Tuesday, November 17, 2009

American Tobacco and Cocaine Caused Increased Heart Disease In Ancient Egypt



"Apart from an ongoing investigation of hallucinogenic drugs in ancient societies, this preliminary study reports the identification of cocaine, hashish, and nicotine in Egyptian mummies. We took samples of soft tissue, bone, and hair from nine mummies. Drugs were detected by radioimmunoassay and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry." -- Svelta Balabanova, forensic toxicologist, et al., Aug 1992

"Data are presented on the biochemical findings in several intermal organs from an Egyptian mummy with a 14C-dating of approximately 950 B.C. By use of radio immunoassay systems and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, significant amounts of various drugs were detected in internal organs (lung, liver, stomach, intestines) as well as in hair, bone, skin/muscle and tendon. These analyses revealed a significant deposition of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), nicotine (and its metabolite cotinine) and cocaine in the tissue from the mummy." -- Franz Parsche, anthropologist, and Andreas Nerlich, pathologist, 1995

"I continued to work on it [cocaine mummies] because I wanted to be sure of my results, and after 3000 samples, I was absolutely certain that the tobacco plant was known in Europe and Africa long before Columbus." -- Svelta Balabanova, forensic toxicologist, 1996

Science Daily: Heart Disease Found in Egyptian Mummies.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2009) — Hardening of the arteries has been detected in Egyptian mummies, some as old as 3,500 years, suggesting that the factors causing heart attack and stroke are not only modern ones; they afflicted ancient people, too.

Study results are appearing in the Nov. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and are being presented Nov. 17 at the Scientific Session of the American Heart Association at Orlando, Fla.
This is isn't really that shocking coming from an ancient nation of smokers and cocaine addicts.

Balabanova, S., Parsche, S., and Pirsig, W., First Identification of Drugs in Egyptian Mummies, Naturwissenschaften, Volume 79, Number 8, Page 358, Aug 1992

Balabanova, S., Teschler-Nicola, M., Strouhal, E., Evidence of Nicotine in Scalp Hair of Naturally Mummified Bodies From the Christian Sayala (Egyptian-Nubian), Anthropologischer Anzeiger; Bericht über die Biologisch-Anthropologische Literatur, Volume 52, Number 2, Pages 167-173, Jun 1994

Corliss, J.R., Evidence of Tobacco In Ancient Egypt, Science Frontiers, Number 95, Sep-Oct 1994

Parsche, F., and Nerlich, A., Presence of Drugs In Different Tissues of an Egyptian Mummy, Ferensius' Journal of Analytical Chemistry, Volume 352, Number 3-4, Pages 380-384, Jan 1995

Mystery of the Cocaine Mummies Transcript, Discovery Channel, 1996

Corliss, J.R., Tobacco and Cocaine In Ancient Egypt, Science Frontiers, Number 111, May-Jun 1997

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's an interesting find!

Quantum_Flux said...

You would think that archeologists should find tobacco pipes in the pyramids.

GaryN said...

Pipes? What, you never heard of Giza brand rolling papyrus? :-)

OilIsMastery said...

If they didn't find any mummies in the pyramids why would they find pipes?

No one was ever buried in the great pyramids.

Quantum_Flux said...

That is not true OIM, the great pharoahs were.

OilIsMastery said...

No mummy let alone Khufu was ever found in the Great Pyramid.

No mummy was found in Khafre's pyramid.

No mummy was found in Menkaure's pyramid.

Jeffery Keown said...

I have not read the linked articles, but has the pipeweed in question been positively identified as the American species of these plants? I have a meeting starting in a moment and can’t get to the articles.

Anonymous said...

The tombs are just too complex to really know for sure, so let's not the jump the gun here. In the cases of lost Pharoahs and other officials, they might have been collected but for some reason remained unidentified.

Alexander Maccabee said...

"No mummy let alone Khufu was ever found in the Great Pyramid.

No mummy was found in Khafre's pyramid.

No mummy was found in Menkaure's pyramid."

Any possibility radical Muslims have disposed of these "pre-Islam" culture artifacts? The Ummah did a fantastic job on the Buddhist statues of Afghanistan. - Some radicals believe in wiping out all history before Islam.

Just me musing if a man-made, moved mummy mystery, might have manifested with Muslims moving mentioned mummies... melsewhere.