Petroglyph Park, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Photo Peter Faris, September 1988.
For quite some time the question of whether the production of rock art was sometimes influenced by the use of hallucinogenic plants has been debated. In recent years discoveries in the American Southwest have cast light on this question and provided an answer of “Yes, the production of rock art was sometimes influenced by the use of hallucinogenic plants.”
“Over a swath of the Chihuahuan Desert stretching from Carlsbad to Las Cruces, at least 24 rock art panels have been found bearing the same distinctive pictographs: repeated series of triangles. Hallucinogenic plants were found growing beneath the triangle designs, including a particularly potent species of wild tobacco and the potentially deadly psychedelic known as datura.” (Pastino 2015)
For years Dr. Lawrence Loendorf has noted the presence of coyote tobacco, Nicotiana attenuata, growing at rock art sites. “Nicotiana attenuata is a species of wild tobacco known by the common name coyote tobacco. It is native to western North America from British Columbia to Texas and northern Mexico, where it grows in many types of habitat.” (Wikipedia) This species of tobacco is considerably stronger in some of the alkaloids that can affect the human brain, and Loendorf realized that the ancient artists my have been purposely growing it for use in trancing at the same ceremonial sites that sport the rock art.
Another plant commonly noticed at rock art sites is Datura. “Although opinions have varied greatly, the home of the entire genus is likely Mexico or Central America.” (Sorenson and Carl Johannessen 2009:189)
Malotki (1999) agrees, stating that: “In addition to Datura, among the hallucinoganic plants available to Pastyle people (Palavayu anthropomorphic style) within the confines of northeastern Arizona, were Indian tobacco (Nicotiana trogonophylla), Four o’clock (Mirabilis multiflora), and the mushroom species psilocybe (Psilocybe coprophilia) and fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) (Hevly, personal communication 1998). Of these, Datura appears to be the most qualified to have served the ancient hunters and gatherers in their exploitation of hallucinogens and conscious-altering agents.” (Malotki 1999:115-6 )
“Researchers believe that the plants may be a kind of living artifact, left there nearly a thousand years ago by shamans who smoked the leaves of the plants in preparation for their painting.” (Pastino 2015)
“I think almost certainly that they’re trancing on this stuff,’ said Dr. Lawrence Loendorf, president of the archaeological firm Sacred Sites Research, of the ancient artisans. ‘I think there’s a real good chance they’re using tobacco in large enough amounts that they’re going into altered states of consciousness, and I think that’s how [the hallucinogenic plants] are getting there. They’re getting to those sites because they were used for special ceremonial purposes.’” (Pastino 2015)
So up until now we have had convincing, but only circumstantial evidence of the use of hallucinogens in the creation of some rock art in the American southwest. The question has now been answered with apparent certainty by the discovery of a number of chewed fibrous quids in southern California’s Pinwheel Cave, that, when analyzed, proved to be the remains of datura (chewed, presumably for trancing) in conjunction with a pictograph of what appears to be an unfolding datura blossom.
“The cave gets its name for a large, red, pinwheel-shaped drawing on its ceiling; some archaeologists have hypothesized it represents a genus of the psychoactive flower Datura. The flower contains the alkaloids scopolamine and atropine, which are considered an entheogen - a psychoactive compound used in a spiritual context. The Chumash people of Southern California called the experiences triggered by ingesting Datura “sacred dreams,” according to Jim Adams, a pharmacologist at the University of Southern California who spent 14 years studying sacred Chumash Datura ceremonies.
When David Robinson, an archaeologist at the University of Central Lancashire, and his colleagues began to excavate the site in 2007, they found chewed remnants of plant materials - also known as quids - pushed into cracks in the ceiling of the cave. Initial attempts to extract DNA from the quids came up short. But now, a combination of new chemical analyses and electron miscroscopy has positively identified the plant as Datura, the teams reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ‘I was like, ‘Wow, we found the smoking gun of hallucinogens at a rock art site,’’ Robinson says.” (Schultz 2020)
So now we have not only a pictograph that seems to represent the spiral arrangement of a partially opened datura blossom, we also have physical remains of datura chewed by humans and then carefully pushed into cracks in the ceiling of the cave - in other words, treated specially, and found in close conjunction with the image. This would seem to be an open-and-shut case.
On November 1, 2014, I posted a column titled Hopi Clan Registers As A Rock Art Lexicon For The Southwest - Squash Blossoms. In this column I suggested that petroglyphs of flowers found in Petroglyph Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and at Signal Hill, Tucson, Arizona, were perhaps meant to represent squash blossoms. It appears that now I have to add the possibility that these images may represent Datura blossoms. Squash blossoms have ceremonial uses for Puebloan peoples and must have as well for Ancestral Puebloan peoples. Now we have confirmation that Datura has been related to rock art (at least in that one instance) I feel that I must also accept the possibility that these petroglyphs of flowers could represent Datura as well.
NOTE: Some images in this column were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.
REFERENCES:
en.wikipedia.org, Nicotiana attenuata, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctiana_attenuata
Faris, Peter, 2014, Hopi Clan Registers As A Rock Art Lexicon For The Southwest - Squash Blossoms, November 1, 2014, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/hopi-clan-registers-as-rock-art-lexicon.html
Malotki, Ekkehart, 1999, The Use of Hallucinogenic Plants by the Archaic-Basketmaker Creators of the Rock Art of the Palavayu, Northeast Arizona: The Case for Datura, in American Indian Rock Art, Volume 25, Steven M. Freers, editor, American Rock Art Research Association, 1999, pp. 101-120.
Pastino, Blake, 2015, Hallucinogenic Plants May Be Key to Decoding Ancient Southwestern Paintings, Expert Says, December 31, 2015, https://westerndigs.org.
Schultz, David, 2020, Californian Cave Artists May Have Used Hallucinogens, Find Reveals, 23 November 2020, https://www.sciencemag.org
Sorenson, John L., and Carl L. Johannessen, 2009, World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492, iUniverse Inc., New York.
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Wonderful discussion and images. Many thanks!
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