January 8, 2024 • 43 mins
Literature Citation: Turner, James West. 2012. “LISTENING TO THE ANCESTORS: KAVA AND THE LAPITA PEOPLES.” Ethnology 51 (1). https://www.jstor.org/stable/43657285
Description: The podcast episode, titled "Episode 5 - Turner 2012," features hosts Douglas LaRose and Jimmy Price discussing Dr. James W. Turner's paper "Listening to the Ancestors: Kava and Lapita People." They explore the paper's anthropological insights on kava's movement across the South Pacific, its origins, and cultural significance. The hosts critically analyze Turner's theories on kava's connection with ancestral communication, spirituality, and ritual practices. They also delve into methodological aspects of Turner's research, contrasting his findings with their own experiences and knowledge of kava. The episode provides a comprehensive review of the paper, including discussions on kava's psychoactive effects, historical diffusion, and the cultural and spiritual dimensions associated with its consumption.
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Douglas LaRose (00:07):
Pour in the tanoa and sit down and enjoy another
session of the Kava Lounge
welcome to the show, everyone.
Welcome back.
. Jimmy Price: Tonight's topic is going to be a paper by Dr.
James W.
Turner, and it's called Listening tothe Ancestors Kava and Lapita People.
This paper Doug and I read over thepast few days and I think probably Doug
(00:30):
has more to say about this than I do,because it's not really my expertise on
the anthropology side, I think we weretalking about in the first episode.
But , I selected this paperbecause it seemed interesting.
It talked a lot about kava and of coursethat makes everything interesting for me.
. So there's some very interesting topicsthat I felt like that were unique and
some , that I'd never heard beforein other papers or anywhere else.
(00:51):
I think this paper, wasquite interesting.
I did highlight quite a bit of stuffhere, but what I noticed with most of it
was already backed up by something else.
So what I really have to do is goback through here and read all the
sources that influence this paperto understand what the real deal is.
Cause I think this is just glossingover some really deep information
that we don't typically get to see.
But yeah, the author Kind of describesthe way kava moves about the South
(01:14):
Pacific and where its origin was andthe likelihoods of its origin being
in single place, or whether it was,, found or whether it was all these other
different possible scenarios wherekava was introduced to the people.
He lands on the same one that Lebot does.
even though it goes over differentpossibilities, it still ends
up at the same place that Lebotdoes, and it's heavily sights Dr.
(01:36):
Lebot as well.
What did you think about it, Douglas?
Yeah, when you look at the paper in terms of him talking about the
movement of kava as a plant, , throughoutthe Pacific Islands from Melanesia
to Polynesia, , there are no issues.
He definitely follows the research,, that Lebot has put forward about kava
being first domesticated in Vanuatu.
(01:57):
From Piper, which Monte comingout of the Papua New Guinea area.
Where I think , Dr.
James Turner.
James W.
Turner , where I think he gets a littlebit riled up and a little bit, out
of his lane is some of these ritualand religious connections he makes
between kava and, , the ancestors andthe afterlife and the spiritual world.
He basically is claimingthat by following the Lapita
(02:20):
tradition throughout the Pacific.
You can see the movement of kavaand that the practices that surround
kava are mostly ritual and religious.
Dr.
Turner talks about kava beinga medium for communication with
ancestors as sources of power.
And he uses some of the linguisticevidence with manna to try to argue that
(02:41):
kava is associated with manna or canincrease manna, which is a kind of like
power, spiritual power in the presentworld as opposed to the ancestral world.
And then he tries to draw anethology, archeology and linguistics
to basically support that argument.
So I'm an anthropologist andwhenever I read anthropological
papers, I'm really interested in.
one thing, and that's, , themethodology and the original research
(03:05):
that the author has undertaken.
And from what I could tell by readingthis paper, all 23 pages of it his
only participatory observation, sothat participatory observation being
his field of research is basicallylike when he is talking about his
experience, I think in Fiji drinking kava.
And he talks about how it was like alight kava and the more he drank, the
more difficult it became for him to walk.
(03:25):
But everything else seemsto be desk research.
So basically him readingother ethnographies, other
manuscripts and citing them.
Which is fine and great, andI have no problem with that.
You can look at other people'swork and try to tie it
together and draw conclusions.
But I think some of his conclusionsare a little bit outlandish, . And
we can get into some of that.
But the paper starts off with himtalking about how traditions are passed
(03:48):
down and the transmission of culture.
, in non-literate societies, , societiesthat don't have written systems , it's
myths and local history and spellsand things like that that get
passed down through oral tradition.
And he talks about how those thingscan be broken up or are destroyed
through things like natural disasters.
Colonialism and other forces like thatand how that knowledge can be lost.
(04:12):
And then he basically makes the argumentthat his agenda and the agenda of
other anthropologists and archeologists, has been to try to reconstruct the
cultural history of these people.
And then within that cultural history,the use of kava and other psychoactive
substances, , barks, leaves,pollen seeds ginger , beetle nut.
That part of the article is prettystraightforward and is very kind
(04:34):
of basic anthropology background.
, the whole idea of psychoactivesubstances being used as a medium
for communication with the spiritworld, there's nothing new.
I think we all know that, , nativeAmericans for example, use,
, peyote and other substances todo spirit quests and to try , to
communicate with the ancestors.
Where I think he gets a little bitcarried away is . I don't think that
(04:55):
kava is really , strong enough to reallyclaim that type of role in a society.
I think Kavas used more for ceremonialritual purposes as a libation or as a way
of people getting together to drink it.
Some of his claims to me, I don'tknow, seem a little bit like
what's the word I'm looking for?
Inconsistent with myown experience of kava.
, I can never picture myself sitting downand drinking a lot of kava, even if it's
(05:19):
three gallons of kava and communicatingwith the ancestors or having some
kind of super spiritual experience.
It's just not strong enough.
Like it doesn't have that mescalinpeyote , psilocybin kind of effect.
. But I can see how, , kava in a groupof people sitting around talking in
a ritual way , and even in religiouscontexts could be functional, but just
not the way that he's talking about it.
(05:40):
I don't know.
Did you have any thoughtsabout that when you read this?
Jimmy Price (05:42):
I underline a few things in here, and it says in
non-literate religious traditions,this entropy is often countered by
openness to new knowledge throughdreams, inspiration, divination,
shamonic trance, or spirit possession,
So it's interesting that makes senseas that, , if, when you're losing
that ancestral knowledge that theonly way to gain something back you
(06:05):
literally cannot is to make it up.
And these divinations and thingswould be an interesting way
of coming up with new power.
But yeah, that wholething was interesting to me.
Of course I'm not an anthropologist,so this doesn't run through my
head when I read these papers.
All I'm looking for islike, how do they use kava?
how much did they use?
, what utensils were theyusing, , and all that stuff.
In my mind, he did an alrightjob for doing a review.
(06:28):
More likely.
He just tied a bunch of things togetherand made a review, an anthropological
review of quite a number of differentpapers and a number of good authors.
I see Lindstrom in here.
I see Titcomb.
I see Lebot in there a lot.
So I thought it was an okay paper
It's not a book but yeah it, Ifound that the implications towards
religious ceremonies was interesting.
Douglas LaRose (06:48):
Yeah.
So for me, when I read one of these papersand I read, , thousands of these when I
was in graduate school, what I'm lookingfor is a compelling thesis statement.
When I was reading this paper, I was like,okay, what exactly is he trying to say?
He's trying to connect the movementof kava with this Lupita culture,
which is in an archeological.
, the Lapita or a ethnic group.
(07:08):
An archeological period that is definedby ceramics and archeologists have
traced the spread or the kind of thetravel or diffusion of Lapita peoples
out of Southeast Asia into Melanesia.
And then I think eventually into Polynesiaby looking at these ceramic fragments.
That's when you look at an archeologicalsite in the South Pacific, there's
(07:31):
something called Lapita Pottery.
And wherever you see that pottery,, that you're like, okay, the, this
is where the Lapita people lived.
So he's connecting that archeologicalrecord with the spread of kava.
Okay, fine.
, that's an argument that can be made.
It's an argument that can also be likeargued against . , there's evidence
that's not how kava spread around.
, so one important thing, while we'reon that subject, he talks about
(07:53):
the Solomon Islands quite a bit.
The Central Solomon Islands.
And how the Lapita tradition is notpresent in the Central Solomon Islands
and how he believes that as a result.
, kava drinking peoples,like we did live there.
And that it was like leapfrogged.
I think he actually uses theword leapfrogged, that they went
around the Central SolomonIslands and went up into Vanuatu.
(08:14):
I think actually an archeologistcould argue that if there's no
Lapita pottery in the central SolomonIslands, it could be that there was
another group of people living there.
that didn't use pottery, thatuses basketry, for example, right?
And their archeological record is justnot as robust because it's, , ceramics
preserve longer and can stay in the groundwithout rotting and decaying over time.
(08:36):
So I just think that, , followingthe archeological spread of ceramics
through the Lapita culture that'snot the most robust academic argument
for trying to look at the way kavaspread throughout the Pacific.
Jimmy Price (08:49):
He did make some notes towards qualities of kava and I did
note those in terms of chemotypedoes talk about Chemotype high in
the kava lactone, D.
H.
M.
producing nausea and are rarelyconsumed for that reason.
Other chemotype, he'stalking about two days.
He even talks about the cultivationof wild kavas and makes some pretty
interesting assertions about that.
(09:11):
And , they make pretty good sensein terms of the logic behind it.
He talks about how, the wild version ofKava, which is Piper Witch Manay, had
to have been cultivated and consumed, orelse those mutations and those changes
towards Piper methysticum would neverhave been realized and appreciated.
It makes sense.
Like, they were drinkingwild kava prior to Kava.
(09:33):
And, I've never heard anyoneput it that way, but yeah, I just
thought that was interesting.
Douglas LaRose (09:38):
Yeah.
I feel like I've heard thatargument before, but it would make
sense that people were, becauseI think even Piper, wichmannii I
think it's difficult to cultivate.
It doesn't naturally sexually reproducevery easily , from what I understand.
Jimmy Price (09:51):
It does in PNG, but it does not in Vanuatu.
Douglas LaRose (09:55):
Which is weird.
Yeah.
So that section kavas effects.
It's like the second section of the paper.
What a weird section because oneof the things that really jumped
out to me, I'll quote him here.
However, anthropologists withexperience of the drug, he's talking
about kava and Western Polynesiahave questioned its efficacy.
Ford from field work in Fiji and Holmeswho worked in Samoa, attributed the
(10:18):
reputed effects, for example, ataxia tolong hours of sitting cross-legged in
a poorly ventilated interiors , heavywith tobacco smoke, but consulted a
psycho-pharmacology who concluded aftera literature review that the reputed
effects of kava drinking are a quote,remarkable example of a placebo phenomenon
in a wide and important setting.
(10:39):
So he's basically saying that, Priorto, , more recent research, people had
dismissed kava as having a placebo effect.
They did.
Which is interesting.
He's also arguing that like it's sopowerful that you can communicate
with the ancestors when you drink it.
Jimmy Price (10:54):
Yeah.
So it's there, there was just awide range of effect for that.
I noticed that too, cause I havethat exact spot highlighted as well.
Yeah, it's, it, yeah.
A remarkable example of placebophenomena, but he puts it in quotes.
So it is just bringing attention tothe fact that it was said, but it it is
interesting that someone would attribute.
That's obvious that theydidn't drink it themselves.
(11:16):
But it's funny to a person thatdrinks kava on a regular basis and
you say, oh, that's just a placebo.
You're just like, okay, yeah.
All, all right, okay, it's a placebo.
All right, then just don't, , you at leastleave it all for me then that's fine.
More for me.
Yeah.
, and it, goes on to say suggestions like those of Forden homes seem to be the
effects reported by non habitual users.
So he talks about the fact that nonhabitual users may not appreciate
(11:39):
it as much as habitual users.
So that made me think, maybe you'retalking a little bit about that
reverse tolerance we think of when wetalk about kava, but hey, maybe not.
I don't know.
But it says, as far as I know, thosewho question the psychoactive properties
of kava offered no explanation for whyhabitual drinkers would attribute specific
physiological and psychological effectsto it while they deliberately seek
(12:00):
those effects and why they value certainvarieties over others for their potency.
He says, I argue that thepsychoactive properties of kava were
central to the drug's diffusion.
Yep.
And that those effects were centralto a complex of beliefs and
practices that diffused with it.
It's a pretty strong argument there.
He says that the psychoactive effectsof kava where the central key player in
(12:27):
its reverence and its use and everything.
So I think that's an interesting point.
Douglas LaRose (12:31):
So in anthropology there is a kind of theory or method
of thinking or type of thinkingthat's called functionalism.
And functionalism is a way oftrying to explain the spread
of something by its function.
So that's what he's doing here, is he'smaking a functionalist argument where he
(12:51):
is saying that the psychoactive propertiesof kava explain why it diffused, why it's
spread around the Pacific . Those effectswere central to a complex of beliefs.
So that's like the religious system.
So I agree with him that people.
Moved kava from island to islanduntil they got to Hawaii, basically
(13:12):
because it has a psychoactive effect.
I just don't believe that they necessarilyused it only for religious purposes.
I think that it had also a use whereit was like more of a casual thing.
It wasn't always this kind of it'stime to get with the ancestors.
Let's drink our kava.
Like I, yeah, I think it was morelike people would sit around probably
(13:33):
on a daily basis and drink their kava.
, it was the men, , mostly who weredoing it, but I don't think it was
always this like super religious.
Ritual experience.
,, I think that's where he gets a littlebit carried away he goes on and on and
we'll get to some more pretty outlandishquotes and hey, like Turner, if you're
listening, I'm sure you've, , done somegood work and even this is good work.
(13:54):
There's one Half of a paragraphthat actually didn't really
correspond with my understanding.
So he says there are significantdifferences in the taste and potency of
kava made from the fresh or dried root.
Despite straining the drink prepared fromthe dried root, contains minute particles
suspended in its, and then it says, hesays kava prepared from the fresh root
is thinner, has a cleaner taste, andwas preferred by my Fiji and informants.
(14:19):
So I've always understood that Fiji's,mostly powdered drink powdered root.
Yeah.
Not fresh root.
So that seems to be like notconsistent with the other
studies I've seen.
Jimmy Price (14:30):
Yeah that's not consistent with anything that I've seen.
But this in this paper waswritten in 2012, so it's not
this isn't exactly an old paper.
So I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Douglas LaRose (14:39):
yeah.
We need to get Turner on.
We need to get Turner on in the podcast.
Yeah.
. Jimmy Price: I don't know, but, and though I did find the quote I was looking for,
it says, along the south coast of NewGuinea a drink is made with the saliva
of chewing and juice squeezed from themastic mask without additional water.
And I, , I couldn't do that one.
There's no way.
I think I put a note somewhere around there.
Jimmy Price (15:01):
Yeah.
I've never heard that one before.
I'm gonna have to go back andread some of these sources.
, and I think that's exact, it wasright above where you where you were?
The thinner cleaner taste waspreferred by my Fiji informants.
It's just a little bit abovethat in the same paragraph.
It's at the very top ofthat paragraph actually.
Oh, 30 page 34.
But he talks about a drink madewith a saliva of chewing and
(15:22):
juice squeezed from the masticatedmass with no additional water
, Douglas LaRose: like sugar cane.
Yeah.
I think that's supposed to be I,he describes it somewhere in the
paper as being similar to sugar cane.
Like how.
You'd chew sugar cane and youjust kind drink the juice.
. Which is a weird comparison becausesugar cane and kava are not alike.
It all No.
I dunno if you've ever chew sugarcane, but it's like a, it's like
(15:43):
on a soda, like a can of soda.
, Jimmy Price: just straight sugar
it says and he still talkssome about kavas effects.
And I have highlighted here whenthe characteristic somnolence,
sets in the kava drinker,begins to crave peace and quiet.
This one I resonated with pretty,pretty well, and it says bright
light is irritating, and myphotophobia was associated with
the pressure behind my eyes andattention at the base of my skull.
(16:05):
At this point, any sound was disturbing.
conversation , which once flowedfreely, becomes burdensome when
sleep comes, it's extremely restful.
In the hypnagogic state betweenwakefulness and sleep the mind
is open to sensory inputs fromthe environment, but it's free to
weave them into its own imagery.
I believe that kavas power toproduce such states led to its
domestication and in diffusion.
(16:26):
So he, he leans into experienceand with kava pretty heavy
there in terms of effects.
So at least he's drawing from some ofhis own understanding , of kava and its
effects . He's . pretty spot on there.
When you talk about listening to thekava, , that's what I envision when
I think of listening to the kava islike bright lights down, volume on
everything down, quiet no tense likefeelings, or the room isn't tense.
(16:50):
So yeah, I thought you hit thenail on the head with that one.
Douglas LaRose (16:53):
So I would completely agree with you, and I would
completely agree with him on that.
Because when I first started drinkingKava, the one thing that I drink it for
was the relief of anxiety and to helpme calm down as , a 20 year old crazy
hormone filled male , who is trying tocarve out his career and everything.
But the one thing in addition tothat I loved about Kava, and I still
(17:16):
love about Kava is the way that itgives you this deep, restful sleep.
, as you fall asleep or as youcome out of sleep, You have these
extremely vivid, multi-layered kindof multiverse dreams where , there's
a lot of like lucid dreaming thatcan happen and things like that.
I can understand why he would connectthat to religious beliefs because
(17:38):
yeah, that is probably a space wherespiritual leaders could get some
kind of insight or revelation thatthey could use for their doctrine.
So I can totally see that.
I think that , he's standing on firmfeet when he makes that argument.
It's the other stuff about likecommunicating with the ancestors.
, that being the main purpose ofkava that I take issue with.
I think it's it was probably a secondarything, and it doesn't always happen.
(17:59):
As like when you drink kava andyou go to sleep, you don't always
have these really crazy dreams.
That's a like maybe one in 20 times you
Jimmy Price (18:08):
get there.
Correct.
Depends on how much energy youhave, , what you're doing that
day if you're stressed out or notreally makes a big difference.
Douglas LaRose (18:14):
I was gonna read from his, the, the only kind of
ethnographic participatory section ofthe whole article is where he describes
his own kava drinking experience.
And I think it's worthreading that whole section.
It's on page 35 , of the journal.
The second half of the second to lastparagraph he says My kava drinking
(18:35):
experiences were mostly in Fiji,where the drink is mildly astringent
and bitter with a slight numbingeffect on the lips and tongue.
The first several cups,full . I thought that was funny.
Cups full.
But like, when was the lasttime you heard somebody say,
oh, I've had three cups full.
The first several cups full have arelaxing effect after six to eight.
So he went deep after six to eight,I usually felt mildly drowsy without
(18:59):
experiencing any impairment of motoractivity, but my face would be somewhat
numb and my appetite sharpened.
So , that's the opposite of my experience. , my appetite is not sharpened when I drink.
Ha.
I usually don't wanna eat anything.
After about 10 cups full , I wasextremely drowsy and falling into
sleep while standing or walking seemednot only possible, but desirable.
(19:23):
Hey, look like thisSounds pretty nice to me.
Like , I wanna go to thatnakamal with drowsiness.
There often is some axia.
I don't know what's the meaning of axia?
Jimmy, can you
Jimmy Price (19:32):
ataxia is like the disjointed movement.
You're not coordinated.
That's Axia.
Douglas LaRose (19:37):
Okay.
So that's that's when you see thevideos on YouTube of people like
falling down and stuff after Kava.
Yep.
This was most noticeable when I hadto walk home from other villages.
So that's pretty much like the extentof him talking about his time in
Fiji and like his drinking of kava.
I found it odd that.
He didn't talk more abouthis experience in Fiji.
Yeah.
Then he
Jimmy Price (19:55):
says see another author who's experienced kava in
Vanuatu for an excellent clinicaldescription of the drugs effects.
Douglas LaRose (20:03):
You have to go all the way back to 1967 to re
Jimmy Price (20:05):
1960.
This isn't it's interesting when youlook at the date on this paper and you
look at the date that he's citing here,like all these papers are very old.
So we might go over some of thesesources in here at some point,
but I guess we should move downinto Kavas diffusion and Origin.
And this is where he gives the threedifferent scenarios or did you wanna
talk about a little more the other stuff.
Douglas LaRose (20:24):
Just just before you do that, there was one sentence that I wanted
to highlight that jumped out to me.
Yeah.
And actually, in my notes, I wroteBollocks, . He wrote, I believe that
Kavas power to produce such states ledto its domestication and diffusion.
I don't think I, again, like thisis that functionalist argument.
I don't think that anybody can claim that,the state of mind that he's talking about
with weaving imagery and the dream state.
(20:47):
And I don't believe that you can argue, with Good cause that is the reason why
Kava was domesticated and diffused.
I think that's he needs to really like,build more evidence to make that argument.
So I just wanted to point that out.
It's more of an academiccriticism than anything else.
So yeah.
Let's move on to the theorigin and diffusion.
Jimmy, go
Jimmy Price (21:06):
ahead.
And part of it is the distribution ofkava among the South Pacific Islands.
It gives three independent scenariosof how this may have happened and
gives a little bit of informationand backup on each one, and
progressively gets more in depthuntil it gets to the final conclusion,
which he feels is the most logicalconclusion for where kava originated.
(21:29):
, the first section he talks about inindependent discovery this means that
an independent discovery such as inCentral Micronesia, Could not have
been an ink independent discovery.
So they're saying like, basically he'sno, that's just not gonna be possible.
Other factors that rule out independentdiscovery include elements of belief and
practice shared by all the kava drinkingsocieties, which is discussed later.
Douglas LaRose (21:50):
He goes talking about the Lapita settlers and how
because that pottery is not foundin the Central Solomon Islands.
He doesn't really explain orjustify his argument that there
was an absence of kava use.
I don't know how you wouldknow that kava wasn't used.
It could be that it was used, butthen people stopped growing it.
Like it's a plant, , plantsdon't really preserve that.
(22:13):
Archeologically, I guess you wouldlook for the tools to where you would
pound the roots and stuff like that,but it could, , like just earlier he
was talking about how like you canchew and drink the saliva, from kava.
So how do we know that theydidn't just consume it that way?
. Jimmy Price (22:27):
He goes over how kava most likely spread out about 3000 years ago.
And everybody talks about wheredo we get this 3000 year number.
And it comes from Dr.
Lebot and he quotes it hereheavily , and does talk about the
movement of kava, from Papa NewGuinea to van or from, is it Vanuatu?
I think he actually goes from Vanuatuto Papa New Guinea Northern Island.
(22:47):
He does.
So it's, yeah, it does start, whilethe Wild Progenator Piper wichmannii
is a native plant for that area, kavadidn't originate PNG that actually
kava as in Piper methysticum camefrom the northern islands of Vanuatu.
Douglas LaRose (23:03):
That's true.
Yeah.
That's what Lebot's research, hasdemonstrated is that the origin of Piper
methysticum is in Northern Vanuatu.
And the diversity of cultivars inVanuatu is the evidence of it being
the fertile crescent, if you will, ofthe cultivation, domestication of kava.
Jimmy Price (23:22):
Yeah.
Here it says, Lebot pointed out thatthe characteristics of Piper methysticum
from found in New Guinea today wereexported from Vanuatu early in the
domestication process with littlesubsequent selection, which would
explain Isa how it got exported early.
It was not a fully developed kavawhen it went back over and it was
(23:42):
not subsequently developed andcultivated to the point where it
was really full Piper methysticum.
So it it's the closestyou can get to Wild Kava.
It doesn't fall even intothe two-day category.
When they do the zymotype andthe categorizing of the Kavas
by , their specific chemo types.
Isa and Iwi come up to just,they've, they're out in left
(24:05):
field, like they're nowhere.
All the other kavasare clustered together.
And then you have Isa , and thenyou have wild, you just have Isa
Douglas LaRose (24:13):
Yeah.
And then he jumps back intothis, argument about the Lapita and
how it is unclear why the Lapitasettlers of the Reef and Santa
Cruz Islands would've avoided theislands of the Central Solomons.
So he gets back into this leapfrogginghypothesis, which again, like all I
read into that is that archeologistsand anthropologists don't know why.
(24:34):
They don't know why a Lapita cultureleapfrogged the central Solomon Islands.
It's okay, this pottery traditioncan't be found in the Solomon Islands.
The Lapita people.
Go there and colonize those islands.
Okay, so what like that doesn'tsay anything about whether
people used or didn't use Kava
True.
That it doesn't, there's no causation.
There's no causal argumentthat you can make.
There's no logical argument that youcan make that the people did or didn't
(24:57):
drink Kava just based on the fact thatyou can't find those ceramics there.
Sure.
, o other than the fact that in presentday Solomon Islands people don't drink
kava that's an argument that can be made.
Jimmy Price (25:08):
Lean linguistics as well.
I think , he leans intothat as well later on.
HoW the word for kava it doesn't,or the word for manna and kava.
They've changed over the span of theSouth Pacific for the last 3000 years.
And those , were kava was present wordswere specifically changed due to it.
So it left a linguistic impression onthe society that chose to consume kava.
Douglas LaRose (25:32):
But manna is definitely a word that you hear
a lot in this Solomons manna.
Manna just means it's like power.
It's like spiritual power.
When something has manna,it has spiritual power.
. And I guess kava is one of thosethings in kava drinking cultures
that, , has spiritual power.
And I think that is, , that theevidence is in the kava ceremonies.
(25:52):
, when you have a kava ceremony in Vanuatuor Fiji or Hawaii it's very ritualistic.
, you have, you sit in like that formationwith different people with different
levels of power in social prestige anddifferent strategic parts of that circle.
So obviously that's important andritualistic and, the person who
has the most mana, the most powerprobably is strongly connected to
(26:16):
how the kava is distributed in that
Jimmy Price (26:18):
ceremony.
And I think this brings us up tothe third scenario for kava spread.
He talks about by beingby the indirect links.
The third scenario has kava andits ritual use spread from an
original center of discovery towhere its use is documented at.
Issue.
In this scenario is the claim that italso spread to intervening areas where
(26:40):
kava, cultivation and use were abandoned.
Brenton's thesis is based on theassertion that most Sian societies
are characterized by decentralizedpolitical systems in which any achieved
hierarchy is subject to challenge.
And in which religious beliefand practice are subject to large
degrees of individual variationin the high rate of obsolescence.
This can be seen on the island of Tannain Southern Vanuatu where the integrity
(27:03):
and accessibility of existing sources ofritual power were never assured and where
the divisiveness and distrust produced byineffective institutions of leadership.
And social coordination led to aspiral of entropy to which mini tanis
responded by rejecting their currentcultural package in favor for another.
And I think they may have talked aboutthat, in the Pollock paper, a little
(27:24):
bit about the kind of resurgence, kavaand rejection of missionary values.
And it says, I have this one highlighted,in the post-contact period kava drinking.
There has been abandoned andre instituted more than once
by some tiniest communities.
And I find that very interesting and itprompted another question for me, and
(27:44):
it's it relates probably to a lot ofthe people that are listening to this,
but is, , here we hear a lot on ourplatforms through people new to Kava
asking about it, , is kava addictive?
And we have all sortsof different answers.
And the real answer is no.
Clinically kava is not addictive.
It does not have a mechanism whichcauses withdrawal intolerance.
Therefore it doesn't cause aphysical addiction . Anything
(28:05):
can be psychologically addictive.
I used the example the other day ofmy strange addiction where the person
could not stop eating toilet paper.
, but.
, if an entire society can just droptheir kava consumption and then pick
it back up and then just drop it againlike that, I think that speaks to a
fundamental quality of the drink itself.
(28:26):
And that it's not something that'saddictive, that makes a compulsion
of use or that causes you toforego other things in favor of it.
I believe that's built into theselosses and resurgences of kava
consumption and cultivation.
And I always look for ways, that it'snot addictive, but it's more of an
underscore towards its safety andit's long history of continued use.
(28:51):
Random drops from entire societies.
And they at some point decide, Hey,we're gonna drink this again, and
we're gonna pick our culture backup, or go back and reestablish Casto.
But I thought that was quite interesting.
And , I never have consideredkava addictive, but I think this
just speaks more towards that.
Douglas LaRose (29:09):
Yeah, I think that's a whole, like a subject that, , hopefully
we can find a paper , in a futurepodcast that kind of delves into that.
I don't know if there are any but it wouldbe interesting to talk about that more
because I have some thoughts about it.
As somebody who's been addicted toalcohol at various points in my life
I know what addiction feels likeand kava is not like that at all.
(29:31):
First of all, it doesn't do any ofthe nasty that addiction does, it
doesn't turn you into a monster anda selfish, , self-destructive person.
That actually I think enhancesyour quality of life and helps you
relax when you want to drink it.
And if you don't drink it , youcan find another way to relax,
but Kava helps . So yeah.
But it would beinteresting to look though.
(29:51):
It's cool that you bring that up andI think also the fact that these
societies were able to put down kavafor a while and then see like how
destructive alcohol was in theirsocieties during the colonial period.
, and then in the post independence period,be like, actually let's swap out that.
Go back liquor for that kava stuff thatwas like with us for thousands of years
(30:12):
before these , missionaries came here.
I think that's a testimony to not onlythe fact that, , it's not addictive, but
also to the fact that it's conducive toa much more peaceful, amicable society.
. Jimmy Price: Absolutely.
Yeah.
Every time we see that alcoholwas introduced to a society,
we see things kind of degrade.
Kava was a great glue and a greatspace creator, and it, yeah, it was
(30:35):
a great loss for those cultures thatwere told that it was heathenistic
and that it was dirty and that it was.
Against God and all this stuff.
And it's just, imagine it sounds crazy,but there's entire societies that lost,
their entire culture for drinking kavabecause we just politically removed it
actually, I was just gonna say, we have this very
(30:56):
ethnocentric , , America Eurocentricway of looking at the world where
alcohol is a normal thing, right?
Yeah.
So people who are listening tothis podcast are probably in the
United States, or like a a westerncountry western European country
and, we grew up with alcohol.
It's like part of our, you gooutside,, , you walk by the pub, you
see the billboard with the beer.
(31:16):
you're flipping through a magazine.
You got, the mug of beer.
It's normalized to the point where , wesee alcohol as this normal thing.
And to go out with your friendsand get, , blackout drunk is like
a rite of passage in our culture.
And, , when you go to college,you're supposed to like, completely
just destroy your body withalcohol . But that's not normal.
That's not something thatlike humans were born to do.
(31:39):
That's something that we've acceptedas part of our culture for the
worst, , as can be evidenced by allthe destroyed families and, , like
dead people due , to liver disease.
From alcohol consumption.
Alcohol as being this normalthing to these specific islanders.
Alcohol was not a normal thing.
It was something that came in,caused a lot of chaos just like
it did to the Native Americans.
(31:59):
And the Aborigines in Australia,so when they took up kava again, it
was like, oh, hey, here's somethingthat we can sit down and enjoy and
it won't kill us and it won't leadto us beating our wives or whatever.
This is something that is not goingto tear away the fabric of society.
So I just think that'ssuch an important point.
, , we have to step outside of our owncultural understanding and be able to
(32:21):
see the world through other people'seyes, and realize that widespread alcohol
consumption is not a normal way of life.
it's, no, it's our normal way oflife because we grew up with it.
