Rokcet Scientist wrote:circumspice wrote:Ahem... The North American Indians
DID have drugs to trade. The most prominent drug that comes to mind is
TOBACCO.
Cocaine could also have been a highly coveted trade item.
Raw coca leaves could be easily transported over long distances.
I think you're confusing North America with South America. Afaik tobacco as a crop was imported into North America in the 17th century by the Europeans (though they imported it from
South America), and coca will grow only in the Andean highlands.
Hauling tons of raw coca leaves from Peru to Massachusetts to get a few kilos of coke out of doesn't make sense. It is much likelier that the Phoenicians/Carthaginians got pure coke straight from Peru. They even had a permanent trading post there if the indigenous tales of olden times* are to be believed: white men with red beards came by sea and stayed for a very long time, then left across the sea again.
*akin to the Aborigine's dreamtime.
RS I say it all depends on your source. Some say tobacco is a native species of South America, some say North & Central America. Take your pick.
It had certainly arrived in North America, if it wasn't already an endemic species, centuries if not millenia prior to the 17th century. There also seems
to be a native species of tobacco in Australia. (see below)
I shouldn't have said COCAINE. I meant coca leaves for chewing, like chewing tobacco or betel. Cocaine is a much later development.
http://academic.udayton.edu/health/syll ... istory.htm
In The Beginning
Tobacco is a plant that grows natively in North and South America. It is in the same family as the potato, pepper and the poisonous nightshade, a very deadly plant.
The seed of a tobacco plant is very small. A 1 ounce sample contains about 300,000 seeds!
It is believed that Tobacco began growing in the Americas about 6,000 B.C.!
As early as 1 B.C., American Indians began using tobacco in many different ways, such as in religious and medicinal practices.
Tobacco was believed to be a cure-all, and was used to dress wounds, as well as a pain killer. Chewing tobacco was believed to relieve the pain of a toothache!
The New World Discovered
On October 15, 1492, Christopher Columbus was offered dried tobacco leaves as a gift from the American Indians that he encountered.
Soon after, sailors brought tobacco back to Europe, and the plant was being grown all over Europe.
The major reason for tobacco's growing popularity in Europe was its supposed healing properties. Europeans believed that tobacco could cure almost anything, from bad breath to cancer!
In 1571, A Spanish doctor named Nicolas Monardes wrote a book about the history of medicinal plants of the new world. In this he claimed that tobacco could cure 36 health problems.
In 1588, A Virginian named Thomas Harriet promoted smoking tobacco as a viable way to get one's daily dose of tobacco. Unfortunately, he died of nose cancer (because it was popular then to breathe the smoke out through the nose).
During the 1600's, tobacco was so popular that it was frequently used as money! Tobacco was literally "as good as gold!"
This was also a time when some of the dangerous effects of smoking tobacco were being realized by some individuals. In 1610 Sir Francis Bacon noted that trying to quit the bad habit was really hard!
In 1632, 12 years after the Mayflower arrived on Plymouth Rock, it was illegal to smoke publicly in Massachusetts! This had more to do with the moral beliefs of the day, than health concerns about smoking tobacco.
In 1760, Pierre Lorillard establishes a company in New York City to process tobacco, cigars, and snuff. Today, P. Lorillard is the oldest tobacco company in the U.S.
http://www.biopsychiatry.com/tobacco/
It is well known that tobacco is, by nature, an American plant, the use of which, when discovered by the Europeans, was rapidly spread across the globe.
Less well known is the fact that there was another region of the world in which wild tobacco not only grew but was used by humans completely independently of any American influence. That region is the arid interior or 'outback' of Australia. Records from Captain Cook's 1770 expedition record that the Aborigines chewed a herb, most likely a reference to tobacco (probably Nicotiana suaveolens).
