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19h ago

4,000-Year-Old Plaque Yields First Biomolecular Evidence of Betel Nut Chewing in Southeast Asia

Detection of betel nut compounds in a Bronze Age Thai molar validates a novel method for revealing psychoactive plant use preserved in dental calculus.

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Archaeologists are still unearthing fragments of ancient communities at Nong Ratchawat, Thailand, where they have already found the remains of 156 individuals.
Betel nut materials from an ethnobotanical garden in Thailand.
Researchers scraped tiny portions of plaque from teeth and dental remains at the Neolithic site.

Overview

  • Researchers detected betel nut alkaloids arecoline and arecaidine in dental calculus sampled from Burial 11 at Nong Ratchawat using advanced chromatography-mass spectrometry.
  • This finding constitutes the earliest direct biomolecular proof of betel nut chewing in Southeast Asia, predating previous evidence by more than a millennium.
  • Experimental reconstruction of a traditional betel quid with areca nut, Piper betel leaf and human saliva confirmed the analytical protocol’s reliability.
  • The study shows that dental plaque can preserve chemical signatures of psychoactive plant use over thousands of years, even when conventional archaeological markers are absent.
  • The team plans to apply the validated method to the site’s remaining burials and other regional sites to chart millennia of cultural betel nut use.