But it's, it doesn't mean thatit's good or healthy or normal.
Jimmy Price (32:34):
I think we talked about that on one of our other podcasts.
But yeah, it's a very safe thing.
, and where alcohol is a veryunsafe thing in terms of health
and just the choices you make.
It clouds your decisions and it, andthat's something that Kava doesn't do.
You just won't be able to walk . Andthere, there's a portion of
this one that stood out to mecuz he talked about the self
reproduction of Piper Mathum yeah.
(32:55):
In this portion of it.
And I thought I had to go back andactually read the sources for this
or try to find what he was talkingabout cuz it was very interesting and
it talks about how there were in the1950s apparently at the Vanuatu Cultural
Center in Port Vela one of the plantsthat had been growing since the 1950s.
Had one of the branches fellover and touched the ground, and
(33:18):
eventually through this process had 11different plants from this one plant.
And I went back to the sourceon that, the Peter Buck article.
And yes, it does talk about theplant's propagation or re propagation
of itself, I guess you call it.
Yeah.
Self re self propagation.
But it's not something that I wouldsay that would save kava in any way.
(33:38):
It's just an interesting ecologicallittle thing that's happened by accident
. I'm sure there's a word for that.
Douglas LaRose (33:44):
Yeah, I think that in the wild, , absent of human interference
there are a lot of plans that dothat, , where they where the, they
grow to a certain point and then thestems, they bend under their own weight.
And then from them going back intothe ground, they produce new what's
the word for the progeny of plants.
New plants, yeah.
(34:04):
Yeah.
Clone.
I'll
Jimmy Price (34:05):
just leave it at that.
, Douglas LaRose (34:06):
I wanna ask you, Jimmy, when you were reading this and you
looked at scenario two which was , kavadrinking, spread by direct links, , so
that would be like the Lupita tradition,so him arguing that there's this cultural
tradition, this carrying kava forward.
And then, when you read scenariothree, kavas read by indirect links.
So he is talking about tradingand contact with other cultures.
(34:29):
diD you really see.
A big difference between those two things.
Because for me, like both ofthose things could have happened.
I don't I don't see why both of thosescenarios can't be true at the same time.
Jimmy Price (34:38):
They could be.
It talks about the Lupita peoplebringing them and that's a pretty
widely accepted way of of viewing that.
So it's not, , in indirect links.
It seems like that's also very plausible.
Yeah.
And I think it probably happened bothat the same time during all this.
There's no way we could narrow it downto one thing I believe, cuz it would just
be everything was happening concurrently.
(34:59):
, all of these different kaas anddifferent gardens were being
cultivated at the same time.
Yeah, I think that's, they are quitesimilar and , they would run concurrently,
I believe, and we could Yeah.
Say that these werehappening at the same time.
. . Douglas LaRose: Yeah, it just, it's just redundant.
I thought that the, I thought that in thatsection there was a part where he talked
about the the significance of the methodof preparation and the consumption of kava
(35:21):
is that it differs from the use of all oralmost all other psychoactive substances
traditionally use in the Pacific.
And then he goes on tomention this guy Thomas.
I'm assuming it's the guy.
It could be a woman that's somebody'slast name, Thomas, 2003, lists various
flowers, pollens, leaves, nuts, seeds,fruits, steroids, gingers and club
(35:41):
mosses, that are used by New Guineapeoples for their psychotropic effects.
And then he says, but no plantother than kava is first macerated
and then infused in cold water.
This distinctive method ofpreparation alone is sufficient to
suggest a single region of origin.
I thought that was like a reallyludicrous argument because
it's pretty, it's a, like I would hope that there
(36:04):
was more behind that, that hejust didn't put in this paper.
But yeah, that was a really.
Really big claim . Yeah.
The distinctive method ofpreparation alone is sufficient to
suggest a single region of origin.
No other plant other than kava is firstmacerated and then infused in cold water.
Okay.
Some groups on New Guinea, South coastforego water and drink a mixture, compose
(36:26):
of saliva in the natural root juices.
man, that's hardcore, right?
So
Douglas LaRose (36:30):
contradictory.
That's hardcore right there,
I think that's, how else would youmake kava I'm trying to think of if
you didn't have, , technology toextract kava with ethanol, how else
would you get the Cains out of kava?
You have to either.
Dry it and pound it in order andthen make it from dried kava, or
(36:50):
you have to macerate it, right?
Yeah.
Jimmy Price (36:52):
He talks about , it's interesting how the kava traditions
have been that instead of just chewingthe roots and swallowing what you
were chewing and getting the effectthat way because in effect you're just
doing toss and wash of fresh kava.
Theoretically that would work especiallyif you were chewing it and, , getting
the kava lactone free and , youcould just take a swig of water at
(37:13):
that point and make your own cob inyour mouth . But there, there are
different ways that could be done, butthey've chose this way specifically.
And I think that's probablybecause it's to be shared and
it's to be consumed with people.
And it's a libation and not something.
Personal.
And it even talks about how in Fiji,and we've talked about this before
too that drinking kava alone is seenas a witchcraft almost, or a sorcery.
(37:38):
And they think highly negativelyof drinking kava alone.
So I always thought that was interesting.
Cause me and my backsplash on mysink are the only people that, that
I drink kava with on a regular basis.
So yeah, . Yeah,
, Douglas LaRose (37:50):
I highlighted that whole paragraph and that
was one of the paragraphs wherehe didn't provide any references,
So I actually, I put in mycomments that, yeah, he says Kava
can be used for nefarious ends.
And Fiji another term for sorcery drought.
Al literally leaf of the tree is sovaya literally, poor fijis never drink
kava alone, even when practicingsorcery . It's it's kinda a funny sense.
(38:14):
And that, and in that case,just two people are involved.
One who prepares the drink and theother who pours the yako out on the
ground while uttering the curse.
What informant stress indescribing this is the power
or efficacy of the Yoko itself.
Kava plays a role in sorcery and otherPacific Island societies as well.
Okay.
So like he makes this statement whenhe says informants, he's referring
(38:35):
to his own research, but he makesthis statement, but he doesn't really
explain is this like how Kavas normallyused, like how often is Kava used
for this purpose or is kava used?
is The presence of kava in this rituallike the soul of the ritual, or is it
just people are drinking kava whilethey're performing these rituals?
Like I just feel like I needed morecontext to be able to like, understand
(38:57):
what he was trying to get out there.
Jimmy Price (38:58):
Yeah.
Hit us up, Dr.
Turner.
Cause we want you as a guest.
. Yeah.
Douglas LaRose (39:03):
Yeah.
He's welcome here.
Jimmy Price (39:04):
Anytime.
I'd love to hear, , he makes thesame sort of illusions that other
people do about life and deathin terms of kava consumption.
And it's, yeah, it's it.
, it's paradoxical because it's seen anassociation with death and sacrifice and
poison disease in some cases with leprosy.
But it's also widely believed to be lifeenhancing as well, not just the others.
(39:27):
So it's an interesting role that it has.
It's almost like it demands respect,but , it's almost like you're
gonna respect this camile tea.
To the person that's looking atit from that perspective,, kava
is not that thing that's gonnamake you, , go rob a gas station.
It just isn't.
But it goes through the variousdifferent myths about how Tagaloa was
cut the boy in half for being a childand then, , made the parent suffer
(39:51):
and then, , poured the cavo over thechild and brought 'em back to life.
So there's many different mythsand origin stories, but they
always have something to do withdeath and usually a gruesome one.
Douglas LaRose (40:03):
Yeah.
It would be interesting tocompare the other myths, like the
other myths of Vanuatu and Fiji.
, and see what are there other mythsabout death that don't involve kava?
, is kava present in all of these myths?
Probably not.
It's probably president in someand not president in others.
1 kind of editorial comments I have, andI don't mean to be like bashing on Turner
(40:23):
here, but spends two pages talkingabout prohibitions and restrictions.
, women and young people and howthey're not supposed to drink
kava traditionally, but then
But then he goes on to say, ratherthan focus on those for whom kava
was prohibited in material rationalesfor those prohibitions, we need to
focus our attention on those forwhom kava drinking was permitted.
(40:45):
It's okay, then why did you justspend two pages talking about.
The people that can't drink kava like he
Jimmy Price (40:50):
just giving you, he was just backing himself up, man, come on,
Douglas LaRose (40:53):
And then he talks about within those two pages this is
on page 44, and pre-Christian, Fijionly these senior men drink kava.
Younger men's involvement was restrictedto preparing it and serving it.
A role played by a youngwoman in Western Polynesia.
In general, the more restricted kava wasin terms of the categories of persons
permitted to use it, or in terms of thecontexts in which it was used, the more
(41:15):
vulnerable it would be to abandonment.
Again, like the restrictions basedon gender, the restrictions against
used by younger men and adolescentsstands in contrast to beetle chewing.
Okay.
So one thing , I want to discuss aboutthis is we just read an article I
think two podcasts ago where We weretalking about the colonial period
and how young men during the colonialperiod lost their interest in kava.
(41:37):
And these references, Thompson 1908,Brewster 1922, I think that they
would've fallen within that period,that colonial period where Kava
was like becoming out of fashion.
And like young people were gravitatingtowards things like cans of beer.
So how does he know that'snot what was going on?
Not that the young men weren'tsupposed to drink kava, but maybe
(41:59):
they just the weren't interestedat that time in drinking kava.
Jimmy Price (42:02):
I hope he figures it out because it's, , it's
2012 when he is writing it.
. Oh, I hope so.
Douglas LaRose (42:07):
Oh, Turner
. Turner 2012, listening to the ancestors Kava and the Lapita Peoples a paper that
I enjoyed reading but didn't necessarilyunderstand the purpose of but it's a
good collection of a lot of information.
Yeah.
So I'm happy that it exists.
But I just, , maybe I need toread more of Turner's stuff to
figure out what , his , kind
Jimmy Price (42:25):
of message.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just wanted to read hisfinal concluding statement.
It says, kavas value lay in itstransformative effects in the quietude
it engenders, it opens the subject tothat which lies within, as well as that
which lies beyond it was and is a channelof communication with the ancestors
(42:45):
and a conduit for ancestral manna.
, and I thought that it sumsup his paper pretty well.
He did try to tie the communicationof ancestors, and I think
he takes it too literally.
In terms of having to the mind frame,like the whole like thing where
you're talking to the ancestors.
I think that there was morenuance to that than that sort
of getting, , totally wasted andtalking to people that aren't there.
(43:08):
I think that it was, , yes, thereis a channel of communication to the
ancestors, but in a more secondary way.
Like they're touching the same dn a that their ancestors touch.
It is sacred for that purpose.
, that makes sense to me.
It being the transformativepsychedelic experience.
I'm with you, Doug.
I don't think I'm, I can ride that train.
I have not yet.
(43:28):
At least I haven't had everykava out there, but I've yet
to find one that's psychedelic.
. But yeah, agreed.
Agreed.
Thanks for listening tonight we hopeyou have a great evening and all that.
And bah,
Douglas LaRose (43:39):
bula.
Enjoy your kava andwe'll see you next time.
Pour in the tanoa and sit down and enjoy another
session of the Kava Lounge
welcome to the show, everyone.
Welcome back.
. Jimmy Price: Tonight's topic is going to be a paper by Dr.
James W.
Turner, and it's called Listening tothe Ancestors Kava and Lapita People.
This paper Doug and I read over thepast few days and I think probably Doug
(00:30):
has more to say about this than I do,because it's not really my expertise on
the anthropology side, I think we weretalking about in the first episode.
But , I selected this paperbecause it seemed interesting.
It talked a lot about kava and of coursethat makes everything interesting for me.
. So there's some very interesting topicsthat I felt like that were unique and
some , that I'd never heard beforein other papers or anywhere else.
(00:51):
I think this paper, wasquite interesting.
I did highlight quite a bit of stuffhere, but what I noticed with most of it
was already backed up by something else.
So what I really have to do is goback through here and read all the
sources that influence this paperto understand what the real deal is.
Cause I think this is just glossingover some really deep information
that we don't typically get to see.
But yeah, the author Kind of describesthe way kava moves about the South
(01:14):
Pacific and where its origin was andthe likelihoods of its origin being
in single place, or whether it was,, found or whether it was all these other
different possible scenarios wherekava was introduced to the people.
He lands on the same one that Lebot does.
even though it goes over differentpossibilities, it still ends
up at the same place that Lebotdoes, and it's heavily sights Dr.
(01:36):
Lebot as well.
What did you think about it, Douglas?
Yeah, when you look at the paper in terms of him talking about the
movement of kava as a plant, , throughoutthe Pacific Islands from Melanesia
to Polynesia, , there are no issues.
He definitely follows the research,, that Lebot has put forward about kava
being first domesticated in Vanuatu.
(01:57):
From Piper, which Monte comingout of the Papua New Guinea area.
Where I think , Dr.
James Turner.
James W.
Turner , where I think he gets a littlebit riled up and a little bit, out
of his lane is some of these ritualand religious connections he makes
between kava and, , the ancestors andthe afterlife and the spiritual world.
He basically is claimingthat by following the Lapita
(02:20):
tradition throughout the Pacific.
You can see the movement of kavaand that the practices that surround
kava are mostly ritual and religious.
Dr.
Turner talks about kava beinga medium for communication with
ancestors as sources of power.
And he uses some of the linguisticevidence with manna to try to argue that
(02:41):
kava is associated with manna or canincrease manna, which is a kind of like
power, spiritual power in the presentworld as opposed to the ancestral world.
And then he tries to draw anethology, archeology and linguistics
to basically support that argument.
So I'm an anthropologist andwhenever I read anthropological
papers, I'm really interested in.
one thing, and that's, , themethodology and the original research
(03:05):
that the author has undertaken.
And from what I could tell by readingthis paper, all 23 pages of it his
only participatory observation, sothat participatory observation being
his field of research is basicallylike when he is talking about his
experience, I think in Fiji drinking kava.
And he talks about how it was like alight kava and the more he drank, the
more difficult it became for him to walk.
(03:25):
But everything else seemsto be desk research.
So basically him readingother ethnographies, other
manuscripts and citing them.
Which is fine and great, andI have no problem with that.
You can look at other people'swork and try to tie it
together and draw conclusions.
But I think some of his conclusionsare a little bit outlandish, . And
we can get into some of that.
But the paper starts off with himtalking about how traditions are passed
(03:48):
down and the transmission of culture.
, in non-literate societies, , societiesthat don't have written systems , it's
myths and local history and spellsand things like that that get
passed down through oral tradition.
And he talks about how those thingscan be broken up or are destroyed
through things like natural disasters.
Colonialism and other forces like thatand how that knowledge can be lost.
(04:12):
And then he basically makes the argumentthat his agenda and the agenda of
other anthropologists and archeologists, has been to try to reconstruct the
cultural history of these people.
And then within that cultural history,the use of kava and other psychoactive
substances, , barks, leaves,pollen seeds ginger , beetle nut.
That part of the article is prettystraightforward and is very kind
(04:34):
of basic anthropology background.
, the whole idea of psychoactivesubstances being used as a medium
for communication with the spiritworld, there's nothing new.
I think we all know that, , nativeAmericans for example, use,
, peyote and other substances todo spirit quests and to try , to
communicate with the ancestors.
Where I think he gets a little bitcarried away is . I don't think that
(04:55):
kava is really , strong enough to reallyclaim that type of role in a society.
I think Kavas used more for ceremonialritual purposes as a libation or as a way
of people getting together to drink it.
Some of his claims to me, I don'tknow, seem a little bit like
what's the word I'm looking for?
Inconsistent with myown experience of kava.
, I can never picture myself sitting downand drinking a lot of kava, even if it's
(05:19):
three gallons of kava and communicatingwith the ancestors or having some
kind of super spiritual experience.
It's just not strong enough.
Like it doesn't have that mescalinpeyote , psilocybin kind of effect.
. But I can see how, , kava in a groupof people sitting around talking in
a ritual way , and even in religiouscontexts could be functional, but just
not the way that he's talking about it.
(05:40):
I don't know.
Did you have any thoughtsabout that when you read this?
Jimmy Price (05:42):
I underline a few things in here, and it says in
non-literate religious traditions,this entropy is often countered by
openness to new knowledge throughdreams, inspiration, divination,
shamonic trance, or spirit possession,
So it's interesting that makes senseas that, , if, when you're losing
that ancestral knowledge that theonly way to gain something back you
(06:05):
literally cannot is to make it up.
And these divinations and thingswould be an interesting way
of coming up with new power.
But yeah, that wholething was interesting to me.
Of course I'm not an anthropologist,so this doesn't run through my
head when I read these papers.
All I'm looking for islike, how do they use kava?
how much did they use?
, what utensils were theyusing, , and all that stuff.
In my mind, he did an alrightjob for doing a review.
(06:28):
More likely.
He just tied a bunch of things togetherand made a review, an anthropological
review of quite a number of differentpapers and a number of good authors.
I see Lindstrom in here.
I see Titcomb.
I see Lebot in there a lot.
So I thought it was an okay paper
It's not a book but yeah it, Ifound that the implications towards
religious ceremonies was interesting.
Douglas LaRose (06:48):
Yeah.
So for me, when I read one of these papersand I read, , thousands of these when I
was in graduate school, what I'm lookingfor is a compelling thesis statement.
When I was reading this paper, I was like,okay, what exactly is he trying to say?
He's trying to connect the movementof kava with this Lupita culture,
which is in an archeological.
, the Lapita or a ethnic group.
(07:08):
An archeological period that is definedby ceramics and archeologists have
traced the spread or the kind of thetravel or diffusion of Lapita peoples
out of Southeast Asia into Melanesia.
And then I think eventually into Polynesiaby looking at these ceramic fragments.
That's when you look at an archeologicalsite in the South Pacific, there's
(07:31):
something called Lapita Pottery.
And wherever you see that pottery,, that you're like, okay, the, this
is where the Lapita people lived.
So he's connecting that archeologicalrecord with the spread of kava.
Okay, fine.
, that's an argument that can be made.
It's an argument that can also be likeargued against . , there's evidence
that's not how kava spread around.
, so one important thing, while we'reon that subject, he talks about
(07:53):
the Solomon Islands quite a bit.
The Central Solomon Islands.
And how the Lapita tradition is notpresent in the Central Solomon Islands
and how he believes that as a result.
, kava drinking peoples,like we did live there.
And that it was like leapfrogged.
I think he actually uses theword leapfrogged, that they went
around the Central SolomonIslands and went up into Vanuatu.
(08:14):
I think actually an archeologistcould argue that if there's no
Lapita pottery in the central SolomonIslands, it could be that there was
another group of people living there.
that didn't use pottery, thatuses basketry, for example, right?
And their archeological record is justnot as robust because it's, , ceramics
preserve longer and can stay in the groundwithout rotting and decaying over time.
(08:36):
So I just think that, , followingthe archeological spread of ceramics
through the Lapita culture that'snot the most robust academic argument
for trying to look at the way kavaspread throughout the Pacific.
Jimmy Price (08:49):
He did make some notes towards qualities of kava and I did
note those in terms of chemotypedoes talk about Chemotype high in
the kava lactone, D.
H.
M.
producing nausea and are rarelyconsumed for that reason.
Other chemotype, he'stalking about two days.
He even talks about the cultivationof wild kavas and makes some pretty
interesting assertions about that.
(09:11):
And , they make pretty good sensein terms of the logic behind it.
He talks about how, the wild version ofKava, which is Piper Witch Manay, had
to have been cultivated and consumed, orelse those mutations and those changes
towards Piper methysticum would neverhave been realized and appreciated.
It makes sense.
Like, they were drinkingwild kava prior to Kava.
(09:33):
And, I've never heard anyoneput it that way, but yeah, I just
thought that was interesting.
Douglas LaRose (09:38):
Yeah.
I feel like I've heard thatargument before, but it would make
sense that people were, becauseI think even Piper, wichmannii I
think it's difficult to cultivate.
It doesn't naturally sexually reproducevery easily , from what I understand.
Jimmy Price (09:51):
It does in PNG, but it does not in Vanuatu.
Douglas LaRose (09:55):
Which is weird.
Yeah.
So that section kavas effects.
It's like the second section of the paper.
What a weird section because oneof the things that really jumped
out to me, I'll quote him here.
However, anthropologists withexperience of the drug, he's talking
about kava and Western Polynesiahave questioned its efficacy.
Ford from field work in Fiji and Holmeswho worked in Samoa, attributed the
(10:18):
reputed effects, for example, ataxia tolong hours of sitting cross-legged in
a poorly ventilated interiors , heavywith tobacco smoke, but consulted a
psycho-pharmacology who concluded aftera literature review that the reputed
effects of kava drinking are a quote,remarkable example of a placebo phenomenon
in a wide and important setting.
(10:39):
So he's basically saying that, Priorto, , more recent research, people had
dismissed kava as having a placebo effect.
They did.
Which is interesting.
He's also arguing that like it's sopowerful that you can communicate
with the ancestors when you drink it.
Jimmy Price (10:54):
Yeah.
So it's there, there was just awide range of effect for that.
I noticed that too, cause I havethat exact spot highlighted as well.
Yeah, it's, it, yeah.
A remarkable example of placebophenomena, but he puts it in quotes.
So it is just bringing attention tothe fact that it was said, but it it is
interesting that someone would attribute.
That's obvious that theydidn't drink it themselves.
(11:16):
But it's funny to a person thatdrinks kava on a regular basis and
you say, oh, that's just a placebo.
You're just like, okay, yeah.
All, all right, okay, it's a placebo.
All right, then just don't, , you at leastleave it all for me then that's fine.
More for me.
Yeah.
, and it, goes on to say suggestions like those of Forden homes seem to be the
effects reported by non habitual users.
So he talks about the fact that nonhabitual users may not appreciate
(11:39):
it as much as habitual users.
So that made me think, maybe you'retalking a little bit about that
reverse tolerance we think of when wetalk about kava, but hey, maybe not.
I don't know.
But it says, as far as I know, thosewho question the psychoactive properties
of kava offered no explanation for whyhabitual drinkers would attribute specific
physiological and psychological effectsto it while they deliberately seek
(12:00):
those effects and why they value certainvarieties over others for their potency.
He says, I argue that thepsychoactive properties of kava were
central to the drug's diffusion.
Yep.
And that those effects were centralto a complex of beliefs and
practices that diffused with it.
It's a pretty strong argument there.
He says that the psychoactive effectsof kava where the central key player in
(12:27):
its reverence and its use and everything.
So I think that's an interesting point.
Douglas LaRose (12:31):
So in anthropology there is a kind of theory or method
of thinking or type of thinkingthat's called functionalism.
And functionalism is a way oftrying to explain the spread
of something by its function.
So that's what he's doing here, is he'smaking a functionalist argument where he
(12:51):
is saying that the psychoactive propertiesof kava explain why it diffused, why it's
spread around the Pacific . Those effectswere central to a complex of beliefs.
So that's like the religious system.
So I agree with him that people.
Moved kava from island to islanduntil they got to Hawaii, basically
(13:12):
because it has a psychoactive effect.
I just don't believe that they necessarilyused it only for religious purposes.
I think that it had also a use whereit was like more of a casual thing.
It wasn't always this kind of it'stime to get with the ancestors.
Let's drink our kava.
Like I, yeah, I think it was morelike people would sit around probably
(13:33):
on a daily basis and drink their kava.
, it was the men, , mostly who weredoing it, but I don't think it was
always this like super religious.
Ritual experience.
,, I think that's where he gets a littlebit carried away he goes on and on and
we'll get to some more pretty outlandishquotes and hey, like Turner, if you're
listening, I'm sure you've, , done somegood work and even this is good work.
(13:54):
There's one Half of a paragraphthat actually didn't really
correspond with my understanding.
So he says there are significantdifferences in the taste and potency of
kava made from the fresh or dried root.
Despite straining the drink prepared fromthe dried root, contains minute particles
suspended in its, and then it says, hesays kava prepared from the fresh root
is thinner, has a cleaner taste, andwas preferred by my Fiji and informants.
(14:19):
So I've always understood that Fiji's,mostly powdered drink powdered root.
Yeah.
Not fresh root.
So that seems to be like notconsistent with the other
studies I've seen.
Jimmy Price (14:30):
Yeah that's not consistent with anything that I've seen.
But this in this paper waswritten in 2012, so it's not
this isn't exactly an old paper.
So I don't know.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Douglas LaRose (14:39):
yeah.
We need to get Turner on.
We need to get Turner on in the podcast.
Yeah.
. Jimmy Price: I don't know, but, and though I did find the quote I was looking for,
it says, along the south coast of NewGuinea a drink is made with the saliva
of chewing and juice squeezed from themastic mask without additional water.
And I, , I couldn't do that one.
There's no way.
I think I put a note somewhere around there.
Jimmy Price (15:01):
Yeah.
I've never heard that one before.
I'm gonna have to go back andread some of these sources.
, and I think that's exact, it wasright above where you where you were?
The thinner cleaner taste waspreferred by my Fiji informants.
It's just a little bit abovethat in the same paragraph.
It's at the very top ofthat paragraph actually.
Oh, 30 page 34.
But he talks about a drink madewith a saliva of chewing and
(15:22):
juice squeezed from the masticatedmass with no additional water
, Douglas LaRose: like sugar cane.
Yeah.
I think that's supposed to be I,he describes it somewhere in the
paper as being similar to sugar cane.
Like how.
You'd chew sugar cane and youjust kind drink the juice.
. Which is a weird comparison becausesugar cane and kava are not alike.
It all No.
I dunno if you've ever chew sugarcane, but it's like a, it's like
(15:43):
on a soda, like a can of soda.
, Jimmy Price: just straight sugar
it says and he still talkssome about kavas effects.
And I have highlighted here whenthe characteristic somnolence,
sets in the kava drinker,begins to crave peace and quiet.
This one I resonated with pretty,pretty well, and it says bright
light is irritating, and myphotophobia was associated with
the pressure behind my eyes andattention at the base of my skull.
(16:05):
At this point, any sound was disturbing.
conversation , which once flowedfreely, becomes burdensome when
sleep comes, it's extremely restful.
In the hypnagogic state betweenwakefulness and sleep the mind
is open to sensory inputs fromthe environment, but it's free to
weave them into its own imagery.
I believe that kavas power toproduce such states led to its
domestication and in diffusion.
(16:26):
So he, he leans into experienceand with kava pretty heavy
there in terms of effects.
So at least he's drawing from some ofhis own understanding , of kava and its
effects . He's . pretty spot on there.
When you talk about listening to thekava, , that's what I envision when
I think of listening to the kava islike bright lights down, volume on
everything down, quiet no tense likefeelings, or the room isn't tense.
(16:50):
So yeah, I thought you hit thenail on the head with that one.
Douglas LaRose (16:53):
So I would completely agree with you, and I would
completely agree with him on that.
Because when I first started drinkingKava, the one thing that I drink it for
was the relief of anxiety and to helpme calm down as , a 20 year old crazy
hormone filled male , who is trying tocarve out his career and everything.
But the one thing in addition tothat I loved about Kava, and I still
(17:16):
love about Kava is the way that itgives you this deep, restful sleep.
, as you fall asleep or as youcome out of sleep, You have these
extremely vivid, multi-layered kindof multiverse dreams where , there's
a lot of like lucid dreaming thatcan happen and things like that.
I can understand why he would connectthat to religious beliefs because
(17:38):
yeah, that is probably a space wherespiritual leaders could get some
kind of insight or revelation thatthey could use for their doctrine.
So I can totally see that.
I think that , he's standing on firmfeet when he makes that argument.
It's the other stuff about likecommunicating with the ancestors.
, that being the main purpose ofkava that I take issue with.
I think it's it was probably a secondarything, and it doesn't always happen.
(17:59):
As like when you drink kava andyou go to sleep, you don't always
have these really crazy dreams.
That's a like maybe one in 20 times you
Jimmy Price (18:08):
get there.
Correct.
Depends on how much energy youhave, , what you're doing that
day if you're stressed out or notreally makes a big difference.
Douglas LaRose (18:14):
I was gonna read from his, the, the only kind of
ethnographic participatory section ofthe whole article is where he describes
his own kava drinking experience.
And I think it's worthreading that whole section.
It's on page 35 , of the journal.
The second half of the second to lastparagraph he says My kava drinking
(18:35):
experiences were mostly in Fiji,where the drink is mildly astringent
and bitter with a slight numbingeffect on the lips and tongue.
The first several cups,full . I thought that was funny.
Cups full.
But like, when was the lasttime you heard somebody say,
oh, I've had three cups full.
The first several cups full have arelaxing effect after six to eight.
So he went deep after six to eight,I usually felt mildly drowsy without
(18:59):
experiencing any impairment of motoractivity, but my face would be somewhat
numb and my appetite sharpened.
So , that's the opposite of my experience. , my appetite is not sharpened when I drink.
Ha.
I usually don't wanna eat anything.
After about 10 cups full , I wasextremely drowsy and falling into
sleep while standing or walking seemednot only possible, but desirable.
(19:23):
Hey, look like thisSounds pretty nice to me.
Like , I wanna go to thatnakamal with drowsiness.
There often is some axia.
I don't know what's the meaning of axia?
Jimmy, can you
Jimmy Price (19:32):
ataxia is like the disjointed movement.
You're not coordinated.
That's Axia.
Douglas LaRose (19:37):
Okay.
So that's that's when you see thevideos on YouTube of people like
falling down and stuff after Kava.
Yep.
This was most noticeable when I hadto walk home from other villages.
So that's pretty much like the extentof him talking about his time in
Fiji and like his drinking of kava.
I found it odd that.
He didn't talk more abouthis experience in Fiji.
Yeah.
Then he
Jimmy Price (19:55):
says see another author who's experienced kava in
Vanuatu for an excellent clinicaldescription of the drugs effects.
Douglas LaRose (20:03):
You have to go all the way back to 1967 to re
Jimmy Price (20:05):
1960.
This isn't it's interesting when youlook at the date on this paper and you
look at the date that he's citing here,like all these papers are very old.
So we might go over some of thesesources in here at some point,
but I guess we should move downinto Kavas diffusion and Origin.
And this is where he gives the threedifferent scenarios or did you wanna
talk about a little more the other stuff.
Douglas LaRose (20:24):
Just just before you do that, there was one sentence that I wanted
to highlight that jumped out to me.
Yeah.
And actually, in my notes, I wroteBollocks, . He wrote, I believe that
Kavas power to produce such states ledto its domestication and diffusion.
I don't think I, again, like thisis that functionalist argument.
I don't think that anybody can claim that,the state of mind that he's talking about
with weaving imagery and the dream state.
(20:47):
And I don't believe that you can argue, with Good cause that is the reason why
Kava was domesticated and diffused.
I think that's he needs to really like,build more evidence to make that argument.
So I just wanted to point that out.
It's more of an academiccriticism than anything else.
So yeah.
Let's move on to the theorigin and diffusion.
Jimmy, go
Jimmy Price (21:06):
ahead.
And part of it is the distribution ofkava among the South Pacific Islands.
It gives three independent scenariosof how this may have happened and
gives a little bit of informationand backup on each one, and
progressively gets more in depthuntil it gets to the final conclusion,
which he feels is the most logicalconclusion for where kava originated.
(21:29):
, the first section he talks about inindependent discovery this means that
an independent discovery such as inCentral Micronesia, Could not have
been an ink independent discovery.
So they're saying like, basically he'sno, that's just not gonna be possible.
Other factors that rule out independentdiscovery include elements of belief and
practice shared by all the kava drinkingsocieties, which is discussed later.
Douglas LaRose (21:50):
He goes talking about the Lapita settlers and how
because that pottery is not foundin the Central Solomon Islands.
He doesn't really explain orjustify his argument that there
was an absence of kava use.
I don't know how you wouldknow that kava wasn't used.
It could be that it was used, butthen people stopped growing it.
Like it's a plant, , plantsdon't really preserve that.
(22:13):
Archeologically, I guess you wouldlook for the tools to where you would
pound the roots and stuff like that,but it could, , like just earlier he
was talking about how like you canchew and drink the saliva, from kava.
So how do we know that theydidn't just consume it that way?
. Jimmy Price (22:27):
He goes over how kava most likely spread out about 3000 years ago.
And everybody talks about wheredo we get this 3000 year number.
And it comes from Dr.
Lebot and he quotes it hereheavily , and does talk about the
movement of kava, from Papa NewGuinea to van or from, is it Vanuatu?
I think he actually goes from Vanuatuto Papa New Guinea Northern Island.
(22:47):
He does.
So it's, yeah, it does start, whilethe Wild Progenator Piper wichmannii
is a native plant for that area, kavadidn't originate PNG that actually
kava as in Piper methysticum camefrom the northern islands of Vanuatu.
Douglas LaRose (23:03):
That's true.
Yeah.
That's what Lebot's research, hasdemonstrated is that the origin of Piper
methysticum is in Northern Vanuatu.
And the diversity of cultivars inVanuatu is the evidence of it being
the fertile crescent, if you will, ofthe cultivation, domestication of kava.
Jimmy Price (23:22):
Yeah.
Here it says, Lebot pointed out thatthe characteristics of Piper methysticum
from found in New Guinea today wereexported from Vanuatu early in the
domestication process with littlesubsequent selection, which would
explain Isa how it got exported early.
It was not a fully developed kavawhen it went back over and it was
(23:42):
not subsequently developed andcultivated to the point where it
was really full Piper methysticum.
So it it's the closestyou can get to Wild Kava.
It doesn't fall even intothe two-day category.
When they do the zymotype andthe categorizing of the Kavas
by , their specific chemo types.
Isa and Iwi come up to just,they've, they're out in left
(24:05):
field, like they're nowhere.
All the other kavasare clustered together.
And then you have Isa , and thenyou have wild, you just have Isa
Douglas LaRose (24:13):
Yeah.
And then he jumps back intothis, argument about the Lapita and
how it is unclear why the Lapitasettlers of the Reef and Santa
Cruz Islands would've avoided theislands of the Central Solomons.
So he gets back into this leapfrogginghypothesis, which again, like all I
read into that is that archeologistsand anthropologists don't know why.
(24:34):
They don't know why a Lapita cultureleapfrogged the central Solomon Islands.
It's okay, this pottery traditioncan't be found in the Solomon Islands.
The Lapita people.
Go there and colonize those islands.
Okay, so what like that doesn'tsay anything about whether
people used or didn't use Kava
True.
That it doesn't, there's no causation.
There's no causal argumentthat you can make.
There's no logical argument that youcan make that the people did or didn't
(24:57):
drink Kava just based on the fact thatyou can't find those ceramics there.
Sure.
, o other than the fact that in presentday Solomon Islands people don't drink
kava that's an argument that can be made.
Jimmy Price (25:08):
Lean linguistics as well.
I think , he leans intothat as well later on.
HoW the word for kava it doesn't,or the word for manna and kava.
They've changed over the span of theSouth Pacific for the last 3000 years.
And those , were kava was present wordswere specifically changed due to it.
So it left a linguistic impression onthe society that chose to consume kava.
Douglas LaRose (25:32):
But manna is definitely a word that you hear
a lot in this Solomons manna.
Manna just means it's like power.
It's like spiritual power.
When something has manna,it has spiritual power.
. And I guess kava is one of thosethings in kava drinking cultures
that, , has spiritual power.
And I think that is, , that theevidence is in the kava ceremonies.
(25:52):
, when you have a kava ceremony in Vanuatuor Fiji or Hawaii it's very ritualistic.
, you have, you sit in like that formationwith different people with different
levels of power in social prestige anddifferent strategic parts of that circle.
So obviously that's important andritualistic and, the person who
has the most mana, the most powerprobably is strongly connected to
(26:16):
how the kava is distributed in that
Jimmy Price (26:18):
ceremony.
And I think this brings us up tothe third scenario for kava spread.
He talks about by beingby the indirect links.
The third scenario has kava andits ritual use spread from an
original center of discovery towhere its use is documented at.
Issue.
In this scenario is the claim that italso spread to intervening areas where
(26:40):
kava, cultivation and use were abandoned.
Brenton's thesis is based on theassertion that most Sian societies
are characterized by decentralizedpolitical systems in which any achieved
hierarchy is subject to challenge.
And in which religious beliefand practice are subject to large
degrees of individual variationin the high rate of obsolescence.
This can be seen on the island of Tannain Southern Vanuatu where the integrity
(27:03):
and accessibility of existing sources ofritual power were never assured and where
the divisiveness and distrust produced byineffective institutions of leadership.
And social coordination led to aspiral of entropy to which mini tanis
responded by rejecting their currentcultural package in favor for another.
And I think they may have talked aboutthat, in the Pollock paper, a little
(27:24):
bit about the kind of resurgence, kavaand rejection of missionary values.
And it says, I have this one highlighted,in the post-contact period kava drinking.
There has been abandoned andre instituted more than once
by some tiniest communities.
And I find that very interesting and itprompted another question for me, and
(27:44):
it's it relates probably to a lot ofthe people that are listening to this,
but is, , here we hear a lot on ourplatforms through people new to Kava
asking about it, , is kava addictive?
And we have all sortsof different answers.
And the real answer is no.
Clinically kava is not addictive.
It does not have a mechanism whichcauses withdrawal intolerance.
Therefore it doesn't cause aphysical addiction . Anything
(28:05):
can be psychologically addictive.
I used the example the other day ofmy strange addiction where the person
could not stop eating toilet paper.
, but.
, if an entire society can just droptheir kava consumption and then pick
it back up and then just drop it againlike that, I think that speaks to a
fundamental quality of the drink itself.
(28:26):
And that it's not something that'saddictive, that makes a compulsion
of use or that causes you toforego other things in favor of it.
I believe that's built into theselosses and resurgences of kava
consumption and cultivation.
And I always look for ways, that it'snot addictive, but it's more of an
underscore towards its safety andit's long history of continued use.
(28:51):
Random drops from entire societies.
And they at some point decide, Hey,we're gonna drink this again, and
we're gonna pick our culture backup, or go back and reestablish Casto.
But I thought that was quite interesting.
And , I never have consideredkava addictive, but I think this
just speaks more towards that.
Douglas LaRose (29:09):
Yeah, I think that's a whole, like a subject that, , hopefully
we can find a paper , in a futurepodcast that kind of delves into that.
I don't know if there are any but it wouldbe interesting to talk about that more
because I have some thoughts about it.
As somebody who's been addicted toalcohol at various points in my life
I know what addiction feels likeand kava is not like that at all.
(29:31):
First of all, it doesn't do any ofthe nasty that addiction does, it
doesn't turn you into a monster anda selfish, , self-destructive person.
That actually I think enhancesyour quality of life and helps you
relax when you want to drink it.
And if you don't drink it , youcan find another way to relax,
but Kava helps . So yeah.
But it would beinteresting to look though.
(29:51):
It's cool that you bring that up andI think also the fact that these
societies were able to put down kavafor a while and then see like how
destructive alcohol was in theirsocieties during the colonial period.
, and then in the post independence period,be like, actually let's swap out that.
Go back liquor for that kava stuff thatwas like with us for thousands of years
(30:12):
before these , missionaries came here.
I think that's a testimony to not onlythe fact that, , it's not addictive, but
also to the fact that it's conducive toa much more peaceful, amicable society.
. Jimmy Price: Absolutely.
Yeah.
Every time we see that alcoholwas introduced to a society,
we see things kind of degrade.
Kava was a great glue and a greatspace creator, and it, yeah, it was
(30:35):
a great loss for those cultures thatwere told that it was heathenistic
and that it was dirty and that it was.
Against God and all this stuff.
And it's just, imagine it sounds crazy,but there's entire societies that lost,
their entire culture for drinking kavabecause we just politically removed it
actually, I was just gonna say, we have this very
(30:56):
ethnocentric , , America Eurocentricway of looking at the world where
alcohol is a normal thing, right?
Yeah.
So people who are listening tothis podcast are probably in the
United States, or like a a westerncountry western European country
and, we grew up with alcohol.
It's like part of our, you gooutside,, , you walk by the pub, you
see the billboard with the beer.
(31:16):
you're flipping through a magazine.
You got, the mug of beer.
It's normalized to the point where , wesee alcohol as this normal thing.
And to go out with your friendsand get, , blackout drunk is like
a rite of passage in our culture.
And, , when you go to college,you're supposed to like, completely
just destroy your body withalcohol . But that's not normal.
That's not something thatlike humans were born to do.
(31:39):
That's something that we've acceptedas part of our culture for the
worst, , as can be evidenced by allthe destroyed families and, , like
dead people due , to liver disease.
From alcohol consumption.
Alcohol as being this normalthing to these specific islanders.
Alcohol was not a normal thing.
It was something that came in,caused a lot of chaos just like
it did to the Native Americans.
(31:59):
And the Aborigines in Australia,so when they took up kava again, it
was like, oh, hey, here's somethingthat we can sit down and enjoy and
it won't kill us and it won't leadto us beating our wives or whatever.
This is something that is not goingto tear away the fabric of society.
So I just think that'ssuch an important point.
, , we have to step outside of our owncultural understanding and be able to
(32:21):
see the world through other people'seyes, and realize that widespread alcohol
consumption is not a normal way of life.
it's, no, it's our normal way oflife because we grew up with it.
But it's, it doesn't mean thatit's good or healthy or normal.
Jimmy Price (32:34):
I think we talked about that on one of our other podcasts.
But yeah, it's a very safe thing.
, and where alcohol is a veryunsafe thing in terms of health
and just the choices you make.
It clouds your decisions and it, andthat's something that Kava doesn't do.
You just won't be able to walk . Andthere, there's a portion of
this one that stood out to mecuz he talked about the self
reproduction of Piper Mathum yeah.
(32:55):
In this portion of it.
