Just to be clear, though, DDG, it’s my understanding that The Lancet is about as mainstream a publication as you’re likely to find, even if it’s not well-known outside medical circles. That’s why I’m puzzled about your assertion that you’d be less skeptical of something published in, say, Scientific American than The Lancet because the former is more mainstream. I’d argue that most popular magazines have–and can afford to have–far less rigorous standards in what they publish than do peer-reviewed trade journals.
Many organisms can cross oceans and continents during storms. Seeds, spores, small birds, bugs. Why would it be so hard to imagine that some coca seeds were carried to the old world, not enough to establish themselves as a permanent invader or crop, but enough that some local plants grew in a garden or two for a couple of centuries? People might have had coca and its byproducts for a while, but a climate change wiped out the not-widespread foreign plant, and then it wasn’t around anymore. So, no paradox: a cocaine-like substance could have been around even though the plant isn’t native to Egypt and isn’t there now. Not saying it necessarily did happen that way, but it COULD have, with no great stretches of known science, no time travelers, no human transatlantic travel.
Well, for me, the big problem with this theory is, first, that coca lives in the Andes mountains, on the opposite side of the continent of South America from where the seeds would have to fall into the ocean to be carried to Africa. How would they get down out of the mountains and all the way across the Amazon basin to Rio? Are you postulating that a bird could carry coca seeds in its gut all that way? That would involve (a) the bird eating coca fruit or berries, whatever it is, then (b) flying all the way to Rio non-stop without excreting once. Is this likely?
It’s my understanding that plants that are adapted to the high mountains won’t grow in a hot and humid coastal plain, no matter how skillful the gardener. This would be like taking the Rocky Mountain columbine, aquilegia caerulea, and trying to grow it in Fort Lauderdale. It just wouldn’t work. So, even if a bird did poop some coca seeds out on the Brazilian coastal plain, they wouldn’t grow.
So, you could postulate that birds ate coca fruit and helped it move a little at a time further down the slopes of the Andes, evolving as it went, colonizing the Amazon basin, and then moving out to the Atlantic coastal plain. But how long would this take? And how likely is it that a slow-growing mountain shrub would be able to colonize the “kill or be killed” amazingly complex and competitive Amazon ecosystem?
Seeds that move into new ecosystems MUST “establish themselves as a permanent invader”. They have to fight their way into an environmental niche that is already occupied. Plants that do succeed at invading different ecosystems are usually the ones that spread by runners, like quackgrass, or by making gazillions of seeds, like crabgrass. Coca is a bush that grows slowly.
Second, even if they did get to Africa somehow, they would have to then propagate themselves all the way across Africa to Egypt.
The only way they could have been “local plants growing in a garden for a while” would be if there were people living on the African coastal plain, waiting for them, with gardens.
Also, seeds don’t just wash up on the beach, and you see them and take them home and plant them. They’d have to establish themselves as an invader first. Then you’d say, “Oh, what are those?” and you’d dig them up and take them home.
Even if they’d evolved to live on the Brazilian coastal plain, they would still have to find a niche on the African coastal plain. It wouldn’t be an automatic, “Oh, sure, come on in and find a seat”. There would be just as much competition from other plants as there would have been on their evolutionary trek down the sides of the Andes, and they’d have to do it all over again.
Third, even if this did all happen and the ancient Egyptians had access to coca plants from somewhere, why didn’t they ever mention it? As has already been pointed out, everything else in their lifestyle is included in their tomb paintings–farming, hunting, war, marriage, birth, death, beer drinking, bread making, boat building. Why nothing about the coca plant? Every other plant they used is pictured somewhere, but no coca and no tobacco.
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*Originally posted by Duck Duck Goose *
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OK. (1) Re (a)and (b) it’s happened that way - not FLYING all the way necessarily, but getting blown by windstorms as well as flying. Need I remind you that some birds make migratory trips of thousands of miles without stopping. (Yes, I know they poop along the way - where I live is either permanent habitat or on the migratory route of about 50% of all the species in North America, and they all poop around the buildings where I work, especially on car roofs.) Bats, too. And not all poops eliminate everything. Tough stuff may hang around in the intestines for a while. (Tangentially, a friend of mine who is a herpetologist does consulting work occasionally for airlines, because tropical snakes crawl into airplane wheelwells and such, survive the flight, defrost, and drop on top of hapless mechanics in the US. Trying to keep snakes out of wheelwells so they won’t travel thousands of miles to different continents is an ongoing struggle. Let alone trying to keep an animal out of a typhoon, hurricane, etc.)
