A Secular Theory of Where the BoM Came From

[webbles]

4 hours ago, california boy said:

Well I am asking what you believe, so thanks for your answer.  I personally find that explanation as looking for an excuse rather than having any logic.  I have reread that chapter 3 times and can't make it work the way you want it to.  

But let's go with your speculation.   The one thing that would have to occur to give a specific name and value for a piece of metal would be consistent weight.  So wouldn't this then become what Nephite currency looked like since it does state that it was used as payment of wages and goods?  Has there ever been any discovery of a stash, or bag or deposit or anything of ingots that were a consistent weight like they have found for other great civilizations that existed for over 1000 years?  It seems like if that type of currency was in use by a population the size that the BoM talks about, there is no evidence such a currency ever existed.  So we are still back to square one.

I'm not sure that Alma 11 is actually about any metal at all.  Yes, it says gold and silver.  But that, to me, is just a translation layer.  I've been trying to figure out how to determine what was introduced by the translator and what wasn't introduced by the translator.  This can, unfortunately, be non-falsifiable so I've gone back and forth on it.  But one of the latest ideas is to see what is the main idea that is happening and whether that is from Joseph or an ancient historian.  In Alma 11, it says that "A senum of silver was equal to a senine of gold, and either for a measure of barley, and also for a measure of every kind of grain."  That idea is an ancient idea; the idea that the "measure of grain" is the source of truth in the monetary system.  It isn't one that Joseph would have been familiar with because a dollar (gold coin, etc) has its own intrinsic worth (the amount of silver/gold) that is independent of the commodities you buy with it.  It has been that way since at least the middle ages, but even the Romans used coins without being backed by commodities.  But to ancient civilizations (including in mesoamerica), the monetary system was backed by the commodities.

So, if we have an ancient historian who is writing about his monetary system, it would be based off of commodities and then have some sort of denominational units that people actually carry and pass around instead of the commodity unit itself.  Joseph translated those denominational units into "gold" and "silver".  But kept the ancient names that he specifically spelled out to Oliver (we know that because Oliver had to correct the spelling of shilum several times and it still is incorrectly spelled in the Book of Mormon as shiblon) and he kept the denominational sizes and that it was backed by grain.  And those things are more similar to an ancient monetary system than one Joseph would be accustomed to.  Now, could Joseph have invented it?  Sure.  But it is also plausible enough to be connected to an ancient system.

[smac97]

3 hours ago, california boy said:

I know the chapter headings are not canonized.  

Your questions sure seemed to indicate the contrary.  But as you like.

3 hours ago, california boy said:

But what those headings are is what those in charge of summerizing the BoM believe that is what the chapter is about.  Are you saying that the chapter heading no longer says the chapter is about the monetary system of the Nephites?

You seem to be equating "monetary system" with "coinage."  I invite you to reconsider that.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited March 27 by smac97

[Calm]

43 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Most Latter-day Saints receive a Patriarchal Blessing, in which the individual's "lineage" relative to the Twelve Tribes is declared.  "Lineage may be through any of the tribes of Israel, such as Ephraim, Manasseh, or Judah. Though we may not all be literal descendants of Jacob, those who accept the gospel of Jesus Christ are adopted into the house of Israel. Because each of us descends through more than one family line, two members of the same family may have their declared lineage through different tribes of Israel."  Whether by literal or adopted descendence, we are each told of a lineage that is "meaningful" relative to the Restored Gospel.  For many (most?) of us, this lineage is not, and need not be, numerically predominant in our genetic ancestry

This seems quite consistent with the ancient Israelite and Jewish practices indicating membership in the community, including converts...though we don’t use circumcision as an indicator of membership for males.  There is a ritual immersion which symbolizes rebirth and entry into the faith community.  (Obviously Jewish membership would not be seen as accepting the Christian faith in any way…)

There is no difference in membership in the community seen between someone born Jewish and those who convert just as there is no difference between those born of a Jewish mother no matter the status of the father as I mention in an above post (that Analytics hasn’t responded to yet and I wish he really would as I am interested in exactly how he views meaningfully and if different from past and current Jewish and LDS practices (seemingly the most relevant cultures we have access to in order to understand Nephite and Lamanite POVs plus doctrinal interpretation of what descent is according to God in the LDS context).

Quote

Halakha forbids the mistreatment of a convert,[71] including reminding a convert that they were once not a Jew.[citation needed][72] Hence, little to no distinction is made in Judaism between those who are born Jewish and those who are Jewish as a result of conversion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_to_Judaism

Quote

How so? If one is a penitent, another may not say to him: Remember your earlier deeds. If one is the child of converts, another may not say to him: Remember the deed of your ancestors. If one is a convert and he came to study Torah, one may not say to him: Does the mouth that ate unslaughtered carcasses and animals that had wounds that would have caused them to die within twelve months [tereifot], and repugnant creatures, and creeping animals, comes to study Torah that was stated from the mouth of the Almighty?

https://www.sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.58b.9?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en

Edited March 27 by Calm

[california boy]

1 hour ago, webbles said:

I'm not sure that Alma 11 is actually about any metal at all.  Yes, it says gold and silver.  But that, to me, is just a translation layer.  I've been trying to figure out how to determine what was introduced by the translator and what wasn't introduced by the translator.  This can, unfortunately, be non-falsifiable so I've gone back and forth on it.  But one of the latest ideas is to see what is the main idea that is happening and whether that is from Joseph or an ancient historian.  In Alma 11, it says that "A senum of silver was equal to a senine of gold, and either for a measure of barley, and also for a measure of every kind of grain."  That idea is an ancient idea; the idea that the "measure of grain" is the source of truth in the monetary system.  It isn't one that Joseph would have been familiar with because a dollar (gold coin, etc) has its own intrinsic worth (the amount of silver/gold) that is independent of the commodities you buy with it.  It has been that way since at least the middle ages, but even the Romans used coins without being backed by commodities.  But to ancient civilizations (including in mesoamerica), the monetary system was backed by the commodities.

So, if we have an ancient historian who is writing about his monetary system, it would be based off of commodities and then have some sort of denominational units that people actually carry and pass around instead of the commodity unit itself.  Joseph translated those denominational units into "gold" and "silver".  But kept the ancient names that he specifically spelled out to Oliver (we know that because Oliver had to correct the spelling of shilum several times and it still is incorrectly spelled in the Book of Mormon as shiblon) and he kept the denominational sizes and that it was backed by grain.  And those things are more similar to an ancient monetary system than one Joseph would be accustomed to.  Now, could Joseph have invented it?  Sure.  But it is also plausible enough to be connected to an ancient system.

First I want to thank you SMAC, Ryan and Calm for responding to my post.  I have read and thought about what has been posted on this subject and for me personally it seemed like very strained answers to some very simple scriptures that outline the monetary system of the Nephites.  I guess you can figure out a rational for just about anything if you work at it hard enough.  I realize your point of view is probably different than my conclusion.  The AI response that Analytics posted seems much more logical and seems to fit what the verses were talking about to me.  I admit that I am not vested in having to believe the BoM is true.  It allows me a much more straight forward reading of what was said.  

That said, I appreciate that you all have found a way to resolve the issue for yourselves.  And in the end, it is you all that are vested in the commitment to believe.  It is not my 10% and countless hours being committed to the Church.  So I guess the important thing to consider is as long as you are ok with the answers you have stated, isn't that all that matters.  

[Analytics]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

So you do agree it’s a workable monetary system? (Seems like that needs to be the first step as why bother arguing about where it is found if you think it’s unrealistic in the first place.)

Yes, it seems to be a workable monetary system. But it doesn’t fit into Mesoamerica in 82 B.C., and is an anachronism that weighs against the book’s authenticity--or at least against the limited geographic model. To see why, consider this prompt and AI response:

Prompt:  I'd like you to analyze how well the economic system described in Alma 11 fits with the economic reality of Mesoamerica in 82 BC. In the analysis, do the following:

1- Write a paragraph describing what we know about the economic system of the civilizations in Mesoamerica in 82 BC, and how confident we are about this

2- Write a paragraph describing what Alma 11 says about the economic system in the BoM in 82 BC

3- Steelman an apologetic argument for how the BoM could fit into this time and place. Assume that the general system described in the BoM is accurate, but be open to the idea that there is a "translation layer" that misidentified what the book is talking about (e.g. "cocoa beans" was mistranslated as "gold"). What is the best case for making the BoM fit into that time and place?

4- Evaluate how well this fits. Even allowing for a "translation layer" that mislabeled things, does this weigh in favor of the BoM being an accurate translation of a real civilization in Mesoamerica in 82 BC, or does it weigh against the BoM being an accurate translation of a real civilization in Mesoamerica in 82 BC? And by "accurate translation" I'm not talking about whether "cocoa beans" was accurately translated. Rather, I'm talking about the possiblity that the BoM is a real history of a real people in this time and place.

Be very thorough in your analysis, but relatively brief in the report. Keep it to 4 paragraphs.

