Areca catechu — the domesticated form of the areca palm whose seeds are the basis of the betel nut trade — is a cultigen, meaning it exists in its current form because of human selection and cultivation.

Its wild ancestor or ancestors are found in Southeast Asian forests.

The process by which wild areca palms were selected and eventually domesticated is not fully reconstructed, but it presumably involved a long period during which foragers identified and used the wild palms for their psychoactive properties before any deliberate cultivation began.

The Sulawesi evidence suggests that this forager relationship with the areca palm’s psychoactive properties predates domestication by at minimum many thousands of years.

The individuals found at Leang Bulu Bettue and Leang Cappalombo 1 were using wild areca nuts — or at most very early stages of managed use — in the pre-agricultural period.