Cocaine came to Europe 200 years earlier than thought: it was discovered in the 17th century. in the human brain Business

Traces of cocaine found in mummified brain tissue reveal that Europeans were chewing the leaves of the coca tree in the 17th century, two centuries before the earliest recorded use of the plant in the Old World, according to a new study.

Researchers have found traces of cocaine in the brain tissue of two mummified people buried in a well-preserved crypt in Milan. The crypt belonged to the former Ca’ Granda Hospital, which historically treated the poor.

Out of approximately 10 thousand Crypt researchers studied nine people who died in a hospital in the 1600s. and were naturally mummified, brain tissue. Traces of cocaine were found in two of them.

The leaves of the coca tree, from which cocaine is extracted, have been chewed for thousands of years in their native South America, but the drug did not become widespread in Europe until the 19th century, when it was chemically isolated from the plant.

“These laboratory studies not only predate cocaine’s arrival in Europe by nearly two centuries, but also demonstrate that some Milanese had contact with this New World plant and chewed or brewed its leaves as a tea,” Live Science via email said lead study author Gaia Giordano, a PhD student in archaeotoxicology at the University of Milan.