Posted on 11/11/2006 3:14:05 PM PST by blam
North African Language
Since all those items can be found in the Near East and the Middle East, why should anyone be surprised that they may be found in mummies?
Cocaine, hashish and nicotine are all from plants native to the Americas, so why would anyone say that they could be found in the Near East and Middle East (which are two terms for the same region)?
It is believed that hash first orginated from Central Asia, as these regions were some of the first to be populated by the Cannabis plant, which may have originated in the Himalayas. Hash quickly spread around the world after the Arabs began to gather and trade it.
Perhaps the plants in question were brought to the americas by ancient egyptian mariners when climates were quite different. The plants became extinct in its true native land when Egypt's climate failed to support it (or the coca blight hit), and it thrived in the Americas where it had been transported. Thousands of years later it was discovered as a new plant of the new world, when it was just the same old stuff that their great great .................... grandparents used to soothe toothaches on the banks of the Nile.
Whose pyramids are older, the Americans' or the Egyptians'?
That could easily be. :') Not so for cocaine or nicotine.
this is BS. Basque isn't related to anything by the way. Scholars have been trying to connect it to other languages for the last hundred years without success.
Whose pyramids are older, the Americans' or the Egyptians'?Hmm, check out Caral, there's a recent topic in the GGG keyword link at message one. :')
The Egyptians would have had quite a trip ahead of them, because Peru's on the west coast of S America. :') Obviously it also makes a lot more sense that the plant was native to the one place it was known to be cultivated in the 16th century when Pizarro got there. It has been suggested that there was an extinct plant along the Nile or whatnot, which was a distant relative of the coca plant. Advocates of this idea are stuck with saying the same thing about the nicotine, although there are relatives of tobacco in the eastern hemisphere; those don't have sufficient quantity of nicotine.
The location of Peru is also something of a problem for the ancient navigation idea, because it would make sense that the coca leaves would have left some sort of trail of trade into, say, the eastern coast of Central America, where the Egyptians could have obtained 'em.
OTOH, if Egyptians (or others, such as the Phoenicians, who are known to have explored and settled the western coast of Africa, and to have circumnavigated Africa) had found the Amazon, trade with Peruvian cultures is more plausible. :')
Poppies have been grown in that area for centuries. I don't think they are native to the Americas. Coca might be, but there could be something grown in the Middle East that acts the same way.
The Straight Dope on Silphium:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/061013.html
even better:
Silphium: Ancient Wonder Drug?
by John Tatman
http://ancient-coins.com/articles/silphium/silphium2.htm
American, at Caral. The age of the 'oldest' pyramid in Greece is in dispute.
There are more pyramids in Mexico than all the rest of the world combined.
Poppies are the source of opium.
Opium is not cocaine, nor is it nicotine, and all three are chemically distinct.
Cocaine and nicotine came from plants native to the Americas.
There are no plants known to contain the levels found in the studied mummies other than coca and tobacco.
The age of the 'oldest' pyramid in Greece is in dispute.The pyramid in Greece is from classical times, and isn't from the 3rd millennium, as has been claimed by just a handful of nationalists.
Kuelap - The Machu Picchu Of Northern Peru (Chachapoyas - White, blonde haired people)"
Possibly, but who knows what travels and trading were done way back when, that might have resulted in some of those plants finding their way to the Middle East? One never knows... ;o)
By the way, did the story say that these mummies came out of their sarcophagi like this, or are these mummies that had been discovered previously? If the latter is the case, it's likely contamination from those who handled the mummies first.
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