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Andrew Collins |
The last lecture of the day was from myself. Originally it had been planned for earlier in the day. However, a shift around with Robert Bauval and David Rohl meant that I became the final speaker at the end of a very long and intense day. I began by recounting the story of the discovery of tobacco inside the mummy wrappings and interior of Rameses II, or Rameses the Great, on its visit to Paris in 1976. Despite an instant dismissal of the evidence by the Egyptological community, there could be little doubt about the implications of this discovery - the tobacco plant was known in the ancient world as early as 1200 BC. However, even though tobacco is principally an American plant, and smoke inhalation was unknown in the ancient world prior to the age of Columbus, it is a fact that a wild form of the tobacco plant existed in North Africa before the time of Columbus. Could the evidence of tobacco found in Egyptian mummies have come from a variety native to Africa? |
I recounted next how in 1992 the German toxicologist Svetlana Balabanova was asked to examine the mummies in the care of Munich Museum to see whether they might provide evidence of drug usage. In all of the samples examined, Dr Balabanova found evidence of cocaine having been absorbed into the body, while many of the samples also tested positive for nicotine and hashish. The whole subject became the subject of a Channel 4 documentary entitled `The Mystery of the Cocaine Mummies', which was first broadcast in the UK in November 1996.
The discovery of tobacco inside Egyptian mummies was one thing. At a stretch, this could be explained, as could the presence of hashish, which we know was used by the Egyptians. Yet the presence of cocaine was quite another matter since it is the active ingredient of the coca plant, native only to the Americas. Evidence of coca chewing, using a little lime or ash, as a stimulant goes back to at least 2500 BC. The puffed out cheeks of the coca chewer have been recognised in Peruvian, Columbian and Ecuadorian art, while coca leaves have often been found alongside burials. It is also a fact that the coca plant grew in Central America, and that evidence of coca chewing has been detected as far north as Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
The evidence of cocaine in Egyptian mummies raises the question of whether coca leaves were being imported into Egypt via transoceanic contact with the Americas. So were Egyptian seafarers making transoceanic journeys to the Americas? It is an enigma which has fascinated the world since the discovery of the American mainland by Columbus during his third voyage to the New World in 1498. The Ra expeditions in the late 1960s and early 1970s by Norwegian explorer, adventurer and historian Thor Heyerdahl showed that primitive reed vessels could use prevailing ocean currents and trade winds to journey from the west African coast to the Caribbean with relative ease. Furthermore, there is ample evidence for the presence of Iberic Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans in the Americas. Iberic swords blades, Carthaginian amphorae, Mediterranean oil lamps, Roman coins and carved inscriptions have all been found in New England. Despite this, many of the comparisons offered between Egyptian and pre-Columbian architecture, art, writing and religion could easily have developed in isolation. Furthermore, no evidence exists to suggest that the Egyptians ever made oceanic journeys, or that any American culture made similar journeys eastwards to the ancient world.
There is, however, overwhelming evidence of the presence among the Olmec peoples of Mexico of at three different racial types, including oriental mongoloids, black Africans and Semitic or eastern Mediterranean individuals. There are found as statues, bas-reliefs and carved ceramic heads. The famous Olmec heads are a prime example of the presence in Mexico of foreign individuals who would appear, from the manner in which they are represented, to have held great status at centres such as La Venta, Tres Zapotes and San Lorenzo. Since no other racial type was depicted in this manner, it seems likely that they were representations of either great leaders or revered ancestors. Since black African skulls have repeatedly been unearthed in Olmec cemeteries, there is every reason to believe that they constitute evidence of transoceanic contact between West Africa and the lands beyond the Gulf of Mexico, and this is aside from the overwhelming evidence of transpacific contact. Moreover, the presence at various sites of reliefs which show individuals with clear Semitic features, complete with long faces, bushy moustaches and pointed beards, seems to suggest contact with Mediterranean seafarers as early as 1200-1000 BC.
