the profound spiritual and scriptural dilemmas
> that arose from the contact between the cultures.
> Fascinating thread, I would like to commend Yuri on his patience in handling some attacks that were getting somewhat extreme.
To throw my own spin on things:
1) The notion that the internal tissues of Egyptian mummies were contaminated by modern tobacco smoke or coca derivatives is unlikely.
Alkaloids just won't diffuse that easily into solid flesh or hair.
Should you think differently, you really ought to be telling a lot of judges and probation officers about your findings.
2) The notion that some other plant derivatives were mistaken for derivatives of tobacco or coca is likewise of extreme legal significance.
For one to make such a presumption, simply because it makes them too uncomfortable to think about the phenomonon, is intellectual cowardice.
These tests are precise, specific, and repeated: sounds like data to me.
3) This is none other than the smoking gun of transoceanic diffusion.
These mummies were stoned. The most economical explanation for how those tobacco and coca alkaloids and derivatives got into their tissues is that they smoked tobacco and chewed coca.
4) This is rendered more probable by the presence of derivatives of local drug plants.
Those who worship with some psychoactive plants are likely to query other deities. This decreases the probability of error.
Tobacco and coca were available to them, so somebody had to cross some water.
Now we venture into speculation, for there is no evidence at all pointing to who may have done the sailing.
Most people who want to guess, surmise the Egyptians.
That's economical, they took the dope.
But I have never been too comfortable with guesses about Egyptians ranging far afield, because of the nature of their culture.
They had a closed, inward-looking riverine society.
They traded with Crete, but look who did the sailing.
The Egyptians liked people to bring them things.
They didn't like to travel much, because they might miss out on some of the goings-on within their vast pantheon.
My favorite guess would be the Indians, the American Natives.
Maritime commerce in the Gulf and Caribean was established quite early.
The West Indies was not peopled by water walkers.
Blue water sailors sail blue water, river sailors try not to.
Americans of the time would have certainly carried some of their wealth of enchanted plants, to relieve the boredom of the heaving waves.
Egypt would not have been the primary port of call for the earliest American sailors crossing the Atlantic, just the last stop on the circuit.
The higher centers of culture in Western Europe would get priority, no doubt.
Prettier scenery. Egypt was much greener than today, but so flat...
Cotton grown in Africa was useless for spinning because it had a short staple.
Cotton was used for cloth in America.
The Americans showed the Egyptians how to breed the poor local plants.
Once the Egyptians got the idea, they did all right.
They weren't backward, just a little slow.
The gourds were picked up in West Africa on a whim by the American sailors.
The locals didn't use them for anything.
They weren't good for much but decoration, but after they were dried you could carry water in them.
This fantasy makes at least as much sense as the low-probability tales of accidents repeatedly happening to Old World sailors.
There is certainly no evidence that European or African boat-building skills were in any way superior to those of the Americans in very early times.
Nor sailing skills.
The Gulf Stream goes to Europe, not to America.
The magnetite plummets recovered at Poverty Point were magical objects.
Anyone who doubts this should suspend a magnetite plummet from a string in one hand, and a hematite plummet from a string in the other.
If it takes you more than a minute to figure out that the magnetite plummet always swings north and south, you're unsuited for sorcery because you aren't perceptive enough.
The latest Poverty Point date is 1000 BC, the earliest date for the Chinese compass is 1000 AD.
Give or take the odd century.
Could be the old Americans got around.
of the earthwork construction there by C14 dates, and the odd century tends to be earlier
for the Chinese compass. Still there is more than one millenium difference favoring the West,
if less than two, for the use of the magnetic compass.
Note added in proof: Since this post, I found that Michael D. Coe, working in 1967 with Olmec strata
contemporary with the Poverty Point culture, excavated a grooved magnetite bar.
When he floated this bar on cork, he found magnetic compass behavior,
and published his observations, with further experiments done in 1973.
I consider the Poverty Point example much more clear-cut,
for dozens of magnetite plummets were found, not just one,
and hematite plummets of matching designs, begging comparison of swing patterns.
