Ancient World Review

The Festival Of Drunkenness & The Blood-Red Sphinx

"The Festival of Drunkenness is a religiously significant celebration that was held annually (said to be biannually in some places) by the ancient Egyptians. The background story for the celebration of this festival can be found in a text known as The Book of the Heavenly Cow [next video]. In this text, there is an ancient Egyptian myth involving the destruction of mankind. According to the myth, human beings were saved from extinction thanks, in part, to alcohol." Source: Ancient Origins (2016).

From what I've read, the Festival of Drunkenness wasn't just a big celebration with some harmless social drinking; it was about getting completely plastered and passing out to commemorate how booze saved humanity from the bloodthirsty warrior goddess, Sekhmet:

"According to the story, Ra had become weary of people's endless cruelty and nonsense and so sent Sekhmet to destroy them. She took to her task with enthusiasm, tearing people apart and drinking their blood. Ra is satisfied with the destruction until the other gods point out to him that, if he wanted to teach people a lesson, he should stop the destruction before no one was left to learn from it. Ra then orders the goddess of beer, Tenenet, to dye a large quantity of the brew red and has it delivered to Dendera, right in Sekhmet's path of destruction. She finds it and, thinking it is blood, drinks it all, falls asleep, and wakes up as the gentle and beneficent Hathor." (Ancient History Encyclopedia)

In other words, all it took to transform the homicidal blood-slurping Sekhmet (often represented as a lion) into Hathor, the goddess of "music, dance, joy, love, sexuality and maternal care" (often represented as a cow) was to get Sekhmet drunk. I also like the bit about how Ra had to be reminded that there was no point in killing everybody if his goal was to teach people a lesson. This is a great story, much more human than the legend of Yahweh exterminating  his own creations (humans as well as animals) in a flood.

Note: According to the Ancient Architects video at the top of this post, the Festival of Drunkenness "could potentially explain the original pre-dynastic origins of the Great Sphinx - as a bloodthirsty statue of an Egyptian lion goddess."

Ancient Egypt is normally seen as kind of austere and grim, but the Egyptians had all sorts of feasts and banquets and they liked their beer:

"Considering the value the ancient Egyptians placed on enjoying life, it is no surprise that they are known as the first civilization to perfect the art of brewing beer. The Egyptians were so well known as brewers, in fact, that their fame eclipsed the actual inventors of the process, the Sumerians, even in ancient times." Source: Ancient History Encylopedia.

The Festival of Drunkenness goes way back:

"Originally, it was thought these rituals took place later in Egyptian history when they were ruled by the Greeks and Romans.  However, recent discoveries from the excavations of the Temple of Mut complex in Luxor show they took place much earlier -  around 1470 BCE.  ... the Festival of Drunkenness was celebrated by people at least once a year, sometimes twice, in homes, temples and makeshift desert shrines.  It was different than many other temple ceremonies as the priests or pharaoh would act on behalf of the people.  In this ritual, everyone participated together -- the elites and the peasants.  The scene is described in a hymn to Sakhnet as young women with flowing garlands in their hair serving alcohol to everyone  They all drink to the point of passing out, then are awoken to the beating of drums and the priests carried out a likeness of the goddess Hathor and they present their petitions to her.  It wasn’t just drinking going on either.  Graffiti was found discussing 'traveling the marshes', which is a euphemism for having sex.  These festivals took place at the beginning of the Nile floods in mid-August, which hearkened to the fertility and renewal of the land by the floods." Source: Naked History (2017).

How can you not like a civilization where everyone took part in a festival like this at least once a year? Drunken orgies have been popular throughout history, of course, but they've gradually lost their religious context. Next video shows a panel from William Hogarth's moralistic series of paintings, A Rake's Progress (1733-35). I like to think that the Festival of Drunkenness in ancient Egypt involved scenes like these all over the country.

Were The Viking Berserkers High On Something?

"In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers ... were warriors who purportedly fought in a trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the modern English word 'berserk' ... Berserkers are attested to in numerous Old Norse sources, with their name literally rendered as 'bear-coats', along with úlfhéðnar ('wolf-coats')." Source: Wikipedia.

