“It is all too easy for outside observers to overlook interactions with plants that do not conform with familiar agricultural patterns.”⁴⁶ The paradox pertains to awareness and consciousness. Certain plants offer humanity awareness. Plants as sacramental hallucinogenics and medicines throughout Homo sapiens’ history have been established through ethnobotany. A 60,000 BC Neanderthal burial from Shanidar Cave appears to have had wildflowers deliberately arranged around the skull. Researchers speculate that some Neanderthal groups consciously adorned the bodies of their dead with botanical gifts and ornamentation that were symbolically important to the social group.  Medical herbs and plants containing consciousness provoking psychoactive compounds have been recovered from the Neanderthal burial at Shanidar Cave,⁴⁷ indicating that the “…Shanidar people were aware of at least some of the medicinal properties of the flowers...”⁴⁸

 

Upper Paleolithic people must have known altered states of consciousness induced by hallucinogens and used this awareness as part of their reality to manage their concept of the complex, multilayered cosmos.⁴⁹ Paleo-Indians who experimented with all types of botanicals discovered those plants which were useful as food or as gateways for the spirits. The magical-religious use of hallucinogenic plants by American Indians represents an ancient stratum from the shamanistic Eurasiatic populations.⁵⁰ It was the Archaic Indians who became intimately familiar with their ambient vegetation, defined specific plant hallucinogens and used them to consciously communicate with supernatural realms.⁵¹

 

The American Indians had over forty local species of hallucinogens in their native pharmacopoeia.⁵³ The 850 AD Starkweather 2 site yielded a report that “…several taxa recovered by pollen floatation are considered useful primarily for ceremonial or medical purposes…”⁵⁴ but the study failed to state which plants. Many of the seeds and plant remains found within the Gila Cliff Dwellings have nutritional or medicinal value.

 

Human neurotransmitters are now known to be similar to growth-promoting substances found in plants. These botanical hormones have powerful pharmacological and psychoactive implications on human biological systems.⁵⁵ “If hallucinogens are operating as exopheromones, that is, inter-species chemical messengers, then the dynamic relationship between primate and hallucinogenic plant is actually a transfer of information from one species to another.”⁵⁶ As entheogens, specific plants reveal the presence of the divine within, and allow humanity to share iyári, or heart memory;⁵⁷ this is the primal condition of Being. “All aboriginal societies have considered – and still do - that these plants are the gifts of the gods, if not the gods themselves...”⁵⁸