Over several millennia, various native plant species in South America have been used for their healing and psychoactive properties. Chemical analysis of archaeological artifacts provides an ...opportunity to study the use of psychoactive plants in the past and to better understand ancient botanical knowledge systems. Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was used to analyze organic residues from a ritual bundle, radiocarbon dated to approximately 1,000 C.E., recovered from archaeological excavations in a rock shelter located in the Lípez Altiplano of southwestern Bolivia. The site is located at an elevation of ∼3,900 m above sea level and contains evidence of intermittent human occupations during the last 4,000 years. Chemical traces of bufotenine, dimethyltryptamine, harmine, and cocaine, including its degradation product benzoylecgonine, were identified, suggesting that at least three plants containing these compounds were part of the shamanic paraphernalia dating back 1,000 years ago, the largest number of compounds recovered from a single artifact from this area of the world, to date. This is also a documented case of a ritual bundle containing both harmine and dimethyltryptamine, the two primary ingredients of ayahuasca. The presence of multiple plants that come from disparate and distant ecological areas in South America suggests that hallucinogenic plants moved across significant distances and that an intricate botanical knowledge was intrinsic to pre-Columbian ritual practices.
The Tuvan Shamanism and Its Features Burged, Munkhtsetseg
Mongolian Diaspora. Journal of Mongolian History and Culture,
09/2023, Volume:
3, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract
We aim to study the tuvan shamansm and to reveal its specific features of shamanism of the Tuvan ethnic group in Mongolia and collected materials for our study during field work by ...interviewing, taking pictures, video and audio records. As an expected result of our study, we come to gain essential knowledge and records on ethnolinguistic, cultural issues, customs, and current status of religion /shamanism/ for the ethnic minority. The tuvans still retain such important components of ethnicity as their native language, their ancient religion-shamanism, and some features of their traditional culture, which identify them as Tuvans. Today the Tuvan shamanism has been studied less than those of the other ethnic groups in Mongolia. Many researchers have studied the Tuvan shamanism as it has been keeping its nature and shamanic rituals for the centuries as if their ancestors did. By studying the tuvan shamansm, researchers and other people gain a deeper understanding the culture and language of the ethnic minority – tuvans living in different parts of Mongolia and speak the Tuvan language as their native tongue.
This review illustrates the relevance of shamanism and its evolution under effects of psilocybin as a framework for identifying evolved aspects of psychedelic set and setting. Effects of 5HT2 ...psychedelics on serotonin, stress adaptation, visual systems and personality illustrate adaptive mechanisms through which psychedelics could have enhanced hominin evolution as an environmental factor influencing selection for features of our evolved psychology. Evolutionary psychology perspectives on ritual, shamanism and psychedelics provides bases for inferences regarding psychedelics' likely roles in hominin evolution as exogenous neurotransmitter sources through their effects in selection for innate dispositions for psychedelic set and setting. Psychedelics stimulate ancient brain structures and innate modular thought modules, especially self-awareness, other awareness, "mind reading," spatial and visual intelligences. The integration of these innate modules are also core features of shamanism. Cross-cultural research illustrates shamanism is an empirical phenomenon of foraging societies, with its ancient basis in collective hominid displays, ritual alterations of consciousness, and endogenous healing responses. Shamanic practices employed psychedelics and manipulated extrapharmacological effects through stimulation of serotonin and dopamine systems and augmenting processes of the reptilian and paleomammalian brains. Differences between chimpanzee maximal displays and shamanic rituals reveal a zone of proximal development in hominin evolution. The evolution of the mimetic capacity for enactment, dance, music, and imitation provided central capacities underlying shamanic performances. Other chimp-human differences in ritualized behaviors are directly related to psychedelic effects and their integration of innate modular thought processes. Psychedelics and other ritual alterations of consciousness stimulate these and other innate responses such as soul flight and death-and-rebirth experiences. These findings provided bases for making inferences regarding foundations of our evolved set, setting and psychology. Shamanic setting is eminently communal with singing, drumming, dancing and dramatic displays. Innate modular thought structures are prominent features of the set of shamanism, exemplified in animism, animal identities, perceptions of spirits, and psychological incorporation of spirit others. A shamanic-informed psychedelic therapy includes: a preparatory set with practices such as sexual abstinence, fasting and dream incubation; a set derived from innate modular cognitive capacities and their integration expressed in a relational animistic worldview; a focus on internal imagery manifesting a presentational intelligence; and spirit relations involving incorporation of animals as personal powers. Psychedelic research and treatment can adopt this shamanic biogenetic paradigm to optimize set, setting and ritual frameworks to enhance psychedelic effects.