"...It is proposed by some authors that the northern warrior tradition originated in hunting magic. Three main animal cults appeared: the bear, the wolf, and the wild boar."

The legend of the werewolf may be related to these ancient stories:

"Old Norse had the cognate varúlfur, but because of the high importance of werewolves in Norse mythology, there were alternative terms such as ulfhéðinn ('one in wolf-skin', referring still to the totemistic or cultic adoption of wolf-nature rather than the superstitious belief in actual shape-shifting). In modern Scandinavian also kveldulf ('evening-wolf'), presumably after the name of Kveldulf Bjalfason, a historical berserker of the 9th century who figures in the Icelandic sagas." (Wikipedia)

Berserkers, like Shieldmaidens, may be completely mythological. According to the National Museum of Denmark, there is little to no archaeological evidence that they ever existed. Assuming that they were real, however, and that the stories about their ultraviolent frenzies are accurate, what could account for their deranged behavior?

The Viking berserkers, we are told, went into battle in a trance-like rage and were supposed to be almost uncontrollable killing machines. Dressed in wolf and bear pelts, they would attack friend and foe alike and their homicidal madness sounds a lot like a drug-induced frenzy of some kind:

"This fury, which was called berserkergang, occurred not only in the heat of battle, but also during laborious work. Men who were thus seized performed things which otherwise seemed impossible for human power. This condition is said to have begun with shivering, chattering of the teeth, and chill in the body, and then the face swelled and changed its colour. With this was connected a great hot-headedness, which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down everything they met without discriminating between friend or foe. When this condition ceased, a great dulling of the mind and feebleness followed, which could last for one or several days." -- Fabing, Howard D. (1956). "On Going Berserk: A Neurochemical Inquiry. (Subscription-access only)

Note: A detailed commentary on berserkers in general and Fabing's paper can be found here.)

The legends suggest that the berserkers might have taken some kind of drug that caused these fits of berserkergang. Whatever it was, it came on with a rush of "shivering, chattering of the teeth and chill in the body," caused a spike in blood-pressure ("the face swelled and changed its color") and body temperature ("a great hot-headedness") and ended with a hangover with could last for days. No one really knows if the berserkers were high on something, but various candidates have been suggested:

"While some researchers believe the Berserkers simply worked themselves up into a self-induced hysteria before fighting, others maintain that it was sorcery, the consumption of drugs or alcohol, or even mental illness, that accounted for their behaviour. Some botanists have claimed that berserker behaviour could have been caused by the ingestion of the plant known as bog myrtle, one of the main spices in Scandinavian alcoholic beverages." Source: Ancient Origins.

The problem with the bog-myrtle theory is that the plant was commonly used to make beer back then and doesn't appear to produce this kind of dramatic effect on people. Maybe I missed something, but I couldn't find any mention of it in The Vaults of Erowid, a site which covers psychotropic plants and herbs in exhaustive detail.

Bog Myrtle (Myrica Gale) is a natural insect repellent, among other things. It was used (along with other herbs) to flavor beer in the middle ages until "hops supplanted gruit herbs for political and economic reasons." (Wikipedia). Bog Myrtle itself isn't psychedelic, as far as I can tell, but various mixtures of gruit herbs could act as euphorics and some of them had hallucinogenic or deliriant properties, so the idea that the Berserkers were stoned on some kind of herbal drink when they went into battle isn't all that outlandish.

"Helpful for enhancing lucid dreaming and astral work generally, bog myrtle was a flavoring for a type of European beer known as gruit up until the introduction of hops. The other components of gruit (1) were yarrow and wild rosemary. Some say this brew was behind the Berserkers [sic]. In northern Europe, bog myrtle and yarrow have been ingredients in fermented drinks made from grain, honey, or fruit since the Iron Age, and it is still used in Scandinavia to make a liqueur called 'snaps.'" Source: Alchemy Works.

(1) Medieval brewers used a wide variety of gruit herbs in their beer.

