Earliest evidence of habitual drug use found in teeth in Indonesia — SkimNews
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- Adam Brumm of Griffith University and colleagues unearthed a human jaw fragment with three teeth in a Maros-Pangkep cave on Sulawesi, Indonesia, dated 16,000 to 25,000 years old, bearing unusual rounded grooves no dental experts had seen before.
- A second set of teeth (6,000 to 8,000 years old) from a more complete skull of a middle-aged or older man at another Sulawesi cave showed identical grooves, worn so deeply that nerve centers were exposed, indicating years of repetitive use.
- Brumm personally tested the hypothesis by rolling a whole betel nut in his own mouth, reporting 'a bitter, astringent taste that made my mouth go numb' — the modern practice of slicing nuts with slaked lime produces different wear patterns.
- Lab tests soaking whole betel nuts in artificial saliva and applying the liquid to cells engineered with human brain receptors confirmed enough arecoline is released for physiological effects, and traces of arecoline were detected directly on the ancient teeth.
- The finding predates the prior benchmarks for habitual drug use: 13,000-year-old beer brewing in Israel and 8,000-year-old coca leaf chewing in Peru.
- Betel nuts rank as the world's fourth most popular psychoactive substance today, behind alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine; chronic chewing with slaked lime causes red-stained teeth and elevated oral cancer and heart disease risk.
Why it matters: This discovery pushes the archaeological record of habitual psychoactive substance use back by at least 3,000 years beyond the prior benchmark (13,000-year-old Israeli beer brewing) and over 12,000 years beyond Peruvian coca evidence. The finding reframes Paleolithic behavior — suggesting pain relief drove the earliest stimulant habits, and the exposed nerves in those ancient teeth show addiction was already reshaping human health tens of millennia ago.
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