Very Recommendable!
The article "High Society" is quite long, I did not read all of it.
"The journey of humans into South America was a strange trip—literally. When people arrived some 15,000 years ago, they encountered an ecologically diverse continent peculiarly rich in psychoactive plants. Botanists estimate more than 100 species there significantly alter human consciousness, accounting for more than two-thirds of the global total.
Perhaps, then, it’s no surprise that psychoactive substances played a starring role in many of the empires that arose there, particularly in the Andes. ..."
"Chavín De Huántar, Peru ... Archaeologists have long believed this 3000-year-old temple complex in a high and remote valley in the central Peruvian Andes was a center of drug rituals ...
Such finds strongly suggested the practice of mind-altering rituals, but in 2016 a team ... began to unearth what he calls “the smoking gun.” They uncovered a new gallery ... including 21 bone tubes,” ... which yielded traces of tobacco and something considerably more potent: seeds from the vilca tree, which contain bufotenine; dimethyltryptamine (DMT); and 5-MEO-DMT, a combination that produces short-lived but extremely intense visions. ...
Drug-based rituals, it is now becoming clear, played a central role in the emergence of Andean civilization. ... believes Chavín’s ritual leaders invited elites from other regions to take part in elaborate ceremonies centered on ingesting powerful substances amid a dramatic sound and light show. In so doing, “they harnessed the process of mental alteration to establish powerful levels of authority.” ...
Chavín’s success spawned imitators throughout the region. In subsequent centuries, the Tiahuanaco and Wari peoples built on these traditions to cement political, social, and religious power as their territories expanded to encompass vast swaths of western South America.
Widespread ritual drug use fell into decline only when the Inca rose after 1200 C.E.; Spanish conquerors suppressed remaining practices after their 1532 invasion. Although psychoactives remained in use for medicinal and small-scale religious purposes—many can still be found for sale in open-air markets—their powerful and pervasive influence on Andean society was relegated to the shadows. ...
Scattered evidence suggests early societies along the Peruvian coast experimented with psychoactives as early as the third millennium B.C.E. More solid evidence is found at Chavín, which emerged 150 kilometers to the north by 1200 B.C.E. The temple complex remained in continuous use until decline set in after an earthquake around 550 B.C.E. Notably, it lacks defenses, palaces, or signs of an organized military. Chavín was not the center of a political state, but a pilgrimage site that for centuries drew visitors from afar. ..."
High culture "How psychoactive substances helped spur Andean civilization"
Snuff trays and tubes, like these found at San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, were used to ingest crushed seeds of the psychoactive vilca plant
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