If the berserkers were high on something, the most likely candidate is gruit beer, but if they were that drunk it's hard to see how they could function very effectively. Some sources I've found speculate that they were tripping on the psychedelic amanita muscaria mushroom, but the psychoactive ingredient in the mushroom is muscimol, which is described as a "sedative-hypnotic," i.e., a tranquilizer -- just the opposite of what you would expect. Also, I've never heard of a psychedelic that consistently produces outbursts of violent rage. If the berserkers were taking a drug, it sounds like it was a medieval form of PCP.

Were the berserkers mentally ill? Again, it doesn't sound like it. Their furies seem to have been situation-specific, only occurring during battles or perhaps when they were working in their villages. If they were crazy they would've been prone to go berserk for no reason at all, but none of the sources I've found describe them flipping out at random. So, unless they were elite warriors who ate some plant that drove them into a homicidal rage the most plausible explanation for their reported behavior is that the berserkers are simply characters from Old Norse mythology. In other words, maybe they never actually existed.

Related:

Norse Power: A Brief Look At Berserker Rage

Did The Vikings Get A Bad Rap?

Eating Your Babies Is A Form Of Parental Care

Blue crabs love baby blue crabs.

"Why do some animals eat or abandon their offspring? According to researchers, these might actually be forms of parental care. Their mathematical model shows that when overcrowding threatens offspring survival -- which often occurs due to spread of infection or competition for resources -- sacrificing a few so the most can live becomes the ultimate form of tough love." Source: Science Daily (2019).

Tough love. That's hilarious. Only a sociobiologist could argue with a straight face that eating your own children is a form of "parental care." Don't get me wrong, though. I can think of lots of good reasons for eating your own babies. Maybe you can't afford the quarter-of-a-million dollars it will cost to raise that cute little rug rat to the age of eighteen, or maybe you just want to stop their incessant babbling and howling.

This baby looks particularly tasty.

Another good reason to eat babies is to save the planet from the global warming crisis. As we all know, the world will end in a few months if we don't immediately dismantle our advanced industrial societies and drastically reduce the population.

The best reason to eat babies, though, is hunger. Jonathan Swift, the famous Anglo-Irish gourmet, pointed out that plump human babies around a year old are particularly succulent and nutritious:

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my Acquaintance in London; that a young healthy Child, well nursed, is, at a Year old, a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome Food; whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked, or Boiled; and, I make no doubt, that it would equally serve in a Fricasie, or Ragoust." -- Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729)

Swift didn't mention it specifically, but babies are also very tasty when they're barbecued.

Related: The History of Barbecue.

Psychedelics Of Ancient Egypt

"Ancient Egyptians believed that the mushrooms were plants of immortality and called them 'a gift from the God Osiris'. Egyptian pharaohs proclaimed mushrooms to be food reserved only for royalty; common people were not even allowed to touch them. Conservation of nature by ancient Egyptians was recorded on walls of temples and papyrus sheets. Egypt considered as the cradle of mycology when ancient Egyptians produced a number of hieroglyphic depictions of psychedelic mushrooms on temple’s walls and through hieroglyphic texts throughout the country." -- The Conservation of Mushroom in Ancient Egypt Through the Present, Research Gate (2016).

Note: The use of psychedelic mushrooms goes way back. According to Wikipedia, "Prehistoric rock art near Villar del Humo in Spain, offers a hypothesis that Psilocybe hispanica was used in religious rituals 6,000 years ago." This is the first I've heard about mushrooms being used in ancient Egypt, though. Psilocybin mushrooms seem to be pretty rare in Africa, but most of the sources I've run across say that the Egyptians grew and used them for ceremonial purposes, and there appears to be hard evidence to support this:

"The Egyptians, similar to Mesoamerican societies, created numerous forms of artwork depicting mushrooms, and had vernacular terms for the psychoactive varieties translating to 'sons of the gods' or 'food of the gods.' They believed that, since mushrooms do not sprout from a seed, they were placed on earth by the god Osiris; therefore their consumption was limited to the priesthood and upper classes (who were also thought to be descended from the gods). It has even been theorized by Egyptologist Stephen Berlant that ancient Egyptians cultivated these mushrooms on barley grain, showing how culturally and spiritually significant their use was." Source: Double Blind Magazine.

