ANTIQUITY OF ENTHEOGENS AND REASONING ON SUPERSTITIONS

Back-story:
I am writing a research on entheogens. Do not want to bother you with details on what I will be arguing in the text, but one part is finished and it might interest you. Have a read if Psychedelic is your topic and you want to learn something about the ancient history. This part of text is pretty much done, as there are maybe slight grammar modifications to be preformed, but history is as it is, so there will be no big alterations to the text.

ANTIQUITY OF ENTHEOGENS

Plant and drug usage or abusage has been found in our society for thousands of years, spreading all over the planet throughout the recorded and documented course of human history with diverse compounds and chemical verity, in many different states of matter and forms (solid, liquid or gas) with different kind of affects and effects. Psychedelic and psychotropic compounds have wide historical context and long history of traditional usage because of their physical and mental “healing” properties; epiphany of the term entheogen. Physical healing in this sense would reflect something that was long time ago considered helpful to our system for swifter recover or to elevate our pain tolerance. Mental healing would consider any action, intentional or unintentional that has profound effect on further understanding of ones surrounding and conscious. It doesn't in any way state that actions of taking psychedelic compounds tend to heal or help recovery in classical medical terms, but neither it does. It is up to you to conclude on this by the end of the text.

Fossil evidence provided by archaeologists suggest that humans have been using psychoactive plants for 10000 years in spiritual and ritual ceremonies. These compounds have been important part of our society and historical evidence of cultural use implies on using them over the past 5000 years.(1)
This kind of evidence is documented in the past within our civilization as well as in indigenous ones. We have evidence of chewing coca in South America that began by at least 8000 cal BP (calibrated years before the present)(2). Indigenous people made paintings of mushrooms on rock around 7000 BC while building temples to their deities and calling psilocybin containing mushroom “teonanácatl” or “Flesh of God”.(3) Mushrooms were not only native to single civilizations, in Spain we have suspected mural of psilocybin mushrooms rituals dating to 6000 BC.(4) Mazatec from Mexico used psilocybin mushrooms, morning glory seeds and Salvia divinorum for spiritual and ritualistic purposes.(5) Sumerians used opium around 5000 B.C..(6) Native Americans used mescaline containing cacti Peyote, San Pedro and Peruvian Torch, where Peyote buttons were carbon dated to 3780-3660 BC, suggesting that they were aware of psychotropic properties of Peyote.(7) Earliest evidence of DMT usage in the form of Yopo snuffs that is derived from Anadenanthera seeds dates to 2130 BC and located in NW Argentina.(8) Psychedelic researcher Giorgio Samorini and R. Gordon Wasson have presented a number of examples where the cultural use of entheogens was found in the archaeological record.(9) Samorini also suggests that the oldest representations of hallucinogenic mushrooms in the world are found in Sahara Desert, N. Africa, tracing psilocybin use to 7000-9000 BC.(10) Archaeologists have also found hemp seeds at Pazyryk, Siberia; suggesting use of Cannabis by the Scythians that occurred during the 5th to 2nd century BC. The list goes on, so there is no need to be concerned with details as we can concur as a fact from carbon dating and cultural evidence that humans used consciousness altering substances through the history.

Some ethnic religions are based completely on the use of certain drugs, mostly hallucinogens such as, but not limited to psychedelics, dissociatives, or deliriants. Shamans are also known to achieve religious ecstasy and induce trance by using this kind substances. The Aguaruna of Peru believe that illnesses are caused by the sorcerer’s dart. Under the influence of ayahuasca shamans try to remove the darts from possessed ones. (11) Is this the belief that should be taken for real, today with our knowledge on sorceries and magic? Is there any difference between shaman darts and entities that manifest on DMT, something that people commonly see while intoxicated with DMT?

Be it through the history or today, religion was and is trying to give answers to questions that are inscrutable within “zeitgeist” of its time or without the knowledge that is yet to come. From personification of the sun as a Messiah or God, Virgo cluster as Virgin Mary, sky as Heaven or fire as Hell, belief system was always influenced and obsessed with natural phenomenon. Who could have blamed them? This helped our ancestors to know the difference between the night and day, seasons and harvests, when to stack food for the winter, when to impregnate a woman… So, this kind of behavior was beneficial and plausible, at least most of the times. When it wasn't, they turned to prayers. Not much has changed since then.

References:

1. Merlin, M D. 2003. “Archaeological Evidence for the Tradition of Psychoactive Plant Use in the Old World”, Economic Botany 57 (3): 295–323
2. Early Holocene coca chewing in northern Peru, Volume 84, Issue 326, December 2010, pp. 939-953.
3. Schultes R E and A Hofmann. 1992. Plants of the Gods (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions).
4. Akers, B. P., Ruiz, J. F., Piper, A., & Ruck, C. A. (2011). A Prehistoric Mural in Spain Depicting Neurotropic Psilocybe Mushrooms? 1. Economic Botany, 65(2), 121-128. doi:10.1007/s12231-011-9152-5
5. Jean Basset Johnson (1939) The elements of Mazatec witchcraft, Etnologiska Studier 9:128-150.
6. Alfred R. Lindesmith, Addiction and Opiates, p. 207.
7. El-Seedi, H R et al. 2005. “Prehistoric peyote use: Alkaloid analysis and radiocarbon dating of archaeological specimens of Lophophora from Texas”, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 101 (1-3): 238-242.
8. Torres, C. M. 1996. "Archaeological Evidence for the Antiquity of Psychoactive Plant Use in the Central Andes." Annali dei Musei Civici-Rovereto 11: 291-326.
   Torres, C. M. 1998. "Psychoactive Substances in the Archaeology of Northern Chile and NW Argentina: A Comparative Review of the Evidence." Chungará 30 (1): 49-63.
9. Samorini, Giorgio (1997). "The 'Mushroom-Tree' of Plaincourault". Eleusis (8): 29–37. and
   Samorini, Giorgio (1998). "The 'Mushroom-Trees' in Christian Art". Eleusis (1): 87–108.
10. Samorini, G. (1992) THE OLDEST REPRESENTATIONS OF HALLUCINOGENIC MUSHROOMS IN THE WORLD (SAHARA DESERT, 9000 - 7000 B.P.). Integration, 2/3: 69-78.
11. "Shamanism and Its Discontents." Medical Anthropology Quarterly 2.2 (1988) 102-20.