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The cave houses a striking image of a pinwheel thought to represent the distinctive shape of the sacred datura flower, or Datura wrightii. This perennial plant species, native to California, is known for its psychoactive properties. The quids – small bundles of leaves and fibrous material from the plant – that were usually chewed up were found stuck in crevices in the cave ceiling.
Chemical analysis of some of the quids showed that they contained hallucinogenic alkaloids, and most were confirmed to be from the datura plant. Three-dimensional analysis of the quids showed they had been crushed and chewed, and dated back to between 1530 and 1890.
While rock art has long been thought to have been created during hallucinogen-induced trance states, “no unequivocal evidence of hallucinogen consumption has been reported at any art site. rock in the world, ”says the study.
However, the results called into question some long-held assumptions about rock art in the area, said David Robinson, lead author of the study published Monday in the journal PNAS.
Some researchers believe that rock art was mainly produced in caves visited and “owned” by individual shamans. The paintings, these researchers suggest, represent visions that came to them during drug-induced trances.
“The idea (is) that a shaman goes to a hidden space and takes his hallucinogen to his vision quest site and replicates his visions on the rock,” explained Robinson, professor of archeology at the School of forensic and applied sciences. at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK.
However, Robinson said his new study, along with other recent research, suggests that although there are a few sites that could have been used for “vision quests,” the majority of rock art sites were places where people lived. The paintings, he said, were about communicating the “core belief systems” of the community that lived there.
The reel was not the result of an artist’s vision either; it has been repainted and touched up several times, according to the study. In reality, much of the art of the region shared common symbols or designs on things that were important to the local culture.
“It is a form of visual communication within indigenous society that benefits everyone. This is what this research shows. It is not about the cognitive experience of an individual.
“If they were shamans, one would expect a lot more variety and much less common elements of composition throughout the region,” Robinson explained.
The idea of the male shaman painting rock art, he said, had infiltrated contemporary Californian discourse.
“Women of Native American tribes hear this from anthropologists, but there is no reason women could not have been involved in rock art. So this kind of story has negative impacts.
So why would the people who lived in this cave take the hallucinogenic plant? The study did not provide concrete answers.
But datura has been linked to initiations of groups of teenagers in native California culture, according to the study, although most of the evidence points to the plant being brewed as a drink rather than chewed, as the evidence in the study shows. this particular cave.
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