Note: This is beside the point, I guess, but the ancient Egyptians were wrong to call psychedelic mushrooms the "food of the gods." As everyone knows, there is only one food of the gods -- the incredible alkaloid known as Herakleophorbia IV, aka Boomfood, described in H.G. Wells' great book, The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth and dramatized in a 1976 movie which can only be called a masterpiece of acting and special effects.

Wine In Ancient Egypt

Winemaking in Egypt goes back to the 3rd millennium BC, but growing grapes was never easy in that country's hot desert climate. Wine was probably a luxury item back then, too expensive to be a staple of the ordinary Egyptian's diet the way it was with the Roman, but red wine -- a color the Egyptians associated with blood -- had religious uses and various tomb paintings suggest that wine was important enough to be included in the list of essentials to be taken into the afterlife: 

"Wine played an important role in ancient Egyptian ceremonial life. A thriving royal winemaking industry was established in the Nile Delta following the introduction of grape cultivation from the Levant to Egypt c. 3000 BC. The industry was most likely the result of trade between Egypt and Canaan during the early Bronze Age, commencing from at least the 27th-century BC Third Dynasty, the beginning of the Old Kingdom period. Winemaking scenes on tomb walls, and the offering lists that accompanied them, included wine that was definitely produced in the delta vineyards. By the end of the Old Kingdom, five distinct wines, probably all produced in the Delta, constituted a canonical set of provisions for the afterlife." (Wikipedia)

The ancient Egyptians also used wine as a kind of delivery vehicle for medicinal herbs:

"Chemical analyses of ancient organics absorbed into pottery jars from the beginning of advanced ancient Egyptian culture, ca. 3150 B.C., and continuing for millennia have revealed that a range of natural products—specifically, herbs and tree resins—were dispensed by grape wine. These findings provide chemical evidence for ancient Egyptian organic medicinal remedies, previously only ambiguously documented in medical papyri dating back to ca. 1850 B.C." -- Ancient Egyptian Herbal Wines, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (2009). 

The Roman Grain Trade

This entire lecture series should play automatically, but if it doesn't, the rest of the series can be found here.

"For all of the glory and grandeur of Ancient Rome, the Roman economy never developed into anything terribly complex compared to modern economies. Ancient Rome was an agrarian and slave based economy whose main concern was feeding the vast number of citizens and legionaries who populated the Mediterranean region. Agriculture and trade dominated Roman economic fortunes, only supplemented by small scale industrial production." Source: "Ancient Roman Economy," United Nations of Roma Victrix.

According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, "The growth of Rome to a city of perhaps 250,000 in the time of the Gracchi and of up to one million under Augustus, far outstripping the productive capacity of her hinterlands, created an unprecedented demand for imported foodstuffs." The regular distribution of "a set monthly ration of grain at a set price for adult male citizen residents" was established by the populari Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, later assassinated for his reforms, and the ration was made free by P. Clodius Pulcher in 58 BC.

Note: The Roman grain dole could be seen as an ancient form of universal basic income, at least for the poorer citizens in the city of Rome itself. This social safety net was a humanitarian measure, but it also helped to prevent social unrest -- food riots and the like -- and meeting the demand must have made some Roman merchants, tax farmers and middle-men fabulously rich.

Gaius Sempronius Gracchus and his brother, Tiberius, may have had ulterior motives, but they attempted to make reforms benefiting the common people. The brothers were both murdered by the ruling aristocracy for (among other things) trying to pass land reforms which would have had a major impact on the patricians' power and incomes. This conflict between commoners and rapacious elites still continues to this day.

The emperor Augustus stabilized the number of residents entitled to the grain dole "at or below 200,000" in 2 BC. "[The] public supply, drawing on the grain paid to the state as rent or tax in Sicily, Africa and (from 30 BC) Egypt, helped the privileged minority who held tickets of entitlement, which could be inherited or sold. But the monthly ration did not meet a family's need for grain, and the tickets did not necessarily go to the poor." (OCD)

Note: The traffic in these grain-dole entitlement tickets must have been rife with corruption.

