When we think of the Andes today, we may think of the Incas, but they were colonizers just like Spain. Some 2,000 years before the Inca the Chavín had extensive farms and art and architecture throughout what Europeans later named Peru. And they did it with a lot less violence than most other prehistorical cultures on the continent.(1)
One common way to keep people from being outraged if one farmer used a different tool than another was hallucinogens. In the stone relics of Chavín de Huántar, archaeologists found hollowed-out bones - snuff tubes is the modern analog - and analysis found traces of nicotine and evidence of vilca bean residue, a form of the fast-acting hallucinogen that became popular in the 1960s, Dimethyltryptamine (DMT).
Snuff tubes carved from hollow bones used for a drug similar to DMT. Credit: Daniel Contreras
To augment the impact, the small rooms would also have music, like trumpets made from conch shells.
Artistic rendering of the chamber where the snuff tubes were found. Daniel Contreras
The authors of the analysis say it wasn't for the general population, it was only for elites. And if you wanted to become an elite, you had to do what the existing social order said to do. The visions were the fun but the goal was social authoritarianism, no different than we see today. Because the visions people experienced were often extreme, leaders were able to assert they had magical power, no different than a politician who makes 700% stock market returns over 10 years and says if you keep electing them, you will also.
They didn't need slave labor when they got people to believe in whatever elites wanted to build. Take that, Egypt.
"One of the ways that inequality was justified or naturalized was through ideology — through the creation of impressive ceremonial experiences that made people believe this whole project was a good idea,” said Dr. Daniel Contreras, Ph.D., of the University of Florida in a statement.
NOTE:
(1) Europe is often criticized for getting on boats but the impact was overwhelmingly positive if you were not an elite. For just the United States to be as violent today as it was before Europeans arrived, we would need to have 30,000,000 homicides per year. Instead, we have under 20,000. Thanks, Spain!
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