Anthropology

By Laura Geggel - Associate Editor a day ago

When ingested, the flower Datura can induce trances.



A digitally enhanced image of the Indigenous pinwheel drawing that researchers made with a technique called D-Stretch.
(Image: © Devlin Gandy)

Just before going into a hallucinogenic trance, Indigenous Californians who had gathered in a cave likely looked up toward the rocky ceiling, where a pinwheel and big-eyed moth were painted in red.

This mysterious "pinwheel," is likely a depiction of the delicate, white flower of Datura wrightii, a powerful hallucinogen that the Chumash people took not only for ceremonial purposes but also for medicinal and supernatural ones, according to a new study. The moth is likely a species of hawk moth, known for its "loopy" intoxicated flight after slurping up Datura's nectar, the researchers said.

Chewed globs that humans stuck to the cave's ceiling provided more evidence of these ancient trips; these up to 400-year-old lumps, known as quids, contained the mind-altering drugs scopolamine and atropine, which are found in Datura, the researchers said.

. . .

Indigenous people around the world, including ancient cultures in Siberia, North America and South America, are known to have taken mind-altering substances, said Patrick McGovern, the scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Project at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, who was not involved in the study. And this study used cutting-edge techniques "to elucidate an important biocultural issue — the use of hallucinogens by peoples of the Americas," McGovern told Live Science in an email.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/rock-art-hallucinogen-california.html