"Grain made into bread was, by far, the most important element in the Roman diet." (Wikipedia) In later years the grain dole, known as the Cura Annonae, and the construction of the new Colosseum led to the development of the "bread and circuses" system for controlling (or trying to control) the population of Rome, making the grain supply of Egypt critical to the survival of the city.

Note: The phrase "bread and circuses" was first used by the cynical poet Juvenal. Technically, the phrase (panem et circenses) means "food and entertainment."

Even the state couldn't meet the huge demand for grain in a city the size of Rome, however, and this created all sorts of problems. "State grain met no more than a portion of the city's annual grain needs," according to the OCD.  "The rest had to be supplied by the free market. Furthermore, the importation of the state grain depended upon private traders, who in times of crisis had to be offered considerable incentives to involve themselves in the trade."

The grain supply of Egypt was so crucial that the Roman emperors made sure to keep the province under tight control:

"As a key province, but also the 'crown domain' where the emperors succeeded the divine Pharaohs, Egypt was ruled by a uniquely styled Praefectus augustalis ('Augustal prefect'), instead of the traditional senatorial governor of other Roman provinces. The prefect was a man of equestrian rank and was appointed by the Emperor." (Wikipedia)

If the wrong man was appointed to govern Egypt, he could easily pressure Rome into meeting his demands. I don't think it ever happened in reality, but this scenario was portrayed in HBO's Rome where Marc Antony withholds the grain supply in order to force Octavian into declaring war.

The Metamorphosis Of Henry VIII

"Henry's food was prepared, in a private kitchen, under the direction of the Privy Master Cook, John Bricket." Source: Historic Royal Palaces.

"The King ate in his private rooms, away from the crowds but on more formal occasions he sat alone at a high covered table in his Presence Chamber, under the canopy of state. He chose from a huge buffet, sampling whatever took his fancy. Dishes included game, roasted or served in pies, lamb, venison and swan.

"For banquets, more unusual items, such as conger eel [see below] and porpoise could be on the menu. Sweet dishes were often served along with savoury.

"Only the King was given a fork, with which he ate sweet preserves. Forks were used to serve, cook and carve, but eating with them didn’t become popular until the 17th century."

Comment: I love the term "presence chamber." Technically the outer room of the privy chamber, a private "apartment" the king maintained at his various royal residences, the presence chamber was the place where ordinary mortals were granted the privilege of entering into the awesome presence of the king himself. At times, they had the extra honor of viewing the majestic king stuffing his face with the endless stream of food that came out of the royal kitchens.

In his youth, Henry VIII was an athlete, but as he grew older he turned into a seriously grotesque chubster who was apparently so fat he couldn't even walk around on his own:

"Late in life, Henry became obese, with a waist measurement of 54 inches (140 cm), and had to be moved about with the help of mechanical inventions. He was covered with painful, pus-filled boils and possibly suffered from gout." (Wikipedia)

Henry ate a lot, true, but that isn't the primary reason he got so fat. Everyone at court ate like he did back then (more or less). Furthermore, everyone in Tudor England was drunk all the time (see 0:29 in the top video). Henry probably started to turn into a blimp when leg injuries forced him to become more sedentary:

"Even by modern standards, and certainly by those of the ordinary man or woman in 16th-century England, Henry ate a good deal. That was what his social group, the high nobility, did. When the noble entertained, food was often served in large quantities as part of the display of generosity or 'magnificence' incumbent upon them, and as proof of their high social status." Source: Zocalo Public Square.

"...His diet was highly calorific, but until his late 30s, Henry’s relentlessly active lifestyle burned most of them off almost as fast he absorbed them. In his early 20s, the king had a 32-inch waist and 40-inch chest. His athletic build at 29 can be judged fairly accurately from a made-to-measure suit of armour he wore at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the meeting held in June 1520 with his great rival Francis I of France.

Related: Field of the Cloth of Gold (BBC In Our Time).

