This is your brain on drugs. (Skull of prehistoric betel nut sucker)Image credit: Fakhri
Posted on 09/27/2026 9:06:35 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Analyzing the teeth of a 25,000-year-old skeleton from Sulawesi, Indonesia, researchers have deduced that this individual habitually sucked on betel nuts, and probably developed an addiction to this popular stimulant.
Widely consumed across southeast Asia and the Pacific, betel nuts are the world's fourth most popular drug, behind alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. These days, the nuts are typically mixed with slaked lime and chewed as a "quid" in order to release the psychoactive compound arecoline, triggering mild euphoria and heightened alertness.
Although the roots of this practice are poorly understood, it is generally assumed that betel chewing does not pre-date the Bronze Age, some 3,500 years ago.
However, researchers have now uncovered two prehistoric hunter-gatherer skeletons displaying deep, rounded grooves in their teeth, which appear to have been caused by continually sucking on betel nuts over the course of many years.
The oldest of the pair dates to between 25,000 and 16,000 years ago, indicating that humans have been using narcotics since at least the late Pleistocene.
(Excerpt) Read more at iflscience.com ...
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This is your brain on drugs. (Skull of prehistoric betel nut sucker)Image credit: Fakhri
Betel nut = Thailand.
Did they find any records of ancient Betel Nut Girls?
I lived in China where chewing on betel nut was common. Often, the sidewalks were stained red from people who chewed on betel nuts and spat their red saliva onto the ground. One of the things that I quickly learned through an aggressive encounter with a cabbie, was that the betel nut vendors would often mix the betel nut with other ingredients including amphetamines and psychedelics.
My older hootch maids in Vietnam all chewed Betal nut.
How about the Betel nut girl booths in Taiwan? The ladies would sell it along side the road.
On Saipan, which is America, they sell them in little plastic bags at convenience stores. Airport has signs “No Beetle Nut Chewing”.
When we lived in Bangkok in the early 1960s, we had betel nut trees beside our house. One of our pet gibbons learned how to unclip her harness. She would always go up in one betel nut trees and gorge herself. She would throw the seed pods at anyone within range. She slept in my bedroom at night, but during the day it was target practice.
Beetlejuice?
Betel Juice!...Betel Juice!...Betel Juice!.....................
That’s when our family was there. Interesting. No monkeys, just mango trees and the neighborhood kids climbing the fence to get ours. Totally different planet to when we came back to the U.S.. One can not even begin to get someone here to understand all of it. Impossible.
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