Together, they form a picture of Late Pleistocene modern humans in Sulawesi who were painting caves and sucking psychoactive nuts — who were engaged, in other words, in the full range of behaviours that modern humans engage in: artistic expression, psychoactive substance use, hunting and gathering, social living, and all the rest.

The depth of this human behavioral repertoire — reaching back well into the Ice Age, documented in fragments from a limestone cave on a tropical island — is what makes discoveries like the Sulawesi betel nut study so significant.

We have been who we are for a very long time.

The Record That Will Be Broken

The Sulawesi study is explicit that it represents the earliest direct physical evidence for habitual drug use, not necessarily the actual origin of the practice.

Physical evidence of ancient behavior depends on preservation.