Is This Trippy Cave Painting the Result of a Hallucination or Something Else?
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:
Is This Trippy Cave Painting the Result of a Hallucination:
There's a cave in California, roughly an hour's drive from Santa Barbara, whose ceiling features a prominent pinwheel-like drawing. Fascinating new research suggests this painting is not some drug-induced abstraction, but a literal representation of the very thing that makes psychedelic trips possible.
Chewed remnants of the psychedelic plant Datura wrightii offer "unambiguous confirmation of the ingestion of hallucinogens" at Pinwheel Cave in California, according to new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The rock site was frequented by indigenous Californians roughly 500 years ago. Just as importantly, the dazzling red pinwheel painted onto the low ceiling is a representation of the plant itself, not a depiction of a shaman's visual experiences while tripping on the drug, the scientists argue. The new paper is consequently challenging the prevailing altered states of consciousness model (ASC), which contends that "hallucinogens have influenced the prehistoric making of images in caves and rock shelters," as the study authors write.
Journal Reference:
David W. Robinson, Kelly Brown, Moira McMenemy, et al. Datura quids at Pinwheel Cave, California, provide unambiguous confirmation of the ingestion of hallucinogens at a rock art site [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2014529117)
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.