In 2022, we told you about a study reporting evidence that an ancient Peruvian people called the Wari laced the beer served at their feasts with hallucinogens—particularly a substance derived from the seeds of the vilca tree, which was common in the region during the Middle Horizon period (circa 850 CE) when the Wari empire thrived. This may have helped the Wari forge political alliances and expand their empire.

Now archaeologists have discovered direct evidence that the use of vilca was a common practice some 1,000 years earlier than the Wari, thanks to analysis of artifacts unearthed at Chavín de Huántar, located about 250 kilometers north of Lima, Peru. And the Chavín people may have used it for a different purpose: to reinforce social hierarchies by limiting consumption of those substances to an elite few, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

There is ample evidence that humans in many cultures throughout history used various hallucinogenic substances in religious ceremonies or shamanic rituals. That includes ancient Egypt, as well as ancient Greek, Vedic, Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures. The Urarina people who live in the Peruvian Amazon Basin still use a psychoactive brew called ayahuasca in their rituals, and Westerners seeking their own brand of enlightenment have been known to participate. The Wari empire lasted from around 500 CE to 1100 CE in the central highlands of Peru.

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A thousand years ago, the people living in Chaco Canyon were building massive structures of intricate masonry and trading with locations as far away as Mexico. Within a century, however, the area would be largely abandoned, with little indication that the same culture was re-established elsewhere. If the people of Chaco Canyon migrated to new homes, it's unclear where they ended up.

Around the same time that construction expanded in Chaco Canyon, far smaller pueblos began appearing in the northern Rio Grande Valley hundreds of kilometers away. These have remained occupied to the present day in New Mexico; although their populations shrank dramatically after European contact, their relationship to the Chaco culture has remained ambiguous. Until now, that is. People from one of these communities, Picuris Pueblo, worked with specialistsancient DNA to show that they are the closest relatives of the Chaco people yet discovered, confirming aspects of the pueblo's oral traditions.

A pueblo-driven study

The list of authors of the new paper describing this genetic connection includes members of the Pueblo government, including its present governor. That's because the study was initiated by the members of the Pueblo, who worked with archeologists to get in contact with DNA specialists at the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen. In a press conference, members of the Pueblo said they'd been aware of the power of DNA studies via their use in criminal cases and ancestry services. The leaders of Picuris Pueblo felt that it could help them understand their origin and the nature of some of their oral history, which linked them to the wider Pueblo-building peoples.

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