Subject: Re: cocaine & tobacco mummies mystery Message-ID: <6ep4si$9da$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Newsgroups: sci.archaeology,sci.anthropology,soc.history,sci.skeptic In article <6e1cv0$b7f$3@titan.globalserve.net>, yuku@globalserve.net (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote: etc. As a newbie to Usenet posting, I will take the risk of looking naive, so we can all back off and get a perspective on this great discussion. Yuri and Oscar are at each other's throats ungracefully, and I gather it's not the first time. Each has threatened to ignore each other's posts, but I wouldn't bet on it. Let's take into account that every word gets archived somewhere. After a few years, many of us will be ashamed of our vehemence. So can we lighten up some on the personal attacks? Much of the fun is in trying to convince others of our pet preconceptions, but actually that isn't likely to happen. All of have opinions, or we wouldn't find the subject interesting. The subject is interesting, dozens of ancient human remains which give pharmacological evidence which seems to support pre-Columbian dope traffic between hemispheres. What we don't have are the original reports; we're arguing from the transcript of a BBC interview, which Yuri was kind enough to provide. But does anybody here have more direct access to the real work? I never heard of it before this thread. Where was it published? Thanks to Doug for the plant info I asked for. I was lazy to assume nicotine was only found in tobacco. I haven't the foggiest idea where Mauritus, or Mauritania either, might be located, nor do I know what kind of relatives of E. coca might be found there. Naturally, I don't intend to let my ignorance slow down the flow of rhetoric; surely if I'm loud enough, Doug will come to see the sweet light of reason, and understand that Columbus only interrupted the steady flow of transatlantic commerce. Yuri guessed, by the way, that I was teasing a little in my insistence that these drugs must have been shipped in American bottomry. The point of discourse is to raise consciousness. The dialectic of science is not a zero-sum game, but is synergy. Rather than bashing each other's entrenched positions, we need to be working to increase our collective understanding of this mystifying and bemusing discovery. Back in the trenches: Alkaloid-bearing plants all have a unique spectrum of alkaloids. If the drug tests done in Munich tested only for the primary alkaloids cocaine and nicotine, then more tests could be made to definitively establish the plant strain, region, and season of harvest, all from the balance of secondary alkaloids. This kind of precision would answer many of our questions. Though it isn't part of standard drug identification technique, the potential significance of this data cries out for special attention.Just chatter...
Subject: Re: cocaine & tobacco mummies mystery From: jthunderbird@nternet.com Date: 1998/03/20 Message-ID: <6etmse$k9s$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Newsgroups: sci.archaeology,sci.anthropology,soc.history,sci.skeptic In article <6epl2g$2hd$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, ramira@oocities.com wrote: > > In article <6ep4si$9da$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, > jthunderbird@nternet.com wrote: > > > The subject is interesting, dozens of ancient human remains which &c. > And indeed, it would be nice to know about any follow-up beyond the original > articles (that is academic). > > > Thanks to Doug for the plant info I asked for. I was lazy to > > assume nicotine was only found in tobacco. I haven't the foggiest > > idea where Mauritus, or Mauritania either, might be located, nor > > do I know what kind of relatives of E. coca might be found there. > > Mauritius is a small island off the Indian ocean coast of East Africa. I can > not recall, being a student of West Africa, whether it would have been a > regular part of the Indian ocean trade which has very old antecedants. In > any event, climate wise, I would guess that a plant extant on Mauritius would > have no problems in coastal East Africa, or Madegascar. Mauritania is on the > Atlantic coast of Africa and is a Saharan country, a bad candidate in all > regards. > > > Back in the trenches: Alkaloid-bearing plants all have a unique > > spectrum of alkaloids. If the drug tests done in Munich tested > > only for the primary alkaloids cocaine and nicotine, then more > > tests could be made to definitively establish the plant strain, > > region, and season of harvest, all from the balance of secondary > > alkaloids. > I would wonder if it may be difficult to establish the strain if the possible > source is extinct? > > Ramira Naka Thank you for the information about Mauritania. I'd like to see it sometime, as I would like to visit most places in the humid tropics. As I progress in my middle age, the winters (even here in Louisiana) seem harder on me. Could it be because of my tropical childhood, in Haïti? Forgive the non- sequiter. As I progress in my middle age, making sense all the time seems harder...Ahem. Please note that establishing an extinct strain by discovery of its alkaloids would be very exciting news. I don't know whether there is a precedent. The possibility makes it all the more desireable to run further tests. In some sense, which I have had difficulty putting into words, it is more costly in terms of logic to postulate a new plant species to explain a new discovery, than it is to change our opinions of past human behaviors. We know that people are sneaky and unpredictable creatures. We are always doing the unexpected, and quite often we deliberately do them just because we wish to be contrary. I am quite prepared to believe that people would cross entire oceans, at the risk of their lives, for no better reason than to prove somebody wrong. I have an irrational faith that Nature herself isn't quite so deceptive, that She is thus more predictable than we. Johnny Thunderbird http://www.oocities.org/~jthunderbird heavyLight Books http://www.nternet.com/~jthunderbird the Sorceror's Web Page ------------------------------- "In matters of history, theories prove nothing." Augustus le Plongeon, Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx
Subject: Re: cocaine & tobacco mummies mystery From: jthunderbird@nternet.com Date: 1998/03/20 Message-ID: <6etdno$agf$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Newsgroups: sci.archaeology Even in the helpful Dejanews tree view, this thread is pretty complex in its form. I've little desire to get into a slugfest with any particular individual, seeing how quickly this can reduce the discussion to the toddler stage emotionally, so I'll hop in at an arbitrary point, intending no pun on making my arbitrary points. In article <3510b129.4851909@news.earthlink.net>, gdwill@earthlink.net (Garry Williams) wrote: > > yuku@mail.trends.ca (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote: > > >Doug Weller (dweller@ramtops.demon.co.uk) wrote: > >: On Mon, 16 Mar 1998 07:02:17 -0600, in sci.archaeology, jthunderbird@nternet.com > >: wrote: > >: >they smoked tobacco and chewed coca. > > > >: The problem with this argument is that NO tobacco was found. It was > >nicotine, which, as I and others have said, is found in a number of > >currently extant plants Uh, Doug, the ref for Manchester at least was tobacco... > Please don't force my hand. I may have to release Steve Whittet upon > you if you fail to recognize that the ancient Egyptians were smart > enough to be able to concentrate substances that they derived from > plants. Alkloidal extraction isn't exactly just concentrating substances. To get any physiologically active amount of nicotine from belladonna, for example, would require a differential extraction to get rid of the much more potent atropine. In other words, a body would be way dead of atropine poisoning before nicotine showed up at all, using belladonna, and similar restrictions apply to most minority alkaloids in other plants. To reprise, these were drug tests made at university laboratories. Had the mummies tested positive for belladonna extractives including traces of nicotine, there would have been interest but less surprise. We might credit drug chemists, trying to find out what drugs were in mummies, not to overlook well known local plants before announcing the mummies used drug plants from a theoretically inaccessible hemisphere. > >: Ditto coca : alkaloids. Since we know that both substances found > >in mummies are available outside of South America we have no need to > >consider a South American connection, I don't think you'll find cocaine in any plant other than E. coca. There is some contemporary economic motive for discovery of such, making it unlikely that its existence has been ignored by the cartels, etc.> BTW, do you have evidence to show that nicotine and coca alkaloids > were found in other things besides these mummies? The evidence I have says these alkaloids were found in a television show. Can I repeat the request for the primary reports? > And if these substances are or were so common, why then the plants > they got them from must be common too, no? *Do* such native plants > exist in Egypt today, or is there evidence of such plants in Egypt's > past, plants that have coca alkaloids and nicotine? Dr. Balabanova didn't seem to think so, and it would have been quite a feather in her hat to find them. > >: particularly since it is hard to believe that the only evidence of : > >such trade would be substances found in mummies! : : Doug > We're waiting with bated breath-please show us the other trade items > that came from South America to Egypt! > Garry Williams Doug and Garry are reluctant to believe that drug plants might form the primary commerce between the hemispheres over some millenia, but what may I ask would be more likely? They form the ideal cargo for prehistoric trade: low bulk, low perishability, high value in trade because they are completely unobtainable in the destination port.
Not to put too fine a point on it, they make their own market (the first time's free, they say.)
Where they come from, they're cheap, they grow out of the ground. They are not likely to leave much evidence around for archaeologists to find, for if the owners have their way they will be completely consumed, as precious items. These imported plant substances would not have been "common", it's a matter of price, you see.
Now I'm curious why more drug plants have not been found as funerary items. The salient exception is the marijuana found in the frozen Scythian tomb in 1944. There are also many Peruvian mummies with coca. But my interest is piqued about Egyptians particularly, though so many such tombs were disturbed. Since Egyptologists seem particularly put out about the subject of this thread, let's ask them what kind of dope has been found for use in the afterlife. If you haven't found much of the cheap local opium, marijuana, belladonna, and so forth, don't bother to complain about the lack of the really costly imported tobacco and coca.
