New research published in Communications Biology has uncovered the earliest known use of the medicinal and psychoactive plant ...

Thousands of years ago in modern-day Peru, hallucinogenic plants were in use in ritual ceremonies at the renowned Chavín de ...

Cannabis has been a globally important crop for millennia. While best known today as marijuana for its psychoactive ...

Ancient Chavín elites used hallucinogens in private rituals to strengthen their authority and shape early social hierarchies.

Researchers analyzed Iron Age fumigation vessels from Qurayyah, Saudi Arabia, detecting harmala alkaloids from Peganum ...

At Chavín de Huántar, archaeologists discovered a network of hidden rooms they called galleries, built into the larger stone ...

In those rooms, they found bones carved into tubes used as psychedelic paraphernalia—part of a ritualistic experience in which special leaders smoked psychoactive plants. “Taking psychoactives ...

A new study uses metabolic profiling to uncover ancient knowledge systems behind therapeutic and psychoactive plant use in ancient Arabia. A new study uses metabolic profiling to uncover ancient ...

"This is compelling evidence that psychoactive plants were part of formalized and tightly-controlled rituals rather than individual vision-quests or shamanic healing practices," Contreras said.