History Forum / General / Archaeology / December 2006

I cited my refs, let me do it again. "Persephone's Quest" by
Ethnobotanist RG wasson. IIRC originally published in 1967, but still
in print from several sources. He didnt call it the "soma road', but
simply noted the many refs to the use of A. Muscaria in the Vedas, and
also reported on his conversations with Ugarit Shamen who still use it
in ritual, and connected the dots, suggesting it was exported from the
coniferous forests south all the way to India. Makes perfect sense.

I've found it growing in the woods, and after drying, a shopping bag of
toadstools only weighs about 300 grams. There'd be a lotta profit is
shipping something so light but so powerful. Just one kg would be
enough to dose 100-150 people. A single ox could carry 300-500 hits.

Within the past year, a city, dating from before the Pyramids, was
found in the Kara Kum, apparently by looking at satellite radar maps
which showed the compresison of the soil from ancient trade routes. It
is midway between India and the Urals. But also at the same latitude as
what we know as the Silk Road route running east from ports on the
Black Sea.

Also posted on the net you will find hits for "Tripolye", a city on the
Dneipr, some 9 times larger than Semetic Ur, and a thousand years
older. It turns out there was a lot more trade going on long before the
recognized classic civilizations of the Fertile Crescent. Anyway, south
of that city, two temples were found, at Gonur and Togoluk, which were
reported by EW Barber in "The Mummies of Urumchi. They were abandoned
around 2000 BCE. http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/var008.htm has a later,
mid 2nd mil date, and makes ref to another site, but in any case all of
them were involved in what we'd now call 'the drug trade'.

However, if you understand the attitude expressed in the Vedas, you see
they were sacred pilgramage sites. Christianity vigorously tried to
stamp out the use of entheogens from ancient times and more recently in
living indigeneous tribes because those who experience the altered
states of consciousness dont agree with the concept of reality posited
by scripture.  As Neitzsche said in "The Genealogy of Morals", this
propaganda has been so pervasive for so long that most people believe
it is a part of their own nature. Wasson makes similar comments about
the mychophobia he noted in Christian cultures.

Your notion that it was all 'prefabricated' by me, is typical of those
who have not looked into this free of Christian dogma. There is also
somewhat of an intellectual turf war going on by all those who've been
in academic archaeology... which was originally founded to prove the
historicity of scripture. Many have built their careers on Levantine
digs, and dont want the focus shifted to the deserts of Central Asia.

However, that effort is basically doomed; partly because of all the
political instability, but also because of the development of modern
forensic technologies to identify sites that lack the monumental
stonework that first got attention, and the unraveling of what went on
there. The scripture and inscription on the stone work often lies, but
the garbage dumps never do.

Opium resin contains 10-16% morphine. Therefore, morphine is the
natural product and only needs to be purified. Chemical reactions are
needed to convert morphine to heroin, i.e. a synthetic product.
Bernard