And I thought I had to go back andactually read the sources for this
or try to find what he was talkingabout cuz it was very interesting and
it talks about how there were in the1950s apparently at the Vanuatu Cultural
Center in Port Vela one of the plantsthat had been growing since the 1950s.
Had one of the branches fellover and touched the ground, and
(33:18):
eventually through this process had 11different plants from this one plant.
And I went back to the sourceon that, the Peter Buck article.
And yes, it does talk about theplant's propagation or re propagation
of itself, I guess you call it.
Yeah.
Self re self propagation.
But it's not something that I wouldsay that would save kava in any way.
(33:38):
It's just an interesting ecologicallittle thing that's happened by accident
. I'm sure there's a word for that.
Douglas LaRose (33:44):
Yeah, I think that in the wild, , absent of human interference
there are a lot of plans that dothat, , where they where the, they
grow to a certain point and then thestems, they bend under their own weight.
And then from them going back intothe ground, they produce new what's
the word for the progeny of plants.
New plants, yeah.
(34:04):
Yeah.
Clone.
I'll
Jimmy Price (34:05):
just leave it at that.
, Douglas LaRose (34:06):
I wanna ask you, Jimmy, when you were reading this and you
looked at scenario two which was , kavadrinking, spread by direct links, , so
that would be like the Lupita tradition,so him arguing that there's this cultural
tradition, this carrying kava forward.
And then, when you read scenariothree, kavas read by indirect links.
So he is talking about tradingand contact with other cultures.
(34:29):
diD you really see.
A big difference between those two things.
Because for me, like both ofthose things could have happened.
I don't I don't see why both of thosescenarios can't be true at the same time.
Jimmy Price (34:38):
They could be.
It talks about the Lupita peoplebringing them and that's a pretty
widely accepted way of of viewing that.
So it's not, , in indirect links.
It seems like that's also very plausible.
Yeah.
And I think it probably happened bothat the same time during all this.
There's no way we could narrow it downto one thing I believe, cuz it would just
be everything was happening concurrently.
(34:59):
, all of these different kaas anddifferent gardens were being
cultivated at the same time.
Yeah, I think that's, they are quitesimilar and , they would run concurrently,
I believe, and we could Yeah.
Say that these werehappening at the same time.
. . Douglas LaRose: Yeah, it just, it's just redundant.
I thought that the, I thought that in thatsection there was a part where he talked
about the the significance of the methodof preparation and the consumption of kava
(35:21):
is that it differs from the use of all oralmost all other psychoactive substances
traditionally use in the Pacific.
And then he goes on tomention this guy Thomas.
I'm assuming it's the guy.
It could be a woman that's somebody'slast name, Thomas, 2003, lists various
flowers, pollens, leaves, nuts, seeds,fruits, steroids, gingers and club
(35:41):
mosses, that are used by New Guineapeoples for their psychotropic effects.
And then he says, but no plantother than kava is first macerated
and then infused in cold water.
This distinctive method ofpreparation alone is sufficient to
suggest a single region of origin.
I thought that was like a reallyludicrous argument because
it's pretty, it's a, like I would hope that there
(36:04):
was more behind that, that hejust didn't put in this paper.
But yeah, that was a really.
Really big claim . Yeah.
The distinctive method ofpreparation alone is sufficient to
suggest a single region of origin.
No other plant other than kava is firstmacerated and then infused in cold water.
Okay.
Some groups on New Guinea, South coastforego water and drink a mixture, compose
(36:26):
of saliva in the natural root juices.
man, that's hardcore, right?
So
Douglas LaRose (36:30):
contradictory.
That's hardcore right there,
I think that's, how else would youmake kava I'm trying to think of if
you didn't have, , technology toextract kava with ethanol, how else
would you get the Cains out of kava?
You have to either.
Dry it and pound it in order andthen make it from dried kava, or
(36:50):
you have to macerate it, right?
Yeah.
Jimmy Price (36:52):
He talks about , it's interesting how the kava traditions
have been that instead of just chewingthe roots and swallowing what you
were chewing and getting the effectthat way because in effect you're just
doing toss and wash of fresh kava.
Theoretically that would work especiallyif you were chewing it and, , getting
the kava lactone free and , youcould just take a swig of water at
(37:13):
that point and make your own cob inyour mouth . But there, there are
different ways that could be done, butthey've chose this way specifically.
And I think that's probablybecause it's to be shared and
it's to be consumed with people.
And it's a libation and not something.
Personal.
And it even talks about how in Fiji,and we've talked about this before
too that drinking kava alone is seenas a witchcraft almost, or a sorcery.
(37:38):
And they think highly negativelyof drinking kava alone.
So I always thought that was interesting.
Cause me and my backsplash on mysink are the only people that, that
I drink kava with on a regular basis.
So yeah, . Yeah,
, Douglas LaRose (37:50):
I highlighted that whole paragraph and that
was one of the paragraphs wherehe didn't provide any references,
So I actually, I put in mycomments that, yeah, he says Kava
can be used for nefarious ends.
And Fiji another term for sorcery drought.
Al literally leaf of the tree is sovaya literally, poor fijis never drink
kava alone, even when practicingsorcery . It's it's kinda a funny sense.
(38:14):
And that, and in that case,just two people are involved.
One who prepares the drink and theother who pours the yako out on the
ground while uttering the curse.
What informant stress indescribing this is the power
or efficacy of the Yoko itself.
Kava plays a role in sorcery and otherPacific Island societies as well.
Okay.
So like he makes this statement whenhe says informants, he's referring
(38:35):
to his own research, but he makesthis statement, but he doesn't really
explain is this like how Kavas normallyused, like how often is Kava used
for this purpose or is kava used?
is The presence of kava in this rituallike the soul of the ritual, or is it
just people are drinking kava whilethey're performing these rituals?
Like I just feel like I needed morecontext to be able to like, understand
(38:57):
what he was trying to get out there.
Jimmy Price (38:58):
Yeah.
Hit us up, Dr.
Turner.
Cause we want you as a guest.
. Yeah.
Douglas LaRose (39:03):
Yeah.
He's welcome here.
Jimmy Price (39:04):
Anytime.
I'd love to hear, , he makes thesame sort of illusions that other
people do about life and deathin terms of kava consumption.
And it's, yeah, it's it.
, it's paradoxical because it's seen anassociation with death and sacrifice and
poison disease in some cases with leprosy.
But it's also widely believed to be lifeenhancing as well, not just the others.
(39:27):
So it's an interesting role that it has.
It's almost like it demands respect,but , it's almost like you're
gonna respect this camile tea.
To the person that's looking atit from that perspective,, kava
is not that thing that's gonnamake you, , go rob a gas station.
It just isn't.
But it goes through the variousdifferent myths about how Tagaloa was
cut the boy in half for being a childand then, , made the parent suffer
(39:51):
and then, , poured the cavo over thechild and brought 'em back to life.
So there's many different mythsand origin stories, but they
always have something to do withdeath and usually a gruesome one.
Douglas LaRose (40:03):
Yeah.
It would be interesting tocompare the other myths, like the
other myths of Vanuatu and Fiji.
, and see what are there other mythsabout death that don't involve kava?
, is kava present in all of these myths?
Probably not.
It's probably president in someand not president in others.
1 kind of editorial comments I have, andI don't mean to be like bashing on Turner
(40:23):
here, but spends two pages talkingabout prohibitions and restrictions.
, women and young people and howthey're not supposed to drink
kava traditionally, but then
But then he goes on to say, ratherthan focus on those for whom kava
was prohibited in material rationalesfor those prohibitions, we need to
focus our attention on those forwhom kava drinking was permitted.
(40:45):
It's okay, then why did you justspend two pages talking about.
The people that can't drink kava like he
Jimmy Price (40:50):
just giving you, he was just backing himself up, man, come on,
Douglas LaRose (40:53):
And then he talks about within those two pages this is
on page 44, and pre-Christian, Fijionly these senior men drink kava.
Younger men's involvement was restrictedto preparing it and serving it.
A role played by a youngwoman in Western Polynesia.
In general, the more restricted kava wasin terms of the categories of persons
permitted to use it, or in terms of thecontexts in which it was used, the more
(41:15):
vulnerable it would be to abandonment.
Again, like the restrictions basedon gender, the restrictions against
used by younger men and adolescentsstands in contrast to beetle chewing.
Okay.
So one thing , I want to discuss aboutthis is we just read an article I
think two podcasts ago where We weretalking about the colonial period
and how young men during the colonialperiod lost their interest in kava.
(41:37):
And these references, Thompson 1908,Brewster 1922, I think that they
would've fallen within that period,that colonial period where Kava
was like becoming out of fashion.
And like young people were gravitatingtowards things like cans of beer.
So how does he know that'snot what was going on?
Not that the young men weren'tsupposed to drink kava, but maybe
(41:59):
they just the weren't interestedat that time in drinking kava.
Jimmy Price (42:02):
I hope he figures it out because it's, , it's
2012 when he is writing it.
. Oh, I hope so.
Douglas LaRose (42:07):
Oh, Turner
. Turner 2012, listening to the ancestors Kava and the Lapita Peoples a paper that
I enjoyed reading but didn't necessarilyunderstand the purpose of but it's a
good collection of a lot of information.
Yeah.
So I'm happy that it exists.
But I just, , maybe I need toread more of Turner's stuff to
figure out what , his , kind
Jimmy Price (42:25):
of message.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just wanted to read hisfinal concluding statement.
It says, kavas value lay in itstransformative effects in the quietude
it engenders, it opens the subject tothat which lies within, as well as that
which lies beyond it was and is a channelof communication with the ancestors
(42:45):
and a conduit for ancestral manna.
, and I thought that it sumsup his paper pretty well.
He did try to tie the communicationof ancestors, and I think
he takes it too literally.
In terms of having to the mind frame,like the whole like thing where
you're talking to the ancestors.
I think that there was morenuance to that than that sort
of getting, , totally wasted andtalking to people that aren't there.
(43:08):
I think that it was, , yes, thereis a channel of communication to the
ancestors, but in a more secondary way.
Like they're touching the same dn a that their ancestors touch.
It is sacred for that purpose.
, that makes sense to me.
It being the transformativepsychedelic experience.
I'm with you, Doug.
I don't think I'm, I can ride that train.
I have not yet.
(43:28):
At least I haven't had everykava out there, but I've yet
to find one that's psychedelic.
. But yeah, agreed.
Agreed.
Thanks for listening tonight we hopeyou have a great evening and all that.
And bah,
Douglas LaRose (43:39):
bula.
Enjoy your kava andwe'll see you next time.
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