A Drug Habit Older Than Farming Is Carved Into Two Sets of Teeth

Two skeletons from Sulawesi, in Indonesia, hold what could be the oldest evidence of people using drugs, and the story written in their teeth is not exactly a feel-good one.

The remains belong to two foragers who lived before farming, unearthed at separate sites there. One is roughly 7,000 years old. The second dates to between 16,000 and 25,000 years ago. Both sets of teeth told the same story. Deep, rounded grooves had been worn into them, some reaching far enough to lay the pulp bare.

The culprit was the betel nut. The seed of the areca palm, it ranks fourth in worldwide use among psychoactive substances, behind nicotine, caffeine and alcohol. Chemical tests also found arecoline, the compound behind the nut's high, in the ancient teeth.

Here's where it gets grim. Adam Brumm of Griffith University, who led the team, thinks the habit may have begun as a toothache remedy. But the hard seeds ground the teeth down so far that the pain got much worse over time. The nut killing the pain was making the pain worse, which called for more nut.

Until now, drug traditions were thought to start with fermented drinks like barley beer some 13,000 years ago. The older of these two skeletons could be nearly twice that age.

Brumm tried a nut himself. Bitter, he reports, and his mouth went numb, which he suspects was the whole point.

Read the full story at The Guardian, September 9, 2026

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