ANCIENT POTS LIKELY STORED DRUGS

Bronze Age cultures in Mideast used opium to treat various pains, ailments,
experts think.

JERUSALEM -- A thriving Bronze Age drug trade supplied narcotics to ancient
cultures throughout the eastern Mediterranean as balm for the pain of
childbirth and disease, proving a sophisticated knowledge of medicines
dating back thousands of years, researchers say.

Ancient ceramic pots, most of them nearly identical in shape and about 5
inches long, have been found in tombs and settlements throughout the Middle
East, dating as far back as 1400 B.C., said Joe Zias, an anthropologist at
Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

The drugs were probably used as medicine, and the finds are helping
researchers better understand how ancient people treated illness and
disease.

When turned upside down, the thin-necked vessels with round bases resemble
opium poppy pods. The round bases have white markings, designs that
symbolized knife cuts made on poppy bulbs so the white opium base can ooze
and be harvested, Zias said.

The Mycenaean ceramics were analyzed with a procedure called gas
chromatography that turned up traces of opium.

Hundreds of the pots have been found.

Based on ancient Egyptian medical writings from the third millennium B.C.,
researchers believe opium and hashish -- a smokable drug that comes from the
concentrated resin from the flowers of hemp plants -- were used during
surgery and to treat aches and pains and other ailments.

The drugs are part of a medical record that shows the ancients were far more
advanced than most people realize, Zias said, noting evidence that European
people did cranial surgery as long as 10,000 years ago, while the Romans
left records of 120 surgical procedures.

Zias said the ancient trade likely was run by respected healers rather than
violent drug lords.