Chamba said:3) if cannabis was carried with the first people to populate the Americas, then why is cannabis only found in a few very isolated digs?.......why wasn't natural American cannabis widespread throughout the continent prior the Spanish invasions?..esp considering how easily cannabis becomes feral as happened after WW2? My theory is that cannabis was introduced by Spanish and the very few samples of hemp cloth proven to be prior to the Spanish in the Americas were from the odd lost trading ship that made it that far by accident and luck..probably much in the same way that coca and tobacco were found buried in pyramids....but one wonders why tobacco and coca were brought back and not the dozens of unique vegetables native to the same area ( potatoes, tomatoes and others)
well Chamba, it is not just "very few samples of hemp clothes", if you read the information provided carefully, you will notice that not only were plenty of hemp cloth samples founds in North America, but also clay pipes with Cannabis residues in them, which means it was a magic-religious substance.
You ask why Tabbacco and Coca made it all the way to Egypt and not Tomatos and Potatos; it is simple, because neither Tomatos nor Potatos were considered magical keys which opened doors into a bigger universe...
see, back in the day, most people were not sucking on their thumbs and watching sitcoms and news shows on the T.V. there is plenty of information regarding this; a good introductory book is Plants of the Gods by Schultes and Hoffman.
peace man.