Only elites used hallucinogens in ancient Andes society

Snuff tubes and spoons unearthed at Chavín de Huántar in Peru had traces of vilca and nicotine.

In 2022, we told you about a study reporting evidence that an ancient Peruvian people called the Wari laced the beer served at their feasts with hallucinogens—particularly a substance derived from the seeds of the vilca tree, which was common in the region during the Middle Horizon period (circa 850 CE) when the Wari empire thrived. This may have helped the Wari forge political alliances and expand their empire.

Now archaeologists have discovered direct evidence that the use of vilca was a common practice some 1,000 years earlier than the Wari, thanks to analysis of artifacts unearthed at Chavín de Huántar, located about 250 kilometers north of Lima, Peru. And the Chavín people may have used it for a different purpose: to reinforce social hierarchies by limiting consumption of those substances to an elite few, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

There is ample evidence that humans in many cultures throughout history used various hallucinogenic substances in religious ceremonies or shamanic rituals. That includes ancient Egypt, as well as ancient Greek, Vedic, Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures. The Urarina people who live in the Peruvian Amazon Basin still use a psychoactive brew called ayahuasca in their rituals, and Westerners seeking their own brand of enlightenment have been known to participate. The Wari empire lasted from around 500 CE to 1100 CE in the central highlands of Peru.

Vilca typically grows in the dry tropical forests in the region. The trees produce long legumes filled with thin seeds. The seeds, bark, and other parts of the tree all contain DMT, a well-known psychedelic substance that is also found in the ayahuasca brews of Amazonian tribes. However, the primary active ingredient is bufotenine, the effects of which quickly wear off if the drug is taken orally. So it's usually smoked, ingested in the form of snuff, or used as an enema by those seeking the full hallucinogenic effect.

A 4,000-year-old pipe laced with bufotenine residue and related paraphernalia was found in an Incan cave in Argentina in 1999—the oldest archaeological evidence to date for using vilca in South America. There is also evidence from historical accounts that a juice or tea derived from vilca seeds was sometimes added to chicha, a fermented beverage made from maize or the fruits of the molle tree native to Peru. This is one way to take vilca orally while still getting a weaker, sustained psychedelic effect, since the beta-carbolines produced during the fermentation of chicha suppress the stomach enzymes that counteract the high by deactivating the active compounds.

People of the neighboring state of Tiwanaku were known to mix such hallucinogens with alcohol, specifically maize beer. There are depictions of vilca seed pods on Wari jars that are about the right size for serving chicha. Excavations at a remote Wari outpost called Quilcapampa unearthed seeds from the vilca tree. Since no snuff paraphernalia was recovered from the site, it's most likely that the vilca was added to the chicha.

Heart of the Andes

Chavin de Huantar in modern-day Peru hosts several monumental buildings overseeing a large plaza, located at an elevation of 10,000 ft.

Daniel Contreras

 

A rendering of the Chavin de Huantar in modern-day Peru at its height.

Daniel Contreras

 

Chavín de Huántar was once the heart of the Chavín culture, a civilization that flourished in the central Andes centuries before the rise of the Inca Empire. Its oldest granite and limestone temples date back to about 1200 BCE, but people have lived at the site for much longer, since at least 3000 BCE. The center features an array of stone-faced structures built around open plazas with interior species that archaeologists call galleries. In 2022, archaeologists rediscovered a narrow duct leading to a small ritual chamber 8 meters deep beneath one of the site’s temple buildings. They dubbed it the Condor Gallery.

That expedition was led by Stanford University archaeologist John Rick, a co-author on this latest paper, which concerns the excavation of a sealed gallery located in the atrium of the site's Circular Plaza. Among the artifacts recovered were 23 items associated with using psychoactive plants: short snuff tubes, flat tablets, and small spoons, all made of animal bone except for one made of a marine mollusk shell.

The chemical analysis of the artifacts revealed that six showed traces of both vilca and nicotine derived from wild relatives of tobacco (Nicotiana), per the authors, with the latter confirmed by microbotanical analysis. Furthermore, there was some damage to starch grains recovered from inside the snuff tubes, suggesting exposure to dry heat—most likely the drying and toasting of vilca seeds and Nicotiana roots. "Drying and toasting is consistent with ethnographic accounts of the preparation of snuff in general and of vilca and tobacco in particular," the authors wrote. "The latter preparation also includes grinding, which could also be a cause of some of the observed damage."

Such psychoactive compounds may have been used in certain immersive rituals. "One of the few practices clearly represented in Chavín art is the procession," co-author Daniel Contreras, an anthropological archaeologist at the University of Florida, told Ars. "These involve apparently costumed individuals, in some cases carrying shell trumpets. Some examples of the trumpets themselves have actually been excavated from another underground gallery very near the one that we write about here, lending credence to the idea that what's depicted in the art is some part of actual ceremonial practice."

A cultural transition

Unlike the Wari, who used psychedelics in communal settings to strengthen social bonds, the Chavín people were more exclusive about who got to partake, based on the fact that the snuff tubes were found in private chambers with limited capacity. This would serve to strengthen social hierarchies and reinforce the authority of the select few.

"The Wari examples are about 1,000 years later, as are the Tiwanaku ones, so maybe it's not surprising that there should be some variation in how people were using vilca," Contreras told Ars. "We don't know that this is the only context in which vilca was used at Chavín—just that it's clear it was being used in this particular restricted-access context. That's not to say that it or other substances—including such simple things as food and chicha—weren't also being used in more open contexts to build social bonds. Work parties for harvest or canal cleaning, for example, are still very much part of life in the rural Central Andes, and for that matter anywhere else (including the U.S.)."

"If I had to guess, I'd say those were very much part of Chavín as well," he added. "But that at the same time some kinds of rituals were very particular and likely exclusive with respect to location, content, and maybe substances involvement—both procuring plants and knowing how to prepare them may have required pretty specialized knowledge."

The discovery has broader implications because Chavín straddled a major social transition. Between 500 and 1,000 years after Chavín, "there were already sedentary villages practicing agriculture and engaged in communal building projects recognizably similar to Chavín—platform mounds arrayed around plazas," said Contreras. "However, there's little evidence of the existence of substantial and durable inequality, and much less evidence of craft specialization, production, and long-distance trade/exchange than there is at Chavín."

But in the 1,000 years after  Chavín, "settlements got significantly bigger and more urban, and several Andean societies can be found (Moche, for instance) that were very clearly strongly hierarchical; social, political, and economic inequality had become the norm," Contreras said. "Chavín is obviously not the only archaeological site found between those two extremes, but it's a really interesting place to examine that transition."

PNAS, 2025. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2425125122  (About DOIs).

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years.

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of April): 1,811

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend