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Traces of nicotine discovered in a Mayan flask date back more than 1,000 year lay out the first forcible grounds of tobacco use by the Mayans , researchers say .
The flaskful was decorate with text that seemed to say " Yo-‘OTOT - Cordyline terminalis ' atomic number 92 - MAY , " which translates to " the home of his tobacco plant " ( or " her tobacco " or " its tobacco " ) , the archaeologists enjoin , but that by itself was n’t enough to convert them .
Archeologists found traces of nicotine in the ancient Mayan container, suggesting that it once held tobacco leaves.
" Textual grounds written on clayware is often an index of contents or of an intended determination – however , factual employment of a container could be altered or falsely represented , " articulate subject field researcher Jennifer Loughmiller - Newman of the University at Albany .
Their analysis of the samples extracted from the flask identified nicotine , the touch alkaloid in tobacco , as a major component . That indicated the watercraft was belike used to holdtobacco leave , the researchers write in the cogitation .
The flaskful was date to around A.D. 700 during the Late Classic Maya period , which lasted from A.D. 600 to 900 . The archaeologists determined that it was made in southern Campeche , Mexico .
It is one of 150 vessels in the Kislak collection of the Library of Congress . Although many of theMayanflasks in the assembling were filled with other message over prison term — such as smoothing iron oxide , which was used in burial rite — the researcher were able-bodied to detect the container ’s original content using high - technical school chemical - psychoanalysis equipment , such as a mass mass spectrometer .
" Our study provides rare evidence of the intended use ofan ancient container , " survey researcher Dmitri Zagorevski of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute said in a argument . " Mass spectroscopy has prove to be an invaluable method acting of depth psychology of organic residue in archaeologic artifacts . "
The finding pock the 2nd time the hieroglyphics on a Mayan container indicated its intended economic consumption . Thefirst examplewas a vas whose text and chemical analytic thinking of its contents pointed to theobromine , an alkaloid detect in Theobroma cacao .
" Results such as this are extraordinarily useful in the discipline of ancient custom and consumption practices , as well as understanding and interpretingMayan hieroglyphs , " the research worker wrote online in January in the diary Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry .
