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8 Transoceanic Trading in Two Oceans
World plant to the New, was in keeping with their maritime and horticultural history: Spice Islanders had been engaged in plant domestication and the trading of
medicinal drugs for millennia.
The medicinal qualities of the spices they traded enhanced their trading value,
gave Spice Islanders access to medical markets and enabled them to trade cloves and
cinnamon to Egyptians for use in embalming. The discovery of American tobacco
and cocaine in Egyptian mummies suggests the same exploitation of the antiseptic
and medicinal qualities of the American plants. The medical use of cocaine for pain
relief is suggested, for example, by evidence in Egyptian mummies for pre-death
ingestion of cocaine [7]. The presence of Old World hashish in Peruvian mummies,
along with New World tobacco and cocaine – the triple combination also found in
Egypt – suggests the possibility of a two-way trade in medicinal drugs by Spice
Island traders who for millennia had been able to recognize and exploit the trading
value of medicinal plants.
Though it may never be proven that Spice Island mariners traded American drugs
to Egypt or that they traded American plants to India over a span of 2,600 years,
it is certainly conceivable. Considerable horticultural expertise would have been
needed for choosing American plants for trade and for assisting in their successful
translocation to various regions, climates and growing conditions in India. In almost
all cases traders would have been introducing food and medicinal plants already
domesticated in America. The Indian bas-relief sculptures of corn, for example,
show domesticated varieties not primitive cobs. Some varieties of American plants
can indeed be sourced to specific American cultivars growing in specific areas in
America: the peanuts that reached China and India are known, for example, to be
similar to those of Peru. Sometimes the names of American cultivars accompanied
the plants.
The implications of the possibility that Spice Island mariners may have traded
American plants to India are quite startling – involving, we will suggest, contact
with America perhaps as persistent and prolonged as that claimed by diffusionists
for the Chinese. If it could be established that Spice Island traders were responsible
for the trading of American plants to India, the Indian archaeological evidence we
consider in the next section would establish a date for first-wave Spice Island contact
with America by at least 1600 BC.
8.3 Archaeological Evidence for the Introduction of American
Plants to India
Sorenson and Johannessen’s Scientific Evidence for Pre-Columbian Oceanic
Voyages to and from the Americas [1] provides the clearest picture to date of the history of global plant movements. We cannot hope to summarize their three-volume
extensive amalgam of botanical and associated archaeological evidence. Our aim is
to consider some of their research findings and to explore some of the conceivable
implications of their research for the history of Spice Island contact with America.
8 Transoceanic Trading in Two Oceans
World plant to the New, was in keeping with their maritime and horticultural history: Spice Islanders had been engaged in plant domestication and the trading of
medicinal drugs for millennia.
The medicinal qualities of the spices they traded enhanced their trading value,
gave Spice Islanders access to medical markets and enabled them to trade cloves and
cinnamon to Egyptians for use in embalming. The discovery of American tobacco
and cocaine in Egyptian mummies suggests the same exploitation of the antiseptic
and medicinal qualities of the American plants. The medical use of cocaine for pain
relief is suggested, for example, by evidence in Egyptian mummies for pre-death
ingestion of cocaine [7]. The presence of Old World hashish in Peruvian mummies,
along with New World tobacco and cocaine – the triple combination also found in
Egypt – suggests the possibility of a two-way trade in medicinal drugs by Spice
Island traders who for millennia had been able to recognize and exploit the trading
value of medicinal plants.
Though it may never be proven that Spice Island mariners traded American drugs
to Egypt or that they traded American plants to India over a span of 2,600 years,
it is certainly conceivable. Considerable horticultural expertise would have been
needed for choosing American plants for trade and for assisting in their successful
translocation to various regions, climates and growing conditions in India. In almost
all cases traders would have been introducing food and medicinal plants already
domesticated in America. The Indian bas-relief sculptures of corn, for example,
show domesticated varieties not primitive cobs. Some varieties of American plants
can indeed be sourced to specific American cultivars growing in specific areas in
America: the peanuts that reached China and India are known, for example, to be
similar to those of Peru. Sometimes the names of American cultivars accompanied
the plants.
The implications of the possibility that Spice Island mariners may have traded
American plants to India are quite startling – involving, we will suggest, contact
with America perhaps as persistent and prolonged as that claimed by diffusionists
for the Chinese. If it could be established that Spice Island traders were responsible
for the trading of American plants to India, the Indian archaeological evidence we
consider in the next section would establish a date for first-wave Spice Island contact
with America by at least 1600 BC.
8.3 Archaeological Evidence for the Introduction of American
Plants to India
Sorenson and Johannessen’s Scientific Evidence for Pre-Columbian Oceanic
Voyages to and from the Americas [1] provides the clearest picture to date of the history of global plant movements. We cannot hope to summarize their three-volume
extensive amalgam of botanical and associated archaeological evidence. Our aim is
to consider some of their research findings and to explore some of the conceivable
implications of their research for the history of Spice Island contact with America.