The origins of the shamanic use of ayahuasca, as well as other hallucinogenic plants, go back hundreds perhaps thousands of years.
One of the myths of Tukano people from Vaupes region in Colombia says that the first people came from the sky in a serpent canoe and Father Sun promised them a magical drink that would connect them with the radiant powers of the heavens. While the men were trying to make this drink, the first woman went into the forest to give birth. She came back with a boy radiating golden light, whose body was rubbed with leaves. This luminous boy-child was the vine.” Says Ralph Metzner in the Sacred Vine of Spirits: Ayahuasca.