---
title: "Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories"
chunk: 9/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_transoceanic_contact_theories"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:37:53.813777+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Traces of coca and nicotine which are found in some Egyptian mummies have led to speculation that Ancient Egyptians may have had contact with the New World. The initial discovery was made by a German toxicologist Svetlana Balabanova after examining the mummy of a priestess named Henut Taui. Follow-up tests on the hair shaft, which were performed in order to rule out the possibility of contamination, revealed the same results.
A television show reported that examinations of numerous Sudanese mummies which were also undertaken by Balabanova mirrored what was found in the mummy of Henut Taui. Balabanova suggested that the tobacco may be accounted for since it may have also been known in China and Europe, as indicated by analyses run on human remains from those respective regions. Balabanova proposed that such plants native to the general area may have developed independently, but have since gone extinct. Other explanations include fraud, though curator Alfred Grimm of the Egyptian Museum in Munich disputes this. Skeptical of Balabanova's findings, Rosalie David, Keeper of Egyptology at the Manchester Museum, had similar tests performed on samples which were taken from the Manchester mummy collection and she reported that two of the tissue samples and one hair sample tested positive for the presence of nicotine.
However, mainstream scholars remain skeptical, and they do not see the results of these tests as proof of ancient contact between Africa and the Americas, especially because there could be Old World sources of cocaine and nicotine. Two attempts to replicate Balabanova's findings of cocaine failed, suggesting "that either Balabanova and her associates are misinterpreting their results or that the samples of mummies tested by them have been mysteriously exposed to cocaine".
A re-examination of the mummy of Ramesses II in the 1970s revealed the presence of fragments of tobacco leaves in its abdomen. This finding became a popular topic in fringe literature and the media and it was seen as proof of contact between Ancient Egypt and the New World. The investigator Maurice Bucaille noted that when the mummy was unwrapped in 1886 the abdomen was left open and "it was no longer possible to attach any importance to the presence inside the abdominal cavity of whatever material was found there, since the material could have come from the surrounding environment." Following the renewed discussion of tobacco sparked by Balabanova's research and its mention in a 2000 publication by Rosalie David, a study in the journal Antiquity suggested that reports of both tobacco and cocaine in mummies "ignored their post-excavation histories" and pointed out that the mummy of Ramesses II had been moved five times between 1883 and 1975.

=== Claims of travel in Roman times ===
Pomponius Mela writes, and is copied by Pliny the Elder, that Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer (died 59 BCE), proconsul in Gaul, received "several Indians" (Indi) who had been driven by a storm to the coasts of Germania as a present from a foreign king, listed by Mela, in different manuscripts, as rege Boorum/Boiorum/Botorum and usually identified in recent scholarship as king of the Boii, though Tausend (1999) argued that it might be corrupted name of the Goths; Pliny identifies the king as the ruler of the Suebi instead:

Ultra Caspium sinum quidnam esset, ambiguum aliquamdiu fuit, idemne Oceanus an tellus infesta frigoribus sine ambitu ac sine fine proiecta. Sed praeter physicos Homerumque qui universum orbem mari circumfusum esse dixerunt, Cornelius Nepos ut recentior, auctoritate sic certior; testem autem rei Quintum Metellum Celerem adicit, eumque ita rettulisse commemorat: cum Galliae pro consule praeesset, Indos quosdam a rege Boiorum dono sibi datos; unde in eas terras devenissent requirendo cognosse, vi tempestatium ex Indicis aequoribus abreptos, emensosque quae intererant, tandem in Germaniae litora exisse. Restat ergo pelagus, sed reliqua lateris eiusdem adsiduo gelu durantur et ideo deserta sunt.

For a long time it was doubtful what there was beyond the Caspian bay: whether the same Ocean, or a land infested with cold, spreading out without circumference and boundless. But, in addition to the natural Philosophers and Homer, who have said that the whole universe was surrounded by sea, Cornelius Nepos, as more recent in authority and hence more certain, is available. Moreover he adds Quintus Metellus Celer as a witness to the fact, and asserts that he related this account: that while he was in charge of the Gauls as proconsul, certain Indians were given to him by a king of the Boii as a gift; and that in inquiring whence they had arrived into these regions, he learned that, driven from Indian waters by the violence of tempests, they had passed over the seas which intervened and finally had come through onto the shores of Germany. Therefore, there remains the sea, but the remaining places of this same side are held in the grip of continual cold and hence are deserted.