Quote

What we know about Mesoamerican economic life around 82 BC is real but incomplete. Archaeology gives us fairly strong confidence that Late Formative Mesoamerica already had agriculture, long-distance trade, craft specialization, and exchange networks moving goods such as obsidian, ceramics, and other commodities across regions; some scholars also argue that market exchange has deeper roots in the Maya world than older models allowed. But our confidence drops sharply when we ask whether people in 82 BC Mesoamerica used a formally named, standardized monetary system comparable to Alma 11. The clearest evidence for commodity currencies like cacao beans and cotton cloth comes much later, especially from Postclassic and early colonial sources, while metallurgy appears to have been introduced into western Mexico only around AD 600–800, centuries after the Book of Mormon setting. So the broad picture “complex exchange economy existed” is reasonably secure; the narrower picture “gold-and-silver denominated money system like Alma 11 existed in Mesoamerica in 82 BC” is not supported by mainstream evidence. (Cambridge University Press & Assessment)

Alma 11 describes something more specific than generic trade. It says the judges were paid according to a reckoning system, naming units of gold and silver—senine, seon, shum, limnah for gold; senum, amnor, ezrom, onti for silver—and explicitly relates those units to each other by fixed value. It also ties them to commodity purchasing power: a senum of silver equals a senine of gold, and either is equal to a measure of barley or other grain. In other words, the text presents an internally standardized value system with named denominations, legal-economic use, and convertibility across metals and staple goods. Even if one avoids calling these “coins” in the strict numismatic sense, Alma 11 is plainly not just describing casual barter; it presents an established, socially recognized schedule of values embedded in civic administration and commerce. (The Church of Jesus Christ)

The best apologetic fit is to say Alma 11 preserves a real Mesoamerican exchange system but Joseph Smith’s English wording mapped unfamiliar indigenous value categories onto Old World monetary language. On that reading, “gold” and “silver” need not mean coined precious-metal currency in circulation; they could be translator labels for prestigious media of exchange, counted bundles, or ranked commodities whose purchasing power was conventionally reckoned against grain. Likewise, the named units in Alma 11 could represent denominations in a local accounting system rather than minted coinage, and the equation with barley could reflect a practical market standard rather than metal money per se. This is not absurd on its face: Mesoamerica definitely had sophisticated exchange, later had commodity monies such as cacao and cloth, and some Latter-day Saint writers have argued that standardized measures or bundled valuables could underlie the text even if Joseph’s vocabulary makes the system sound more metallic than it originally was. As a steelman, that is the strongest path: preserve the text’s claim of an orderly value system while treating the metallic terminology as translation approximation. (Frontiers)

Even with that generous translation layer, though, the fit is still weak overall. The steelman helps with the word “coin,” and maybe even with “gold” and “silver,” but it does not erase the fact that Alma 11 depicts a fairly formalized, named, publicly intelligible system of denominations tied to legal wages and staple-equivalent value. For Mesoamerica in 82 BC, we have evidence for exchange and regional trade, but not good evidence for that specific kind of system, and the metallurgy problem remains especially stubborn if the text is taken at all straightforwardly. So this does not weigh in favor of the Book of Mormon as an accurate translation of a real Mesoamerican civilization in 82 BC. At best, the translation-layer argument softens the conflict from “strong anachronism” to “possible but unsubstantiated reinterpretation.” On balance, the economic data weigh against, not for, Alma 11 being a historically accurate description of a real Mesoamerican society of that date. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

 

[webbles]

1 hour ago, california boy said:

First I want to thank you SMAC, Ryan and Calm for responding to my post.  I have read and thought about what has been posted on this subject and for me personally it seemed like very strained answers to some very simple scriptures that outline the monetary system of the Nephites.  I guess you can figure out a rational for just about anything if you work at it hard enough.  I realize your point of view is probably different than my conclusion.  The AI response that Analytics posted seems much more logical and seems to fit what the verses were talking about to me.  I admit that I am not vested in having to believe the BoM is true.  It allows me a much more straight forward reading of what was said.  

That said, I appreciate that you all have found a way to resolve the issue for yourselves.  And in the end, it is you all that are vested in the commitment to believe.  It is not my 10% and countless hours being committed to the Church.  So I guess the important thing to consider is as long as you are ok with the answers you have stated, isn't that all that matters.  

No problem.  I can see why people don't accept the Book of Mormon.  But for me, believing that Joseph invented it just crosses into the impossible.  Too many coincidences, lucky guesses, etc.  AIs will say that as well if you keep bringing up apologetic and critical point of views.  I've done it several times.  A naturalistic creation of the Book of Mormon just doesn't have a simple answer, in my mind.  I prefer the theories that involve others as that makes way more sense to explain the content of the Book of Mormon, but they have a lot of historical documentary issues (as in, how were they involved with no one ever mentioning it).

[smac97]

3 hours ago, california boy said:

First I want to thank you SMAC, Ryan and Calm for responding to my post.  I have read and thought about what has been posted on this subject and for me personally it seemed like very strained answers to some very simple scriptures that outline the monetary system of the Nephites.

Funny how that works.  I look at Alma 11 and see only a description of weights and measures.  How else to account for the inclusion of barley/grain?

3 hours ago, california boy said:

I guess you can figure out a rational for just about anything if you work at it hard enough.  

Yes, we can all do that.

3 hours ago, california boy said:

I realize your point of view is probably different than my conclusion.  

Except that we have articulated both our conclusions and the evidence and reasoning (and references) we used to reach those conclusions. 

You seem to be treating your conclusions as self-evidently correct.

3 hours ago, california boy said:

The AI response that Analytics posted seems much more logical and seems to fit what the verses were talking about to me.  I admit that I am not vested in having to believe the BoM is true.  It allows me a much more straight forward reading of what was said.  

Right.

And no need to explain or defend your "reading."  It just is.

I think John Sorensen's explanation is superior to yours, and to Roger's AI-rooted alternative.

3 hours ago, california boy said:

That said, I appreciate that you all have found a way to resolve the issue for yourselves.  And in the end, it is you all that are vested in the commitment to believe.  

Well, no.  We are all making choices here.  You as much as we.

3 hours ago, california boy said:

It is not my 10% and countless hours being committed to the Church.

By choice, yes.  Because I believe the Church is what it claims to be.

I think you come here to argue against the Church because you previously believed as we do, then you went out from us, because you are angry at the institutional Church and its teachings about same-sex behavior and marriage, and instead of "investing" time and money and effort in building up the Church, you "invest" in justifications and rationalizations for your departure.  You don't want the Church to be what it claims to be.  You are invested in and committed to that narrative.

3 hours ago, california boy said:

So I guess the important thing to consider is as long as you are ok with the answers you have stated, isn't that all that matters.  

I think the pursuit of truth matters the most.  If the Church were not what it claims to be, I would want to know that.  But that is not what has happened.

If the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be, and if Joseph's narrative about his theophanies is true, then I'm all in.  Although I was born and raised in the Church, my testimony is mostly traceable to reading The Book of Mormon, pondering it, and praying about it.  I received a spiritual confirmation that it is. 

At the time I knew nothing of apologetics, of critiques of the Church's doctrine and history.  I was just a kid.  Then I went into the Army, and boy, was that a wake-up call.  The choice between being a Latter-day Saint, or not, was really stark.  I could attend Church on my own, or not.  I could drink and smoke, or not.  I could pay tithing, or not.  I could fool around with girls, or not.  I could cuss up a storm and crack vulgar jokes to fit in with my peers, or not.  I chose to continue the course I had started on earlier.  In a sense, I was in a "I need my faith to be justified" stage here.

Then I went on a mission to Taiwan.  Hard work.  Lots of it.  I preached the Gospel and served the people of that island and followed the behavioral rules.  I studied a lot.  I continued to observe both the practical and spiritual benefits of living the Gospel.  And more to the point, I became more convinced and persuaded about the Church's truth claims.  I was transitioning to a "I like that my faith is justified" stage.

Then I went home.  Worked.  Went to school.  Met a girl.  Married.  Became a father.  Started to work.  Another child.  Went back to school for a law degree.  Another child.  Then I started to practice law.  Three more kids.  On the Church front, I served as Gospel Doctrine Teacher, then on the Stake High Counsel, then a bishopric counselor, then as bishop, then as primary teacher, then as finance clerk, then as Sunday School teacher. 

During most of this I was on ZLMB, and then on this board.  19,000+ posts and 22 years.  I have talked to countless fellow Latter-day Saints (in various places in their respective faith journeys), former Latter-day Saints, curious lookyloos, and so on.  The more I studied, and listened to voices across the spectrum, and discussed and debated, the more persuaded I have become that the Church is what it claims to be.  Not because, as you insinuate, I am desperate or have succumbed to "sunk cost" thinking, but more because my intellectual basis for being a Latter-day Saint has caught up with my spiritual and emotional bases for being a Latter-day Saint.  I am currently in a "I am grateful that my faith is justified" stage.

Funny how folks can look at the same thing and come away with such drastically divergent perspectives and conclusions about it. 

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited March 28 by smac97

[smac97]

8 minutes ago, webbles said:

No problem.  I can see why people don't accept the Book of Mormon. 

Same here.  We have a lot of people saying some pretty negative stuff about it, and about those who lead the Church that houses it, and even the members themselves.

8 minutes ago, webbles said:

But for me, believing that Joseph invented it just crosses into the impossible.  Too many coincidences, lucky guesses, etc. 

@Analytics ostensibly started this thread to address points I had raised in this other thread pertaining to how critics, despite having 200 years to do so, have been unable to articulate a positive, coherent explanation for The Book of Mormon that accounts for the key data points (physical plates, witness statements, text origins/translation process) without heavy speculation, while claiming empirical rigor.

And as we've seen, they can't do it.  And apparently the best they can do is suggest that "space aliens" and/or "Satan" an/or "demons" are a "more likely" explanation for the text as compared to Joseph's narrative, which is "just not possible."

Such are the not-particularly-impressive fruits of Anti-Mormonism.

Meanwhile, the Latter-day Saints have done the hard work and, I think, have created a substantial basis for arguing "plausibility."  I think that's as far as we should go, and otherwise rely on Moroni 10:3-5.  Otherwise, we run the risk of the former overshadowing the latter.

8 minutes ago, webbles said:

AIs will say that as well if you keep bringing up apologetic and critical point of views.  I've done it several times.  A naturalistic creation of the Book of Mormon just doesn't have a simple answer, in my mind.

Nor even a plausible complex answer.

8 minutes ago, webbles said:

I prefer the theories that involve others as that makes way more sense to explain the content of the Book of Mormon, but they have a lot of historical documentary issues (as in, how were they involved with no one ever mentioning it).

Yep.  It has been an interesting journey for me, as an attorney, to watch the extant evidence ostensibly for Joseph's narrative to pull double duty, with the second being a substantial foil and frustration to naturalistic counter-theories.  

Thanks,

-Smac

[Zosimus]

4 hours ago, Analytics said:

Yes, it seems to be a workable monetary system. But it doesn’t fit into Mesoamerica in 82 B.C., and is an anachronism that weighs against the book’s authenticity--or at least against the limited geographic model.

I think we keep asking the wrong questions. We keep asking "does X fit setting Y?" but the better question is "where does the text have the highest verisimilitude?"

Alma 11 is a good test. Its a very specific economic system. So instead of asking "does this economic system fit Mesoamerica in 82BC?, the verisimilitude question would be "where in the ancient world did systems like this actually exist, with these metals, at this level of detail?"

