Tripping the Ice Fantastic. Our Ice Age Ancestors and Ancient Altered States of Consciousness

Were our ancestors painting abstract geometry… or cataloging chemistry? Neuroactive flora, the natural mind altering chemistry of Ancient Altered States of Consciousness.

Deep inside El Castillo Cave in Northern Spain, past the famous ‘hand stencils’ and the ‘charcoal bison’, in a difficult to reach side passage, above a natural stone ledge (that looks just like an altar) are five red images. 

Current Archeologists Point of View:

These images are five red bell-shaped doodles.

Dr. Benjamin Pothier’s Theory:

These five images are 15,000-17,000 year-old botanical diagrams of psychoactive nightshades.

The Neuroactive Flora of Ancient Altered States of Consciousness

It’s unlikely our ancestors took tallow lamps… Ground up minerals and animal-fat binders… Hollowed bone blowing tubes and more… Then climbed hundreds of meters past the reach of the natural sunlight into a pitch black cave… Just to draw shapes.

Navigating these passages involves crawling through tight and dangerous shafts, in temperatures of around 10–12°C (50–54°F). Even just keeping a flame alight would have been a struggle. 

Would our ancestors go to all these challenges of taking their home-made art supplies deep inside a dark cave, just to doodle? Or were they leaving instructions.

Looking at that stone wall, the abstract doodle narrative starts to crumble…  Are they random squiggles drawn by a bored hunter gathers? They are clean, deliberately drawn images. A drooping, flared outline that mirrors the shape of the opening of the Deadly Nightshade in bloom. Plants that are still growing in Northern Spain today.

Are these drawings a fifteen thousand year old Field Guide to Accessing Altered States? 

Deadly Nightshade and Ancient Altered States of Consciousness

Deadly Nightshade contains very potent mind-altering compounds: Atropine, Scopolamine and Hyoscyamine. These alkaloids are not ‘gentle’ plant compounds on the human nervous system!

Tropane alkaloids hit hard! With delirium and a complete loss of reality, feelings of weightlessness, even the sensation of shapeshifting. There is a class of Paleolithic rock art figures called the Therianthropes. A therianthrope is a figure that combines both human and animal physical characteristics.

Looking at other Ice Age cave art in Europe, we see the ancient painters drawing images of half-human, half-animal creatures. The famous antlered ‘Sorcerer’ of Trois-Frères in France, the Lion-Headed Man* of Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany and the Bird-Headed Man of Lascaux France (often cited as one of the best drawings of a shamanic trance.).. to name but a few of these Therianthropes.

*The lion-headed man of Germany is dated about 40,000 years ago!

For decades archeologists wondered where those bizarre visions came from… The art on the walls wasn’t fantasy. It was a direct representation of a chemical trip… And the El Castillo images were the instructions.

Early Writings of Altered States of Consciousness

Traditional archaeology dates literacy as starting in the Summer, around 5,000 years ago… With cuneiform styluses pressed into clay. Anything painted on stone before then was categorised as Prehistoric Art.

So if ‘Literacy’ can be defined as the deliberate storage and transmission of information… In this case, these Deadly Nightshade images, through visual symbols are a type of graphic communication or proto-writing.

Previously the consensus was that the earliest depictions of mind-altering plants were in the Sahara. Like the famous Mushroom Shaman murals of Tassili n’Ajjer. These 8,000-year-old images, until now, were accepted as the earliest Entheobotanical Art.  

Tripping the Ice Fantastic

These kind of tropane alkaloids don’t just create visual hallucinations, they trigger profound Kinesthetic Hallucinations… Hallucinations that are felt in the skin, muscles and bones. Limbs feeling like they are elongating, animal hooves replacing feet, the body sprouting feathers, or sharp horns pushing out from the skull.

Then add the experience of losing the sensation of gravity itself, creating the feeling of flying. The Ice Age initiate ingesting these Deadly Nightshades didn’t just imagine a lion or a bison… They experienced becoming the beast. Quite a trip.

The drooping, flared silhouettes matching the silhouette of deadly nightshade isn’t an isolated example… There is chemical proof that the Ancient Europeans used Nightshades. At Es Càrritx Cave in Menorca, 3,000 year old hair samples tested positive for both atropine and scopolamine.  

Ancient Techniques for Altered States of Consciousness

The cave would also have acted as a sensory isolation chamber, total darkness and quiet. And in complete darkness the Visual Cortex goes Hyperactive…

It starts searching for input, and this triggers Entoptic Visuals (flashes, geometric grids, and glowing phosphenes, etc).

Add in the Nightshade Trip and internal hallucinations would completely replace the experience of physical reality. 

Modern Archaeo-Acoustic studies show these chambers have a propensity to  low-frequency resonance…  In these enclosed spaces, a low chant, or single vocal hum would bounce off the stone walls causing physical vibrations in the chest, and altering their brainwaves.

As if anything else were needed to create deeper trance states!