10 Ancient Drug Epidemics That Erased Entire Civilizations

10 Ancient Drug Epidemics That Erased Entire Civilizations Look at the palace at Knossos on the island of Crete, built around thirty-eight hundred years ago, and you will see something the textbooks tend to gloss over. The frescoes are breathtaking, dolphins leaping, athletes vaulting over bulls, priestesses draped in gold. It looks like paradise. But walk into the sanctuary room and look at the goddess figurines standing with their arms outstretched, their eyes rolled back, their faces tilted toward the sky. Look at what they are wearing on their heads. Those are poppy capsules. Scored down the side. The exact incision pattern that releases opium latex. The Minoans, the first advanced civilization in Europe, the people who gave us the legend of the labyrinth and the first recognizable palace economy in the Western world, put opium paraphernalia on the heads of their gods. And that was not a metaphor. That was a prescription.