I haven't looked too closely at it, but my guess is Mesoamerica would score poorly, cocoa beans, jade, and textiles as medium of exchange, sure, but there's not much that looks like senums, amnors, ezroms, and ontis in Mexico. We could loan-shift our way there, but every loan-shift lowers verisimilitude. A setting where "gold" means gold scores higher than one where "gold" means "cocoa beans, maybe?"

But Mesoamerica scoring poorly doesn't say anything about the verisimilitude of the Book of Mormon, it only says that yje Mesoamerica model has some weak points

otoh If you consider the verisimilitude question in other limited geographies, the results are better. 

- Copper plates with lengthy inscriptions, Yes, but not Mesoamerica
- Israelite diaspora communities dating to the first temple with copper plates, Yes, but not Mesoamerica
- Monetary systems resembling Nephite monetary systems, Yes, but not Mesoamerica

We could go down the list of steel, elephants, horses, chariots, silk. All these things really do fit into limited geographies that date to the Book of Mormon timeframe. Meaning the Book of Mormon has extremely high verisimilitude, if we take our thumb off the scales. Of course, verisimilitude doesn't prove anything about whether or not the Book of Mormon is history, but it does tell us where the Book of Mormon most closely resembles a real civilization, which is the prior question.

I've been working out a comparative framework that checks for verisimilitude across all the major geography models, not just economics but the full range of material culture: fauna, flora, metallurgy, writing, weapons, government, the lot.

I ran Alma 11 through the framework, and got these results. And since we were discussin writing on metal plates as historical evidence for the Book of Mormon, I also ran that test. Results are here.

Edited March 28 by Zosimus

[champatsch]

19 hours ago, webbles said:

But one of the latest ideas is to see what is the main idea that is happening and whether that is from Joseph or an ancient historian.

This is an example of why it is important to first determine that Joseph Smith did not translate the English of what he dictated (translate used in the default sense of taking words of a source language and turning them into words of a target language). So much of the discussion here is secondary.

Here, webbles accepts the possibility that Joseph Smith might have worded the Book of Mormon, despite a large amount of counterevidence. Elsewhere I saw that calm invoked Webster's ADEL for word meaning in the text, even though that flawed dictionary does not adequately cover the text's word meaning. Do not take my word for its flaws, consider an appraisal from the early 1960s by someone who knew nothing about Book of Mormon English usage: Joseph W. Reed, Jr., "Noah Websters Debt to Samuel Johnson," American Speech 37, no. 2 (May 1962): 95–105. https://www.jstor.org/stable/453145.

Consider an archaic meaning for the following. This will be new to most of you, although many of you might have sensed that there was something odd about adopting the typical meaning of the phrase "from time to time" in this context:

Quote

Alma 49:21
        And it came to pass that the captains of the Lamanites brought up their armies before the place of entrance
        and began to contend with the Nephites, to get into their place of security.
        But behold, they were driven back from time to time, insomuch that they were slain with an immense slaughter.
 

Here is the archaic contextual meaning, which is not in Webster's ADEL: "At all times; continuously, or for an extended period; in an unbroken succession. Obsolete. (a1500–1679)." Oxford English Dictionary, “'from time to time' in time (n., int., & conj.), sense P.3.j.ii,” March 2026, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/9257664969.

 

Perhaps some here recall a few things I mentioned about the non-verbal save usage of the Book of Mormon, and that it is textually unique, in an overall sense.

First, Joseph Smith (and his mother Lucy) subconsciously preferred except over save, but he dictated more save than except. Using a Helaman | 3 Nephi boundary, the Book of Mormon shifts from about thirty-five percent save, relative to except, to about eighty-three percent. Both of these realities argue that if Joseph Smith worded the non-verbal save of the dictation, then it was all done consciously against preference, without any biblical, pseudo-archaic, or contemporary impetus to do so.

Second, the preferred usage of Joseph Smith and his contemporaries, including his mother Lucy, was to employ except and save as prepositions the vast majority of the time; yet they function as conjunctions in the Book of Mormon the vast majority of the time. In the Book of Mormon, except occurs as a conjunction almost every time, and save occurs as a conjunction about ninety-one percent of the time (177 of 194), relative to the prepositional use.

Third, contemporary usage of the conjunction save was uncommon and strongly favored the form “save that S” (see the OED for this appraisal). The Book of Mormon is almost entirely “save S,” without the complementizer that (175 of 177; two exceptions: 1 Nephi 18:15; 1 Nephi 22:4).

Fourth, the conjunction save in the Book of Mormon almost always functions as a subordinator. The historical and contemporary tendency was to employ save as a coordinator to a higher degree than in the Book of Mormon (my observation from repeated scanning of large textual databases).

Fifth, the Book of Mormon has 70+ examples of pro-form "save it were." Currently, only five original instances are known before 1830, in five British texts. There is also an 1828 northern English example (not pro-form), with a literal it. (The Book of Mormon has four with a literal it.) Pro-form "save it were" is one way of many that the Book of Mormon is more British than American in its English usage.

And so on and so forth (e.g. save . . shall | should").

In short, almost everything about non-verbal save is different from what the Book of Mormon would have, if Joseph Smith had authored it.

A reasonable conclusion is that Joseph Smith did not word the non-verbal save usage of the Book of Mormon. An unreasonable conclusion is that he did.

Edited March 28 by champatsch

[Calm]

15 hours ago, champatsch said:

Elsewhere I saw that calm invoked Webster's ADEL for word meaning in the text, even though that flawed dictionary does not adequately cover the text's word meaning.

Webster’s 1828 is full of gaps as should be obvious from the limited number of entries.  As I understand it, it was never intended to be comprehensive, but rather to help standardize English, thus giving preference to more educated forms and useful scientific, legal, religious, etc terms.  I love Oxford, but dragging out the magnifying glass and typing in the possible entries to post on this board is annoying.  I find Webster’s useful enough most of the time for my purpose.

I use Webster’s 1828 not to establish definite meaning, but to show plausible alternative meanings, in this case “quarters” possibly referring to “a particular region” of indeterminate size rather than a specified expansive area.  Iow, we don’t need to be locked into one so-called “plain reading” (a very, very overused term imo) that is even often based on 20th century usage, not on Joseph’s time period, which one would expect would be the most common source of words if he was the sole author/creator of the text.  Webster’s shows even from a naturalistic interpretation of the text, it doesn’t require a hemispheric reading.

——

Back to your comments, perhaps I have misunderstood your theory or conflated it with others’, but I understood you see the text covering a range of times, not just a one and done translation from a particular moment when EModE was dominant that is then given to Joseph in some way.  You have pointed out words that were prominent and then falling out of usage from different centuries, for example, iirc.

So to help clarify your theory for me, could you answer these questions:

Do you see Joseph as having no input into word choice, but simply transmitting someone else’s translation?

Do you see the language of the dictated text limited to a certain time period?  If so, what is the range of that period?

Edited March 29 by Calm

[rodheadlee]

On 3/10/2026 at 8:22 AM, Senator said:

The funny thing is,  they ended up dwindling and perishing in unbelief anyway.  Go figure

Yeah, humans are that way. All you have to do is look and see how people maintain their cars that they drive every single day. Go figure.

[Pyreaux]

On 3/26/2026 at 8:10 PM, Analytics said:

2 Nephi 1 presents the promised land as a divinely reserved inheritance for Lehi, his children, and “their seed,” with the book as a whole identifying the future Lamanites as that covenant remnant, the most natural reading is that modern Lamanites were expected to be meaningfully descended from Lehi’s family. So a model in which his lineage became so genetically negligible as to be undetectable is textually strained and not straightforward.

Your response was, "The AI platform is not very familiar with the doctrines of the Church.  Since when does lineage = detectable genetic ancestry?  Patriarchal blessings?  Adoption?"

That is true.

But the fact remains that if one takes what the Book of Mormon says about land covenants at face value, then the promised land was "kept as of [590 B.C.] from the knowledge of other nations" and was given to Lehi and to his descendants. God could give the land to them because nobody else was there. We know nobody was there because it was kept from their knowledge. 

Lehi said "a land which the Lord God hath covenanted with me should be a land for the inheritance of my seed." You don't think "seed" in this context implies DNA?

The Book of Mormon says "all things" without qualification. 2 Nephi 2:22. This is scripture mastery stuff.

"we Latter-day Saints believe that Noah was an actual man, a prophet of God, who preached repentance and raised a voice of warning, built an ark, gathered his family and a host of animals onto the ark, and floated safely away as waters covered the entire earth. We are assured that these events actually occurred by the multiple testimonies of God’s prophets." (Donald W. Parry, “The Flood and the Tower of Babel,” Ensign, January 1998)

Everything the Book of Mormon says about Noah is entirely consistent with what "multiple testimonies of God's prophets" have said about the event. But if you don't believe they understood this, then maybe they didn't. Touche. 

 

My basic problem is that I have no idea what you believe. I know some things you believe. You believe in Jesus and priesthood authority. But regarding the gospel as taught in the Book of Mormon and other scriptures? You don't swallow the whole package. You think "the multiple testimonies of God's prophets" are wrong about the flood. You think the creation and fall were local things in a bubble someplace and weren't everywhere. You probably think people came across the bearing straight to the Americas 10,000 years before Adam fell. Or something.

In contrast, the Book of Mormon teaches the hard-core-ultra-conservative-young-earth-creationism-no-death-anywhere-before-the-fall-three-pillars-of-eternity gospel of Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie. They believed this because the Book of Mormon teaches it and it is the most correct book on earth. You don't accept all of that. You think there must have been others here because of demographics or warfare or agriculture or something. You probably believe in evolution to some extent. But doing all of this is mingling the philosophies of men with scripture. Don't get me wrong--you are free to believe whatever you want to and Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie were certainly wrong about all of these things, so you're going in the right track. But from my seat, when you claim that we shouldn't expect any of Lehi's seed to show up in DNA tests because of X, Y, and Z, you are really saying that we shouldn't believe what Lehi said in 2 Nephi 1 because either God was lying, Lehi was just spouting out nonsense, or that's just ancient mythology that Mormon wrote down that had no bearing on reality, or it is all symbolic, or something. 

The advice that their land "should" be kept secret from the Nations of the Old World, says absolutely nothing excluding Nationless vagabonds like everyone there. Exactly what "Nation" did the Clovis represent? Even with the Clovis there, the land is still undiscovered by any of the "Nations". The "nations" often meant major warring empires like Babylon or Egypt, rather than groups of indigenous people already living in there.

