We are continuing to pursue the first people in our area from pre-historic time. The history is just now being written. From where did they come? When?
What do Egyptian mummies, cocaine, and nicotine have to do with Original Americans? They exported.
In 1992, chemistry, toxicology, and endocrinology researcher, Dr. Svetla Balabanova, from the Institute for Legal Medicine at University of Ulm, published results of DNA analysis on the ancient Egyptian mummy, priestess Henut Taui. She had other mummies which she also tested.
Using the same techniques she used as a legal analyst, Dr. Balabanova found high levels of cocaine, nicotine, and THC in bodies preserved for multiple thousands of years. Surprised at her own finds, she retested with the same outcome. Then she sent samples to other laboratories for independent testing, confirming the initial evaluation. Of nine mummies tested, all showed signs of cocaine and THC, all but one showed signs of nicotine.
For this seminal research, Dr. Balabanova received accusations of a fraud, and incompetence with un-reproducible results. Why the vitriol?
Tobacco and coca are indigenous to the Americas, with coca from Peru surroundings. Before Columbus, no cultivation was in Africa, Europe, or Asia. If Dr. Balabanova was correct, the standard history hypotheses about origins appear wrong, and the stories we heard in school were puffery and imagination. Then what else was erroneous?
How did her esteemed colleagues react? In no order, these are some of the accusations and consequence.
One, the mummies were fake. Dr. Alfred Grimm, Curator of the Egyptian Museum in Munich affirmed, the Munich mummies are “real Egyptian mummies. No fakes. No modern mummies. They came from ancient Egypt.” The mummies had inscriptions, amulets, and complex embalming.
Two, the mummies became contaminated by her tests or handling. Legal medicine avers that if a hair follicle contains an addictive drug, it must have been consumed during the lifetime and will not be degraded after death.
Three, the results were not replicable. Dr. Rosalie David, Keeper of Egyptology at the Manchester Museum, thought the claims were quite impossible. She sent samples of her museum’s mummies to labs. Surprisingly, they came back with tobacco traces. Her comment, “I am very surprised at this.” She went on to validate Dr. Balabanova’s research.
Still opposition claimed that the tobacco and coca were very rare varieties of African origin or metabolites had produced the result. Alternately, the African varieties had become extinct. This changeable claim was recognized as specious by other researchers.
Intrigued by her own results, Dr. Balabanova obtained 134 naturally preserved bodies from Sudan. One-third contained both nicotine and cocaine.
The differences between specimens reveal that the chemicals were common, but not ubiquitous. The levels indicate occasional use not excessive abuse compared to modern DNA results.
A prolific researcher and author in the medical field, Dr. Balabanova, with three colleagues, published a paper in 1997 about nicotine in prehistoric skeletal remains of South China.
What of the claims of global travel and trade?
Almost universally, people are intrigued by the construction of the dramatic pyramids from that era. The same are intrigued by mummification. They believe the Mediterranean people built river ships and sea-going vessels larger than Columbus’s boats. But the idea they ventured outside the Straits of Gibraltar is just too much.
The old sea-faring Phoenicians, who did venture out, appear to be the Egyptian drug supplier along with their other global trade. How does this new information correspond to the ancient Inga stone and Fuente Magna bowl? Might it help in translation?
From this incident, multiple physicians, chemists, and biologists recognize that human remains carried evidence of only American sourced recreational cocaine and nicotine. Cannabis was indigenous to China. It would seem there was a global trade from Americas, to the Mediterranean, to China thousands of years before Columbus.
Earlier articles showed that based on the diversity, credibility, and scientific methods of professional cartographers, military, theologians, historians, scientists, engineers, astronomers, and archaeologists, the reality is no longer logically or rationally refutable. Global maps existed at the time of the Original Americans about 4000-3500 BCE.
After the flak of the map revelations in the 1960ís, academicians interested in research grants or career progression avoided pre-Columbian travel topics. As the subsequent evidence has shown, the findings in that area was necessarily outside of academia.
Has anything changed in acceptance? Somewhat. Stephen A. Wells documents the slow migration. University of California at Riverside provides faculty assets for research in Natural History and Pre-Columbian Exploration.
University of California at Davis Professor Emeritus of Geography, Dr. Stephen C. Jett, is editor of the periodical Pre-Columbiana. Jett is a well-known academic, author, and researcher. The first edition of Pre-Columbiana had a bibliography of early contacts. Twenty-plus years later, it is still published ad hoc.
Vienna, Italy ethnologist, Dr. Christine Pellech edits the English language journal and website, Migration and Diffusion. Hundreds of credentialled researchers with doctorates now publish in the area of diffusion and pre-Columbian travel.
Although not wholesale acceptance, now out-of-hand dismissal of pre-Columbus represents academic misjudgment. The scientific method requires gathering data, analyzing data, developing hypotheses, and testing hypotheses. Only through this rigorous process are new hypotheses accepted.
Think about, the drug trade from thousands of years ago indicates a global travel, not only between Americas and the Mediterranean but to China. Maybe drug trade is not so different now. What else about history that is absolute dogma is just not accurate. History is too important to relegate to historical reporters. Scientists must be involved for new hypotheses.