Open Questions

Open Sage

Why It Is Open Sage's ceremonial use among Indigenous peoples of western North America is a living tradition, and no specific, dated, non-intrusive documentary or archaeological source establishing its earliest attested use has been located.

What Would Settle It An archaeobotanical study identifying Salvia residue from a securely dated site, or a documented early written account naming the practice without describing closed ceremonial content.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany, ethnohistory

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Sandalwood

Why It Is Open Sandalwood appears in Sanskrit literature whose precise dating is disputed among scholars, and in early Chinese Buddhist sources, without it having been established which candidate reference is earliest on a securely datable basis.

What Would Settle It A philological study fixing the earliest securely datable Sanskrit or Chinese text naming sandalwood specifically, rather than aromatic wood generally.

Expertise Needed Philology, Indology

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Storax

Why It Is Open Genesis 37:25 and other passages mention tsori, translated balm, among trade goods, but scholarly identification of tsori is divided between storax, mastic gum and other resins, so it cannot honestly be cited as storax's own earliest attestation without settling that identification.

What Would Settle It A study settling the botanical identification of the Hebrew term tsori among its candidate resins.

Expertise Needed Biblical philology, archaeobotany

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Sweetgrass

Why It Is Open Sweetgrass's ceremonial use is a living Indigenous North American tradition, and no specific, dated, non-intrusive documentary or archaeological source establishing its earliest attested use has been located.

What Would Settle It An archaeobotanical study identifying Hierochloe residue from a securely dated site, or a documented early written account naming the practice without describing closed ceremonial content.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany, ethnohistory

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Tobacco

Why It Is Open Multiple archaeological finds across the Americas have been proposed as early evidence of tobacco use, but which specific, securely dated find or residue analysis is genuinely the earliest has not been confirmed here.

What Would Settle It A residue analysis study identifying nicotine biomarkers from a securely dated, named excavation, compared against other candidate early pipe finds.

Expertise Needed Archaeobotany, archaeochemistry

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Panchaloha

Why It Is Open The five-metal alloy is prescribed in the Shilpa Shastra textual tradition, but secondary accounts date the relevant texts anywhere from the fifth to the ninth century CE depending on the recension, with no single scholarly source consulted confident enough to cite for a precise date. The Chola dynasty, ninth to thirteenth century CE, is where panchaloha temple bronze casting is best documented and most celebrated, but that is its flowering rather than its documented beginning.

What Would Settle It A South Indian art history or Sanskrit textual scholarship source establishing when the specific Shilpa Shastra passages prescribing the five-metal alloy were composed, distinguishing that from the later Chola-era flowering of the practice.

Expertise Needed South Indian art history and Sanskrit textual scholarship

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.).

Open Onycha

Why It Is Open The Hebrew shecheleth of Exodus 30:34 is rendered onycha, fingernail, in the Septuagint. The leading identification is the operculum of a marine gastropod, which fits the sense, a nail-like hard plate, and the ancient aromatics trade. Benzoin, labdanum and rockrose are proposed plant alternatives but fit neither the sense nor the trade as well. A non-kosher animal product in the sacred incense is a live halakhic difficulty, which is the main reason the operculum identification is resisted by some commentators rather than for philological reasons. No reconstruction of the ketoret can be made without settling this, and it has not been settled.

What Would Settle It A residue analysis of an incense deposit from a securely dated Second Temple period altar or vessel, compared chemically against operculum keratin and against the candidate plant resins, would settle which substance was actually burned.

Expertise Needed Archaeochemistry, biblical studies

Question posed in Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.).

Open Saffron

Why It Is Open Recent genetic and iconographic evidence (Kazemi-Shahandashti et al. 2022) points to Bronze Age Greece, Crete and Santorini around 1700 BCE, anchored on Minoan fresco depictions and Crocus cartwrightianus genetics. Older scholarship long assumed an Iranian or Asia Minor origin instead, given saffron's overwhelming later importance in Persian culture and its trade-route common names; this atlas's own origin-region fact already records the question as debated among authorities, and the 2022 genetic study does not by itself settle a century-old debate.

What Would Settle It Further ancient-DNA or archaeobotanical sampling of Crocus material from Aegean, Anatolian and Iranian Bronze Age sites, and confirmation of whether Crocus cartwrightianus populations outside Attica also carry the ancestral genome the 2022 study used to anchor the Greek-origin claim.

