How Did Ancient Humans Survive Without Painkillers?

How did ancient humans survive without painkillers? Not by biting down and suffering. For almost all of history there were no pills, but there were four answers to pain: a brain that can turn pain down by itself, bitter willow and poplar bark (the ancestor of aspirin), plants that reach into the mind (poppies in Neolithic Spain, coca in Peru 8,000 years ago, nightshade traces in 3,000-year-old hair from Menorca), and other people. Touch, laughter and song all raise your pain threshold, and a 1978 experiment showed that belief itself releases the body's own painkillers. Chapters 0:00 Imagine pain with no pills 0:45 Answer 1: The painkiller inside you 2:15 Answer 2: The bitter willow bark 3:39 Answer 3: Plants that change the mind 5:03 Answer 4: Other people 6:16 Can belief kill pain? 7:28 Case closed Sources Beecher, H. K. (1946). Pain in men wounded in battle. Annals of Surgery, 123(1), 96–105. Beecher, H. K. (1956). Relationship of significance of wound to pain experienced. JAMA, 161(17), 1609–1613. Melzack, R. & Wall, P. D. (1965). Pain mechanisms: a new theory. Science, 150, 971–979. Cox, J. J. et al. (2006). An SCN9A channelopathy causes congenital inability to experience pain. Nature, 444, 894–898. Stone, E. (1763). An account of the success of the bark of the willow in the cure of agues. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 53, 195–200. Desborough, M. J. R. & Keeling, D. M. (2017). The aspirin story – from willow to wonder drug. British Journal of Haematology, 177, 674–683. Weyrich, L. S. et al. (2017). Neanderthal behaviour, diet, and disease inferred from ancient DNA in dental calculus. Nature, 544, 357–361. Guerra-Doce, E. (2015). Psychoactive substances in prehistoric times: examining the archaeological evidence. Time and Mind, 8(1), 91–112. Guerra-Doce, E. et al. (2023). Direct evidence of the use of multiple drugs in Bronze Age Menorca from human hair analysis. Scientific Reports, 13, 4782. Dillehay, T. D. et al. (2010). Early Holocene coca chewing in northern Peru. Antiquity, 84, 939–953. Keverne, E. B. et al. (1989). Beta-endorphin concentrations in cerebrospinal fluid of monkeys are influenced by grooming relationships. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 14, 155–161. Gray, L., Watt, L. & Blass, E. M. (2000). Skin-to-skin contact is analgesic in healthy newborns. Pediatrics, 105(1), e14. Goldstein, P. et al. (2018). Brain-to-brain coupling during handholding is associated with pain reduction. PNAS, 115(11), E2528–E2537. Dunbar, R. I. M. et al. (2012). Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 279, 1161–1167. Kaptchuk, T. J. et al. (2008). Components of placebo effect: randomised controlled trial in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. BMJ, 336, 999–1003. Levine, J. D., Gordon, N. C. & Fields, H. L. (1978). The mechanism of placebo analgesia. The Lancet, 2(8091), 654–657. Narration is AI-generated. Illustrations are AI-generated from our own prompts. #AncientHumans #HumanHistory #Prehistory