Off the top of your head

['Gear]

People who concern themselves with such things have long pondered the fact that the South American continent has the highest concentration (by far) of hallucinogenic plants on the planet. I'd like to mine this group of minds for ideas as to why that might be.

So what do you think?

 

[jack]

its a jungle down there. Many of our modern drugs have evolved from plants and herbs in that area.

 

[Ilyanna]

a) the highter the temperature and amount of precipitation, the higher the biodiversity.
b) same applies for the stability of the climate throughout the year.

The areas of rain forest (about 7% of the landmass) contain about 90% of species. This means that throughout the millenia, humans have had a really, really great number of plants to investigate reg. the edibility and usage for cultic rituals. That's why today there are so many known hallucinogens originating from South America.

 

['Gear]

The problem is other mature rain forests, Indonesia for example, are essentially devoid of psychoactive compounds.

 

[jack]

Nature is racist.

 

['Gear]

That's true.

 

[Ilyanna]

Random ideas:

Devoid of psychoactive ones, not really: Areca catechu, Mitragyna speciosa (Kratom), some Acacias, Myristica fragrans, Kaempferia galanga.
Quite a shortage on hallucinogens, though. Psilocybin, of course.

Expanse of Amazonas area: about 7 million square kilometers
Expanse of Indonesia: about 1.9 million square kilometers, half of which are subject to Monsun.

Differences in the cultural and religious development perhaps? No idea about Indonesia.

 

['Gear]

My mistake. Hallucinogens.

 

[Ilyanna]

ah, I was wondering about that.
Problem is that basically, our knowledge of hallucinogenic plants depends on a few factors: there need to be a group of people who at one time found and used them, usually some indigenous tribes. Those tribes had to have some kind of written chronicle or other ways to hand down the knowledge. That knowledge had to reach the ear and interest of people from Western countries in order for us to hear about it.

It is quite possible that the Indonesian rain forest has more hallucinogens than we could ever dream of, but if even one of the above factors were missing, we would never know.