Datura flower By David ShultzWith recurring zigzags, spirals, and other simple geometric patterns, ancient rock art is sometimes surprisingly similar across the globe.
One hypothesis is that the artists were all using psychoactive compounds, which nudged the brain toward certain patterns. Now, a new find from a roughly 500-year-old cave used by Native Americans suggests such compounds may indeed have been an important component of their rock art.
But the art itself may not have depicted the experience of tripping.“They have broken away from the ludicrous school of thought … which saw all rock art as trance imagery produced by shamans,” says Paul Bahn, an archeologist at Archaeological Institute of America who was not involved in the.