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Psychoactive Substances, Advanced Civilization, and Supernatural Entities
The Nazca Lines, psychoactive mysteries of the Chavín civilization, and sound-based technology in ancient societies
This is an excerpt from Sky Gods and the Recipe for Immortality: The secret influence of psychoactivity over science, society, and the supernatural.
Wherever supernatural entities and ideas appear, psychoactive substances are often nearby. Consider the Nazca Lines in South America, a UN-designated World Heritage Site with gigantic designs carved into the desert millennia ago by a mysterious civilization.
The Nazca exhibited advanced technology such as aqueducts and remarkably complex textiles, however, their most puzzling creation is the Nazca Lines. The Nazca Lines feature hundreds of massive geoglyphs with each measuring between 1,320 feet and 3,300 feet across.
These remarkable icons can only be seen fully from the sky (and can even be seen from space). On the ground, it’s difficult to even notice them.
An exceptionally odd Nazca geoglyph shows a humanoid waving at the sky in what appears to be a space suit. Designed to be seen from above — and requiring immense effort by a relatively advanced but still primitive ancient civilization — the structures are truly mysterious.
In 2022, research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science reported an array of psychoactive substances in Nazca territory:
“The results of the study show that coca leaves were present on the southern Peruvian coast since the Early Nazca Period. The Nazca inhabitants were also positive tested for the presence of harmine and harmaline coming probably from Banisteriopsis caapi (the main compound of the hallucinogenic ayahuasca beverage), and the San Pedro cactus, a source of mescaline…
In modern medicine, the properties of harmine have led to its use in anti-depression and anti-addiction treatment.”
