25,000-Year-old evidence of drug use found in Indonesia? what researchers discovered

Humans may have been taking mind-altering drugs much earlier than previously believed. Evidence suggests that up to 25,000 years ago, certain Indonesian civilizations utilized betel nuts as medications, according to the recent research.According to the BBC report, researchers at Australia's Griffith University discovered peculiar patterns in the skeletal remains of prehistoric humans that they connected to betel nut sucking.According to the study's principal investigator, Professor Adam Brumm, this might be the "earliest evidence for drug use anywhere in the world."The unusual skeletal remains of two early human foragers from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi were found, according to a recent study published in Science Advances. One was between 25,000 and 16,000 years old, while the other was between 7,600 and 6,300 years old.The researchers discovered that swallowing whole betel nuts was the source of the hunter-gatherers' distinctive dental wear pattern, which included deep, rounded tooth grooves.Betel nuts, which are the seeds of the betel or Areca catechu palm, cause moderate euphoria and increased consciousness when eaten.Brumm stated; "Although poorly known in western societies, it is the world's fourth most widely used psychoactive substance, after alcohol, caffeine and nicotine."It was previously believed that drug use started around 13,000 years ago with fermented alcoholic beverages, following the introduction of farming.But according to Brumm, the approach "fails to account for the possibility that very ancient drug-taking lies at the roots of our most commonly used psychoactive substances - "The study suggests that certain contemporary drug-taking behaviors have deep roots in forager traditions by pinpointing the ancient activity that underlies betel-nut chewing as we know it.In modern times, the drug is typically consumed by combining a processed betel nut seed with slaked lime and other ingredients to make a chewable mixture known as a “quid”. The practice is widespread across South and Southeast Asia, with an estimated one in 10 people worldwide using betel nut products.To investigate how the psychoactive compounds could have been absorbed, researchers soaked betel nuts in artificial saliva. Their experiments showed that simply sucking on whole betel nuts could release sufficient levels of these compounds to affect brain activity.Although the effects from sucking on whole betel nuts may have been weaker than those produced by chewing the modern quid, researchers said the practice could still have been frequent enough to contribute to serious gum disease.