'Plain reading", as always, is a thing not considerate of what different people thought it meant in history. Ignoring how Ancient Near Eastern adoptions work, like in the Bible, "seed" often includes servants, concubines and their children, adoptees and migrants "grafted in." Over 1,000 years, Lehi’s biological markers would be diluted by a much larger "native" population, making them genetically invisible today while remaining "covenant seed" in God's eyes.

Modern Americans have different notions of what "the land" or "all" the earth is. The Ancient Near East is full of hyperbole. "All" doesn't always mean "100%". In the Old Testament, phrases like "all the earth came to Egypt to buy corn" (Genesis 41:57) clearly don't mean people from Australia and the Americas were in Joseph’s grain line. It means "the known world" or "everyone in the region." Have you never read any local flood theories that explain a relative nature in these texts? The prophets confirm that Noah was real, the account all the earth was flooded is "true", just as there is "one" God, and Jesus is God's "only" son is also "true", but it's also hyperbole.

On 3/27/2026 at 9:36 AM, california boy said:

Has there ever been any discovery of a stash, or bag or deposit or anything of ingots that were a consistent weight like they have found for other great civilizations that existed for over 1000 years?  It seems like if that type of currency was in use by a population the size that the BoM talks about, there is no evidence such a currency ever existed.  So we are still back to square one.

What's interesting in the Nephite system is it's an exchange system tied specifically to barley, and barley was once an anachronism in the Americas too. Then we found it.

The ancient Mesoamerican markets, goods were almost exclusively measured by volume, by filling containers. The use of metal as a weighted currency is not currently supported by the Mesoamerican archaeological record for this period, which is why the Book of Mormon description is viewed as an anachronism.

But since there is evidence that ancient Egyptians traded with South Americans (for tobacco, coca plant). If trade and diffusion happened, wouldn't there likely be an Egyptian-influenced merchant using Egyptian systems? The Nephite system (based on values of 1, 2, 4, 7) is striking similar to ancient Egyptian weight systems. For example, the Eye of Horus fractions in Egypt used a similar binary-based division for measuring grain. If an advanced mercantile system existed in a specific city-state, it might not spread to the rural areas that didn't have access to metals. It is surprisingly easy for a group like the Nephites to leave a thin signature.

If archaeologists haven't dug in the exact market plaza of that specific city, the evidence remains buried. Many pyramids are built on top of more advanced pyramids and civilizations. A marketplace from 80 BC could be buried under 60 feet of rubble and five subsequent layers of construction. If a city-state fell or went bankrupt, their gold and silver weights wouldn't be thrown away, they would be melted down to make jewelry and idols. That's assuming the Spanish didn't find it already and took it to Spain.

Edited March 29 by Pyreaux

[california boy]

8 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

But since there is evidence that ancient Egyptians traded with South Americans (for tobacco, coca plant). If trade and diffusion happened, wouldn't there likely be an Egyptian-influenced merchant using Egyptian systems?

I have never heard of ancient Egyptians trading with South America.  I asked Chatgbt.  Here is the answer I got.

Short answer: No—there’s no credible evidence that ancient Egyptians traded with South Americans.

So where is this evidence that caused you to make this statement?

[Pyreaux]

5 hours ago, california boy said:

I have never heard of ancient Egyptians trading with South America.  I asked Chatgbt.  Here is the answer I got.

Short answer: No—there’s no credible evidence that ancient Egyptians traded with South Americans.

So where is this evidence that caused you to make this statement?

Ancient Egyptian Mummies with American Only Drugs

As always, AI doesn't know everything at all times, you have to tell it almost exactly what it should search for, or it won't know or bother to look. it will simply provide the most conservative archaeological view from off the top of its head. The evidence isn't a secret, it’s been causing a massive stir in the scientific community over the last 30 years. The "Cocaine Mummies" is the most famous piece of evidence of the 1992 Balabanova Study.

Dr. Svetlana Balabanova, a German forensic toxicologist, tested the remains of several Egyptian mummies. She found significant traces of American only plants like cocaine and nicotine in the hair, soft tissue, and bones. The mainstream skeptics claimed it must be contamination, but the tests found metabolites (benzoylecgonine and cotinine). These chemicals are only produced when a living body processes the drug. You cannot "contaminate" a mummy with metabolites, the person had to have ingested the plant while they were alive.

Since Coca and Tobacco are New World plants. They did not exist in Egypt. Their presence in the internal organs of mummies is strong evidence for trans-oceanic trade with Egypt.

Peruvian Mummies with Egyptian Beetles and Eastern Hemispheric Diseases

AI will likely tell you that Europeans brought TB to the Americas. Yet, there are Peruvian mummies that clearly died from TB based on the x-rays. DNA sequencing in 1994, researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of Chicago extracted DNA from the lungs. The DNA was a 100% match for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This proved TB was somehow crossed the ocean to the Americas long before Columbus. Though the conservative answer is the bacteria had to have "hitchhiked" on animals, like seals from Africa or Middle East. But strains in Peruvian mummies require prolonged human-to-human contact to jump and mutate the way they did. Seals didn't spend enough time hanging out with ancient Peruvians to facilitate a massive cross-continental jump of a specifically human-adapted pathogen. A merchant ship, however, is a floating petri dish.

The Lasioderma serricorne is known as the "tobacco beetle" is native to Egypt. Archaeologists have found these specific beetles inside the wrappings and cranial cavities of these pre-Columbian Peruvian mummies. Beetles don't fly across the ocean. They travel in stored grain, dried plants, or textiles. If an Egyptian beetle is found inside a Peruvian mummy, it means there was an Egyptian product physically present in Peru.

If ChatGPT has a better explanation for how an ancient Egyptian ended up with metabolized South American cocaine in her liver, or how Egyptian pests and bacteria got inside an ancient Peruvian, other than from global trade, I’d love to hear it. As I see it, there seems to have been an Egyptian diffusion in the Americas (1 Nephi 1:2).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3pH3YWiXJ4

Edited March 30 by Pyreaux

[champatsch]

On 3/28/2026 at 4:39 PM, Calm said:

Do you see Joseph as having no input into word choice, but simply transmitting someone else’s translation?

Do you see the language of the dictated text limited to a certain time period?  If so, what is the range of that period?

(2 Nephi 27:24) the Lord shall say unto him that shall read the words that shall be delivered him

Joseph Smith did not choose the wording. Of course he inadvertently made some dictation errors, like a human. And scribes misheard and miswrote. Most but not all of those were caught when the scribe read back what had just been written down.

It is not someone else's translation. It is either the Lord's translation or a translation made under the Lord's direction.

(3 Nephi 21:11) whosoever will not believe in my words—which am Jesus Christ—which the Father shall cause him to bring forth unto the Gentiles and shall give unto him power that he shall bring them forth unto the Gentiles

It is a wide time period – 1390 to 1770 perhaps.

Most people nowadays use the Oxford English Dictionary on a computer, not with a magnifying glass: the online third edition and the second edition on CD (which can be transferred to a drive). One problem with using Webster's is that a particular meaning might be missed. Another is the implication, in the absence of clarification, that the meaning of nonbiblical words is from 1820s American English. Another is that obsolescence is not clearly indicated in Webster's, which that article discusses. And so forth. That said, of course there is meaning persistence in many cases so there is no problem.

[smac97]

10 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

Quote

I have never heard of ancient Egyptians trading with South America.  I asked Chatgbt.  Here is the answer I got.

Short answer: No—there’s no credible evidence that ancient Egyptians traded with South Americans.

So where is this evidence that caused you to make this statement?

Ancient Egyptian Mummies with American Only Drugs

As always, AI doesn't know everything at all times, you have to tell it almost exactly what it should search for, or it won't know or bother to look. it will simply provide the most conservative archaeological view from off the top of its head. The evidence isn't a secret, it’s been causing a massive stir in the scientific community over the last 30 years. The "Cocaine Mummies" is the most famous piece of evidence of the 1992 Balabanova Study.

Dr. Svetlana Balabanova, a German forensic toxicologist, tested the remains of several Egyptian mummies. She found significant traces of American only plants like cocaine and nicotine in the hair, soft tissue, and bones. The mainstream skeptics claimed it must be contamination, but the tests found metabolites (benzoylecgonine and cotinine). These chemicals are only produced when a living body processes the drug. You cannot "contaminate" a mummy with metabolites, the person had to have ingested the plant while they were alive.

Since Coca and Tobacco are New World plants. They did not exist in Egypt. Their presence in the internal organs of mummies is strong evidence for trans-oceanic trade with Egypt.

Peruvian Mummies with Egyptian Beetles and Eastern Hemispheric Diseases

AI will likely tell you that Europeans brought TB to the Americas. Yet, there are Peruvian mummies that clearly died from TB based on the x-rays. DNA sequencing in 1994, researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of Chicago extracted DNA from the lungs. The DNA was a 100% match for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This proved TB was somehow crossed the ocean to the Americas long before Columbus. Though the conservative answer is the bacteria had to have "hitchhiked" on animals, like seals from Africa or Middle East. But strains in Peruvian mummies require prolonged human-to-human contact to jump and mutate the way they did. Seals didn't spend enough time hanging out with ancient Peruvians to facilitate a massive cross-continental jump of a specifically human-adapted pathogen. A merchant ship, however, is a floating petri dish.

The Lasioderma serricorne is known as the "tobacco beetle" is native to Egypt. Archaeologists have found these specific beetles inside the wrappings and cranial cavities of these pre-Columbian Peruvian mummies. Beetles don't fly across the ocean. They travel in stored grain, dried plants, or textiles. If an Egyptian beetle is found inside a Peruvian mummy, it means there was an Egyptian product physically present in Peru.

If ChatGPT has a better explanation for how an ancient Egyptian ended up with metabolized South American cocaine in her liver, or how Egyptian pests and bacteria got inside an ancient Peruvian, other than from global trade, I’d love to hear it. As I see it, there seems to have been an Egyptian diffusion in the Americas (1 Nephi 1:2).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3pH3YWiXJ4

I'm of a "The Jury Is Still Out" way of thinking on this topic. 

I found this article interesting: 

What Were Cocaine, THC, And Nicotine Doing On Ancient Egyptian Mummies?

