Though many people harken back to those hippies in the park listening to classic rock n’ roll jam bands and dropping acid to expand their minds, the earthly origins of psychedelics are actually much, much more ancient. The first recorded use of psychedelics came from rock cave paintings in the Sahara and Egyptian deserts, drawn at a time when the Gods ruled in Egypt

Known as the Plateau of Rivers,” Tassili n’Ajjer is a national park in the Sahara Desert, located on a vast plateau in southeastern Algeria. Having one of the most important groupings of prehistoric cave art in the world and covering an area of more than 72,000 km2 (28,000 sq mi), Tassili n’Ajjer was inducted into the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 1982. The site of Tassili was primarily occupied during the Neolithic Stone Age period (6,000-1,500 BC) by groups hunting and living among livestock. The local geography, elevation, and natural resources at the time were optimal conditions for dry-season camping of small groups and the lowlands appear to have been used as living sites. There are numerous rock shelters within the sandstone forests, strewn with Neolithic artifacts including ceramic pots and potsherds, lithic arrowheads, bowls and grinders, beads, and jewelry.

The occupation of Tassili is part of a larger movement and climate shift within the Central Sahara. Around 12,000 BC, an arid period began that split the Sahara into arid lowlands and humid highlands. Archaeological excavations confirm that human occupation, in the form of hunter-gather groups, occurred between 8,000 and 5,500 BC; followed by a period when they began to organize into pastoral groups in response to the increasingly unpredictable climate.

Prehistoric Art

The rock formation is an archaeological site, noted for its numerous prehistoric parietal works of rock art, first reported in 1910, that date to the early Neolithic era at the end of the last glacial period during which the Sahara was a habitable savanna rather than the current desert. Although sources vary considerably, the earliest pieces of art are presumed to be 12,000 years old. The vast majority date to the 9th and 10th millennia BP or younger. The art was dated by gathering small fragments of the painted panels that had dried out and flaked off before being buried. Among the 15,000 engravings so far identified, the subjects depicted are large wild animals including antelopes and crocodiles, cattle herds, and humans who engage in activities such as hunting and dancing. These paintings are some of the earliest Central Saharan paintings and occur in the largest concentration at Tassili.

In 1989, the psychedelics researcher Giorgio Samorini proposed the theory that the fungoid-like paintings in the caves of Tassili are proof of the relationship between humans and psychedelics in the ancient populations of the Sahara, when it was still a verdant land. One of the most important scenes is to be found in the Tin-Tazarift rock art site, at Tassili, in which we find a series of masked figures in line and hieratically dressed or dressed as dancers surrounded by long and lively festoons of geometrical designs of different kinds... Each dancer holds a mushroom-like object in the right hand and, even more surprising, two parallel lines come out of this object to reach the central part of the head of the dancer, the area of the roots of the two horns. This double line could signify an indirect association or non-material fluid passing from the object held in the right hand and the mind. This interpretation would coincide with the mushroom interpretation if we bear in mind the universal mental value induced by hallucinogenic mushrooms and vegetals, which is often of a mystical and spiritual nature. It would seem that these lines – in themselves an ideogram which represents something non-material in ancient art – represent the effect that the mushroom has on the human mind... In a shelter in Tin – Abouteka, in Tassili, there is a motif appearing at least twice, which associates mushrooms and fish; a unique association of symbols among ethno-mycological cultures...Two mushrooms are depicted opposite each other, in a perpendicular position with regard to the fish motif and near the tail. Not far from here, above, we find other fish, which are similar to the aforementioned, but without the side-mushrooms.

This theory was reused by Terence McKenna in his 1992 book, “Food of the Gods,” hypothesizing that the Neolithic culture that inhabited the site used psilocybin mushrooms as part of its religious ritual life, citing rock paintings showing persons holding mushroom-like objects in their hands, as well as mushrooms growing from their bodies. For Henri Lohte, who discovered the Tassili caves in the late 1950’s, these were obviously secret sanctuaries. The painting that best supports the mushroom hypothesis is the Tassili mushroom figure Matalem-Amazar where the body of the represented shaman is covered with mushrooms. According to Earl Lee in his book From the Bodies of the Gods: Psychoactive Plants and the Cults of the Dead (2012), this imagery refers to an ancient episode where a “mushroom shaman” was buried while fully-clothed and when unearthed sometime later, tiny mushrooms would be growing on the clothes. Earl Lee considered the mushroom paintings at Tassili fairly realistic.

Meanwhile in Egypt, the God Thoth, very reminiscent of the word Thought, from which Psyche (Mind) Delics (Clear Experience) is derived from, was the God known for imparting wisdom to the Egyptians and teaching them about the Tree of Life, Farming, Geometry, Architecture, Science, Writing, and much more helping shape Egyptian culture as we know it.

According to the Ancient Greeks who established relationships with the Ancient Egyptians, the practice of using psychedelics, including a brew known as Kykeon by the Greeks, as well as the use of magic mushrooms was taught to them by the Egyptians. This knowledge they recounted had been imparted to them by the Gods through the Egyptian mystery schools. Beyond, extensive evidence of cannabis used in Egypt and cannabis pollen being found within every Egyptian Royal Tomb, Egyptian are also believed to have used the Acacia Nilotica tree for ceremonial purposes which they also placed in their tombs. This tree, native to Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, has long been revered and is noteworthy due to its high concentrations of DMT. The Acacia Nilotica is portrayed repeatedly throughout Egyptian mythology and is referred to as the ‘tree of life,’ from under which the first gods of Egypt were born. We also find an intimate connection between Osiris, the pineal gland, and DMT; as legend has it that the god was not only born from an Acacia Nilotica tree but is believed to live inside the spirit of all Acacia Nilotica trees. It was also the emblem of the resurrection of the solar deity and typifies human immortality and regeneration.