Question posed in Ancient Artworks and Crocus Genetics Both Support Saffron's Origin in Early Greece, Seyyedeh-Sanam Kazemi-Shahandashti et al., Frontiers in Plant Science, 25 Feb 2022, doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.834416.

Open Ligure

Why It Is Open No securely dated ancient Hebrew source uses leshem outside the Exodus breastplate list in a context that fixes what stone it names, so every proposed identification, jacinth, amber, tourmaline or opal, rests on inference rather than direct attestation. The Septuagint, the Vulgate and the later translation tradition do not agree on a referent for this ninth breastplate stone either, which is the visible symptom of the unsettled identification.

What Would Settle It An independently attested, securely dated use of leshem in a non-biblical ancient Hebrew or closely related Northwest Semitic inscription or document, ideally alongside a described or surviving physical object, would let philologists cross-check the word against a known referent. A securely provenanced, labeled exemplar from a Second Temple period priestly context would serve the same purpose.

Expertise Needed Northwest Semitic philology, biblical archaeology and historical mineralogy

Question posed in The Holy Bible, Anonymous (multiple authors).

Open Hyssop

Why It Is Open The Hebrew ezov is rendered hyssop by long translation convention, but Hyssopus officinalis is not native to the southern Levant and does not match the plant's described uses. Origanum syriacum, Syrian oregano, fits the ecology and the ritual use better and is the leading candidate, but the identification rests on inference rather than on any ancient description precise enough to settle it.

What Would Settle It A botanical description in an ancient source specific enough to exclude the alternatives, or archaeobotanical remains from a ritual context that can be identified to species.

Expertise Needed Botany and Biblical Hebrew philology together. Neither field settles it alone, which is why it has stayed open.

Question posed in Identification of Biblical Hyssop and Origin of the Traditional Use of Oregano-Group Herbs in the Mediterranean Region, Alexander Fleisher and Zhenia Fleisher, Volume 42, pages 232 to 241.

Open Lily

Why It Is Open The Greek krinon is a general word for a showy flower rather than a botanical name. Anemone coronaria is the most commonly proposed candidate on grounds of what actually grows abundantly and conspicuously in Galilean fields, but Lilium candidum and several others remain in the running and the text gives no distinguishing detail.

What Would Settle It Nothing in the text can settle it; the question would move only on evidence about which flowers were locally called krinon in first-century Galilean usage.

Expertise Needed Koine Greek lexicography and Levantine field botany.

Question posed in Plants in the New Testament, Terry B. Ball, Entry for lily.

Open Myrrh

Why It Is Open Myrrh is traded and described across the ancient world as one commodity, but the genus has several resin-producing species and the ancient sources do not distinguish them. A genetic study of commercial myrrh found only a small proportion of samples matching the pharmacopoeia species, so even the modern trade is not one thing.

What Would Settle It Species-level identification of resin residues from a securely dated archaeological context, ideally from more than one trade period.

Expertise Needed Botany, archaeobotany, and the economic history of the incense routes.

Question posed in Deciphering Insights into Commercial Myrrh Species Authenticity from the psbA-trnH Genetic Region, Changhong Cao, Wenting Zhong, Feng Gao, Ying Zhang, Zhiguo Ma, Hui Cao and Menghua Wu, Article e0320731, results on species identification.

Open Ayahuasca Vine

Why It Is Open Two unrelated plants, out of the tens of thousands in the Amazon, must be combined for either to have any effect, and nothing about the appearance, taste or separate action of either suggests the other. Explanations range from very long systematic experimentation to the answer the traditions give, which is that the plants communicated it. The record is oral and the practice is old.

What Would Settle It Probably nothing can settle it. What would help is comparative work on how many other plant pairings are known in Amazonian practice, since a tradition with many such combinations implies a method, while a single one implies an accident or a transmission.

Expertise Needed Ethnobotany, Amazonian anthropology, ethnopharmacology

Question posed in Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon, Luis Eduardo Luna.

Open Ergot

Why It Is Open Proposed by Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck in 1978. It would explain how an experience initiates consistently described as overwhelming could be produced reliably for thousands of people on a schedule. But no ancient source describes anything of the kind, the water extraction needed to separate soluble from toxic alkaloids is delicate, and the argument reasons backwards from the reported effect to a cause that would account for it.

What Would Settle It Residue analysis of vessels securely associated with the Eleusinian rite, or a text that describes the preparation. Absent either, the question may be permanently undecidable, since the Mysteries were kept for roughly two thousand years and the secret held.