An excerpt:

Quote

So, how did these seemingly impossible drugs end up in samples of ancient Egyptian mummies? Had Balabanova found a tight, but millennia-spanning, clique of party mummies? 
...

With others failing to find similar drug levels in other mummies, in all likelihood, the cocaine positives were the result of later contamination. It is known that hair samples from non-users can become contaminated with cocaine, and it is still detectable later on, regardless of washing technique. With cocaine popular long before "proper storage of archaeological finds" became a hit, it is probable that the team found modern cocaine on ancient bodies. 

Traces of nicotine are likely not the result of contamination, though we should stress this isn't the part where we tell you that ancient Egyptians nipped over to South America for a bit of baccy rather than coca leaves. Several known European plants contain nicotine, and it is plausible that the ancient Egyptians had ingested them. However, researchers have found few instances of nicotine being converted into cotinine in ancient mummies. Cotinine is considered to be a more reliable indicator of use, as it shows that the drug has been metabolized by the body.

"English scholars have additionally observed how in the 19th century, among the conservation practices of mummies, it was customary to sprinkle them with tobacco dust, as well as pyrethrum, the latter a compound obtained from species of Tanacetum and also identified in the mummy of Ramesses II. Both substances acted as insecticides," Samorini adds. 

"This practice was not limited to Egyptian mummies but to numerous other European and Asian mummies, and it is plausibly this conservation technique that gave rise to the discovery of fragments of tobacco and nicotine in the mummy of Ramesses II and of nicotine in the ‘drugged mummies’ of the Balabanova team."

THC, meanwhile, is a little less controversial, with ancient Egyptians thought to use cannabis to treat bladder infections, eye pain, and potentially as a soothing enema. Yes, apparently, ancient Egyptians could have been boofing weed. However, again, other studies have not found THC on mummies, suggesting contamination or poor practices by the initial research team could be to blame for the results.

In short, while stories of ancient Egyptians traveling the ocean to South America to pick up some cocaine and tobacco might sound fun, it is far more likely that they died unaware of the substances they would later be sprinkled with.

And here:

New World Drugs in Old World Mummies?

Quote

Nicotine
...

So where might they find enough nicotine to metabolize and show up in Balabanova’s tests if they didn’t trade with or travel to South America?

The answer is probably Nicotiana africana, a plant native to the African continent (Merxmüller and Buttler 1975) and concentrations can reach up to 2%. Today, this plant is found in the mountains of northern Namibia. In his 2017 book, Ancient Ocean Crossings: Reconsidering the Case for Contacts with the Pre-Columbian Americas, Stephen Jett suggests that N. africana “contains almost no nicotine” and is too far away. But recent research by Marlin et al (2014) shows that the African variety of tobacco has varied levels of nicotine within the plant itself. Most notably, within the leaves. They found that while nornicotine and anabasine were the primary alkaloids in the leaves of N. africana (83% and 15% respectively), nicotine was present at 2%.

....

Personally, I think N. africana is the likely explanation. The levels of nicotine aren’t extremely high, but it only takes a concentration of about 2% in a gram of leaf. This, by itself, is probably enough to metabolize in the human body and be detectable in the small amounts Balabanova et al have discovered.

Cocaine

 

Today, cocaine—a tropane alkaloid—is produced from from either Erythroxylum coca or Erythroxylum novogranatense, both native to South America.

At least 10 known species of Erythroxylum exist throughout the African continent, plus 9 on Madagascar (in the Indian Ocean but considered an African nation), and several species on the island nation of Mauritius, just east of Madagascar (Görlitz 2016; Bieri et al 2006; Evans 1981). To date, and of the species that were tested, none have yielded signals of cocaine content through chemical analyses, but other tropane alkaloids were found in most.

The general hypothesis is that Erythroxylum originated from either Africa or Madagascar (Islam 2011; Oltman 1968) and Melissa Islam suggests (2011) that the cocaine producing species E. coca and E. novogranatense were artificially selected for from an earlier species. Humans have done much the same with plants that provide food and it could be argued that the cultural significance of coca in South America might be sufficient enough to influence its cultivation.

Dominique Görlitz (2016) argued that the “morphological and physiological differences of Erythroxylum species” is enough to conclude that the cocaine-producing varietals are exclusive to the Americas. During historic times, the clearing of land for crops, timber, or grazing is a serious threat to “endemic and indigenous species” of plants, including those used both historically and prehistorically for medicinal purposes (Suroowan 2019). The number of unknown flowering plant species in the world was estimated to be 10-20 percent higher than those already known (Joppa, Roberts, & Pimm 2010), with many of these living in threatened and fragile habitats.

Given the facts, it’s difficult to imagine under what circumstances Görlitz is able to understand the “morphological and physiological differences” within the Erythroxylum genus well enough to conclude that only the species in the Americas are capable of producing the tropane alkaloid of cocaine. Or that a species, recently extinct, could not have.
...

The most parsimonious explanation—the one that requires the fewest new assumptions to believe true—is that ancient Egyptians made good use of plants already within easy reach.

The notion that they had to travel to South America is a fanciful one, but only because it was a significant technological challenge for any culture 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. As a professional archaeologist, I think I’d be joined by many of my colleagues in congratulating and showing excitement for the person or persons that show solid, physical evidence that can be tested, which demonstrates a trade link between the South American and African continents around the periods these mummies were living, breathing individuals. This kind of evidence could be in the form of indisputable pottery, hieroglyphs detailing the expedition, or maybe even some remnant of N. tobaccum or E. novogranatense that is recognizable in form, through phytolith, by seed, or perhaps even DNA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_transoceanic_contact_theories

Great summary of all the various theories.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Pyreaux]

5 hours ago, smac97 said:

I'm of a "The Jury Is Still Out" way of thinking on this topic. 

I found this article interesting: 

What Were Cocaine, THC, And Nicotine Doing On Ancient Egyptian Mummies?

An excerpt:

And here:

New World Drugs in Old World Mummies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_transoceanic_contact_theories

Great summary of all the various theories.

Thanks,

-Smac

The arguments have massive holes in it. The weakest one is the "contamination" theory suggesting that 19th-century curators sprinkled tobacco on mummies as an insecticide. While sprinkling tobacco explains nicotine on the surface, these sources admit finding cotinine, a reliable indicator of ingestion. If Balabanova found cotinine (which she did), then the "insecticide sprinkling" theory is not any good. A dead body cannot metabolize it into cotinine. Only a living liver can do that.

The sources suggest the "local plant" theory, with Nicotiana africana as a local source for Egyptian nicotine. N. africana contains primarily nornicotine and anabasine. If the Egyptians were using the African plant, the chemicals in the mummies would show those specific alkaloids. Instead, the tests showed a profile consistent with Nicotiana tabacum, the American variety.

The article even resorts to a "ghost plant" theory. The idea that an extinct African species might have produced cocaine, all to avoid the forensic reality of what we know exists in the Americas. The suggestion that two different American only metabolites in one body is explained by hypothetical extinct plants that no one has ever seen is weak.

The most parsimonious explanation is that a single trade route brought these two American plant leaves to Egypt. This explains the cocaine and nicotine metabolites which prove ingestion, not contamination. Also Egyptian beetles and the pathogens in Peruvian mummies. All suggesting trade.

These sources continuing to mention all three theories at once is just as daft as ChatGPT quoting all three golden plates theories at once. It cannot be contamination, local and extinct plants. The plates cannot be a non-existing conspiracy to fraud, a vision, and a prop. If they are all equally viable, what you mean is that you don't know, and each guess is as good as another. That is very Schrodinger.

Edited March 30 by Pyreaux

[Calm]

6 hours ago, champatsch said:

It is not someone else's translation. It is either the Lord's translation or a translation made under the Lord's direction.

Isn’t the Lord or someone he directed a different “someone” than Joseph?

[Calm]

7 hours ago, champatsch said:

Most people nowadays use the Oxford English Dictionary on a computer, not with a magnifying glass

Last time I checked, which was years ago l admitt, I couldn’t find a free version online.

And I adore my edition that requires a magnifying glass (it even has a little drawer for the glass).  It would be like cheating. 😛 

I recognized all those issues with Webster’s, but since all I am aiming for is for people to break out of the “plain reading” trap generally speaking, to on occasion think about how Joseph might have understood it reading it with his vocabulary of his century as opposed to ours, not dealing with much else typically, I only need a substantive alternative contemporary to Joseph definition.  Webster’s is generally sufficient for my needs.  If I need more, it’s Oxford.  I am not a linguist and usually leave the technical discussion on the BoM to those with more training except for asking questions, so that need only pops up now and again.

Is the link you used the best (only?) source for Oxford online?  It would actually be nice to have an alternative since mine is 40 years old.  We do get into debates over definitions in my home, so being able to pull out an authoritative up to date source that includes archaic versions is always a plus for me…still a phone lacks the gravitas of a massive text one can barely pick up (it makes a great doorstop when moving as well, much better for the floor and door than a rock).

That link was rather confusing at a glance, got to get used to the formatting I guess.

Edited March 30 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Pyreaux said:

The arguments has massive holes in it. The weakest one is the "contamination" theory suggesting that 19th-century curators sprinkled tobacco on mummies as an insecticide. While sprinkling tobacco explains nicotine on the surface, these sources admit finding cotinine, a reliable indicator of ingestion. If Balabanova found cotinine (which she did), then the "insecticide sprinkling" theory is not any good. A dead body cannot metabolize it into cotinine. Only a living liver can do that.

The sources suggest the "local plant" theory, with Nicotiana africana as a local source for Egyptian nicotine. N. africana contains primarily nornicotine and anabasine. If the Egyptians were using the African plant, the chemicals in the mummies would show those specific alkaloids. Instead, the tests showed a profile consistent with Nicotiana tabacum, the American variety.

The article even resorts to a "ghost plant" theory. The idea that an extinct African species might have produced cocaine, all to avoid the forensic reality of what we know exists in the Americas. The suggestion that two different American only metabolites in one body is explained by hypothetical extinct plant that no one has ever seen is weak.

The most parsimonious explanation is that a single trade route brought these two American plant leaves to Egypt. This explains the cocaine and nicotine metabolites which prove ingestion, not contamination. Also Egyptian beetles and the pathogens in Peruvian mummies. All suggesting trade.

