How did cannabis reach the New World

@upstate you said: “it is shure it was indeed growing here (America)” when? and evidence please.

@upstate how do you wanna know the Egyptian mummy thing was not a Lab error. I need evidence for what we say , alltho i heard sicker trough the current Chef (or what we call it) of the Egyptian Archeologists is critisized quiet a bit, that doesent mean he is per see doing thnigs wrong. Thats about it ,how can you just claim the “Lab error” was made up.

Could it really be just a Lab-error, cause i found it kind of strange how such a result comes up in just recent time and not earlyer… Probably cause it was seldon they used coca, but…

Lots of articles that get written remain unpublished because it goes against the scientific grain…even with evidence.

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My vote’s on the Spanish, and trans-Atlantic African slaves shortly after. Ropes and sails were made from hemp. Western arival wouldn’t have been possible without it. Vikings didn’t stay long or have diplomatic relations with the natives, else cannabis (at least hemp varieties) would have been established in the Newfoundland area. I’ll make a bet hemp, and later drug cannabis would have been some of the earliest seeds brought over from the old world for trade in the new. Introducing the West (or maybe the East?) to the bountiful crops of Central and South America such as corn, potatoes, gourds, tomatoes, and tobacco.

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It had to do with accessability and purity. It’s not often copper is on the surface like it was on these islands. Dont know about what abilities they had for refining copper, I only remember reading that it’s easy to trace where all copper in the world came from( if it was pure ?) Specifically, even which mine it came from. Each has it’s own signature. There was a special on it on the History Channel awhile ago…they seemed pretty sure. maybe someone can find it. It still doesn’t do anything towards finding out about cannabis coming to the Americas. It just shows who was capable of transatlantic voyages in ancient antiquity. That we know of. There were probably others. The chinese had a large expedition under Zheng He head East in the 1300’s, and drew an accurate map of the Baja peninsula and the mouth of the Colorado River, along with some of Mexico’s coast and up into California…
The Mongols had a fleet get blown by a typhoon to Lord knows where while trying to invade Japan while Khublai Khan was Leader of the Mongols…but still…you would need pollen to prove cannabis was growing…

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I read about the Zheng He thing a while back. It’s very likely the Americas were visited multiple times from multiple groups of people. I guess the question lies in how much exchange took place.

I assume the Chinese expedition probably didn’t see a point in further expeditions unless they saw economic opportunity. Sail a ship one way to India, Arabia, or Africa and make a ton of money selling spices/silks/etc., sail the other way and don’t find anything valuable to trade or sell. Not a lot of activity going on in the Baja desert. Many people also think the Chinese made it to Oregon/Washington area as well. Imagine if Columbus never found any gold or resources to steal, maybe the Spanish wouldn’t have bothered trying to eke out an empire since long distance ship fleets were enormously expensive to build and maintain. The Chinese were also never interested in forcibly converting natives to their religion like the Spanish and Portuguese Catholics.

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Interesting thread indeed.

It seems entirely possible, if not probable, that ocean voyages between ancient cultures took place many thousands of years ago.

Heyerdahl is notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, in which he sailed 8,000 km (5,000 mi) across the Pacific Ocean in a hand-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. The expedition was designed to demonstrate that ancient people could have made long sea voyages, creating contacts between societies. This was linked to a diffusionist model of cultural development.

Heyerdahl made other voyages to demonstrate the possibility of contact between widely separated ancient peoples, notably the Ra II expedition of 1970, when he sailed from the west coast of Africa to Barbados in a papyrus reed boat. He was appointed a government scholar in 1984.

Heyerdahl’s books relating these adventures are entertaining as well as edifying.

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That’s the thing. The traditional methods are used, just like any other study, and lab results are from universities usually. And the people in the field are by the book. But their work is not accredited…not backed by the people that matter. I understand you wouldn’t want a novice doing a DNA test for the first time. But there are talented, meticulous people doing freelance work and their results matter and bear further study. It’s fine to be skeptical. If you are, prove the new theory wrong. Dont Just wash your hands of it outright. Get out there and do the same study. See what you come up with.

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Here’s something about that copper…


A little more digging should lead to that phoenician theory. All that copper went somewhere… a little digging on Ancient mining of Great Lakes copper should bring up what you’re looking for.

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Good arguement for Minoans mining the copper.

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I don’t think the Minoans were necessarily involved in the mining. I can’t find any authenticating source on that story, except a “book of mormon proof” site. Cyprus had copper and they’re next door.

Keweenaw does have native copper and a lot of it, and it was mined intensively. There were large Native American empires/confederations/nations at certain points in history, but we don’t know much about them as most were already in sharp decline by the time the Spanish arrived and diseases did the rest. I suppose it is possible Native peoples traded copper to Basque or similar earlier peoples, who then traded it to the Minoans.

I suspect if there was sustained long term contact between those peoples there would have been a transfer of diseases, DNA through interbreeding, crops, technology. But we don’t really see that.

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Here are some things known around my area, Michigan for who was around before the “new world”.

Native American mined copper in what is called the Upper Pennisula of Michigan…with that said this could have been done for much longer than the colonized “new world” knows, or admits to the educated.

