Ancient teeth point to earliest known drug use

Researchers have identified what may be the earliest known evidence of habitual psychoactive drug use in humans, tracing it to prehistoric foragers on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi who appear to have sucked on betel nuts as long as 25,000 years ago. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances on September 9, come from a study led by Adam Brumm of Griffith University's Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution in Brisbane. The team analysed the remains of two preagricultural foragers found at two separate archaeological sites on the island. One individual, a man who died between the ages of about 40 and 50, lived between 25,000 and 16,000 years ago, a period roughly corresponding to the Last Glacial Maximum, although Sulawesi itself was not covered in ice. The second individual, whose sex could not be determined, lived between roughly 7,600 and 6,300 years ago. The older remains were uncovered about a decade ago in the Maros-Pangkep region, where excavators found a jaw fragment bearing three teeth marked by unusual wear. Both individuals displayed deep, rounded grooves in their teeth, in places so severe that the inner dental pulp was exposed.