These sources continuing to mention all three theories at once is just as daft as ChatGPT quoting all three golden plates theories at once. Saying the plates are non-existing conspiracy to fraud, a vision, and a prop all are contrary theories. If they are all equally viable, what you mean is that you don't know, and each guess is as good as another. That is very Schrodinger.

My apologies for appealing to Chat here, but I know little beyond the basic info here as I never researched this topic since I first encounter it eons ago and that was preinternet and very limited.  With this new encounter of your more in depth info, my interest is reawaken.  Therefore, I want to know your response to the criticisms I am seeing on this and since I don’t know the details well enough, I would just be repeating someone else’s summary anyway….and I don’t have to time to go looking for a more trustworthy source…so using Chat.  If Chat is misrepresenting the info, just say so and I will try and find a human discussing the issues instead later:

CHAT:

What’s correct…

Cotinine is a metabolite of nicotine produced by the liver.

In modern toxicology, it’s often used as a biomarker of exposure.

 

Where the argument breaks…

This assumes a closed biological system, but mummies are anything but:

After death, bodies undergo:

Microbial activity

Chemical degradation

Environmental exchange over centuries

 

Studies have shown that:

Post-mortem chemical transformations can occur

Contaminants can penetrate deeply into tissues (including hair shafts)

 

More importantly:

Early 1990s testing (including the work cited) relied on methods like radioimmunoassay, which are:

Prone to cross-reactivity (false positives with similar molecules)

Less specific than modern GC-MS / LC-MS confirmation protocols

 

👉 Bottom line:

Cotinine suggests exposure, but in ancient remains it is NOT definitive proof of ingestion.

———

Claim: The chemical profile matches American tobacco, not African species like Nicotiana africana.

 

What’s correct…

Different Nicotiana species do have different alkaloid profiles.

 

Problems…

The claim assumes:

The testing fully resolved the alkaloid spectrum (it didn’t, by modern standards)

The profile is uniquely diagnostic (it isn’t that clean)

 

Complications:

Alkaloid overlap

Nicotine is not exclusive to Nicotiana tabacum

Other plants (even unrelated ones) contain nicotine or similar alkaloids in small amounts

 

Degradation over time

Alkaloids break down and transform over millennia

You are not measuring a “fresh plant fingerprint”

 

Incomplete comparative database (especially in the 1990s)

African flora was—and still is—under-characterized chemically

 

Edited March 30 by Calm

[smac97]

15 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

The arguments have massive holes in it. The weakest one is the "contamination" theory suggesting that 19th-century curators sprinkled tobacco on mummies as an insecticide. While sprinkling tobacco explains nicotine on the surface, these sources admit finding cotinine, a reliable indicator of ingestion. If Balabanova found cotinine (which she did), then the "insecticide sprinkling" theory is not any good. A dead body cannot metabolize it into cotinine. Only a living liver can do that.

Huh.  So surface sprinkling of tobacco dust (a real 19th-century conservation practice) or museum handling cannot explain how cotinine, being a liver metabolite of nicotine produced only in a living body, was found inside tissues, hair, or bone.

That leaves the "local plant" theory:

15 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

The sources suggest the "local plant" theory, with Nicotiana africana as a local source for Egyptian nicotine. N. africana contains primarily nornicotine and anabasine. If the Egyptians were using the African plant, the chemicals in the mummies would show those specific alkaloids. Instead, the tests showed a profile consistent with Nicotiana tabacum, the American variety.

Thank you for sharing this.  Seems like the advocates of the “local plant” defense are relying on special pleading or untested assumptions.

That leaves the "ghost plant" theory:

15 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

The article even resorts to a "ghost plant" theory. The idea that an extinct African species might have produced cocaine, all to avoid the forensic reality of what we know exists in the Americas. The suggestion that two different American only metabolites in one body is explained by hypothetical extinct plant that no one has ever seen is weak.

This theory, then, is speculative and untestable.  No one has ever identified such a plant in the archaeological or botanical record, so the theory feels like an ad-hoc rescue hypothesis.

15 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

The most parsimonious explanation is that a single trade route brought these two American plant leaves to Egypt. This explains the cocaine and nicotine metabolites which prove ingestion, not contamination. Also Egyptian beetles and the pathogens in Peruvian mummies. All suggesting trade.

Neither article discusses "Egyptian beetles and the pathogens in Peruvian mummies."  Are you bringing those two data points in as a "all things considered" kind of way?

15 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

These sources continuing to mention all three theories at once is just as daft as ChatGPT quoting all three golden plates theories at once. Saying the plates are non-existing conspiracy to fraud, a vision, and a prop all are contrary theories. If they are all equally viable, what you mean is that you don't know, and each guess is as good as another. That is very Schrodinger.

Let me play Devil's Advocate here (honest, as I am very much a neophyte on this topic). 

Based on the two articles I read, and a few others, it seems like parsimony is being claimed by both sides.  With the help of Grok:

The articles' arguments for parsimony: Local African plants + contamination + known Egyptian practices require fewer new assumptions than positing transatlantic voyages:

• Nicotine: Real, documented African species (Nicotiana africana, native to Namibia) contains nicotine (≈2% of alkaloids) and could have been used medicinally. No new continent-spanning trade needed.
• Cocaine: The Erythroxylum genus (coca family) originated in Africa/Madagascar; an extinct or undiscovered African species that once produced cocaine is plausible biogeographically. Alternatively, modern/post-excavation contamination (19th-century tobacco dust, museum handling, or lab pollutants).
• THC: Cannabis was already well-known and used in ancient Egypt (texts, seeds, residues).
• Overall parsimony argument: “The one that requires the fewest new assumptions” (Feagans’ exact words). We don’t have to invent Egyptian ships capable of repeated Atlantic crossings, sustained trade networks, or cultural exchange—none of which left any archaeological, genetic, textual, or iconographic trace. Contamination + local/possible plants fits the existing evidence with minimal invention.

Your argument for parsimony: A single limited trade route from the Americas to Egypt is more parsimonious because it explains the full chemical profile (cocaine + nicotine + cotinine) with one mechanism.

• Cotinine proves ingestion (only a living liver produces it), so surface contamination or sprinkling tobacco dust fails.
• Alkaloid profile matches American Nicotiana tabacum far better than African N. africana (which is nornicotine-dominant).
• The “extinct African coca plant” is an untestable ghost hypothesis with zero evidence.
• One trade route neatly accounts for two American-only metabolites appearing together in the same bodies (plus possible supporting clues like beetles/pathogens, though not in the articles).
• Listing multiple contradictory mundane theories (contamination OR local plant OR extinct plant) is hedging and therefore unparsimonious—like Schrödinger’s cat explanations.

Seems like each argument relies on an unverified point ("an extinct or undiscovered African species" for the article, "Egyptian ships capable of repeated Atlantic crossings, sustained trade networks, or cultural exchange" for you).  Is that a fair assessment?

For me, I think the "sustained trade networks" and "cultural exchange" expectations to be pretty weak.  There are all sorts of ways evidence of trade could not been lost through the centuries.  As for "Egyptian ships," that seems to be a more potent objection to your theory.  Is it possible that there was an intermediary?  A non-Egyptian, old-world trader that could have had, or facilitated trade between, Egypt and the Americas?

I asked Grok about this.  The response:

Quote

Yes, an intermediary (a non-Egyptian Old World trader or middleman) is a logically possible variant of the contact hypothesis—and it’s one that some proponents of the “cocaine mummies” idea have floated to get around the “Egyptian ships” objection you rightly flag as stronger. But it doesn’t actually strengthen the overall parsimony claim; if anything, it weakens it further. Here’s a clear breakdown.

1. The “Egyptian ships” objection is indeed the bigger hurdle

You’re correct. Ancient Egyptians were superb riverine and coastal sailors (they routinely sailed the Nile, the eastern Mediterranean, and made the Red Sea run to Punt for myrrh and incense). But there is zero archaeological, iconographic, or textual evidence they possessed blue-water, ocean-going vessels capable of repeated Atlantic crossings—let alone the navigation, provisioning, and return-trip technology that would be required. That remains the single strongest practical barrier for any direct-Egypt-to-Americas scenario.

2. The intermediary idea (Phoenicians/Carthaginians as middlemen) is not new

Some contact-theory writers (including a few blog posts and fringe-history pieces) explicitly propose that Phoenicians or their Carthaginian descendants acted as the traders:

• Phoenicians were the ancient world’s premier long-distance mariners (they circumnavigated Africa, traded tin from Britain, and established colonies across the Mediterranean).
• They could, in theory, have picked up coca/tobacco in the Americas and sold the high-value drugs onward to Egyptian elites without the Egyptians ever leaving the Nile.
• A few sources even tie this to biblical “Ophir” trade or Carthaginian coins that some (now-debunked) interpretations claimed showed a map of the Americas.

This intermediary route removes the need for Egyptian transatlantic capability, which is why it feels like a cleaner fix for the ship problem you mentioned.

So far, this analysis seems to make facial sense.  What do you think?

Quote

3. Why it still doesn’t help parsimony much

Even with an intermediary, the hypothesis still requires more extraordinary assumptions than the skeptical “local plants + contamination” story:

• No traces anywhere in the chain: We would expect some evidence of American plants (pollen, seeds, residues, or trade goods) turning up in Phoenician/Carthaginian ports, warehouses, shipwrecks, or trading colonies. None exists. The same absence that hurts direct Egyptian contact also hurts the middleman version.

I'm not sure about this.  You are arguing that we do have "some evidence" of American plants in the Old World.  Its not a lot of evidence, largely because most things occurring in antiquity do not survive the long passage of time.  But some do, such as the data points you are referencing.  These data points were found only incident to arduous preservation techniques relating to mummies.  I doubt Phoenician/Carthaginian traders were at all interested in preserving their efforts.  

What are your thoughts here?

Quote

• Extra layer of actors: Now you need another sophisticated seafaring culture (Phoenicians/Carthaginians) to have made the Atlantic round trips and kept the source secret or unrecorded for centuries. That multiplies the number of un evidenced entities rather than reducing them.

This sounds more difficult than it really is.  I don't think your theory requires that all Phoenicians/Carthaginians had transatlantic contact.  A relative few, servicing Egyptian elites, may have been enough to account for both the presence of the forensics and the difficulty of transatlantic travel.  