Johnny Thunderbird
http://www.oocities.org/~jthunderbird
heavyLight Books
http://www.nternet.com/~jthunderbird
the Sorceror's Web Page ----------------------------- evolution is a fact, god is a theory
Subject: Re: cocaine & tobacco mummies mystery dweller@ramtops.demon.co.uk (Doug Weller) wrote: > > On Mon, 16 Mar 1998 07:02:17 -0600, in sci.archaeology, jthunderbird@nternet.com > wrote: > >The most economical explanation for how those > >tobacco and coca alkaloids and derivatives got into their tissues is that > >they smoked tobacco and chewed coca. > > The problem with this argument is that NO tobacco was found. It was nicotine, > which, as I and others have said, is found in a number of currently extant > plants and possibly others which are no longer to be found. Ditto coca > alkaloids. Since we know that both substances found in mummies are available > outside of South America we have no need to consider a South American > connection, particularly since it is hard to believe that the only evidence of > such trade would be substances found in mummies! > > Doug > Let us shovel up some background on the plant alkaloids, shall we? Nicotine is found in the New World genus nicotiana, which includes some ornamentals and the tobacco species. I am not aware of its presence in any other type of plant, nor that it has ever been reported in any plant indigenous to the Eastern Hemisphere. I would welcome your input on this, so long as it names names, dates and places. Nicotine is a deadly poison. Should you inject it, it would kill you faster than so much cyanide. You can't poison yourself by ingesting it, though, because it is also a violent emetic. It is vomited out before the body absorbs a lethal dose. Should another plant contain nicotine, it does not automatically mean that such a plant would provide a means to introduce nicotine into the body. Coincidence stretches thin to yield an unknown plant, sharing enough of the properties of tobacco that it also makes the body tolerate nicotine. Cocaine is found in the New World in the coca plant, with its biochemical precursors tropinone and ecgonine. It is not present in any Old World genus, nor are its precursor alkaloids. It is not likely to be found in any unrelated plant, due to its complex structure.
These two alkaloids are excellent markers of Native American presence in the Old World. No better evidence of cultural diffusion can be found than the presence of these two drugs in early Egyptian mummies. This is because the tests are so precise, unambiguous, and not subject to error. Two of the drugs most central to Native American culture were found in ancient Egypt. Most likely, they were there because Red Indians carried them over the big water.
I was particularly delighted to hear of this finding, because of the way it overturns preconceptions concerning the early Americans. It was supportive of one of my pet notions, of transoceanic voyaging by Native Americans. In fact, I have unpublished notes toward a novel, I jotted down several years ago, in which the Indians discover Egypt, and teach them a few things there. This was inspired when I heard that Egyptian cotton was useless until it had been crossed with Sea Islands cotton around 3000 bpe; I shelved the story until I could clarify the picture of cotton genetics. (Things I learned in the cotton spinoff of this thread make me glad I waited ;-)
Let's get rid once and for all of the presumption that the mummy chemical tests were wrong. The BBC reports of the Munich work gives the impression of careful work by competant people. That being the case, the probability of error becomes vanishingly small.
The standard procedure involves testing for the original drugs, in this case cocaine and nicotine, and also for their metabolites. Do not confuse these drug metabolites with plant alkaloids which accompany the main drug in the growing plant. The metabolites are produced in the body, and do not exist in the plant. They are biochemical breakdown products of the main drug, only produced by the body in response to having taken that drug. There is no way they could be introduced into a cadaver as a contaminant.
Contamination must come from outside a specimen. A contaminant drug will adhere to the surface of flesh or hair before supposedly working its way in by some sort of solid diffusion. All the samples were washed in alcohol before testing. If any of the suspect drug was found in the alcohol wash, the sample was discarded and not tested. All the positive results thus had drugs inside but not outside the surface of the sample.
The bioassay used is orders of magnitude more sensitive than the chemical analysis formerly in use to determine the presence of drugs. Its specificity also reaches an extreme, because life is the detector rather than chemicals. In a manner of speaking, germs are trained to be allergic to a certain drug. That's how it's done.
Life is complex, though, and likes to confound predictability. There are cases of false positive signals from really weird biochemical pathways. To guard against this possibility, the Munich researchers backed up their tests with chromatography. This gives a distinctive signature of the drug and its metabolites by the chemical fragments of which they are comprised. Should both types of tests agree on a drug, it's there.
