Tag: ancient history

Viking Drug Use: From Riotous Parties to Berserker Fury

The Vikings stand as legendary figures, their exploits on the seas and battlefields shrouded in myth and mystery. Yet beyond their tales of conquest and exploration lies a lesser-known aspect of Viking culture: their relationship with mind-altering substances.

From the halls of Valhalla to the depths of the dark Nordic forests, some believe the Vikings indulged in a variety of intoxicants, from potent mead brewed from honey to hallucinogenic mushrooms harvested from the wild and maybe even cannabis. It’s even said the Viking’s most fearsome warriors, the Berserkers, were fueled by narcotics.

As is so often the case with Viking history, separating fact from fiction isn’t easy when it comes to Norse drug use.

A Match Made In Valhalla?

The Vikings have a pretty wild reputation, and they were indeed no strangers to revelry and celebrations. Feasts, gatherings, and festivals served as integral parts of their social fabric. Much like many social gatherings today, imbibing certain drugs was a central part of how Vikings socialized.

Their primary drug of choice was, unsurprisingly, alcohol. Not just a means of relaxation and merriment after a hard day’s raiding, it was a symbol of social status and hospitality (a key aspect of Viking culture). Mead, often referred to as the “drink of the gods,” held particular reverence among the Norse with reference being made to it throughout various mythological tales, sagas, and rituals.

But it is likely they didn’t stop there. Over the years there has been much speculation over what other drugs the Vikings may have consumed, especially the potential use of hallucinogenic substances among the Norse.

References in sagas and folklore hint at the consumption of psychoactive mushrooms, such as  Amanita muscaria, known for their mind-altering properties. While evidence for widespread use remains elusive, the possibility of occasional experimentation cannot be discounted.

But before we begin speculating as to what the Vikings may have used, let’s focus on what we know they definitely used. In Viking society, alcohol consumption was a deeply ingrained cultural practice that permeated every aspect of life. Think British pub culture, but even more fundamental and much more spiritual.

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Copper Age Settlement Shows Evidence of Accidental Ritual Mercury Abuse

Getting high off toxic insolvents and chemicals to induce mind-altering effects, is a public health concern today. Dial back 5,000 years ago, in the Iberian Peninsula, groups of women adorned in immaculate ceremonial attire would participate in a ritual dance before an audience, inhaling a vibrant red powder, or mixing it an elixir. This powder, derived from the mineral cinnabar, induced a fevered trance accompanied by tremors and delirium, and its users, visited different astral planes. But the dark side of this tradition was it necessitated a lifetime of dangerous and lethal mercury abuse.

What the users were unlikely to be aware of was that the ‘trip’ was a byproduct of the toxic metal mercury, today one of the most widely banned substances by public health departments all over the world. This usage and more have been wonderfully documented in a study published in late 2023 in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory.

“Western medicine has basically banned mercury … [like] public health enemy No. 1,” says Leonardo García Sanjuán, the study’s lead author and an archaeologist at the University of Seville in Spain. “But the truth is, the history of the relationship of humans with mercury has been quite complex.”

Repeated exposure to these rituals led to the accumulation of mercury in the women’s bodily tissues over their lifetimes. Millennia later, archaeological analysis revealed significantly elevated levels of mercury in the bones of these women and others from their community, far surpassing modern health tolerances.

It appears that at the Copper Age settlement of Valencina, between approximately 2900 and 2650 BC, ritual leaders purposefully ingested mercury-rich cinnabar for ceremonial or magical purposes. Meanwhile, other community members may have inadvertently consumed it while working with the pigment or through environmental contamination.

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40,000 YEARS AGO, NEANDERTHALS DEVELOPED THIS STICKY TECHNOLOGY TO HELP THEM CRAFT STRONGER TOOLS

According to a new study, Neanderthals were using an ochre-based compound as a glue-like adhesive at the Mousterian type site in Le Moustier, France, around 40,000 years ago.

Led by Patrick Schmidt at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany, and published in Science Advances, the study documents the earliest known use of a multi-component adhesive in Europe, indicating complex cognitive abilities and technological innovation among Neanderthals.

A STICKY SITUATION

The research team reexamined stone tools from Le Moustier, which had been untouched since the 1960s, and found traces of a mixture of ochre and bitumen on several artifacts, including scrapers, flakes, and blades. Ochre, a naturally occurring reddish earth pigment, and bitumen, a common component of asphalt, were combined to create a sticky glue-like mass for tool making. 

This mixture was found to be more than 50% ochre, which was surprising to the team because air-dried bitumen alone can serve as an adhesive, but loses its adhesive properties when mixed with such large proportions of ochre. So the team ran some tests.

