How did Ancient Egypt...

manage to import both cocaine and tobacco during the time of the Pharoah?

I'm pretty sure this is acceped as fact - and as the CF search is off at the moment, I can't see if has been asked before.

So, any speculators? How did they navigate? Pretty sure Thor Heyerdahl has proved they could have got from Africa - South America - the question is, HOW did they get back again? And who did they meet in South America to trade with?

Simple- they rowed

As far as Trans atlantic travel goes; I think there is evidence in Phoenician/Carthaginian voyages, one of them being that at the heigt of Carthaginian power, and the time when the voages would have occured, when Carthage was sending out exploers all over the place looking for trades, is also when Olmec civilazation started, and reached its zenith; not to mention similarities in art,religion, buliding style; the meso american "pyramids" look, and function like Phonician/Carthaginian/mesopotamian Ziggurat temples, and the fact that both religions made religious sacrifices on theses temples as part of the religion.

I think you missed my point Zen.

I mean, is it possible to an Egyptian reed ship get to South America, bit of exploration... and then ROW BACK?

Or would it be more likely that they actually built a return vessel in South America out of native materials... that's the idea that fascinates me, some sort of trading post/colony of Africans in South America 1,000s years BC!

See why I'm curious? Pretty unlikely to find archeological evidence of such a sight... Would be a helluva find if it happened.

Originally posted by CruddyLeper
I think you missed my point Zen.

I mean, is it possible to an Egyptian reed ship get to South America, bit of exploration... and then ROW BACK?

Or would it be more likely that they actually built a return vessel in South America out of native materials... that's the idea that fascinates me, some sort of trading post/colony of Africans in South America 1,000s years BC!

See why I'm curious? Pretty unlikely to find archeological evidence of such a sight... Would be a helluva find if it happened.

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Right pronunciation, wrong spelling

as far as egyptians go? Well I think that, like almost ALL of the shiping and trading needs of the Egyptians that went on during that time, the Phoenicians would have acted as the merchant middle men, and they didnt use reed ships, they built both single, and two oar level ships, at least for war, and wood construction would have been kept for trade vessals as well, however, war ships often accompanied ships going past the straight of gibralter, as such expiditions were expensive, and supervised by the high rankes, solme times kings themselves, and they often wanted adequate protection. Egypt didnt have a real navy until the new kingdom, and even then Greeks, and phoenicians still took care of the sea born trading needs of Egypt.

To sum it all up- No, Egypt would not have done, other nations, like Greece, Pheonicia proper, or Carthage would have.

Hmm... so maybe what we might find is evidence of the Phoenicians outside of the Med - like West African coast and maybe in South America...

Mind you, no dummies them. Very likely the ports and inlets they used are now commercial shipping harbours and marinas.

Yep, a good deal of thier colonies are still here, a good example is modern Catragena, in south easternSpain, that city, whose ancient name is Carthago Nova, has its roots as one of the more affulent colonies of Carthage, which itself was a phoenician colony.

There are amny others, most in Europe, but a good share of African ones as well, which have stayed major centers of culture and commerce.

Also, the Phoenicians DID (amazing to me at least) circum-navigate Africa, and inspired a similer attempt by Carthage,Persia, and Rome (well technilly Rome only went as far as Carthage went, about 1/2 of the way down the west side of Africa, just to see if what Carthage suposedlly did was possible, they concluded it was

@cruddy Leper
What time period are you refering to as the "phaoroahs" ruled for 3 thousand years?
Where exactly did the cocaine and tobacco come from? I'm assuming that you are refering to America.

What text or evidence are you quoting, as what you are saying about the Egyptians is very unlike them, They weren't explorers so what Zen says is probably right. They did have drugs but I haven't heard of them having coccaine before.

I would like to know as I would like to check it out for my self.

If I recall correctly. traces of cocaine were found in an Egyptian tomb or burial or some kind a few years back.

If the Phonecians did manage to bring something as "wonderous" as cocaine back, I'm sure that any resectable Egyptian ruler would want to get some for himself -- and have the gold to buy it.

@Sir Eric; LOTS!

Try Google >"Egypt cocaine mummy" or similar

Happy reading... these traces were first detected in the 70s, on more Rameses II mummy. HOWEVER, it could be later contamination, and some believe it came from Babylon, not S America...

Happy speculating.

I've just finished reading the complete transcript of the documentary 'the mysteries of the cocaine mummies'.
It's a definiete read for any one that is interested in Egyptology at all.
Small amounts of nicotine are present in a wide variety of plants and foods, but the high concentrations sought by smokers can only be found in tobacco.

The following is a quote from the transcript of the documentary

[Graph showing quantities of nicotine: Concentrations in bone samples - Modern Smoker in nanograms/gram :c40ng China:c55ng Germany:c65ng Sudan:c45ng Egyptian Mummies:Off screen!]

