Humans have used modern technology to invent many new ways to find comfort and push our life experiences into new directions. But there is one method that has stood the test of time for thousands of years: drugs. Indeed, there is widespread archeological evidence for human use of mind-altering substances, including an 1,000-year-old plant bundle with chemical traces of cocaine and 14th-century ceramic jugs containing opium. Unearthed ancient drug paraphernalia build out the well-accepted story that people have been doing drugs, religiously or recreationally, since the dawn of civilization (and likely even earlier.)
Imagine, though, that you are in a completely thought experiment-based drug court representing an ancient defendant accused of doing ancient drugs. The evidence, you might say to the fictitious judge, is completely circumstantial! The prosecution has nothing to prove that my client actually did those drugs, your honor.
Your defense would have been valid until now: A new study analyzed human hair from the early first millennium BCE collected in caves in Es Càrritx on the island of Menorca east of Spain, and found multiple psychoactive compounds derived from plants. To the Spanish and Chilean researchers who conducted the investigation, these findings indicated that the heads attached to the hair had engaged in drug use for almost a year. The new study was published on April 6 in the journal Scientific Reports.
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The Menorcan caves at the center of the study are thought to have been a place for ceremonial burials—indigenous people have inhabited the island as early as 3,000 years ago. As part of a ritual, deceased individuals’ hair were dyed red and locks were cut off and stored in a wooden container. By testing these locks for chemical compounds called alkaloids that are present in psychoactive plants, the researchers were able to pinpoint who, exactly, would have been using drugs thousands of years ago.
“The study of drug use in Prehistoric Europe has mainly been based on indirect evidence, such as archaeobotanical remains of drug plants, artistic depictions, and occasionally the detection of drug alkaloids in certain artifacts,” the authors wrote in the study. “The unusual finding of human hair in the cave of Es Càrritx provided the opportunity to obtain direct evidence for the use of plant drugs by Late Bronze Age people.”
The researchers found chemical signatures for three different alkaloids, suggesting the use of multiple mind-altering plants. One of these is Jimsonweed, a member of the nightshade family that can act as a hallucinogen but is poisonous in large doses. Another, the joint pine, produces an extract that can be used as a decongestant and doping agent.
The alkaloids found in the hair even gave the researchers a clue into how the people using these substances might have felt. Two of the compounds are produced by “deliriant drugs” that seem to take hallucinations to a new level.
“Out-of-body experiences and a feeling of alteration of the skin, as if growing fur or feathers, are usually reported,” the researchers wrote in the study.
Human hair grows at a steady rate of about a centimeter a month, and these psychoactive compounds were found along the strands analyzed. This suggests that whoever’s hair it was used these drugs for almost a year, and possibly longer. Due to the toxicity of the plants identified and their inability to act as strong pain relief for the sorts of conditions that afflicted the people buried in the cave, the researchers theorized that the hair in the containers belonged to shamans, who would have been highly knowledgeable about the proper dosages and side effects of these hallucinogenic substances.
Means, motive, and opportunity—it doesn’t get more straightforward than that. Ancient drug court is adjourned.
