New data extracted from mummified brain tissue in Milan, Italy, indicates that Europeans used cocaine 200 years earlier than was previously believed. Researchers at the University of Milan and Foundation IRCCS Ca’ Granda called the discovery “unprecedented.”

While it’s been long established that Indigenous people in South America have used coca leaves for thousands of years, this study provides new evidence that the drug was brought to Europe as early as the 1600s — two centuries before cocaine hydrochloride salts became popular there. These remarkable findings were presented in the October 2024 issue of The Journal of Archaeological Science.

Historical use of coca leaves in South America

For thousands of years, communities in South America have valued native coca plants and used them for a variety of religious, recreational, and medicinal purposes. The Incas viewed the bush and its effects as “miraculous and magical.”

When ingested, coca can create an intoxicating sense of well-being. It can also alleviate digestive problems, nose bleeds, and asthma, among other medical conditions.

Mummies have been discovered with traces of coca leaves, and recent studies indicate that some sacrifice victims were dosed with the substance in an effort to calm them before their deaths.

Forensic testing on mummies

Researchers wanted to learn more about people whose preserved remains were stored in the crypt of a 17th-century hospital, Ospedale Maggiore. The crypt holds the remains of nearly 10,000 people and has provided us with a better understanding of the medical practices of the time.

For this study, researchers tested nine brain samples from individuals entombed there. Surprisingly, two of the brain samples contained traces of cocaine. This was unexpected since there was no mention of the substance in the hospital’s records or lists of medications.

The drug could have been used “for recreational purposes, as self-medication, or it may have been administered as part of a medical remedy by healers not practicing in the hospital,” according to the report.

Did they take drugs to cope with life’s hardships?

Researchers provided an additional theory: that the drug might have been ingested as a result of “occupational exposure.”

Workers in the New World had been using coca leaves as a productivity enhancer for years. As the samples tested in this study likely came from poor laborers, it’s quite possible they were looking to replicate those same effects.

Since the indigent patients were probably hungry, they also might have turned to coca to suppress their appetites and reduce food requirements.

Further research

“Whether coca leaves were used for recreational purposes, or rather for their reinforcing properties helpful for the population in their hard everyday life, is a topic that requires further debate,” the researchers conclude.

It also remains to be seen whether coca use was more widespread in 17th-century Europe, or whether these particular patients’ drug use was a rarity for the time. Either way, this groundbreaking study presents the first hard evidence to place coca in the Old World in the 1600s.