Editorial

Scientists Test Mummified Brains For 17th Century Drug Use. The Results Are Wild

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Fig. 1. Signs of caries sicca on cranium C2, both photograph and X-rays image / IMAGE AVAILABLE VIA SCIENCEDIRECT

Kay Smythe News and Commentary Writer
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An upcoming study in the October issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science reveals the first documented evidence of cocaine use in Europeans.

Italy may have always been an underrated party capital for Europe, or at least as far back as the 17th century (1600s). Remains of well-preserved mummified brains found inside the Ca’Granada crypt were analyzed by researchers from the University of Milan, and tested positive for the plant from which cocaine is derived (Erythroxylum coca).

Party jokes aside, the crypt is actually a burial site near a major hospital from the period, the Ospedale Maggiore, which predominantly treated Milan’s poor. Of the nine samples the team took, two tested positive for the plant. “Given that the plant was not listed inside the detailed hospital pharmacopeia, it may not have been given as a medicinal remedy but may have been used for other purposes,” the researchers noted.

The results push the timeline back on cocaine’s formal entry to Europe by almost two centuries. Spanish conquistadores first got their hands on the plant in the late 15th century while gallivanting around South America, ZME Science explained. Like the raver boys of today, the Spanish invaders were very much into the stimulant properties of the coca plant.

Use in the Americas dates back thousands of years, possibly as early as 3000 B.C. But this isn’t your dad’s 1980s cocaine, which is a far more potent and synthesized nasty (often cut with other drugs and awful things these days). The coca plant is a small shrub, native to South America, containing alkaloids that act as a stimulant on the central nervous system. It also suppresses hunger, so was part of daily use for many Indigenous peoples, ZME noted. (RELATED: Smugglers Put Drugs In Last Place You Would Expect. Police Find It Anyway)

Heavy testing was conducted at the crypt site to ensure the cocaine’s presence wasn’t as a result of contamination. But just the fact it’s there means academics, historians, and anthropologists need to completely rethink the ancestry and prevalence of cocaine in Europe. And what did people actually use it for back then? I guess we’ll have to wait to find out.