Seeking That Caffeine Buzz for More Than a Thousand Years

Cour­tesy Illi­nois State Arche­ol­ogy Survey

It’s one of those iden­ti­fy­ing flashes that con­nect us instantly with the past. As early as 1050 A.D. inhab­i­tants of North Amer­ica, specif­i­cally east of St. Louis, Mo., were seek­ing out, brew­ing and rit­u­ally drink­ing in copi­ous quan­ti­ties a sub­stance anthro­pol­o­gists are call­ing Black Drink. They prob­a­bly did this before con­duct­ing any impor­tant activities. The drinkers were prob­a­bly mostly men and the bev­er­age they were drink­ing was made from leaves and twigs of species of holly (Ilex vom­i­to­ria, Ilex cas­sine). They con­sumed it from rit­ual ves­sels like these beakers.

Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Anthro­pol­ogy Patri­cia Crown, work­ing with Thomas E. Emer­son from the Illi­nois State Arche­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey, Prairie Research Insti­tute and Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois, Cham­paign; Jiyan Gu and Tim­o­thy Ward from Keck Cen­ter for Instru­men­tal and Bio­chem­i­cal Com­par­a­tive Archae­ol­ogy, Depart­ment of Chem­istry and Bio­chem­istry, Mill­saps Col­lege, Jack­son, MS; W. Jef­frey Hurst at the Her­shey Tech­ni­cal Cen­ter in Her­shey PA; Tim­o­thy R. Pauke­tat from the Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL con­ducted the research, pub­lished on-line in the Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Science.

To con­duct the study the inte­rior part of the ceramic sherds were ground into a pow­der for analy­sis of absorbed organic residues. The researchers were search­ing for caf­feine, theo­bromine and theo­phylline along with urso­lic acid. The analy­sis was so sen­si­tive that caf­feine drinks were not allowed in the lab­o­ra­tory and tech­ni­cians worked in pro­tec­tive cloth­ing. Sub­stance lev­els were mea­sured in parts per billion. The beakers have been dated from 1050 A.D. through 1250 A.D. at the var­i­ous sites.

In their paper the researchers note the rit­ual ves­sels or beakers were unknown in the greater Cahokia region before A.D, 1,000. They point out the beakers are a very small part of ceram­ics exca­vated from the area “attest­ing to their lim­ited use as spe­cial serv­ing dishes.”

The first Euro­peans who encoun­tered the tribes in the south­east­ern part of what is now the United States noted that the local inhab­i­tants parched holly leaves and small twigs, placed them in a large pot with water, boiled and agi­tated the liq­uid into a froth before drink­ing it. The researchers say “in many groups, Black Drink was a cen­tral part of rit­ual cleans­ing and purg­ing of the body” and was com­bined with fast­ing and vomiting. The observers described men drink­ing Black Drink in great quan­ti­ties, often before tak­ing part in indi­vid­ual or com­mu­nity reli­gious rit­u­als, impor­tant polit­i­cal coun­cils, ball­games or war parties.

This is the first actual sci­en­tific evi­dence of the use of Black Drink in the south cen­tral United States and the first demon­stra­tion that Black Drink was con­sumed prior to Euro­pean Contact. The researchers say it doc­u­ments the use of the plants far north of their nat­ural habi­tats, imply­ing some trade activ­ity and sug­gests the beakers may have been cre­ated espe­cially for their role in the rit­ual cer­e­monies fea­tur­ing Black Drink.

Ron L. Stauber, draftsman

The researchers say it also “bol­sters ear­lier sug­ges­tions that Cahokia played an impor­tant role in the sub­se­quent reli­gious devel­op­ments in the South­east.”  Sim­i­lar holly drinks, such as yerba mate remain pop­u­lar in South America.

Crown is known for her research into the caf­feine habits of the inhab­i­tants of Chaco Canyon. Her ear­lier research doc­u­mented the use of choco­late drunk in rit­ual fash­ion between 1000 and 1125 A.D. in the Southwest. The Cahokia research was con­ducted as part of a larger study of cacao use funded by the National Sci­ence Foundation.

In a world where new ideas and new tech­nolo­gies assault the sense every hour of every day, it may be a lit­tle com­fort­ing to real­ize that beneath all the out­ward change and bus­tle, beneath all the gad­gets, the more some things change, the more they stay the same.

Media con­tact: Karen Went­worth (505) 277‑5627; email: kwent2@unm.edu