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ANCIENT DISCOVERIES IN SOUTH AMERICAN CAVE REVEALED TO BE THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLDER THAN EXPERTS THOUGHT

Throughout the world, ancient artistic depictions that were long ago applied to the walls of caves and other stone surfaces offer a window to the past, and into the minds of those who crafted such imagery.

Now, recent research into the emergence of rock art in Patagonia has revealed that imagery depicted at the Cueva Huenul 1 cave is thousands of years older than archaeologists previously estimated.

The findings, detailed in Science Advances, offer new insights into both the evolution of rock art in the region and the ancient humans who resided there, but also have broader implications for our understanding of the sociocultural conditions that might have helped propel the emergence of ancient art.

Unlike other parts of South America, explorations of Patagonia’s prehistory were comparatively recent and remain limited in many respects, with much of its rock art and other archaeological offerings still undated using modern techniques.

Some of the most striking art in the region exists at the Cueva Huenul 1 cave, whose walls and ceiling feature almost 900 paintings that past studies have grouped into 446 motifs.

“CH1 is the most notable place for pigment-based rock art production in northwestern Patagonia and neighbor areas of central-western Argentina and central Chile,” the authors of the new study write, who now say they are among the oldest anywhere in the region, dating to thousands of years earlier than previous studies had placed them.

“We report the earliest set of directly radiocarbon-dated rock art motifs from the archaeological site Cueva Huenul 1,” some of which the authors say appeared “8.2 thousand years before the present (ka B.P.), predating previous records by several millennia,” and having been created over close to 130 generations during a 3,000-year period.

According to the study, this mid-Holocene gallery coincides with a “rock art emergence” phase that dovetails with arid conditions in the region and a temporary decline in the region’s human population.

“We suggest that this diachronic rock art emerged as part of a resilient response to ecological stress by highly mobile and low-density populations,” the authors report.

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Mysterious Ancient Language Revealed on Bronze Hand From 2,100 Years Ago

Abronze hand from 2,100 years ago has revealed rare evidence of a mysterious ancient language, with researchers determining that the inscription is the oldest and longest example of Vasconic to date.

A team of researchers analyzed the artifact, found at the site of an Iron Age hillfort known as Irulegi in Navarre, northern Spain, for a newly published study in the journal Antiquity—and also suggested the words written on it could be linked to modern-day Basque.

Vasconic was spoken by a pre-Roman people known as the Vascones, who once inhabited the western Pyrenees in an area that corresponds primarily with modern-day Navarre, as well as parts of the Spanish regions of La Rioja and Aragon. And as one of only a few known examples of it, the inscription offers fascinating insights into one of Europe’s least understood ancient languages.

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MASSIVE STONE WALL BUILT MORE THAN 10,000 YEARS AGO FOUND HIDDEN BENEATH THE BALTIC SEA

Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Warnemünde report the discovery of an ancient, 10,000-year-old massive stone wall that has remained submerged beneath the Baltic Sea for millennia.

At nearly a kilometer in length, the Stone Age megastructure hidden beneath the waters of the Bay of Mecklenburg in Germany is not only one of the oldest man-made hunting structures in Europe but likely one of the oldest pieces of construction in the entire world.

“It was likely constructed by hunter–gatherer groups more than 10000 y ago and ultimately drowned during the Littorina transgression at 8500 y B.P.,” the researchers explain in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Since then, it remained hidden at the seafloor, leading to a pristine preservation that will inspire research on the lifestyle and territorial development in the larger area.”

CROSS DISCIPLINES OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND MARINE GEOSCIENCE REVEAL DETAILS OF ANCIENT MASSIVE STONE WALL

When describing the discovery and early excavation of the submerged site, the researchers behind the historic find say that studying sites that have been underwater for this length of time is both rewarding and challenging. For instance, remaining underwater for thousands of years likely helped preserve much of the ancient site. However, studying something that is over 21 meters below the surface also has challenges that archaeologists don’t always face.

“The Baltic Sea basins, some of which only submerged in the mid-Holocene, preserve Stone Age structures that did not survive on land,” they explain. “Yet, the discovery of these features is challenging and requires cross-disciplinary approaches between archeology and marine geosciences.”

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The First Viking Woman to Sail to America Was a Legendary Traveler

SHE’S BEEN CALLED “THE GREATEST female explorer of all time,” and the “best-traveled woman of the Middle Ages.” Just after the year 1000 AD, she gave birth to the first European baby in North America. And she concluded her global odyssey with a pilgrimage on foot to Rome. Yet few today can name this extraordinary Viking lady, even if they have heard of Erik the Red and Leif Erikson, her father- and brother-in-law.