There have also been many coins found on the beaches of Michigan, some from Romans some from Buddhist temples, but it is not certain how they got there.

There is evidence of Vikings in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

It may be that the Vikings traded for copper with the Algonquin. There is evidence of the Vikings attempting to settle in Newfoundland, and trading with the natives there, native from that area may have had access to cannabis back then.

These are just some of the things I have been made aware of being a Michigander and talking with older folks who love to read of history.

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Read my post up above. There is DNA evidence minoan DNA and Native American DNA may have been mixed, and the evidence appears to show this mixing occurred during the same time period the copper was being mined in massive amounts. The amount of copper that was mined would have taken an absolutely incredible Labor Force if only primitive tools were being used. I don’t know of any American culture that would have had a population like that 3500 or 4500 years ago, and there is no culture known of in North America that was even farming extensively enough to feed a large population and allow free time for large public works that long-ago. Farming would have been a requirement to free up a large enough labor source for that kind of mining, and any time in history we see massive Works accomplished, agriculture has been there to feed the workers. The additional evidence of the mining suddenly stopping when the minoan culture collapsed is also interesting. If the Native Americans had been doing that it would have continued into the modern era. Copper never did go out of style. And we don’t find massive amounts of copper in archaeological American sites like you would expect to find if mass quantities of copper were being locally mined. And then there are the numerous stories of the Native Americans talking about the foreign visitors that came for the copper in very large boats. I wish I could find you something right off the bat, but I’ve read hundreds of books on Colonial history and I came across that interesting bit of information on many occasions. Never whole entire sections of a book, usually a few paragraphs or a page in a book of several hundred pages . Usually I find this information in books on the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, Lewis and Clark expedition, French Jesuit priest Diaries, excerpts of which are found in the topics I read…
The source of European Bronze Age copper has never been discovered. All we know is that the source was incredibly pure and the only place in the world with copper that pure is in Michigan.

One thing I’ve learned through all my reading, and newer technology has helped to prove much of it, is that many of the myths and legends from ancient antiquity are not myths or Legends at all, but are true stories passed down from generation to generation through oral history. Now you might think that oral history isn’t to be trusted, because of the way words can be changed. But the Native Americans were very meticulous about their oral Traditions, using shells or beads to help them remember certain details. These shells were ordered in the way a modern book is ordered. Each set of shells designed to trigger a memory.
3500 years ago is a long time. Quite possibly the only evidence that would remain from so long ago would be DNA evidence.

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There is though. Native population pre-Spanish contact was much much higher…some think as much as 10x higher. Mound builder culture was huge. Large settlements. Thousands and thousands of years of history.

Though the amounts of copper extracted were massive, well, a lot can get done in 5000+ years. Oral traditions can be…spotty at best. I was just reading about a tribe that thought they descended from the sky on ropes. Or the people that think Earth is the back of a turtle. Or Jesus rose from the dead. For everyone that’s accurate there’s 100 more that aren’t.

I’m having a hard time corroborating the Minoan-Native American theory, can’t seem to find much credible info, even DNA related.

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@upstate i like how you list up the possibly evidential Findings, its nice to have quotes lined up in this thread in an easily understandable Way!

Archeology is not something i do every day, so i just cant tell how shure this all is. Lets just agree, it is nice lecture you listed up!

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There have been instances of nicotine in other, non-nightshade plants, but it’s complicated because there is a debate on whether that is a result of pollution and uptake or natural synthesis. It’s even weirder because they found tramadol in a tree in west Africa. What’s weird is the scientific community doesn’t seem to be addressing the radical implications of plants being able to uptake such complex compounds in such quantity. It seems like a big deal either way. Anyway, I just wanted to say it may be possible nicotine was in other plants, but there is no way to say for sure, I don’t think.

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Recently discovered stone age painting includes hallucinogenic plants

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Is Tramadol a man made chemical?

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It is. It is a newer, complex, synthetic opioid that is an opioid, NMDA antagonist, SNRI, and with some gabaergic activity. The serotonergic activity combined with the opioid receptor activity make the euphoria off the charts for me and the pain relief is unreal. It’s made by Janssen Pharmaceutica. I truly love it, though it has one of the most impressive withdrawal profiles of almost any opioid short of fentanyl. Scientists right now are claiming that trees are uptaking it from the urine of beasts of burden. I am really not buying that, not in the quantities they’ve found it, unless they are feeding the cows tramadol instead of food. If a tree can synthesize tramadol, then it would render our understanding of what is possible through naturally occurring biosynthesis pretty crude. Conversely, if a tree can uptake and accumulate that much of a compound through trace amounts found in urine, well that has just mostly terrifying, but some exciting implications.

What can cannabis uptake? Is it possible to put tramadol in the reservoir and get uptake? That’s not cost effective enough for unscrupulous people to do, but maybe it is for another compound. Maybe there are therapeutic possibilities? What is in the food we eat?

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the oldest culture I know of with large populations in North America was the mound builders, but the time period for their rise was more than 2000 years later.
But I dont doubt that you could be right. There’s alot we dont know, and the ice age erased alot of history. perhaps more populous American Indian cultures were doing the mining at that time. Mining in that area goes back what, 7000 years did it say?

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