ABSTRACT
Outside of the Andean area, the evidence for Anadenanthera use can be divided into three major regions: the Orinoco River system, the Amazon basin, and its southern periphery (see Plate 50; Appendix). The use of psychoactive plants has been noted in the AmazonOrinoco basin since the second half of the 1600s (Aguado 1956). During the mid-1700s, missionaries such as Joseph Gumilla (1984) and Juan Rivero (1956) provided the earliest descriptions of the use of Anadenanthera. Accurate and detailed information mostly refers to the postcolonial period when explorers such as L a Condamine (1778), Humboldt and Bonpland (1971), and Spruce (1970) identified the tree and described preparation of its seeds as a snuff powder.
