Researchers studying two pre-agricultural skeletons discovered on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have identified what may represent the earliest documented evidence of human consumption of mind-altering substances. One skeleton dated to approximately 7,000 years old and another to between 16,000 and 25,000 years old both displayed unusual dental characteristics that prompted investigation into their origins.
Both individuals exhibited deep, rounded grooves worn into their teeth, with some erosion reaching the dental pulp. This dramatic wear pattern led scientists to hypothesize about the cause and eventually suspect repeated contact with hard, round objects held in the mouth over extended periods. The research team, led by Prof Adam Brumm of Griffith University’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, theorized that the foragers were regularly sucking on betel nuts, which are seeds from the Areca catechu palm and commonly wrapped in betel vine leaves for consumption.
To test their hypothesis, researchers soaked betel nuts in artificial saliva and confirmed that the nuts released sufficient quantities of arecoline, a psychoactive compound, to produce effects. Chemical analysis of the ancient skeletons’ teeth subsequently revealed traces of arecoline in the dental tissues, supporting the theory. The findings, published in Science Advances, suggest the foragers may have initially used the nuts to address dental pain, inadvertently creating a cycle in which the nut-sucking behavior itself caused progressive tooth damage and further pain.
Betel nuts rank as the world’s fourth most widely used psychoactive substance globally, behind only alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine, with approximately one-tenth of the world’s population currently using them. The research extends knowledge of this consumption practice back millennia into prehistoric times. Previous understanding suggested that organized psychoactive substance use traditions began approximately 13,000 years ago with fermented beverages like barley beer, making these findings substantially older than previously documented evidence of deliberate drug consumption.
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