"Peoples in the Peruvian Amazon speak a dazzling variety of languages, but their words for ayahuasca and related activities are notably alike" => "ayahuasca hasn’t been in the western Amazon for millennia. Rather, it seems to have arrived and spread much more recently." - ThreadSky

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lameensouag.bsky.social • 1 day ago

"Peoples in the Peruvian Amazon speak a dazzling variety of languages, but their words for ayahuasca and related activities are notably alike" => "ayahuasca hasn’t been in the western Amazon for millennia. Rather, it seems to have arrived and spread much more recently."

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sovereignhuman.bsky.social•1 day ago

Interesting. Maybe they were used as medicine —rarely— to treat the severely suffering. It’s just that so many more Westerners severely suffer what was rare to indigenous cultures, and we (westerners) project widespread use onto indigenous cultures.

geofffhughes.bsky.social•1 day ago

I could totally believe this, but also liturgies and cults are often syncretic like this and they can still be quite old. Imagine someone doing this with communion: "they speak a dazzling variety of languages in Europe but the words for communion are notably latinate..."

lameensouag.bsky.social•1 day ago

I take your point, but that would lead you to conclude that the practice of communion had spread much later than the time at which European languages had split up - which would be correct! In a context where people often bandy about terms like "Paleolithic", 2 millennia isn't that much.

geofffhughes.bsky.social•1 day ago

Yeah, it's an imperfect comparison for sure, but also part of the reason philology works so well on Indo-European languages is because there are a bunch of conservative liturgical languages holding things together so that the divergences are easier to track.

ajw87.bsky.social•1 day ago

I've long found it interesting that the word "ayahuasca" itself is Quechua/Amazonian Quichua ("ayawaska", 'ghost vine') and not from a language of the lowlands.

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