I’m writing a novel that involves the buying and selling of pre-Incan art and artifacts from the Peruvian cultures such as the Moche, Nazca, Chimú, and Chavín. During the research for the book I discovered that many of the artifacts involved the use of coca going back thousands of years. I’m not talking about the refined and way more powerful cocaine, but rather coca leaves, which were carried around in their dry form in colorful bags like the one pictured above. The leaves are chewed up into a wad that rests between the cheek and gum, but something else is added, a pinch of lime, usually made by baking seashells in a fire and then grinding them into a powder.
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- The lime was carried around in a poporo, like this one, a hollow flask-like gold vessel with a female figure on the front. This one is 9 inches high and is from the Quimbaya culture, about A.D. 750. But how do you get the lime out of the poporo?
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- Well, they would use a golden lime spatula like these to get the lime out of the poporo and transfer it to the wad of leaves in the mouth. The lime causes a chemical reaction to release more of the coca into the bloodstream, increasing the effect of the drug.
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- Then, under the influence of the coca and perhaps psychedelic drugs such as ayahuasca, artists would create fantastical golden sculptures like these. What are they? Did the pre-Incas dream up pre-airplanes? Or are these just a stoner’s vision of flying fish?
