Plants

Deep in the El Castillo cave in northern Spain, up a side passage off the main pathway, there is a small painted panel most visitors would walk straight past. Created some 17,000 to 15,000 years ago, it shows five red signs, each shaped a little like a bell. A natural stone ledge runs beneath them like the lip of an altar. For over a century, archaeologists have simply catalogued these as “bell-shaped signs”, filed under the vast heading of ice age marks we don’t know the meaning of. Building on my PhD research surveying plants used in shamanic ritual worldwide, I argue they may be flowers. Mind-altering flowers, to be specific – the bell of a psychoactive nightshade, most likely