Humans used stimulants 25,000 years ago, study finds

Archaeologists in Indonesia discovered evidence that people chewed betel nuts around 25,000 years ago, potentially making this the oldest known instance of human drug use.

Researchers from Griffith University in Australia studied the teeth of two hunter-gatherers found on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The teeth showed unusual wear patterns and contained traces of arecoline, a chemical found in betel nuts.

The team hypothesized that ancient people sucked on whole betel nuts, releasing arecoline and experiencing a mild euphoric and alerting effect. Experiments showed that simply sucking on the nuts could release enough arecoline to affect brain function. This practice likely began long before previously thought, pushing back the timeline for human drug use to the late Pleistocene period.

While betel nut chewing may have initially served as a pain reliever for dental problems, the abrasive nuts eventually caused severe dental issues, creating a cycle of continued use. Betel nut is now the fourth most consumed psychoactive substance worldwide, after alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine, but remains less familiar in Western societies. The discovery suggests that the use of this stimulant has deep prehistoric roots.