(2) Some plants may be hard to grow in different environments; others aren’t. Can you say weeds? Or bamboo, or kudzu, or dandelions? Or even broccoli? Yes, that’s right, broccoli - and for that matter zucchini - will grow almost anywhere, with very little effort on a human’s part. That’s why they’re always the vegetable of the day at restaurants. Broccoli isn’t native to north america, but it sure started growing here easily the minute Thomas Jefferson brought it over. And I don’t think anyone deliberately brought bamboo- it just came along on something else.
(3) We do not know that the Egyptians recorded everything. There may be thousands of things they didn’t record, and how the hell would we know?? What do we have records of - a very few tombs, a very few mummies (relative to total population of ancient egypt) - chances are that there are HUGE amounts of their lives, activities, plants, etc. unrecorded. And if it’s not recorded, well, we don’t know, do we??
I’ve got to say I’m a bit irked that 66 posts into this thread and nobody has mentioned my Fortean Times article on the subject. The first half, at least, is available on line at: http://www.forteantimes.com/artic/117/toke.html
The important thing I found in researching it that I don’t think anyone else has mentioned is that Balabanova isn’t the only one doing this research any more. I found a pathologist, Larry Cartmell, who found nicotine traces in some Egyptian mummies. This is a guy with a lot of experience working with South American mummies so he knows what he’s doing. And at least some of the samples were taken directly from the archaeological site, so there was no possibility of contamination.
One of the direct samples had a pretty high nicotine level, about the same as a non-smoker who works in a smoke-filled environment, so even if you don’t believe Balabanova, even if you don’t think there is any decay of nicotine over time, there is something here that requires explanation.
Seems to me the Fortean Times was mentioned in this thread. I found your article while helping research this piece, too. I’m sorry I’ve not found the other articles I described earlier. The Hindustan Times (?) article doesn’t seem to be online anymore. Anyhow, the original write up on these findings was in a German journal.
For a fictional treatment of the theme, see *The 10,000 Gates of Thebes,*by Robert Silverberg.
Eohippus, were the Franklin cadavers mummified? I thought it was just the opposite, that they were frozen by the permafrost. Doesn’t mummification involve the complete drying-out of the cadaver, while freezing retains the body’s normal water content?
Bunrab, in response to your point #2, many of the plants you pointed out that thrive in foreign soils are still in similar climates. Kudzu may have taken over the Southeast, but it doesn’t grow anywhere else in the US because the Southeast alone has a climate similar to southern China.
Besides, if coca could grow in all sorts of places, wouldn’t it be grown all over the place now? It’s not like there isn’t a motive. And if it were that flexible, how could a climate change have wiped it out, as you suggest? The climate change between the Andes and Egypt is pretty huge already.
Just want to chime in here. Duck Duck Goose, you are officially my hero! You’ve done heroic work fighting ignorance. Kudos to you!
Now.
The thing is, coke and cig using egyptians make no sense. There are two options…a thriving transatlantic drug trade, or the egyptians cultivating these plants themselves. Where are the records of this? Where is the evidence? It makes no sense. If you were going to the trouble to establish regular trade with America, don’t you think there’s be some evidence of that? Also, egyptian boatbuilding was not highly developed, mostly they shipped things up and down the Nile in barges.
It is one thing to imagine a couple of boats blown across the atlantic, and a few sailors who lived out the rest of their lives in America. I’d be shocked if there wasn’t a few such cases. Heck, I can imagine someone making it back with a hold full of drugs. But once those drugs are gone, what then? You have to go back and get more. Which means trade.
But trade leaves traces. Don’t you think that there would be some evidence besides drug residues? If the mummies were regularly using cocaine, there should be cocaine paraphenelia grave goods. If they were using tobacco, where are the pipes? Where are the paintings of pharoahs sitting around with a cig and a coke spoon? Or perhaps they used some other method to take the cocaine, like disolved in wine/beer. In any case, the drugs wouldn’t just show up in the mummies, they’d show up elsewhere.
The only other explanation is that the drugs were used in the mummification process as sacred plants. But why would the priests consider these plants sacred if they didn’t know you could get stoned from them? Tobacco, etc are often considered sacred by the cultures that use them, BECAUSE they use them. If you don’t use them, if you don’t know what they are for, they are just weeds, so why would you use them to preserve your mummies. And anyway, it seems like they are trying to prove that the residues are are in the hair, not in the wrappings.
Anyway. I can rest easy now, knowing that DDG is on the case, never stopping, never stinting, always on watch against ignorance…
A) Do we know that drug residue is not to be found elsewhere? Have we looked?
B) Nicotine is an excellent insecticide, and could in principle be used in mummification for no other reason. (So, of course, could an old-world quasi-nicotine.)
As to journalism:
I wish you could trust the mainstream press, but you can’t. Both Harpers and U.S.News have recently printed pieces backing the anti-Stratfordian hoaxes, and apparently refuse to retract.
But I have to confess that I have Erwin do most of the heavy lifting…