The cultural history of tobacco use begins was back in the prehistory of South America. According to current archaeological understanding, humans first made their way south to Chile around 13,500 years ago. These Palaeoindians, as they are known, reached the lowlands of Patagonia, the Pampas and Gran Chaco by 11,000 years ago. This is the natural home of the tobacco plant, from where it would spread to enchant and addict humankind the world over. According to Johannes Wilbert, the leading expert on the use of tobacco by the South American Indians, these Palaeoindian hunter-gatherers did not make immediate use of the plant. Instead such a use did not emerge until the Indians began to cultivate and tend it in their gardens some 3,000 years later. These pioneer horticulturalists grew some twelve different species, Nicotiana tabacum and N. rustica being the most significant. Unlike many anthropologists and ethnobotanists who have worked closely with native peoples who use psychoactive plants in their religious life, Wilbert does not trace the origins of shamanism to the use of such substances. He sees the Palaeoindians as following an ascetic path to the spirit world; the shift to using entheogens only came with the advent of horticulture.
Not only were the Indians of South America the first to domesticate tobacco, they also discovered all the ways of using it, even some which are almost unknown in the West today. As Wilbert says, they: 'chew tobacco quids, drink tobacco juice and syrup, lick tobacco paste, apply tobacco enemas, snuff and smoke. In addition, they administer tobacco products topically to the skin and to the eye.' Their appetite for tobacco is staggering and even the most inveterate chain-smoker pales by comparison. Shamans on the Orinoco have been seen to smoke five or six three-foot cigars in a single ritual session. The toxic effects of tobacco are well understood by the shamans of South America and, as Wilbert says: 'masters take their apprentices after months or even years of progressive nicotine habituation to the very brink of death.' Shamans, whether they use psychoactive substances or not, seek 'near-death' experiences in order to gain spiritual insight into the origins and causes of disease. This is the rationale behind the systematic use of the intoxicating effects of nicotine. The strength of native tobacco and the great quantities of it used can induce hallucinogens which are seen to be of great importance by the tobacco shamans.
When Columbus discovered America in 1492 (which had actually been discovered much earlier by the Vikings and, of course, millennia earlier by the first explorers of the New World, the Palaeoindians), members of his expedition became the first Europeans to witness the – to them – curious habit of smoking tobacco. When, in his journal, Columbus describes Indians: 'who always carried a lighted firebrand to light fire, and perfume themselves with certain herbs they carried along with them', he was not writing from his own observations but from the accounts relayed to him by Luis De Torres and another Spaniard who had been sent ashore on 2 November 1492. Jerome Brooks, a historian of tobacco use, has some interesting comments on this passage. He notes that De Torres was a learned man who knew not only his classical sources but also read Hebrew and Arabic. Since the voyagers had thought they would land in Asia, De Torres had been brought along to act as interpreter for Columbus when, as they hoped would happen, they gained an audience with the Great Kahn. The phrase 'perfumed themselves' is seen by Brooks to be that of De Torres rather than Columbus. De Torres would have known the work of the Greek historian Herodotus, who describes the ancient Scythian inhalation of cannabis smoke, and attempted to relate the wholly exotic New World practice of tobacco smoking to this Asian custom. There does not appear to be any evidence that either Columbus or any of his entourage brought back the novel plant to Spain on their triumphant return, although it is possible that some sailors in this or later crews brought it home in small quantities, an occurrence that would have gone unrecorded and therefore is impossible to confirm or deny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca
[b
]Coca is traditionally cultivated in the lower altitudes of the eastern slopes of the Andes (the Yungas), or the highlands depending on the species grown.[/b] Since ancient times, its leaves have been an important trade commodity between the lowlands where it is grown and the higher altitudes where it is widely consumed by the Andean peoples of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia and northwestern Argentina.
Fresh samples of the dried leaves are uncurled, are of a deep green on the upper, and a grey-green on the lower surface, and have a strong tea-like odor. When chewed, they produce a pleasurable numbness in the mouth, and have a pleasant, pungent taste.
They are traditionally chewed with lime to increase the release of the active ingredients from the leaf. Older species have a camphoraceous smell and a brownish color, and lack the pungent taste.
