Study: Mind-altering drugs shaped rise of Andean civilization
Research finds psychoactive substances played a key role in the development of early Andean societies.
What to know
- New research in Science magazine identifies mind-altering drugs as a key factor in Andean civilization's rise
- The study suggests psychoactive substances played a significant role in early Andean social and cultural development
Science magazine Publisher
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlesposts
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Study circulates on Hacker News
The Science article gains traction on Hacker News, reaching the frontpage with discussion of the research.
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The problem with psychoactive drugs, as I understand it, is not the lack of positive results. There are plenty of well recognized cases.The problem is the the unpredictability, because there are plenty of catastrophic results too, and we don't really know why. We can't tell "in your case you should take this dose, the risks are quantified and…
2 more of the top 3 · 16 posts in this stretch
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There will be sensationalist reports on this. And worth reflecting that these elites operating 'psychoactive pilgrimages' may have been significantly male-dominated. This doesn't often go with egalitarianism... https://www. science.org/content/article/mi nd-altering-drugs-played-key-role-rise-andean-civilization ?
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> The work also benefits from recent research into the use of hallucinogens in treating mental illness, which has promoted broader acceptance of these substances. “There was long a feeling that drugs made you sick and addicted,” says José Capriles, an archaeologist at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) who excavates in Bolivia. “Today…
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Study published linking psychoactive drugs to Andean civilization rise
Science magazine publishes research finding that mind-altering drugs played a key role in the development and rise of Andean civilization.
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first by HN Best, 12d ago · also HN Frontpage
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High culture https://www. science.org/content/article/mi nd-altering-drugs-played-key-role-rise-andean-civilization?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub Posted into News from Science @ news-from-science-SciMag
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What people are saying 13 voices from 1 site · best of 17 · verbatim
- Sep 12
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Terrence McKenna had a theory that psychedelics jump started civilization by making us more open to cooperation.
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My general gripe with results like this is that it seems to be interpreted in a biased way by the people that already use psychoactive drugs, who want to argue for them in the modern world.I do agree that drugs were often needed for people to ensure the hardships of civilization (alcohol is not just a disinfectant). My main problem though is that…
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I would love to know how many human conceptions were assisted by the more well-known mind-altering drug, alcohol.
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Haha that’s great.“Artificial General Intelligence arose from the streets of San Francisco ca. 2027 possibly due to the high use of opiates among the population. Scientists have found that many locals at the time (of the dominant natural species - Homo sapiens) would consume vast amounts of fentanyl on the city streets - an incredibly dangerous…
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People do drugs in abandoned buildings. In a few hundred years archaeologists will think the purpose of shopping malls was fentanyl.
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“This was a time of huge levels of creativity and competition,” he said. “If you didn’t innovate with the latest psychoactives, you were left behind.”Why does this sound familiar? Silicon Valley, microdosing, everyone trying to be creative in finding best applications for AI (more or less creative, I must flag here)Guess history repeats itself.
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I wouldn't celebrate the end of the war on drugs just yet. Even if psychedelic medicines are approved, bifurcated scheduling means that rich white people using psychedelics in clinics would be respectable medical users, but the same exact molecule used on the street by poor brown people would still be schedule 1 and used to justify continued…
- Sep 11
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I love Tom Standage’s book, A History of the World in Six Glasses. It talks about: beer (Mesopotamia), wine (Greece/Rome), spirits (Spanish colonization), tea (British colonization), coffee (world wars), and Coca-Cola (American empire).It’s amazingly coherent.
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It's thought that a lot of the geometric designs in Indigenous pottery and architecture are directly influenced by hallucinogenic plants like datura.There's a really great YouTube channel called Desert Lore and he covers this topic in depth in this episode. It was really fascinating:
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I read many years ago that psychedelics are what lead to the formation of consciousness. And it’s supported by the fact that psychedelics are also a network like the brain is. And when taking them, your brain experiences plasticity and that’s what allows profound changes.A big part of our consciousness is the default mode network (which is a…
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So if you take a lot of psychedelics you end up with a civilization that ritually murders 20,000 people every couple of months.Just imagine the power you could wield as a shaman with drugs like DMT and psilocybin it would look like a literal magic
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Didn’t mind-altering drugs like alcohol play a key role in the rise of any civilization?
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Given that many of our current-day subterranean environments are also covered in art and strewn with drug paraphernalia, can we really say that it played a key role in the rise of the civilization?