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Comment by ericd | Hacker News Reader

Could they have gotten the plant you mention via trade?

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.

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!

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