Pharmacopoeia Neanderthalensis and The Plants of the First "Flower People"

European ephedra (Ephedra fragilis) in Colentum (Roman port, 1. century bc), island of Murter, Croatia

Ephedra may be the oldest plant used in ritual and folklore. Plant remains were found in the Shanidar caves, 60,000-year-old burial site of Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) in Kurdistan (todays Iraq). The Neanderthals used them in rituals, as an entheogen, and/or for medicinal purposes. Ephedra and other bioactive flowers were given to the dead on their final journey. The "Neanderthal ephedra" was identified as Ephedra altissima Desf. (= E.-distachya-type, E. fragilis-type), and is related to a type of Ephedra alta Dene., Ephedra foliata Bois. et Kotschy, or Ephedra fragilis ssp. campyloda. Many of these varieties are still used ethnomedicinally today.

In ancient Persia, close to Neanderthal region, the ephedra herb was prepared in cultic ways and used as a libation.

Ephedra may also have been used for its stimulating, energizing, awakening, sensation-sharpening and appetite-suppressing effects by cave bear cults. It has been mainly documented in the Alps, made possible because the endemic varieties (Ephedra helvetica) came from Switzerland.

It is currently impossible to know for certain if the Neanderthals used ephedra as an aphrodisiac. If so, ephedra is humanity's oldest known aphrodisiac - more than 60,000 years.

During archeological excavation in the 1980's in the south-east region of Karakorum desert, Turkmenistan, the land named Margusch by the old Persians was discovered under enormous sandbanks. It may have been the home of the religious founder Zoroaster (= Zarathustra). There is also a three-thousand-year-old temple construction, which looks like a pre-Zoroastrian sanctuary. Large clay pots and bowls, which were often used for the preparation of ritual drinks, were found on a fire altar. Some brewing remains were successfully analyzed and revealed to contain ephedra, indicating that the exhilarating haoma drink, which was mostly praised as avesta, contained ephedra (Stein 1932).

Among mankind's oldest ritual plants definitely is ephedra. Neanderthal Flower People laid its thin stalks on the graves of the dead.

As the Aryans moved into the Indus Valley, they searched for a visionary soma plant. It is not known which plants or mushrooms the Aryans first used; however, it is certain that in post-Vedic times, the holy soma drink (that the Persians named haoma) was prepared with ephedra. Therefore, the high mountain ephedra herb (Ephedra gerardiana) in the Himalayas is still known as somalata (Sanskrit), or alternatively somlata (Nepali, "plant of the moon" or "soma plant"). The effects are indeed strongly stimulating but, they are not visionary. Therefore, several academics, such as R. Gordon Wasson, do not believe the original soma plant, which he believed was fly agaric - but simply a weak substitute. He also believed that knowledge about original soma plant is either kept in secret or has been lost.

The following plants are identified by pollen analysis as burial objects of the Neanderthals by Shanidar (Leroi-Gourhan 1975; Lietava 1992; Shackley 1980, 96; Solecki 1975, 881). Plants marked with an asterisk were, or are, used as aphrodisiacs.

Composite plants

Achillea-type (Asteraceae)

*Achillea sp., yarrow

Centaurea-type (Asteraceae)

Centaurea sp., cornflower

Centaurea solstitialis L., St. Barnaby's thistle

Senecio-type

Senecio spp. ragwort

Liliaceae (lily plants)

Muscari-types

Muscari sp., grape hyacinth

Malvaceae (Hollyhoc plants)