Prehistoric Drug Use
Sulawesi Foragers May Have Used Betel Nuts 25,000 Years Ago
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Key Points
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Betel nuts are estimated to be the world’s fourth most widely used psychoactive substance, after alcohol, caffeine and nicotine, with roughly one-tenth of the global population consuming them.
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The remains came from two separate archaeological sites on Sulawesi and belonged to exceptionally rare adult skeletons from pre-agricultural communities—one dating to about 16,000–25,000 years ago and the other to roughly 7,000 years ago.
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Lead researcher Adam Brumm said the findings may reveal how a drug-use habit still common across the Asia-Pacific region evolved; he described the tooth damage as resembling wear from “a drill head shaped like a gobstopper.”
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The study, published in Science Advances, places habitual plant-drug use among Homo sapiens up to about 12,000 years earlier than the previous record, a 13,000-year-old beer tradition identified in Israel.
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Researchers suggested the practice may have created a cycle of dependence: temporary pain relief from arecoline led to continued sucking, while prolonged use worsened dental damage and may have increased reliance on the nuts. Study co-author Adam Brumm called this an early example of “the cycle of addiction.”
Researchers have found the earliest evidence of habitual drug use in human history: two prehistoric foragers from Sulawesi, Indonesia, who regularly sucked betel nuts between roughly 25,000 and 6,000 years ago ZME Science. Deep grooves in their teeth and chemical traces of arecoline—the seeds' psychoactive compound—point to repeated consumption long before agriculture emerged Griffith University. The discovery pushes back the known timeline of drug use by about 12,000 years, predating the previous record of ancient beer-making in Israel.
Betel nuts remain the world's fourth most widely used psychoactive substance today, after alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine, with roughly one-tenth of the global population consuming them Study Finds. But the Sulawesi evidence reveals a darker side: the hard, abrasive seeds severely eroded the teeth of these ancient users, exposing pulp and raising infection risk—possibly trapping them in a cycle of dependence.
Deep Tooth Grooves Point to Ancient Betel Habit
The two skeletons—one dating to 16,000–25,000 years ago and the other to roughly 7,000 years ago—came from separate archaeological sites on Sulawesi Daily Sabah. Both showed distinctive wear patterns: deep, rounded grooves in the teeth that resembled damage from repeatedly holding hard objects. Lead researcher Adam Brumm described the wear as resembling marks from "a drill head shaped like a gobstopper."
What makes the evidence compelling is the combination of two independent clues ZME Science. Beyond the tooth grooves, researchers detected chemical traces of arecoline inside the dental tissue itself. Together, these findings provide far stronger proof of habitual betel use than tooth wear alone could offer.
Pain Relief Leads to Self-Reinforcing Addiction Cycle
Researchers suspect the practice began as a practical solution: arecoline may have temporarily numbed or relieved tooth pain Mundo América. But sucking on the hard, abrasive nuts repeatedly wore down the teeth further. Exposed pulp increased infection risk, potentially making the original pain worse and pushing users to rely even more on the substance.
Brumm called this an early example of "the cycle of addiction"—where a remedy creates the very problem it was meant to solve ZME Science. The pattern suggests that drug dependence emerged not from abundance or settled life, but from simple trial and error among mobile hunter-gatherers seeking relief from immediate pain.
Drug Use Predates Agriculture by Thousands of Years
The Sulawesi findings challenge the assumption that drug use requires farming or settled communities Griffith University. Psychoactive plants were freely available to mobile hunter-gatherers, and experimentation with them could address urgent needs like pain relief or alertness. No surplus production or permanent settlements were necessary.
The study, published in Science Advances, pushes the earliest confirmed drug habit back 12,000 years further than the previous record Study Finds. This transforms our understanding of how and when humans developed relationships with mind-altering substances—suggesting curiosity and self-medication drove usage long before civilization itself.
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