Gak Attack! Barbarians Snorted Drugs Before Battle, Study Finds

If you are facing battle, it is generally a good thing if the soldiers on your side are alert, or maybe confident, and even downright reckless in their disregard for danger. The better your fighters, the more likely you will win the day, and nothing disarms a fighter lack a panic.

This is well known to modern armies, but traditionally it had been thought that ancient barbarian armies went for alcohol and left it at that. But a new study of Roman-era barbarians suggests they liked something a little stronger.

The study by Anna Jarosz-Wilkołazka, Andrzej Kokowski and Anna Rysiak from Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, published in Praehistorische Zeitschrift, specifically considers the little spoons that Germanic warriors often had. Attached to the ends of belts, these are generally associated with men, always in a context associated with war gear, but otherwise mysterious.

Such spoons are extremely common, and some 241 have been found over 116 different sites in northern Europe. The study suggests that the spoons, between 7 and 10 cm long and with bowls no larger than 2cm, might have been for snorting drugs and getting all worked up before a fight.

The spoons are particularly telling, especially for the small size of the bowl. Such an implement would have been when its owner needed to be careful with the dose they were administering to avoid taking too much of the drug, and the fact that these bowls are so small also gives us an indication as to the potency of these stimulants. 

The history of drug use before battle is well known in other cultures, such as the ancient Greeks or Romans. However drug use by Germanic barbarians has not been well understood until now.

So, what stimulants were these barbarians snorting? The study concludes that these warriors would have had access to a wide range of narcotics, including opium, cannabis, nightshades such as belladonna or henbane, as well as various mushrooms. Any combination of these would be theoretically possible.

With so many examples of the spoons made from so many different materials and with such a wide ranging style, all we can say at the moment is that their use was ubiquitous.  But for now the barbarian battle recipe for their particular marching powder still remains a mystery.

Original study: Praehistorische Zeitschrift.

Header Image: The study suggests that the spoons found everywhere in barbarian war gear were used for snorting drugs before battle. Source: Praehistorische Zeitschrift.