The idea of a lost species of tobacco came to Balabanova because the concentrations in the bodies from Asia and Europe were similar to modern day smokers.
But one thing had puzzled her. At 35 times the dose for smokers, the amounts of nicotine she had found in Egyptian mummies were potentially lethal.
But first, Balabanova was baffled, but then she had a thought. The high doses of nicotine in Egyptian bodies could be explained if the tobacco - as well as being consumed - had also been used in mummification.
Over their 3000 year history the Egyptian preists kept the recipe of spices and herbs used to preerve the thousands of people and millions of animals they mummified a closely guarded secret.
The high levels of nicotine in tobacco can kill bacteria. Could it have been one of their secrets?

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This I think seems to be the most likely theory/explanation about the appearence of the tobacco in the mummies. The Egyptians if they had smoked it would probably have recorded the use of it some how and the fact the there is no evidence that it was consumed like it is today would suggest that they only used it for embalming.

But the cocaine seems to be a bit of an unresolved issue......
Was there a trans-atlantic trade route? or was there a coca plant that has since died out grown in the then known world?

Seems those mummies still have a few secrets that they like to throw up at us every now and again.

I reccomend checking this site out for the full transcript of the documentary.

http://www.uiowa.edu/~anthro/webcourse/lost/coctrans.htm
Curse of the cocaine mummies transcript

Thanks for the post cruddyleper

Like I said SirEric, lot of debate about whether or not the "New World" ingredients are later contaminants or not... tobacco was widely used to keep the insect parasites out of the mummies in 19thC...

Only way to be sure is if recent finds (possibly Queen Nefertiti for one) also exhibit these substances... or maybe somebody just had a party in the Munich museum after hours... Personally I think the WAS contact of a sort - finding a site in S America with African finds would settle the argument once and for all.

I dont think that it was contamination after mummification otherwise the test that they did on the hair sample would have returned a different result.
They did leave the lotus flower question quite open though but perhaps that has been more thoruoughly investigated since then.

When it comes to re-writting history, the historians need a lot more to go on than what has been presented in the doco.
There are lots of instances where someone has presented a model to explain a certain observation only to have it rejected by the current day scientists.
A good example of this is plate techtonics. It is now widely accepted as fact but it took years, centuries even for it to gain the credibility that it needed to be accepted as fact. In fact even though it was first put forth a couple of hundred years ago and then was picked up again only mid last century because of the mapping of the pacific basin that was done in the 50's, and that it only became truly accepted enough for it to be taught in schools in the 70's.
My point being that there maybe small evidence of a atlantic trade route now, but not yet enough now to support the hypothesis but we dont know what will be found tomorrow.

It's kind of exciting isn't it?

edit; grammar and explanations

Here's a website that suggests that Atlantis is in Mexico.
It spends a lot of time talking about the similarities in the languages of the ancient greeks and the native Aztecs.

In a nutshell, it suggests that the ancient Phoenecians new about this place and kept it quite for themselves and that the native language is derived from the what the Phoenicians spoke,

In his book, Hindu America, India-Indian author Chaman Lal states: "At present we are studying the native tongues and find that at least as far as Nahuatl, Zapoteca, and Maya languages are concerned, they are of Indo-European (Sanskrit) origin."
The aforementioned studies are by Dr. Magana Peón and Professor Humberto J. Cornyn, both members of the Geographical Society of Mexico

Click to expand...

It also mentions that the description that Plato gave of Atlantis is very similar to the features of Mexico.

Is this more evidence of a pre-Columbus Atlantic trade route?
The search continues

The article can be found at....
http://www.viewzone.com/atlantis2.html

Originally posted by Sir Eric
What text or evidence are you quoting, as what you are saying about the Egyptians is very unlike them, They weren't explorers so what Zen says is probably right. They did have drugs but I haven't heard of them having coccaine before.

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There are several evidence indicating that it's true. Altough I haven't got a link either, I have also heard this in several places - recently I heard it in a documentary film about Egypt. Cocaine leafs were drawn in their hierogryphs or something...

Hey, maybe they never sailed anywhere, maybe south americans went to egypt...

Or maybe a drug much similiar to cocaine grew in Egypt those times... can we be SURE that it was cocaine and not something very similiar to it that later stopped growing in Egypt because of climate changes (or maybe because they used it too much )

EDIT: Hmmm that cocaine mummy thing seems to ruin my theory lol

I seem to remember an ancient clay fountain (It looked like a giant bowl in the pictures I saw) found in South America (in Guinea, I think) that was covered in Assyrian writing. A nearby statue also had semi-Assyrian writing and apparently the word 'Inca' meaning sun/king in Incan also means something somewhat similar in Assyrian.

It would be very interesting if someone could put all these little bits of information together and come up with some sort of hypothesis as to exactly how much and how often the people on the opposite sides of the Atlantic were in contact with each other.