QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA—Betel nuts, a type of palm seed (Areca catechu) containing a neuroactive substance called arecoline, were repeatedly sucked by hunter-gatherers living on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, Live Science reports. Adam Brumm of Griffith University and his colleagues examined grooves in the heavily damaged teeth of two individuals. The first was a man who died between 25,000 and 16,000 years ago, while the second person lived on the island between about 7,600 and 6,300 years ago. Both were 40 to 50 years old at the time of death. Sucking on betel nuts alone would have made the mouth numb and relieved toothaches, as demonstrated when the substance was tested on genetically-engineered frog eggs. The scientists also detected traces of betel nut in samples taken from the teeth in the study. But sucking on betel nuts to numb tooth pain likely worsened dental conditions over one's lifetime, Brumm explained. The grooves in one of the teeth were so deep that the tooth’s inner pulp cavity had been exposed. “It would have been excruciatingly painful,” he said. Some 4,000 years later in Sulawesi, during the Neolithic period, betel nuts were combined with slaked lime to produce a stimulant that is still in use across South Asia and Oceania today. “It now seems probable that betel chewing as we know it evolved from a much simpler, older practice of just sucking on the intact nut,” Brumm concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Science Advances. To read about evidence for betel nut consumption in Southeast Asia some 4,000 years ago, go to "Around the World: Thailand."
