Researchers decided to analyze drugs which are contained in hair for to find whether a suspected drug user has been taking banned substances and, if possible, to track the time course of usage by following the distribution along the hair. They also studied animals raised for meat for to find what illegal hormone was given to them.

Statistics show that in the early 1990s, the hair of South American mummies dating from 1000 BC to 1500 AD was analyzed by radioimmunoassay to reveal the presence of cocaine and its metabolites benzoylecgonine and ecgonine methyl ester. These findings were later confirmed by George Cross (a Brit award for bravery), and were taken as sign of coca leaf chewing by the native people and helped to suggest that this workings originated in the Andes.

Another study published in the same time reported the detection of cocaine, nicotine and tetrahydrocannabinol in mummies from Egypt (1000 BC to 400 AD).

As it is known, cocaine and nicotine are derived from South American plants and there were no known trans-oceanic journeys to Europe before Columbus sailed to the Americas.

Recently in Germany, specialists from anthropology, pathology, radiology, molecular biology and toxicology gathered 70 human and animal mummies as part of an ongoing mummy project involving. One of the many operations carried out was to gather evidence of the use of drugs and this was completed by analyzing the hair of pre-Columbian mummies for drugs.

Only eight of the human mummies had sufficient hair for trial. The analyses were carried out by Frank Musshoff and Burkhard Madea from the Institute of Forensic Medicine.

The samples were washed with water, petroleum benzine and dichloromethane and the washes held. The cleaned hair was cut into pieces and ultrasonically extracted with methanol. They were also exposed to targeted analysis for nicotine and its metabolite cotinine in selected ion monitoring mode, using deuterium-labeled internal standards to allow quantitation.

In general the analyses for drugs were all negative but three of the mummies tested were positive for nicotine: an adult woman from Peru or Argentina radiocarbon dated to 1095 ± 50 AD, a child from the Peruvian Chancay culture dated to 1415 ± 16 AD, a female bony skull complete with scalp and well-preserved braided hair from Peru that had not been dated.

The nicotine levels were 57.5, 14.1 and 11.4 mg, but cotinine was absent in all cases. The method quantitation limits were 0.12 and 0.10 ng/mg for nicotine and cotinine, respectively.

The nicotine concentrations are of the same order as those reported in the hair of modern-day smokers but the absence of its primary metabolite is puzzling. In general cotinine is not always detected in every active smoker, but researchers detected it in all three mummies. That’s why this research can be considered too coincidental.

One explanation offered by the researchers is the contamination of the mummies by smoking visitors or museum employees during their collection, storage and display. However, neither nicotine nor cotinine were detected in any of the washings, which would be expected for external contamination. It is possible that the hair had been cleaned during mummy storage but this could not be confirmed because the earlier records are incomplete.

In addition, the team was able to exclude modern contamination as the mummies had been stored in their show cases for 100 years before being rediscovered and examined in 2006.