Life from an ancient coffin

From the coffin came life . . . after 2,100 years!

It was May 1985. Chinese archaeologists had just cracked
open a Han Dynasty tomb in the Feng-huang Mountains.
Beside the corpse were containers of ancient seeds. "Let’s
cover these with a damp cloth," motioned one of the men to
his colleague. "We don’t want them to crack."

For some days the partners excavated further, unaware that
something peculiar was happening. Until the lifting of the cloth;
that’s when the shock came. Still alive, would you believe, after
2,100 years, forty seeds had sprouted into tomato plants.

But the implications went deeper. Until now, the tomato was
held to have been discovered, together with its native South
America, only four centuries ago—concomitant with the
development of ocean travel. We must now re-examine history.

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