Quote

• Scale and repetition: The mummy data (if taken at face value) spans multiple centuries and multiple high-status individuals. That implies ongoing, repeated trade—not a one-off accidental voyage. Sustained trade still needs ports, supply chains, and some economic incentive, none of which left any mark.

Not sure about this, either.  We are, after all, talking about plants.  Is it possible that Phoenicians/Carthaginians instigated the trade, and that the Egyptians cultivated the plants in some very limited form (again, just for the elites)?

Quote

• Evidence-loss argument: You’re right that some evidence can degrade or be lost over 3,000 years. But the complete silence across multiple independent lines (archaeology, genetics, texts, iconography, pollen records) is harder to explain away when we do have clear evidence of other long-distance Egyptian/Phoenician trade (e.g., to Punt or Britain). The absence is more telling than in a one-off event.

Mainstream archaeology therefore treats the intermediary version the same way as the direct-Egyptian version: interesting as speculation, but still far less parsimonious than the mundane explanations (real African Nicotiana africana for nicotine, possible extinct African Erythroxylum or contamination for cocaine, and well-documented local cannabis for THC).

This sounds like special pleading, of the "Sheer speculation about ghost plants is parsimonious, but semi-vindicated speculation about transatlantic trading (presence of America-only plants in Egypt) is not" variety.

It also assumes a bit much about "mainstream archaeology" being more empirically-minded than it actually is.  How much of its skepticism is rooted in dispassionate empirical analysis, and how much in community-wide inertia and resistance to finds that substantially alter the status quo?

Quote

Bottom line on parsimony

The skeptical side still has the stronger claim: their explanations rely on things we already know existed (African nicotine plants, cannabis use, 19th-century museum practices, and the biogeographical possibility of an African coca relative) and require only modest, testable gaps. Adding an intermediary doesn’t remove the extraordinary transatlantic-crossing assumption—it just relocates it to a different culture that also left no supporting evidence. It solves the “Egyptian ships” problem at the cost of creating new ones.

Your instinct that evidence can be lost is fair, but in this specific debate the total lack of corroboration across so many independent datasets is what keeps the contact hypothesis (intermediary or direct) on the fringe. It’s a fascinating puzzle, and the intermediary idea is a clever workaround—but it doesn’t flip the parsimony balance.

Thoughts here?

I appreciate your input.

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

I went back to Grok about its "parsimony" assessment above.  My prompt:

Quote

This sounds like special pleading, of the "Sheer speculation about ghost plants is parsimonious, but semi-vindicated speculation about transatlantic trading (presence of America-only plants in Egypt) is not" variety.

It also assumes a bit much about "mainstream archaeology" being more empirically-minded than it actually is.  How much of its skepticism is rooted in dispassionate empirical analysis, and how much in community-wide inertia and resistance to finds that substantially alter the status quo?

Grok's response:

Quote

You're raising a fair and sharp objection—one that's been leveled at the skeptical literature for decades. Let's cut through it directly, without hedging.

Is the "ghost plant" vs. transatlantic-trade comparison special pleading?

Yes, it has that flavor on the surface, and your phrasing nails the asymmetry critics (including your friend) see:

• Skeptics say: "An extinct/undiscovered African Erythroxylum species that produced cocaine is a modest, parsimonious possibility—because the genus originated in Africa/Madagascar anyway. No need for ocean voyages."
• Contact side replies: "But you have zero direct evidence for that plant—no fossils, no residues, no texts—while we do have chemical metabolites of American plants (cocaine + nicotine + cotinine) in Egyptian tissues. Why is your invisible plant more parsimonious than a limited trade event that explains the actual data we have?"

This is the strongest part of your (and your friend's) pushback. The extinct-African-coca hypothesis is untestable speculation right now. It is the single weakest link in the mainstream explanation, and many skeptics treat it too casually as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Feagans (the 2019 blog you read) leans on it heavily; Samorini (the ethnobotanist heavily quoted in the IFLScience piece) is more cautious but still frames the whole thing as "impossible" from an Old-World-only standpoint.

The "impossible" think doesn't really work for me.  Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition comes to mind.

Quote

That said, the two speculations are not equivalent in scale:

Hypothesis	What it assumes	Scale of new assumption	Testability / Supporting context
Ghost/extinct African coca	One plant species (or variant) in the already-known genus Erythroxylum once produced cocaine in Africa	Small biogeographical tweak	Low (but fits known plant-family origins)
Transatlantic trade (direct or via Phoenician intermediary)	Sophisticated ocean-going ships, repeated voyages, viable plant transport, sustained economic incentive, cultural exchange networks	Entire undocumented maritime trade system + technology	Extremely low (zero corroboration in ships, ports, artifacts, pollen, DNA, texts, or iconography)

 

The contact hypothesis isn't "semi-vindicated" by the chemistry alone—it still requires inventing a historically unprecedented event that left no trace anywhere except the disputed mummy residues. That's why most archaeologists see it as the larger leap, even granting the ghost-plant weakness.

On mainstream archaeology's skepticism: empirical rigor or institutional inertia?

Both—and the mix varies by subfield. You're right not to treat "mainstream archaeology" as a dispassionate monolith; every academic field has social dynamics, career incentives, and paradigm inertia.

• Evidence of genuine empirical analysis here:
  • Balabanova's original work (and some follow-ups) has been criticized on methodological grounds for decades: inadequate controls for contamination, lack of blind testing, inconsistent replication, and possible over-interpretation (Samorini's 2024 paper goes further and raises the possibility of outright "ghost" or falsified studies).
  • The chemical data have been re-examined multiple times; the alkaloid-profile mismatch for nicotine (N. africana vs. American tabacum) and the isolated nature of the findings are real problems.
  • Archaeology does accept paradigm shifts when the evidence is robust and multi-line: Clovis-first was overturned by pre-Clovis sites; Göbekli Tepe forced a rethink of "primitive" hunter-gatherers; sweet-potato genetics and chicken DNA confirmed limited Polynesian–South American contact; Norse Vinland is textbook.
• Evidence of inertia/resistance:
  • Diffusionist ideas (pre-Columbian Old–New World contact) do face extra scrutiny because they challenge the long-dominant "isolationist" model of the Americas. Some proponents (e.g., geographer Stephen Jett) have explicitly complained about "a good deal of inertia, a good deal of resistance."
  • Career and funding pressures exist: proposing something that requires rewriting textbooks can be risky for junior scholars. The "cocaine mummies" story has attracted fringe enthusiasm (ancient-astronaut, hyper-diffusionist circles), which can make serious researchers wary of even engaging.

Net assessment: In this specific case, the skepticism is more empirically grounded than pure gatekeeping. The chemical traces are intriguing but isolated, contested on methods, and contradicted by the total absence of supporting data across every other line of inquiry (archaeobotany, maritime archaeology, genetics, texts). If a Phoenician shipwreck turned up with coca leaves, or American tobacco pollen appeared in an Egyptian port, or DNA links emerged, the field would shift—history shows it does when the evidence crosses the threshold. The "ghost plant" is the least satisfying part of the skeptical story, and your friend is right to hammer it. But it doesn't make the full contact hypothesis the more parsimonious explanation yet. It keeps the debate alive as a genuine puzzle rather than settled fact.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Calm]

Quote

while we do have chemical metabolites of American plants (cocaine + nicotine + cotinine) in Egyptian tissues.

I think the point that chemical testing was not as precise in the 90s (this was the original test period, yes? Has the testing been replicated with current tech?) and only partial (has there been fuller testing of profiles?) as well needs to be addressed as does lack of replication.  Not saying it hasn’t been addressed. (Added looks like chat was inaccurate, I am shocked!!!)

Would be interested in seeing documentation that no postmortem chemical decomposition/reactions would produce the same profile as ingestion as given in the rebuttal info I posted as its Chat and I don’t accept its sayso automatically as certain things seem vulnerable to hallucination and this feels like one of them….not that alkaloids break down over time,that is obvious to me, rather that such degraded alkaloids would produce similar enough profiles to ingested nicotine profiles where they wouldn’t if fresh.

Quote

 

Alkaloids break down and transform over millennia

You are not measuring a “fresh plant fingerprint”

The ghost plant….I think the fact that the database of African plants is less complete than many places is a valid point.

Again, know nothing about this area, so Chat for a guesstimate, which it provided with a disclaimer over lack of precision.  If accurate (if 80% to take the smallest number), that is a good amount of plants that haven’t been tested, so could be potential candidates for a “ghost plant”.  Not saying every untested plant is a good candidate, but if there are 45-60,000 plants native to Africa, there might be a number of more likely candidates that haven’t been profiled yet.  Even just a half dozen is significant.  Remember not talking about identical profiles, but cross-reactivity such as with nicotine like structures, Nornicotine or Anabasine or combo or something similar.  I wonder how likely false positives are these days and have such more precise tests been done? (Added:  if cross reactivity is ruled out due to the more precise test being actually used, then it raises the unlikeliness…but the low rate of tested profiles does seem to still leave open the plausibility windows for me at this point).

For me, got to wonder as plants used anciently domestically seem like they would be more likely to have been tested than plants in the wild, so that would drop the percentage of untested plants way down….the claim is use over time, correct, not a one time experiment?

Quote

 

🧪 2) Chemical / phytochemical coverage (what compounds they contain)

This is the relevant layer for your question—and it’s dramatically less complete.

Plants with any phytochemical study: estimated 10–20% globally

Plants with well-characterized alkaloid profiles: likely <5–10%

 

Databases like:

Kew Royal Botanic Gardens

NAPRALERT

…contain large amounts of data, but they are:

Sparse outside medicinal or economically important plants

Biased toward:

Traditional medicine species

Toxic plants

Crop relatives

👉 For many African plants, we have:

No alkaloid profile

Or only partial screening (not full compound identification)

 

Then there are the issues of time and testing…

Quote

How likely is convergent evolution of nicotine-like compounds?

Quite plausible.

Plants evolve alkaloids mainly for:

Insect defense

Anti-herbivory toxicity

And they repeatedly “discover” similar solutions using:

The same amino acid precursors

The same enzyme classes (methyltransferases, oxidases, etc.)

This is a textbook case of convergent evolution.

👉 Translation:

Different plant lineages can independently evolve chemically similar molecules.

🧪 4) What would it take to produce nicotine specifically?