Dangerous and deadly sea voyages

Her full name, in modern Icelandic, is Guðríður víðförla Þorbjarnardóttir—Gudrid the Far-Traveled, daughter of Thorbjorn. She was born around 985 AD on the Snæfellsnes peninsula in western Iceland and died around 1050 AD at Glaumbær in northern Iceland. This map shows the extraordinary extent of her travels in between those dates and places. In all, she made eight Atlantic sea voyages, at a time when those were very dangerous and often deadly.

What little we know of her comes from the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders. These are collectively known as the Vinland Sagas, as they describe the Viking exploration and attempted settlement of North America—part of which the explorers called “Vinland,” after the wild grapes that grew there.

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Romans may have used a poisonous plant as a hallucinogenic drug 2,000 years ago, study finds

The Romans are known to have been one of the world’s most influential civilisations.

But even they may have enjoyed a little escapism – in the form of powerful hallucinogens, a study suggests.

Archaeologists have discovered hundreds of black henbane seeds in a hollowed bone at the rural Roman settlement of Houten-Castellum in the Netherlands.

These seeds originate from a poisonous plant, which is part of the nightshade family, and have been used as both a medicine and a narcotic.

Until now, no conclusive evidence of the use of black henbane has been discovered from Roman times.

But experts said the placement of seeds inside a hollowed-out sheep or goat bone, sealed with a black birch bark tar plug, indicate the seeds were stored there intentionally around 2,000 years ago.

Historic texts suggest that henbane may have been used as a painkiller and sleep remedy.

But others warn it can also have strong hallucinogenic effects – causing loss of muscle control, dilation of pupils, visions and even induce a sense of flying.

While this is the first example of black henbane being found in a container from the Roman period, it is not clear exactly what its intended use was, the researchers said.

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Ancient 15,000-Year-Old Viruses Seen in Melting Tibetan Glaciers

Ancient creatures are emerging from the cold storage of melting permafrost, almost like something out of a horror movie.

From incredibly preserved extinct megafauna like the woolly rhino, to the 40,000-year-old remains of a giant wolf, and bacteria over 750,000 years old.

Not all of these things are dead.

Centuries-old moss was able to spring back to life in the warmth of the laboratory. So too, incredibly, were tiny 42,000-year-old roundworms.

These fascinating glimpses of organisms from Earth’s long distant past are revealing the history of ancient ecosystems, including details of the environments in which they existed.

But the melt has also created some concerns about ancient viruses coming back to haunt us.

“Melting will not only lead to the loss of those ancient, archived microbes and viruses, but also release them to the environments in the future,” researchers explained in a study in 2021, led by first author and microbiologist Zhi-Ping Zhong from Ohio State University.

Thanks to metagenomics techniques and new methods for keeping their ice core samples sterilized, the researchers are able to get a better understanding of what exactly lies within the cold.

In the study, the team was able to identify an archive of dozens of unique 15,000-years-old viruses from the Guliya ice cap of the Tibetan Plateau, and gain insights into their functions.

“These glaciers were formed gradually, and along with dust and gases, many, many viruses were also deposited in that ice,” said Zhong. These microbes potentially represent those in the atmosphere at the time of their deposit, the team explained in their paper.

Past studies have shown microbial communities correlate with changes in dust and ion concentrations in the atmosphere, and can also indicate climate and environmental conditions at the time.

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MYSTERIOUS JADE MASK AND OTHER ARTIFACTS IN 1700-YEAR-OLD TOMB REVEAL THE EXISTENCE OF AN UNKNOWN MAYA RULER

Artifacts unearthed in a 1,700-year-old Maya tomb in Guatemala, which include a jade mask and incised human remains, could point to an undocumented chapter in the history of the Maya Empire according to researchers involved with the discovery.

The tomb was discovered by researchers with Tulane University at the Chochkitam site, located near Guatemala’s borders with Belize and Mexico.

Among the remarkable discoveries at the site were a curious jade mosaic mask, as well as carved human femur bones, one of which appears to convey a man believed to be a Maya king holding such a mask.

According to researchers, hieroglyphs that accompany the carvings are believed to identify his ancestors and describe the lineage of rulers extending to the Maya states of Tikal and Teotihuacan.

Other findings within the tomb included 16 rare spondylus shells, a variety of oysters whose shell was revered by the Maya, and often worn as jewelry or used as currency, in addition to having been used in ceremonies.

The artifacts, which are believed to date to 350 CE, offer additional links to Tikal and Teotihuacan, which were highly influential on Maya rulers during this period.

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