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Tue, 20 Jul 1999 10:02:48 -0500 |
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Old Cahawba Project |
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Lon,
I'm no expert of course, but I too have heard these reports about cocaine
and tobacco found in these mummies. The simplest explanation of course, is
contamination from modern workers either in the field or the lab. After
seeing the newsreels of the excavations of some of these mummy's, I don't
think my theory is too unbelievable.
Linda Derry ([log in to unmask])
Old Cahawba Archaeological Park
Alabama Historical Commission
> OK, here's some weird stuff for the list. On coming to work today (well
> OK, your tomorrow unless you're on the right side of the dateline such as
> my fellow "down under" co-conspirators) I was confronted by a number of
> folks in my office that wanted to know all about the Discovery Channel
show
> that they had seen the night before that claimed that mummys around the
> world (i.e. Egypt, Africa, Asia, etc going back millenia before the
> Columbian Exchange) had been found to have detectable traces of tobacco
and
> cocaine in preserved hair based on the work of a current forensic
annalyst.
> I have put forward my ideas on these compounds being the products of New
> World plants and faced the scorn for a non-media "expert" in competition
> with that fine source of all knowledge - the TV - that it was highly
> unlikely that tobacco or cocaine was being transported between the Old and
> the New World previous to at least the 16th century (and here I *thought*
> that I was being pretty conservative). So, being the poor trusting
b#$#%^d
> that I am, I am hoping for back up, or at least not too much scorn from
> other people on the list to try to back this up. If not, I guess that we
> can postulate a "Columbian exchange" of a fairly modern meaning well
before
> the 20th c. :)
> Lon
>
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