Cocaine Discovered in Egyptian Mummies

[Savwafair2012 Profile]

When Columbus and his buddies made it to the New World, aka not India, they found more than just future smallpox sufferers waiting for them. There was a whole cornucopia of never-before-seen plants and animals growing in the Americas, not to mention new and interesting ways to use beads. So while the natives came away from their first European encounter with raging infectious diseases and honeybees, Europeans were introduced to the glories of tobacco, narcotics made from the coca leaf and a whole mess of open-air nudity. If you've ever needed evidence that history is unfair, there it is.



Wikipedia
"This is great, we'll take it. These guys don't have squatters' rights, do they?"

At least that's the story we know. And if that's true, then how did some Egyptian mummies wind up with traces of cocaine in their bodies?

The Finds:

In 1992, German scientists were testing their mummies when they found remnants of hashish, tobacco and cocaine in their hair, skin and bones. Now, hashish comes from Asia, so it's not unfathomable that a royal Egyptian would know a guy who could get him the hook-up. But tobacco and cocaine were strictly New World plants at the time of the mummification. It'd be like if some celebrity today tested positive for heroin that could only have been grown on Venus.




Getty
"I've been nodding for the last two millenniums. This shit is incredible."

So how did it happen? All we have are theories. Maybe the sites were contaminated by hard-partying archaeologists (although you'd think that if somebody had old pics of themselves snorting coke off of a mummy's ass, they'd have uploaded that shit to Facebook by now). Or maybe the mummies themselves were fake, like maybe they were disco-era archaeologists who just took their love of mummification too far.



Getty
"Four excavators came down with the disco fever before a priest released the curse."

So the German scientists did what anyone trying to protect their reputation would do -- they had an independent lab test the mummies themselves. They found the same dope. The Germans then went to work testing hundreds of ancient mummies, finding nicotine in a third of them. Not only that, but actual tobacco leaves were discovered in the guts of Ramses II (of Exodus fame, maybe). And among those leaves, an actual dead tobacco beetle was found, which means that some ancient Egyptian just smoked the hell out of his cigarettes.



Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_19769_5- ... z1sz0HDIel

[Stivheys Profile]

you may like this program from channel 4 'the mystery of the cocaine mummies'


http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the- ... ummies/4od

[Perronick Profile]

Wasn't that shown in the documentary "Forbidden Archaeology"?

[E6722maj Profile]

that's why the war on drugs is an unwinnable joke. people have always done them, always will do them.


legalise it!

.