So who were these ancient voyagers? All the indications are that they were either Phoenicians using Spanish ports such as Gades or Tartessos or Carthaginians out of the port of Carthage on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, Mogador on the Atlantic coast of Morocco and Cerne Island, an unidentified Atlantic island off the coast of West Africa. An account of a journey into the Western Ocean by a fifth-century BC Carthaginian sea-captain and general named Himilco recorded by Rufus Festus Avienus in the third-century speaks of his vessel encountering a vast expanse of seaweed, calm seas and mud shoals. Apparently, it could not be crossed in four months. There is every reason to conclude that this is a reference to the Sargasso Sea, the vast expanse of seaweed and calm waters which stretches between the Azores in the east and the Bahamas in the west. Due to the presence of the seaweed, Himilco came to believe that the waters thereabouts were shallow. Other early writers, such as Plato, Aristotle and pseudo-Scylax also allude to this impassable, or shallow, sea of mud, shoals and calm which existed in the Western Ocean. There are also a number of accounts of mythical islands reached either by accident or design by Iberic Phoenician and Carthaginian seafarers. With names such as the Isles of the Blest, the Fortunate Isles, the Elysium Fields and the Purpurariae, they are likely to refer to archipelagos on the eastern Atlantic seaboard including the Canary Isles, the Madeiras and the Azores. However, other classical writers speak of islands with indigenous inhabitants and navigable rivers which are not found in this part of the ocean. These seem to refer to islands much farther away, plausibly among the Greater Antilles.
Moreover, the Roman writer Pliny the Elder tells us that a geographer named Statius Sebosus recorded that it was 40 days' sail between the Gorgades, the ancient name for the Cape Verde islands, and the legendary island group known as the Hesperides which lay in the Western Ocean. Although there are certain linguistic difficulties with respect to what Pliny has to say on this matter, I have found a completely separate source for this same statement. In the knowledge that it took Christopher Columbus 33 days to journey between the Cape Verde Islands and Barbados in the Lesser Antilles on his third voyage to the New World, I propose that Statius Sebosus accurately recorded the journey time to the West Indies as early as 100 BC. If this is correct, it means that transatlantic journeys must have occurred either during or prior to his age. Most probably this knowledge came from Carthaginian sources. However, the discovery of Roman wrecks off the coast of Brazil and Honduras suggest that the Romans also learnt of this lucrative trading market and may well have exploited it for their own purposes and, like the Phoenicians and Carthaginians before them, did so in complete secrecy.
Since there is no hardcore evidence to show that the Egyptians themselves ever made transatlantic or transpacific journeys, I propose that it was the Phoenicians, and later the Carthaginians, who were trading with Central American cultures. Among the commodities they brought back to the ancient world were tobacco and coca. If the coca did not derive from plant species native to Central America, then it was traded north by one the Peruvian cultures, most probably the Chavín. The Phoenicians, I consider, then traded these substances on to the Egyptians, with whom the Phoenicians had a close connection. I also propose that through the Phoenicians' contact with cultures who used tobacco, they copied the process of smoke inhalation as early as 1200 BC (although not necessarily with tobacco leaves). This is evidenced from the discovery at various sites in northern Syria of pipe bowls that might well have been used for this purpose. The earliest pipe bowl found in the Americas comes from Marajo Island in the mouth of the Rio Amazon and dates to c. 1500 BC.
With all this new knowledge at our disposal we must ask ourselves how it might affect our understanding of Plato's account of lost Atlantis as given in his works the Timaeus and Critias, written c. 350 BC. It is certain that much of his knowledge of what lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules was derived from garbled maritime sources. We know that he alludes to the Sargasso Sea, as well an `opposite continent', but what else does he say, and how might all this clear away the mists to reveal the true location of Atlantis? To help answer this and many other pressing questions in advance of the publication on 17 February 2000 of my long awaited new book GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, go now to the interactive Atlantis section of the site and make up your own mind.
Read Andrew's reports
on the next lecture
or choose from below:
Yuri Stoyanov
Christopher Knight and
Robert Lomas
Robert Bauval
John Lash
David Rohl
Michael Baigent
Colin Wilson
Andrew Collins
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