Video Review Guide 

The Curse of the Cocaine Mummies

1996, 53 minutes, color, Discovery Channel
See a full transcript of this video!

Summary 

When toxicologist Svetla Balabanova discovered heavy concentrations of both cocaine and nicotine in mummies from a Munich, Germany museum, many questions were raised. Initially, she was accused of sloppy lab work or instrument contamination. That ruled out, contamination of the mummies themselves was considered. Did the materials get into the mummies from later contamination? Hair shaft tests proved that some  nicotine was consumed. Were the mummies fakes, common in museums, faked and purchased during the last century. Apparently not.

The video is a good demonstration of how science works to eliminate possibilities. For example, it is possible that nicotine-bearing plants were available in Africa. Left open, is the question of cocaine, apparently only available in South America.  

This leads to questions of transoceanic contact which are explored in detail in the last half of the video. Skeptics point out how scanty the evidence really is for trade routes that might have included America. Some good scholars (Kehoe, Bernal) favor the evidence and believe that trade was likely. The narrator raises some seriously erroneous issues about how science works. Pay careful attention to the concluding remarks.

Questions 

1. How were the nicotine and cocaine discovered in the mummies? What does this say about some discoveries in science?
2. What did the search for nicotine plants native to Africa demonstrate? 
3. Are there serious issues about the nature of the use of nicotine in Egypt and America that go unexplored?
4. What is the nature of the evidence for transoceanic trade?
5. Are any serious questions omitted from the discussion? What kind of diffusion would such trade be? What sorts of evidences should appear besides  the drugs themselves? 
6. In what way does the narrator give an erroneous version of how science works? Why is this misleading?

| Main | Outline | Brief | Brief Schedule | Debunking Tools | Video Guides | Projects | Final |

larry-zimmerman@uiowa.edu
University of Iowa Anthropology
08/18/98