This article investigates the styles of enquiry involved in Lowland South American Amerindian shamanic and narrative discourse genres. The article argues in favour of the existence of an Amazonian ...mode of thinking strictly related to formulaic composition, commonly found in different verbal poetic genres and its contemporary transformations into written texts published as books by Amerindian researchers and narrators. Taking into account philosophical and anthropological discussions about speculative thinking, this study aims to revise the role of narrative verbal genres in Amerindian ethnology and its ontological backgrounds, as well as offering an alternative perspective on the contrast between writing and oral traditions. The article is based on translations of songs and testimonies collected among the Marubo of Western Amazonia.
Abstrait
Enquête chamanique en Amazonie : composition formulaïque et discours spécialisé
Résumé
L'article étudie les modes d'enquête employés dans les genres des discours chamaniques et narratifs des Amérindiens dans les basses terres d'Amérique du Sud. Il avance qu'il existe un mode de pensée amazonien strictement lié à la composition formulaïque, que l'on rencontre souvent dans différents genres poétiques oraux et dans leurs transformations contemporaines en textes écrits publiés dans des ouvrages par des chercheurs et narrateurs amérindiens. Cette étude, qui prend en compte des discussions philosophiques et anthropologiques sur la pensée spéculative, réévalue le rôle des genres oraux narratifs dans l'ethnologie amérindienne et ses contextes ontologiques, ainsi que d'offrir une perspective alternative au contraste entre l'écriture et les traditions orales. L'article se base sur des traductions de chants et des témoignages recueillis parmi les Marubos de l'ouest de l'Amazonie.
Since its discovery in the 1970s, the rich rock art assemblage of Alta, Northern Norway, has been increasingly examined and interpreted. Central to the interpretations are topics such as ritual, ...circumpolar cosmology, landscapes and communication. The interpretative frame of reference has grown steadily, while discussions and disagreements have been surprisingly few. This paper argues that the outcome of this is a broad but still closely related set of understandings that define the kind of interpretations that qualify as likely or eligible. The paper offers a critical view on how ethnographic sources as well as concepts such as circumpolarity, rituals, and shamanism are mobilized in this interpretative formation. It also questions the increasingly more profound and intricate understandings of the rock art as a world-shaping and mediating tool. The interpretative imperative of finding a 'deeper meaning' is discussed and alternative approaches to rock art suggested.
In light of the recent ethnographic production on the indigenous Arawá peoples and the research in historical ecology dedicated to the lands of the Juruá-Purus interfluve, this article proposes a ...reflection on plant poisons, hunting and fishing, based on the sociality, shamanism and body-making practices of the indigenous peoples of this region. We start from the self-poisoning of the Suruwaha to consider it as a starting point for the analysis of the language of the physiology of Arawá affections that expresses the ambivalence or categorical instability of certain plants. Our hypothesis is that the use and importance of plants in the Arawá context is inseparable from their anti-alimentary value, i.e., their food and practical aspects do not obliterate their shamanic potential as poisons. In the first part of the text, we present a reflection on Casimirella ampla, a tuberous plant, which offers a productive perspective on the use of cassava in this region and will serve as an analytical model to test the hypothesis on the practical and categorical ambivalence of certain plants. In the second part, we develop our argument by highlighting the anti-alimentary potential of these plants, in favor of an alternative conceptual image of Arawá sociability in which poisons are featured as body transforming substances.
Why is culture the way it is? Here I argue that a major force shaping culture is subjective (cultural) selection, or the selective retention of cultural variants that people subjectively perceive as ...satisfying their goals. I show that people evaluate behaviors and beliefs according to how useful they are, especially for achieving goals. As they adopt and pass on those variants that seem best, they iteratively craft culture into increasingly effective‐seeming forms. I argue that this process drives the development of many cumulatively complex cultural products, including effective technology, magic and ritual, aesthetic traditions, and institutions. I show that it can explain cultural dependencies, such as how certain beliefs create corresponding new practices, and I outline how it interacts with other cultural evolutionary processes. Cultural practices everywhere, from spears to shamanism, develop because people subjectively evaluate them to be effective means of satisfying regular goals.
Chez les Kaingang du Brésil méridional, les animaux apparaissent dans plusieurs récits décrivant l’origine du savoir technique et rituel. Ainsi, par exemple à la suite du déluge, les animaux furent ...les premiers organisateurs et officiants du Kikikoi, un grand rituel funéraire considéré comme la plus importante expression de la culture et de l’identité kaingang. Les Kaingang affirment que ce sont des animaux qu’ils ont appris les chants et les danses du rituel. Nous analyserons dans cet article la relation entre les compétences animales et la pratique des chamanes Kaingang. Nous proposons une réflexion concernant la relation des humains au monde animal comme s’inscrivant dans une hiérarchie de puissances et, plus précisément, de mise en commun des compétences et des puissances puissances d’agir animales et humaines. Le concept d’entité-maître apparaît comme une clé pour l’interprétation de la pratique, de l’autorité et de la compétence des chamanes et autres leaders.
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