Hair Samples Show Europeans Were Using Psychedelics in the Bronze Age

While archaeologists and historians have long suspected the inhabitants of Bronze Age Europe of using psychedelics, they now have irrefutable scientific evidence. And it’s all thanks to several tiny strands of human hair found impeccably preserved in a 3,000-year-old burial site in Spain.

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Hair Samples Reveal Psychedelic Traces

The researchers found that the hair contained traces of three different alkaloids known to cause altered states of consciousness.

“This is incredible,” said Rafael Mico, professor of archaeological prehistory at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. “This is the first direct evidence in Europe of the use of psychedelics.”

Mico co-authored a new study describing the findings, which was published this month in the journal Scientific Reports.

A New Analysis of a Decades-Old Discovery

According to Mico, this is a discovery that has been made for decades. It all began in the mid-1990s with the discovery of a cave in Menorca, an island off the east coast of Spain. The cave, called Es Càrritx, contained the remains of about 200 people from the Bronze Age.

According to Mico, some of these people had hair dyed red. Strands of hair were found inside decorated tubular boxes made of wood and antlers. The archaeological finds inside the cave were exceptionally well preserved, as the cave opening had long been closed by collapsed rubble.

“It’s a miracle to have found these strands of hair through very, very special conditions,” Mico said.

Improved Science Key to psychedelics Detection

Initial analyses of these hair samples didn’t tell researchers much about the use of psychedelics, according to Mico. But over time, the science improved, so they tried again. This time, they found evidence of three compounds that can be produced from native plants: the hallucinogens Atropine and Scopolamine and the stimulant Ephedrine.

Plants such as mandrake (Mandragora autumnalis), henbane (Hyoscyamus Albus), Datura, and Ephedra are the likely sources of these different substances.

All three compounds are used in modern medicine for a wide variety of purposes, including atropine to combat nerve agent poisoning, scopolamine to treat motion sickness, and Ephedrine to lower blood pressure during anesthesia.

The analysis suggests that the person to whom the hair belonged had been using these psychoactive compounds regularly for at least a year prior to his death.

Not the First Time Bronze Age Psychedelic Use Discovered

This is not the first time it has been discovered that the Bronze Age peoples of what is now Europe used psychedelics, as did the inhabitants of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. But earlier research was more circumstantial – for example, archaeological finds of what appeared to be smoking pipes.

“That’s why it’s important to keep the archaeological remains in good condition so they can be analyzed in the future,” Mico said.

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(Featured image by Frank C. Müller (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons)

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