It’s easy to imagine that dosing followers with hallucinogens is a practice invented by contemporary cult leaders like Charles Manson (or the United States government), but recent archeological findings indicate at least one example that dates back more than a thousand years.
Excavation at a site in the southern Peruvian town of Quilcapampa (a place where the Wari people settled in the Sihuas Valley) uncovered artifacts related to hallucinogenic beverages, in an area with buildings that were likely used for feasting. The findings included 16 vilca seeds and remains of a fermented fruit drink referred to as “chicha de molle.” As the team of researchers wrote in a paper published by the journal Antiquity, the drink would have created a strong psychotropic effect, and: “The resulting psychotropic experience reinforced the power of the Wari state.”
The hallucinogenic powers of the vilca seeds, amplified by delivery within chicha de molle, would have been taken as a spiritual experience by the consumer. Researchers label this discover as particularly significant, because it helps contextualize the social practices of the Wari with respect to the use of hallucinogens during the Formative period (900–300 BCE) — associated with political strategies defined as “exclusionary” — versus during the Late Horizon (approximately 1450–1532 CE), when Inca leaders implemented “corporate” strategies via the mass consumption of alcohol.
Excavation at a site in the southern Peruvian town of Quilcapampa (a place where the Wari people settled in the Sihuas Valley) uncovered artifacts related to hallucinogenic beverages, in an area with buildings that were likely used for feasting. The findings included 16 vilca seeds and remains of a fermented fruit drink referred to as “chicha de molle.” As the team of researchers wrote in a paper published by the journal Antiquity, the drink would have created a strong psychotropic effect, and: “The resulting psychotropic experience reinforced the power of the Wari state.”
The hallucinogenic powers of the vilca seeds, amplified by delivery within chicha de molle, would have been taken as a spiritual experience by the consumer. Researchers label this discover as particularly significant, because it helps contextualize the social practices of the Wari with respect to the use of hallucinogens during the Formative period (900–300 BCE) — associated with political strategies defined as “exclusionary” — versus during the Late Horizon (approximately 1450–1532 CE), when Inca leaders implemented “corporate” strategies via the mass consumption of alcohol.
The paper’s authors argue that findings from Quilcapampa locate the shift between these two practices during the Middle Horizon (600–1000 CE), when beer made from Schinus molle was combined with the hallucinogen Anadenanthera colubrina, and represent an intermediate step between exclusionary and corporate political strategies.
“Almost certainly, it would have been a spiritual experience,” wrote study co-author Justin Jennings, a curator of new world archaeology at the Royal Ontario Museum, as quoted in Live Science. Since vilca seeds were not naturally proximate to Quilcapampa, a certain amount of effort must have been expended to gather them, indicating their importance to the social fabric. READ MORE...
