Coca-leaf chewing with lime
Masticado de hoja de coca con cal
- Date
- c. 6000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Ñanchoc Valley, Cajamarca, Peru
- Credited to
- Preceramic peoples of northern Peru
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Coca leaves alongside lime obtained by burning limestone, found on house floors around 8,000 years old: the lime releases the alkaloid when chewed. It is the oldest documented use of a plant stimulant in the Americas.
The domestication of Erythroxylum coca and E. novogranatense occurred independently in the eastern Andes and in Colombia.
What it led to
- the Andean institution of ritual, social and working coca-chewing ('chakchado')
- the 19th-century pharmacology of cocaine
- tolerance of hypoxia and hunger in high-altitude work