Should you still insist on the possibility of error, you are not alone. Thousands of prisoners do too. Whatever the error probability of a single test, the probability is vanishingly small when you consider agreement among sixty-five related mummy drug tests. This is hard science, hard as the facts may be to accept.
They didn't get the wrong plants. They didn't get the wrong drugs. They didn't get contaminated samples. Face reality. Egypt was discovered by American Indians.
--------------------------------- today is the rest day of the first of my life...
Subject: Re: cocaine & tobacco mummies mystery Thanks Yuri! In article <6euedt$nnm$1@titan.globalserve.net>, yuku@globalserve.net (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote: > > Here's some more info: > > __________________________________________________________________________ > > Research Verifies Use of Hashish, Cocaine, Nicotine in Prehistoric Cultures > > SOCIOLOGY OF DRUGS > > March 1993 > > A group of German anthropologists, using an innovative means quantify innovative? > of analyzing hair and bone samples from mummies and other ancient > remains, have verified the use of hashish, cocaine, and nicotine in > prehistoric society (Franz Parsche, Svetlana Balabanova, and Wolfgang > Pirsig, "Drugs in Ancient Populations," The Lancet, Vol. 341, 2/20/93, > p. 503). > > The researchers from the Institute for Anthropology and Human Genetics > in Munich analyzed hair, skin, muscle, brain, teeth, and bones from > natural and artificial mummies and earth-buried skeletal remains. They > examined 72 Peruvian mummies from 200 - 1500 AD, 11 Egyptian mummies > from 1070 BC - 395 AD, skeletal tissue from two Sudanese from > 5000 - 4000 BC and 400 - 1400 AD, boy those two Sudanese both lived a long time! > and skeletal tissue from 10 south > Germans from around 2500 BC, looking for cocaine, hashish, and > nicotine and their metabolites. bingo on metabolites > > Evidence of all three drugs was found in the Peruvian and Egyptian > remains, wow --- I distinctly heard hashish in Peru --- > while only nicotine was found in the south German and > Sudanese remains. The researchers note that their analytical method, > which permits analysis from both mummified and non-mummified remains, > will be scrutinized. > > References > > http://www.ndsn.org/MARCH93/PREHIST.html > > Yuri. Just what I wanted, and more. Excuse me while I go find a Lancet. The result, hemp presence in North America, is of spiritual significance to me; I am associated with a WebRing dedicated to the Hemp Goddess Scythia. I am affiliated in feeling and certain zones of consciousness with a strong Native American heritage which I hoped would intersect with the interests of this Goddess, the tutelary deity of the Hemp or mairjuana plant, which hope was just fulfilled. That makes this a moment a spiritual fulfillment for me, and that's groovy. Johnny Thunderbird heavyLight Books: http://www.oocities.org/~jthunderbird the Sorceror's Web Page: http://www.nternet.com/~jthunderbird ------------------------ In history, theory proves nothing. A. Le Plongeon, Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx
was a factor which had been unanimously ignored by all participants to the discussion.
To me, it was as important, if not more so, than all the mummies of Egypt and how they worshipped.
The overwhelming tendency in archaeology is to bias all facts of American prehistory,
by warping them into a perceptual framework based on the Eastern hemisphere.
Here was the first solid evidence that early Americans had marijuana and smoked it,
and no one saying the first word about it!
Subject: Re: cocaine & tobacco mummies mystery From: jthunderbird@nternet.com Date: 1998/03/21 Message-ID: <6f0bg7$ibj$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
In a toxicology book I was reading, I saw that E. coca "and other Erythoxylon
shrubs in South American countries" produce cocaine.
So my supposition that E. coca was unique in producing cocaine was in error, so I had to acknowledge that.
It is then conceivable that West Africa, or some of the islands between there and the Indian Ocean,
which have had such amazing isolated ecosystems, could at some time have had natural coca equivalents.
It wouldn't be smart to bet against the biology of places such as Madagascar or Sri Lanka.
Since no one in the discussion had more specific knowledge of the plants on Mauritius,
I had to concede the point. Grudgingly.
I still thought it was far fetched logically, to fetch cocaine closer geographically in that particular way.
