cocaine
Current reading material.
“Archaeological evidence of coca use dates back at least to 2500 BC -
pretty much as far back as the first discoveries on the continent - in
the form of paintings and statuettes of human figures with cheeks
bulging on one side: a dead giveaway for coca chewing. Graves are found
all over South America containing items left to prepare the bodies for
the afterlife. Coca leaves are invariably included. The very word
‘coca’ is thought to be derived from Aymara, the language of the
pre-Incan Tiwanaku tribes, in which ‘khoka’ means ‘plant’ or ‘tree’. There is an emphasis not carried across in the translation here, however, in that ‘khoka’ denoted not just any old plant, but the quintessential, the original, the
plant. Before language, it seems, there was coca. To this day in
Peru, coca is used as the standard measurement of both distance and
time. Walks are described in terms of a number of cocada: the number of coca wads one will get through when walking at a comfortable pace (one cocada
equals around 45 minutes, totalling about 3 kilometres on level ground
or 2 kilometres on steep climbs). There’s a certain beauty in the fact
that people have been planning their day around coca for centuries: what
a cocada equals today is exactly what a cocada
equalled yesterday. And what it will equal tomorrow or the next day, It
is not possible to decimalise is, nor will it ever be. This is just one
reason why North America, with a total history of five hundred years
behind it, will never succeed in stopping South America from using coca -
with a history of 4,000 years. Because, in its heart, South America
runs on Coca Time”
Dominic Streatfeild - Cocaine