Ancient rock carvings in southern Peru could have been made by people high on hallucinogenic drugs, a new study suggests.
The carvings likely portray dancers and are featured on more than 2,000 boulders in the dry gorge of Toro Muerto (Spanish for “Dead Bull”) in the valley of the Majes River. They are thought to be between 1,400 and 2,100 years old. Archaeologists think many were carved between 100 B.C. and A.D. 600 by the Siguas people, who were influenced by the Nasca (or Nazca) culture of southern Peru that made the famous geoglyphs in the desert of the same name.
But wavy lines in the rock carvings are also strikingly similar to art made in the 1970s by the Tucano (also spelled Tukano) people indigenous to the Amazon rainforest in Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador. In those cases, the Tucano made their art during visionary states caused by ingesting the hallucinogen ayahuasca — a drink made from the vine Banisteriopsis caapi. These similarities suggest that the Peruvian rock carvings may also have been influenced by similar visions, according to the new study, published on April 3 in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
More: Ancient artists high on hallucinogens carved dancer rock art in Peru, study suggests | Live Science
Tom Metcalfe 