Comment by pvaldes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pvaldes | Hacker News Reader

The history seems speculative, but I'll speculate a little more anyways. Lets suppose that those mummies wheren't fake, is not probable, but lets assume that. Could we theoretically find nicotine in an old egyptian mummy?.

In theory is possible. There is one species of Nicotiana native from Africa (Nicotiana africana). The problem is that this plant is a Namibian endemism, in the other coin of Africa. For people mastering the complicated process of embalm a body, with a trading area that extends to the entire Mediterranean sea, and taking a lot of precise steps and hassles to be sucessful, a local plant able to stop insect damage would had been noticed and treasured. We can speculate that the current Namibian populations are relict populations of a much wider distribution area, and that this is another white rhino. Maybe the north populations were wiped by the old Egyptian empire?, then the flower must appear painted somewhere or some obscure text should talk about such treasure.

And in any case, there is still the Cocaine issue. There are also some members of the family Erytroxylaceae native from Africa, but If you find three of the most popular drugs when putting a sample of a mummy in a machine, you should suspect that either the mummies were fake, or where real but used later to smuggle drugs, or that the drugs were into the machine previously (the laboratory has been used before for analyze drugs).

It would seem like it would be easier to contaminate with nicotine given the old school habits of smoking everywhere the cocaine is harder to explain because it's not that easy to contaminate with it, back in the old days cocaine unsers injected it, snorting didn't become a thing until the 1970s.

However apparently the use of solvents negates any effect from atmospheric smoke so it appears to be an embalming element.

Used to smuggle drugs seems by far the most likely. Mummies would have the benefit of being ostensibly fragile, valuable, and repellent to most. That’s a trifecta drug smugglers would hope for, in terms of evading deep inspections.

The readings were however taken from the hair that was washed before testing, indicating ingestion while alive.

Contamination of the mummy itself seems unlikely, while contamination from the lab or tech seems incredibly likely.

Maybe, but unlikely; other tests were done.

> “Since the initial work of Balabanova et. al., other studies have revealed the same drugs (cocaine, nicotine, and hashish) in Egyptian mummies, confirming the original results."

Could they have gotten the plant you mention via trade?

In theory yes of course, but there is no (other) physical evidence of possible trade between Europe/Africa and the Americas in that period. The possibility that the Phoenecians could have comes up from time to time, but their ships really weren’t well adapted to deep ocean travel.

To emphasize the point: the Atlantic Ocean is roughly 3,000 miles from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, or merely 2000 from Ireland to Newfoundland. Crossing the Atlantic means provisioning months of food and water, and being able to tackle navigation without any visible reference points. It also means being able to design ships that can handle stormy conditions, because you're likely to hit a storm in that time.

The first ships likely capable of making a crossing are the Chinese junks, followed by Polynesian outrigger canoes. The first European ships capable of making it are probably the Viking longships, which makes pre-Viking contact difficult to conceive, much less a sustained trading pattern. Furthermore, Phoenician ships were predominantly rowed, not sailed, which makes the journey especially hard to believe.

Or, with the trade winds, about 15 days on anything that can sail/drift downwind. There were similar, well established routes ("just follow the wind") on the Indian Ocean side of Africa done with very small (2-3 people) boats.

The typical speed of Phoenician ships under favorable winds was about 4.5-6 knots, and these relied heavily on rowing. Without oars, you're looking at 3-4 knots. 4.5 knots is still about 30 days from the Canaries, and keep in mind, that's the shortest time it would have taken you to go west; the eastbound trip would have been travelling at less than a knot (fighting both current and trade winds).

I came for the crackpot theories, but instead learned something fascinating.

Thanks!

Namibia was probably too far to have links with old Egypt. The egyptian empire documents show that they were very aware and informed about people living in the current Italy and Greece at north, Irak/Syria at east, and make war with Lybia at west and Sudan at South.

They were a bureaucratic society. To cross the central rainforest and the Kalahari desert to trade with South Africa and do not reflect it in their documents seems unlikely to me (but I'm not an expert in this field).

This said, finding a wild Nicotiana in Egypt today is a childs game. Nicotiana glauca, an escaped american species appears everywhere in all Mediterranean countries. Could easily slip into any local plant mix aiming to give some good ol' autenthicity to a modern mummy.

I would have figured that it would have been primarily independent traders that handled most long distance trade, and that this wouldn't have been a particularly high volume trade good, so there would be a good chance that the fraction of records we've recovered don't contain any mention. I have very little education in this area, though. Thanks for all the info!

The concept of independent traders and a merchant class uncontrolled by a central palace system of government really didn’t emerge until after the Late Bronze Age collapse circa 1170’s BCE. Before that, it was all about central control through the sovereigns, their (hugely extended) families, a system of “gift exchanges” that look a lot like commerce to us today, and control through priesthoods. It just wasn’t an option to get up and be a merchant on an international scale without your god-king giving you the rights at that time.

Wow, thanks! That's super interesting. I have to redo some of my mental model of the ancient world.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com