Various analysts have suggested that the early use of psychoactive plants may have been primarily ceremonial — that the altered states produced by mind-altering substances had spiritual or ritual significance that drove their adoption before their everyday use became established.

This hypothesis cannot be evaluated from the dental and chemical evidence alone.

Nutritional experimentation.

Foragers are constantly experimenting with the landscape’s edible and useful materials.

An areca nut might have been tried as a potential food source, found to be unpalatable as food but producing interesting effects, and adopted for those effects.

The reality is probably some combination of these — different individuals may have been introduced to the behavior in different ways, and the sustained use that the dental evidence documents reflects whatever combination of motivations was sufficient to maintain the habit despite its cost to the teeth.

Brumm himself has been careful not to overspecify: “The evidence does not indicate precisely the reasons for first starting betel nut use — whether it was relief, stimulation, ritual or some social norm,” as the Ancient-Origins account reports.