Subj: Stoned Age artists may have been on a trip 



Source: The Guardian, UK



Pubdate: 15 May 1999







Stoned Age artists may have been on a trip 

By Martin Wainwright



A whole new meaning has been given to the term Stone Age by archaeologists

who have discovered an unexpected inspiration for prehistoric cave art. 



Hemp seeds and spores of 'magic mushrooms' found in excavations suggest

that the hazy and often upside-down bison and stickmen of primitive artists

may have been painted in the course of drugs trips.



'It is too early to talk about proof, but there are striking similarities

with modern hallucinogenic art,' said David Cowland, who delivers a lecture

at Bradford university next week on cannabis finds at prehistoric sites.

'Cave paintings have a formlessness and unexpected mixing, for instance of

mammoths and vivid red dots, and the artists clearly had no shortage of

appropriate fungi and plants.'



Research centres on wall-paintings in caves in France and Spain dating back

to 16,000BC where ritual, often associated with drug use, is thought to

have played an important part. Mr Cowland, a postgraduate at Bradford's

archaeology department, said: 'We know that shamans, credited with magic

powers, were important in primitive societies, and the use of magic

mushrooms tallies with that.'



Moulds, including the powerfully hallucinogenic ergot found on rotting

vegetation, were common in caves, and deliberate use also appears to have

been made of the toadstool, amanita muscaria, or fly agaric.



The Greek historian, Herodotus, recorded travellers' descriptions of

cannabis rituals dating back to much earlier times among Scythian

tribespeople on the border between Siberia and Mongolia.



'They take some hemp seed, creep into a small tent and throw the seed on to

hot stones. At once it begins to smoke, giving off a vapour unsurpassed by

any vapour bath one could find in Greece. The Scythians enjoy it so much

that they howl with pleasure.'



Mr Cowland said that recent finds at Pazyryk in the Altai mountains

confirmed the account. Digs had located burnt hemp seeds and a primitive

censer.



Richard Morris, director of the British Council for Archaeology, said that

references to cannabis, opium and other drug finds were increasingly common

in excavation reports from what, he said, 'should perhaps be renamed the

Stoned Age'.