Note: Henry wasn't a fat-ass at this time.

Henry suffered various injuries over the years from jousting and hunting accidents. He also developed leg ulcers which seriously hampered his mobility but had no effect on his ability to cram food into his increasingly bloated pie-hole:

"Henry was clearly often disabled, unable to move without intense pain. Exercising in the way he had done as a young man proved impossible, although he continued to ride and to hunt for some years. His appetite was, nevertheless, undiminished. He quickly gained weight, which could then not be worked off. An unhealthy cycle was set in place."

If I could eat like Henry VIII I'm not sure I could resist it, either. Just looking at the food in the top video makes me hungry, but then again I get hungry watching instructional videos about how to slaughter and butcher hogs. Venison, lamb, sweet preserves, game pies -- it sounds delicious and I don't think I would feel particularly guilty about chowing down on a porpoise or a swan. Eels sound nasty, though, or they did until I watched the next video.

This looked great until he pureed it into a disgusting mess.

Despite his prodigious intake, Henry VIII may have been malnourished. This seems hard to believe considering the amount of food the court put away:

"Tudor cuisine was lavish. An ambassador to Henry VIII’s court is quoted as saying, '…the wealth and civilization of the world are here; and those who call the English barbarians appear to me to render themselves such.'" Source: Picture Britain.

The Tudors consumed a huge number of game animals, most of which I can't even identify:

"First of all, there was a lot of meat going on during this era. Just listen to this account of game found in one household’s larder: 'cranys, redshankes, fesauntes, sholardes, pacokes, knottes, bustardes, great byreds, hearonsewys, bytterns, reys, kyrlewes, wegions, dotrells, ternes, smale byrdes.' Henry’s daughter Elizabeth clearly had a taste for meat; her court went through 1,240 oxen, 8,200 sheep, 760 calves, and 1,870 pigs in a single year. In addition to vast amounts of meat, there were also delicious confections such as trifles, fools, whitepot (a baked dish of cream, eggs, and currants), clotted cream, and leach. Needless to say, this kind of cooking was hardly conducive to trim waistlines."

Most of the game animals with weird medieval names are birds, I think. The byttern or bittern looks especially plump and tasty.

The problem with a diet like this is that it consisted mostly of meat, breads and lots of alcohol (water was apparently considered to be unhealthy and the nobility avoided vegetables because they were thought to be "peasant food."). The lack of vitamin C and other nutrients in the royal diet could cause diseases like scurvy. The early symptoms of scurvy, in particular, include "weakness, feeling tired and sore arms and legs" (Wikipedia) which would have aggravated the effects of Henry's injuries and made it even harder for him to burn more calories than he consumed. And the result of that can be dramatic.

Henry sounds like a medieval version of professional eater Joey Chestnut, though Joey is in much better shape.

Video from 2019.

Scientists Identify Contents Of Maya Drug Containers

Mexican tarragon is another name for the Mexican marigold.

"Scientists have identified the presence of a non-tobacco plant in ancient Maya drug containers for the first time. The researchers detected Mexican marigold (Tagetes lucida) in residues taken from 14 miniature Maya ceramic vessels. The vessels also contain chemical traces present in two types of dried and cured tobacco." Source: Science Daily.

These vessels are thought to have been buried over a thousand years ago. Tagetes lucida is a medicinal and culinary herb and some sources describe it as "powerfully psychoactive." The Maya apparently smoked this particular type of Mexican marigold, using tobacco to make it "more enjoyable" and the plant was also used as a ritual incense by the Aztecs. According to Science Daily, this research "paves the way for future studies investigating other types of psychoactive and non-psychoactive plants that were smoked, chewed, or snuffed among the Maya and other pre-Colombian societies."

The Nature Of Ayahuasca

"Ayahuasca is a South American entheogenic brew commonly made out of the Banisteriopsis caapi [ayahuasca or yage] vine, and the Psychotria viridis shrub or a substitute, and possibly other ingredients..." (Wikipedia)

Good demonstration of the process. Whistling is annoying, though.

