25,000-Year-Old Teeth Yield Earliest Evidence of Drug Use
Researchers found chemical traces and deep tooth grooves, suggesting Ice Age foragers used betel nuts for pain relief and may have developed dependence.
- On Wednesday, September 9, 2026, Griffith University researchers announced the discovery of 25,000-year-old skeletal remains in Sulawesi, Indonesia, showing evidence of habitual betel nut sucking by ancient hunter-gatherers, pushing back the timeline of human drug use by over 10,000 years.
- Archaeologists previously believed psychoactive drug use emerged around 13,000 years ago with the Neolithic advent of farming and fermented drinks in Israel, but this Sulawesi discovery predates those agricultural traditions by over 10,000 years, fundamentally reshaping the history of human substance use.
- Professor Adam Brumm and colleagues at Griffith University identified deep, rounded tooth grooves in the remains; laboratory experiments using artificial saliva and cloned human receptors confirmed that sucking intact betel nuts releases arecoline, the psychoactive compound.
- Sucking the abrasive seeds caused severe dental damage, exposing sensitive pulp chambers and leading to chronic infections in a 'vicious cycle' where users likely persisted with the practice to soothe the very toothaches it created, Brumm suggested.
- Modern betel quid chewing remains popular among roughly 600 million people today, though this ancient tradition carries significant public health burdens, including links to oral cancer and other serious conditions documented in contemporary users.
136 Articles
136 Articles
Archaeologists have discovered the oldest evidence of drug use on Sulawesi. Two bites tell of betel nuts in the ice age. And of a fatal cycle.
On an Indonesian island, researchers have found signs of abuse in two prehistoric skeletons, suggesting that humans have been using drugs for thousands of years longer than previously thought.
The prehistoric remains of two collectors found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi contain revealing indications that humans began to use a mind-altering drug thousands of years earlier than was believed.
Millennial Use of Betel Nut: Traces of Psychoactive Substances on Human Teeth 6,300-25,000 Years Ago
The use of psychoactive substances in humans is older than expected and goes back well before the advent of agriculture: this is demonstrated by the traces found on the teeth of two Indonesian hunters-gatherers who lived between...
<p>The oldest evidence of regular use of a psychoactive substance was found on an island in Indonesia. Sulawesi hunter-gatherers may have consumed betel nuts 25,000 years ago. Scientists have found their marks on severely damaged teeth.</p>
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