it's exactly what you'd expect.

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨fossilesque@mander.xyz⁩ to ⁨science_memes@mander.xyz⁩

https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/f18b4265-90ce-49b1-98ca-99432b256ed6.png

A recent study suggests that Germanic warriors during the Roman era may have relied on carefully dosed stimulants to enhance their courage and physical endurance in battle. Researchers identified hundreds of small, spoon-like objects, often found alongside war equipment at archaeological sites across Scandinavia, Germany, and Poland, dating between the 1st and 4th centuries CE.

These objects, ranging from 1.5 to 2.7 inches in length and featuring either a concave bowl or a flat disk, were typically attached to warriors’ belts. While they played no role in securing the belts, their proximity to weapons has led scholars to conclude that they likely served as tools for dispensing stimulant substances. The objects were consistently found in graves or marshes, areas associated with battlefields and sacrifices, further supporting the hypothesis of their use in warfare.

archaeologymag.com/…/barbarian-warriors-used-stim…

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

rumschlumpel@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Now I want to know what kinds of stimulants were available to Roman-era Germanic people!

source
- fossilesque@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  Reaching back into history, into antiquity, we can again conclude that nothing has changed in this respect. In pre-historic times, the European flora offered a large variety of plant and fungal species with psychoactive properties, such as the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L.), canna-bis (Cannabis sp.), ephedra (Ephedra sp.), some members of the Solanaceae family, e. g. belladonna or deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna L.), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger L.), mandragora (Mandragora officinarum L.); and also ergot (spores of the fungus Claviceps purpurea (Fr.) Tul.) and hal-lucinogenic fungi such as the liberty cap (Psilocybe semilan-ceata (Fr.) P. Kumm.) or even the fly agaric (Amanita mus-caria (L.) Lam.)4.
  
  The history of Mediterranean civilisations is, after all, marked not only by the consumption of wine. “The ancient Greeks ate and drank opium, but the custom went nowhere beyond ancient Rome, whose users also kept this custom to themselves”5. The sentence quoted above even suggests un-equivocally that stimulants other than alcohol in antiquity were reserved for the world of Mediterranean civilisation. The barbarians living outside its borders were expected to content themselves with consuming alcoholic beverages
  
  www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/…/html
  
  It’s open access.
  
  source
  - rumschlumpel@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Hm, which of these are actually stimulants (i.e. substances that increase alertness)? The ones I know seem to be depressants, painkillers and hallucinogens, which seem less useful immediately before battle than stimulants.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - Donkter@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    This always made me wonder. Why don’t we hear more about these psychoactive substances in modern day drugs. I know the nightshade family is usually poisonous as well as psychoactive but surely people have experimented with extracting/filtering these plants to get the desired effect like we extract cocaine from coca leaves or opium from poppies.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
- Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Panzerschokolade.
  
  source
  - rumschlumpel@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    TIL classical Europe had cocoa and synthetic amphetamines
    
    source
eestileib@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Wow that guy clearly needs to lay off for a while.

source