"..a chemically similar preparation also known and sold as ayahuasca, but occasionally also known as 'pharmahuasca', can be prepared [next video] using illicitly manufactured N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and a pharmaceutical monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) such as isocarboxazid. The brew is used as a traditional spiritual medicine in ceremonies among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin."

Note: Pharmahuasca can be dangerous. According to the Vaults of Erowid, "The health risks associated with all drugs are dose-dependent and pharmahuasca-type ayahuascas can easily include much higher dose levels than plant-based ayahuascas and are often consumed by less experienced self-experimenters and often without experienced sitter/guide."

Ayahuasca is a powerful hallucinogen. According to Wikipedia, "People who have consumed ayahuasca report having mystical experiences and spiritual revelations regarding their purpose on earth, the true nature of the universe, and deep insight into how to be the best person they possibly can. This is viewed by many as a spiritual awakening and what is often described as a near death experience or rebirth. It is often reported that individuals feel they gain access to higher spiritual dimensions and make contact with various spiritual or extra-dimensional beings who can act as guides or healers."

The active ingredient in ayahuasca is DMT, a short-acting but extremely powerful psychedelic which normally can't be absorbed through the gut. It's a mystery, at least to me, how these Amazonian shamans learned how to prepare the ayahuasca brew, which not only makes it possible to take DMT orally but to extend its effects from 10 or 15 minutes to several hours.

Related: The Use of Psychoactive Plants Among the Hupda-Maku.

The Erowid Ayahuasca Vault. (A huge amount of information can be found here.)

Is The Paleo Diet Really "Stone Age?"

I don't know much about the so-called Paleo Diet, other than the fact that it emphasizes eating meat and avoiding carbohydrates. This could be a good diet, for all I know, but it's pretty clear that there's nothing particularly "Stone Age" about it. So many changes have taken place in our food over the millennia that we probably couldn't eat like cavemen even if we wanted to. The wild plants available in the Paleolithic were a lot different from the cultivated plants and grains we have today, and the wild game was more rangy. And we don't really know that much about the real Paleo diet to begin with. For instance, it now appears that Stone Age people ate a lot more carbs than commonly believed:

"Analyses of Stone Age settlements reveal that the hunters were healthy and would gladly eat anything they could get their hands on, including carbohydrates – contrary to the modern definition of the Paleolithic, or Stone Age diet." Source: "Stone Age Hunters Liked Their Carbs," Science Nordic (2013).

"The low-carbohydrate Paleo diet has attracted star advocates, including professional golfer Phil Mickelson, actor Matthew McConaughey, and Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush. But experts are now debating whether or not people in the Paleolithic Era did actually eat carbs." Source: "The Paleo Diet Has It Wrong: Cavemen Did Eat Carbs?, Market Watch (2015).

The Paleo Diet has been pushed with a lot of Conan-the-Barbarian marketing hype. You know the sort of thing -- "follow this diet and turn yourself into a savage, blood-drenched Cimmerian." That's not necessarily a bad thing, however. It's entertaining, at least. I'm a big fan of Robert E. Howard and I've read all of his Conan stories. From what I remember, though, Conan ate just about everything he could get his hands on. If he had a particular "diet," I'm not sure what it would be.

The biggest problem with the hype surrounding the Paleo Diet is that "we are not biologically identical to our Paleolithic predecessors, nor do we have access to the foods they ate. And deducing dietary guidelines from modern foraging societies is difficult because they vary so much by geography, season and opportunity." Source: Scientific American (2013).

Having said all this, however, I've got to admit that I've been cutting down on my carb consumption, partly due to my exposure to information about the Paleo Diet. I also avoid processed foods like the plague. As a result of this change in my diet, combined with a six-day-a-week weightlifting and aerobics routine,  I've managed to lose almost 25 pounds. Whether my reduced carb intake had anything to do with my weight loss is another question because I've also been reducing the amount of calories I consume every day. I'm in reasonable shape, I suppose, but I'm not exactly Conan the Barbarian.

Making that transformation requires a lot more than eating more meat and cutting back on the pasta.

Related: PALEO DIET: Big Brains Need Carbs