The human race has been getting high for longer than you might assume. Researchers have found evidence that ancient humans chewed on betel nuts, a stimulant that is still widely used today. The seed may have been employed as a painkiller or as a social and cultural practice – something that still influences its modern use.
Researchers analysed the teeth of early human foragers from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and found “dental pathology” most likely attributed to the “habitual sucking of whole betel nuts”, said a study published in the journal Science Advances. The earliest human remains examined were dated to 25,000 to 16,000 years ago and another set was dated 7,600 to 6,300 years ago. Written accounts of betel nut chewing go back approximately 2,000 years while previous archaeological evidence goes back about 3,500 years. The new findings extend the potential betel nut use by tens of thousands of years.
Prehistoric humans likely used betel nuts as painkillers, but in chewing on them they “wore their teeth down to the pulp, which would have been excruciating”, said The New York Times. Because of the pain from tooth damage, they may have upped their betel nut consumption, ultimately worsening the addiction.
It is “fascinating to see the negative effects that drug addiction, if you want to call it that, had on ancient people before the development of alcohol, nicotine and caffeine”, Adam Brumm, a professor of archaeology at the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith University and lead author of the study, told the Times. |
