Photo: Götz Friedrich / Pixabay
For: Real America News
New findings made during excavations in Quilcapampa, Peru, suggest that Wari leaders used “beer” and hallucinogenic drugs to strengthen relations and consolidate the rule of the ancient Peruvian empire, which ruled the highlands of Peru between the years 600 Y 1000 of our era.
In a study published in the journal Antiquity , archaeologists affirm that the hallucinogens of the seeds of the vilca tree – which may have provided a mild hallucinogenic experience – were added to chicha, a beer-like beverage still consumed today, during the banquets, a community use of drugs that reinforced the control of the waris by creating links in the celebrations and giving importance to the leaders as providers from the drugs.
The revelation comes from @ROMtoronto-led excavations of the Wari outpost of Quilcapampa, Peru, which was established during the 9th century AD and occupied for several decades. 2/
📷: The location of Quilcapampa pic.twitter.com/cAy550QZWW
— 🅰 Antiquity Journal (@AntiquityJ) January , 2022
Fieldwork conducted by the Royal Ontario Museum was conducted at the site of Quilcapampa, a Wari town in southern Peru established during the 9th century and occupied for decades. The extremely arid environment preserved botanical remains of potatoes, quinoa and peanuts from 1,100 years, as well as the first seeds ever found of the hallucinogenic vilca tree in a wari site.
The team also found evidence that chicha was made in large quantities atn the site from the deposit with the molle tree (Schinus mole), with an alcohol content of approximately 5 percent, according to National Geographic.
The vilca would grant a special status to the Wari elites
“These individuals were capable of offering memorable and collective psychotropic feasts
, but ensured that they could not be replicated independently,” the researchers wrote, noting that the difficulty d to obtain and prepare the vilca would grant a special status to the Wari elites who provided it.
The evidence from the core of the site, which also includes ceramics, suggest that the studied remains most likely come from a feast that was held near the end of the Quilcapampa occupation. The study postulates that the fact of finding chicha, vilca and pottery so close indicates that vilca was added to chicha to enhance its psychoactive effects .
According to the study, this seems to have been a key event for the politics of the region. The later Inca empire also followed the communal style of drug use of the Wari, although they preferred group consumption of large amounts of corn beer rather than vilca.
The Wari Empire, also called the Huari Empire, arose in the central highlands of Peru around the year 600 AD The Wari came to dominate much of the territory of the earlier Moche and later Chimú cultures, but centuries of drought led to the collapse of the Wari state around the year 1000 AD
( With information from DW)
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