Israeli town of Yavneh had thriving drug culture 3,000 years ago

Archaeologists discovered traces of hallucinogenic substances used over 3,000 years by the Philistines living in ancient Yavneh, Israel, revealing an ancient drug culture that is believed to have revolved around spiritual rituals.

According to Haaretz in 2015, scientists completed an analysis of findings made in a repository pit in the central Israeli town over  a decade ago. The pit was discovered by accident, just a few hundred meters from the Tel Yavneh archaeological site, where researchers have found evidence for continuous habitation from the second millennium BC up to the Middle Ages.

Tel Yavneh has been an artifact gold mine in the last few years, especially with the find of what was described in a press release as “probably one of the smallest digs ever performed as it was restricted to a repository pit that was only roughly 2 meters across and 1.5 meters deep.”  However, according to Professor Wolfgang Zwickel of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) who was involved with the publication of the study, “what was found here can truly be described as one of the finds of the century.”