Wide of Shaman's hut interior. Colombian Amazon. Amazon shaman discusses his knowledge of ayahuasca or vine of the dead. Ayahuasca is any of various psychoactive infusions or decoctions prepared from the Banisteriopsis spp. vine, usually mixed with the leaves of the Psychotria bush. It was first described academically in the early 1950s by the late Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes who found it employed for divinatory and healing purposes by Amerindians of Amazonian Colombia.