Nicotine itself requires:

Coupling of two specific metabolic branches

Enzymatic specialization seen clearly in Nicotiana

So:

Exact nicotine production outside Nicotiana is rare (as far as we know)

But:

“Near-nicotine” compounds are not rare

And detection methods (especially 1990s ones) may not distinguish them cleanly

 

⚠️ 5) Degradation complicates everything

In a mummy context:

Alkaloids can:

Oxidize

Demethylate

Rearrange chemically over time

So what you detect after 2,000–3,000 years is:

Not necessarily the original compound

Possibly a degradation product or transformed molecule

👉 This weakens any argument that relies on a precise modern chemical fingerprint.

 

Edited March 30 by Calm

[Pyreaux]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

My apologies for appealing to Chat here, but I know little beyond the basic info here as I never researched this topic since I first encounter it eons ago and that was preinternet and very limited.  With this new encounter of your more in depth info, my interest is reawaken.  Therefore, I want to know your response to the criticisms I am seeing on this and since I don’t know the details well enough, I would just be repeating someone else’s summary anyway….and I don’t have to time to go looking for a more trustworthy source…so using Chat.  If Chat is misrepresenting the info, just say so and I will try and find a human discussing the issues instead later:

CHAT:

What’s correct…

Cotinine is a metabolite of nicotine produced by the liver.

In modern toxicology, it’s often used as a biomarker of exposure.

 

Where the argument breaks…

This assumes a closed biological system, but mummies are anything but:

After death, bodies undergo:

Microbial activity

Chemical degradation

Environmental exchange over centuries

 

Studies have shown that:

Post-mortem chemical transformations can occur

Contaminants can penetrate deeply into tissues (including hair shafts)

 

More importantly:

Early 1990s testing (including the work cited) relied on methods like radioimmunoassay, which are:

Prone to cross-reactivity (false positives with similar molecules)

claiming the 90s tech (Radioimmunoassay/RIA) was prone to false positives.

• The Rebuttal: Balabanova did use GC-MS (Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry) for her confirmatory tests. GC-MS was the "gold standard" in 1992 and it is still the "gold standard" in 2026.

   

   

• The "Hair Shaft" Evidence: Modern hair testing (2000-2020) has proven that external contaminants can be washed off. Balabanova used a wash-and-test protocol where she tested the "wash water" to ensure no drugs were on the surface before testing the internal hair shaft. The drugs were inside the hair

/ LC-MS confirmation protocols

 

👉 Bottom line:

Cotinine suggests exposure, but in ancient remains it is NOT definitive proof of ingestion.

———

Claim: The chemical profile matches American tobacco, not African species like Nicotiana africana.

 

What’s correct…

Different Nicotiana species do have different alkaloid profiles.

 

Problems…

The claim assumes:

The testing fully resolved the alkaloid spectrum (it didn’t, by modern standards)

The profile is uniquely diagnostic (it isn’t that clean)

 

Complications:

Alkaloid overlap

Nicotine is not exclusive to Nicotiana tabacum

Other plants (even unrelated ones) contain nicotine or similar alkaloids in small amounts

 

Degradation over time

Alkaloids break down and transform over millennia

You are not measuring a “fresh plant fingerprint”

 

Incomplete comparative database (especially in the 1990s)

African flora was—and still is—under-characterized chemically

It looks like its relying upon 2026 IFLScience, a pop-science outlet. Cross-reactivity happens in immunoassays (cheap, preliminary tests). It does not happen in GC-MS (Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry), which Balabanova used as her confirmatory method. GC-MS identifies a molecule by its molecular weight and fragmentation pattern.

It claims the 90s Radioimmunoassay/RIA was prone to false positives and is not as specific as modern GC-MS. Yet Balabanova did use GC-MS for her confirmatory tests. GC-MS was the standard in 1992 and it is still the standard in 2026. Since the 1992 study, other researchers, like Parsche and Nerlich in 1995, performed follow-up tests using more advanced mass spectrometry on the same mummies and confirmed the presence of both nicotine and cocaine. This argument is a historical myth.

IFLScience also claims nicotine is found in eggplants, peppers, and cauliflower, so the Egyptians were just eating a lot of veggies. Nicotine exists in trace amounts in those plants, it is measured in micrograms. The levels found in the mummies were in nanograms per milligram of hair. An ancient Egyptian would have had to consume roughly 800 pounds of eggplant in a single sitting.

Cotinine is a polar molecule created by an enzymatic reaction in the liver. If the chemicals are degrading and transforming, they would be less likely to look like a perfect match for cocaine and nicotine. Degradation makes things harder to detect, not easier to mistake for a complex South American drug.

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

 

 

Let me play Devil's Advocate here (honest, as I am very much a neophyte on this topic). 

Based on the two articles I read, and a few others, it seems like parsimony is being claimed by both sides.  With the help of Grok:

The articles' arguments for parsimony: Local African plants + contamination + known Egyptian practices require fewer new assumptions than positing transatlantic voyages:

• Nicotine: Real, documented African species (Nicotiana africana, native to Namibia) contains nicotine (≈2% of alkaloids) and could have been used medicinally. No new continent-spanning trade needed.
• Cocaine: The Erythroxylum genus (coca family) originated in Africa/Madagascar; an extinct or undiscovered African species that once produced cocaine is plausible biogeographically. Alternatively, modern/post-excavation contamination (19th-century tobacco dust, museum handling, or lab pollutants).
• THC: Cannabis was already well-known and used in ancient Egypt (texts, seeds, residues).
• Overall parsimony argument: “The one that requires the fewest new assumptions” (Feagans’ exact words). We don’t have to invent Egyptian ships capable of repeated Atlantic crossings, sustained trade networks, or cultural exchange—none of which left any archaeological, genetic, textual, or iconographic trace. Contamination + local/possible plants fits the existing evidence with minimal invention.

Your argument for parsimony: A single limited trade route from the Americas to Egypt is more parsimonious because it explains the full chemical profile (cocaine + nicotine + cotinine) with one mechanism.

• Cotinine proves ingestion (only a living liver produces it), so surface contamination or sprinkling tobacco dust fails.
• Alkaloid profile matches American Nicotiana tabacum far better than African N. africana (which is nornicotine-dominant).
• The “extinct African coca plant” is an untestable ghost hypothesis with zero evidence.
• One trade route neatly accounts for two American-only metabolites appearing together in the same bodies (plus possible supporting clues like beetles/pathogens, though not in the articles).
• Listing multiple contradictory mundane theories (contamination OR local plant OR extinct plant) is hedging and therefore unparsimonious—like Schrödinger’s cat explanations.

Seems like each argument relies on an unverified point ("an extinct or undiscovered African species" for the article, "Egyptian ships capable of repeated Atlantic crossings, sustained trade networks, or cultural exchange" for you).  Is that a fair assessment?

For me, I think the "sustained trade networks" and "cultural exchange" expectations to be pretty weak.  There are all sorts of ways evidence of trade could not been lost through the centuries.  As for "Egyptian ships," that seems to be a more potent objection to your theory.  Is it possible that there was an intermediary?  A non-Egyptian, old-world trader that could have had, or facilitated trade between, Egypt and the Americas?

I asked Grok about this.  The response:

So far, this analysis seems to make facial sense.  What do you think?

I'm not sure about this.  You are arguing that we do have "some evidence" of American plants in the Old World.  Its not a lot of evidence, largely because most things occurring in antiquity do not survive the long passage of time.  But some do, such as the data points you are referencing.  These data points were found only incident to arduous preservation techniques relating to mummies.  I doubt Phoenician/Carthaginian traders were at all interested in preserving their efforts.  

What are your thoughts here?

This sounds more difficult than it really is.  I don't think your theory requires that all Phoenicians/Carthaginians had transatlantic contact.  A relative few, servicing Egyptian elites, may have been enough to account for both the presence of the forensics and the difficulty of transatlantic travel.  

Not sure about this, either.  We are, after all, talking about plants.  Is it possible that Phoenicians/Carthaginians instigated the trade, and that the Egyptians cultivated the plants in some very limited form (again, just for the elites)?

This sounds like special pleading, of the "Sheer speculation about ghost plants is parsimonious, but semi-vindicated speculation about transatlantic trading (presence of America-only plants in Egypt) is not" variety.

It also assumes a bit much about "mainstream archaeology" being more empirically-minded than it actually is.  How much of its skepticism is rooted in dispassionate empirical analysis, and how much in community-wide inertia and resistance to finds that substantially alter the status quo?

Thoughts here?

I appreciate your input.

Thanks,

-Smac

A philosophic parsimony like Occam’s Razor is misapplied to forensic evidence. In a courtroom, if you find a specific person's DNA at a crime scene, a parsimonious explanation isn't to claim the scene was contaminated, another unknown person with identical DNA committed the crime, or that the matching DNA evolved spontaneously, rather that the person with the DNA in your custody was there.

For the theory to work, we must assume a plant that has never been seen, has no fossil record, and conveniently produced the exact same complex alkaloid as two South American plants.

I don't have to assume the idea of seafaring ships. We know ancient humans had ships. We know the Ra II proved a reed boat can cross the Atlantic. We know the Phoenicians circumnavigated Africa. We know the Polynesians traded with South America, which is mainstream science now. Polynesian chickens were found in pre-Columbian Chile. DNA evidence proves that the Sweet Potato traveled from the Andes to Polynesia before Columbus. 

There were all sorts of middlemen. The Egyptian got their marijuana from China. China sold it to the Scythians and Persians, who sold to the Phoenicians, who sold to the Egyptians. They were all notoriously secretive about their trade routes to maintain monopolies. They'd famously sank their own ships rather than let Romans follow them to the "Tin Islands" of Britain. If they traded in drugs, those are consumed. They won't leave behind much archeological evidence, but what would be left behind would be metabolites in the people who bought them, likely the dying elite seeking exotic medicines and pain killers.

Grok's claim Nicotiana africana explains the nicotine is chemically illiterate. N. africana is dominated by nornicotine. American N. tabacum is dominated by nicotine. The Balabanova study found a high nicotine-to-cotinine ratio, not a nornicotine profile. To suggest Egyptians used N. africana is like saying if someone who tested positive for caffeine actually just ate a lot of chocolate, the chemical is different.

Edited March 30 by Pyreaux