LA PAZ, BOLIVIA—Artifacts such as “snuffing tablets,” a wooden snuffing tube, and spatulas uncovered at the site of Cueva del Chileno, located near Lake Titicaca, suggest that the people of Tiwanaku used hallucinogens. “Snuffing tablets in the Andes were primarily used by ritual specialists, such as shamans. Psychotropic substances, once extracted from plants, were spread and mixed on the tablets. Inhalation tubes were then used to introduce the substances through the nose into the system,” Juan Albarracin-Jordan of the Fundación Bartolomé de Las Casas told Discovery News. Shamans who were under the influence acted as “mediators between the natural and the supernatural. They were also conflict brokers between the living and the dead,” Albarracin-Jordan explained. Cups used for drinking the alcoholic beverage known as chicha were also found, and although drug use declined with the Tiwanaku state around A.D. 1100, the drinking of the fermented corn beverage persisted.