From: jthunderbird@nternet.com Date: 1998/03/21 Message-ID: <6f0bg7$ibj$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Newsgroups: sci.archaeology In article <1998032103272001.WAA03134@ladder01.news.aol.com>, joatsimeon@aol.com (JoatSimeon) wrote: > > Mauritius was uninhabited when first visited by European sailors in the 16th > century, and when settled by them (first by the Dutch, and then after 1714 by > the French). It was also the home of a very unusual flora and fauna, mostly > now extinct (including the dodo). > -- S.M. Stirling > Islands outlive cycles of human settlement and desertion. I did find out cocaine comes from other Erythroxylon species in South America, so I was wrong about its being unique to E. coca. The Erythroxyla from this island are not to be ruled out as a potential source, therefore, for coca alkaloids in Egypt and Eurasian venues. I won't raise my probability assessment all that much without some word of the relevant alkaloids, tropinone, ecgonine and cocaine in the Mauritanius plants. At that point I will concede this island to be a conceivable source for Old World cocaine measurements, while throwing a tantrum until readings are made with adequate sensitivity to distinguish Mauritanius from Peruvian coca. When in doubt, read.... The review I just saw of the peer-reviewed article in The Lancet, Vol. 341, 2/20/93, p. 503), which review should be at http://www.ndsn.org/MARCH93/PREHIST.html gives the additional result I had not been aware of, that hashish metabolites were found in a large number of Peruvian mummies. On balance, ocean-crossing traffic is still the most comfortable explanation for the drugs found in the bones and hairs and other tissues studied. Johnny Thunderbird heavyLight Books http://www.oocities.org/~jthunderbird the Sorceror's Web Page http://www.nternet.com/~jthunderbird --------------------------- In history, theory proves nothing. Augustus Le Plongeon, Queen Moo and the Egyptian SphinxSubject: Re: cocaine & tobacco mummies mystery Article Segment 2 of 2 > In earliest trade, spices and gold are the ruling > commodities, not "drugs" in the sense of things for medical or spiritual > treatment. These tend to be of highly local significance and not something > which necessarily translated across cultural boundaries. A look at the trade > with Africa reveals no "drugs" but much trade in spice, humans of course > later on, cloth and manufactured goods, as well as gold. I can not recall > anything which might be reasonably termed a drug involved in the Indian Ocean > trade, whether ancient, islamic or portuguese eras. Opposites detract. This is the obverse of the viewpoint I just expressed at some length. Priests, religious leaders, shamans don't disclose their secrets to the public, which has systematically deprived us of data. > that there must have been trans-Atlantic trade in the > bronze age. Indeed, this second proposition goes against what is known > regarding the technology of the time, the lack of physical evidence or such > contact, and the physical evidence for a lack of contact including the > immense impact that Old World diseases had on the New World, > > Ramira Naka Not meaning to be contrary, but Larry addressed this subject earlier on 3/12 in a snippet I found changed some of my thinking: ------------- begin quote -------------------- For relatively isolated contacts this has been covered pretty thoroughly just a couple of weeks ago, with respect to the Norse, but the principles are much the same. Besides those reasons mentioned for the Norse, contacts in the centuries BC, especially as early as, say, ~1200 BC, there's another reason. Some of the plagues simply didn't exist yet. I believe smallpox didn't emerge (as far as we know) until ~2,000 years ago in India. Other diseases might be a lot older, but no one really knows how much longer for most of them. I think the first reference in Western Europe to what can be identified as bubonic plague in Europe was in the 5th century AD. I do think the lack of European epidemic diseases is pretty good proof that there was _not_ any kind of large-scale movement back-and-forth across the Atlantic. If there was any large-scale movement, such as from a Phoenician colonization fleet sailing down the African coast and being caught by a storm and carried across unwillingly, this would have amounted to probably a few hundred people at most arriving in the Americas. Enough to have an impact, I think, but finding any traces of them would be nearly a miracle. Whether such a large-scale event happened, I don't know. Probably unlikely. But certainly not _impossible_ as many have claimed in the past. ---------------- end quote ---------------- Not that I go along with his conclusions, but he shows how the disease problem isn't quite so forbidding to ancient contact as I once thought. Johnny Thunderbird heavyLight Books http://www.oocities.org/~jthunderbird the Sorceror's Web Page http://www.nternet.com/~jthunderbird --------------------------------------- In matters of history, theories prove nothing. Augustus Le Plongeon, Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx
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