Expertise Needed Classics, ancient history, archaeochemistry, mycology

Question posed in The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries, R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl A. P. Ruck.

Open Iboga

Why It Is Open Reported since 1962 and repeated many times in unregulated clinics, but the evidence base is weak. Rigorous trials have been slow, partly because the compound is controlled in many jurisdictions and partly because a treatment given once does not fit the commercial model that funds drug development. Meanwhile ibogaine is cardiotoxic, prolongs the QT interval, and deaths have occurred where screening was absent.

What Would Settle It Adequately powered controlled trials with cardiac monitoring. The question is included here rather than left to medicine because the answer bears on the plant: demand from outside Gabon is already driving overharvesting of wild stands of a slow growing species that a religion depends on.

Expertise Needed Pharmacology, addiction medicine, cardiology, conservation biology

Question posed in Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa, James W. Fernandez.

Open Salvia Divinorum

Why It Is Open The plant has no confirmed wild population, sets seed poorly and is propagated from cuttings, which points to long cultivation, as with kava and Brugmansia. But there is no colonial record of it, unlike the mushrooms and ololiuqui which the friars documented extensively, and no archaeological evidence. So the plant looks ancient and the documentation begins in the twentieth century.

What Would Settle It Discovery of a wild population would settle the origin. A colonial or pre-conquest reference, possibly under a name not yet connected to it, would settle the antiquity. Genetic work on cultivated clones could estimate how long it has been propagated vegetatively.

Expertise Needed Ethnobotany, plant genetics, Mesoamerican ethnohistory

Question posed in Ethnopharmacology of Ska Maria Pastora (Salvia divinorum, Epling and Jativa-M.), Leander J. Valdes III, Jose Luis Diaz and Ara G. Paul.

Open Blue Lotus

Why It Is Open The iconographic case, argued by Emboden, is substantial: the flower is held to the nose with unusual persistence in banquet scenes, some figures appear to be in altered states, and it is linked to wine and to the drinking festivals of Hathor. The pharmacological case is weak. Apomorphine and nuciferine are present in small amounts, apomorphine is a strong emetic rather than a pleasant intoxicant, and no psychoactive dose has been shown achievable from a quantity of flowers a person would plausibly use.

What Would Settle It Quantitative analysis of alkaloid content in Nymphaea caerulea grown under conditions comparable to ancient Egypt, plus a controlled account of the effect of a realistic dose. Residue analysis of vessels from banquet or funerary contexts would help. Note that ololiuqui was doubted on similar grounds for centuries and then vindicated, so an absence of demonstrated activity is not evidence of absence.

Expertise Needed Egyptology, ethnobotany, phytochemistry

Question posed in Transcultural Use of Narcotic Water Lilies in Ancient Egyptian and Maya Drug Ritual, William A. Emboden.

Open Statue of Gommateshwara Bahubali

Why It Is Open No inscription at Shravanabelagola records the name of the sculptor or workshop that carved the image, even though the patron, Chavundaraya, is well attested. Digambara colossal images of this scale from the tenth century rarely name their carvers at all, so the silence is consistent with the period's own convention rather than a loss of a record that once existed.

What Would Settle It A donative or masons' inscription naming a sculptor or guild, of a kind found at other Hoysala and Ganga-period sites but not yet identified at Shravanabelagola itself, or a documentary source from the Ganga court not yet examined.

Expertise Needed South Indian art history, Ganga-period epigraphy

Question posed in The Jains, Paul Dundas, Gommateshwara / Bahubali colossus at Shravanabelagola, attribution gap.

Open Leshan Giant Buddha

Why It Is Open No inscription, temple record or contemporary chronicle names the sculptor, master mason or workshop who carved the statue, even though the monk who conceived the project and the two officials who later funded its completion are all recorded by name.

What Would Settle It A Tang-period donative or masons' inscription naming a carving workshop, of a kind found at other major Tang Buddhist rock-carving sites but not yet identified at Leshan itself, or a documentary source from the Jiannan Xichuan administration not yet examined.

Expertise Needed Chinese Buddhist art history, Tang-period epigraphy

Question posed in Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference), Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, s.v. "Leshan Giant Buddha", attribution gap.

Open Dura-Europos Synagogue Frescoes

Why It Is Open The synagogue's dedicatory Aramaic inscription names the community elders and officials responsible for the 244 or 245 CE renovation, but no painter or workshop. Neither the founding excavation report nor later scholarship consulted for this entry identifies who executed the cycle.

What Would Settle It A signed or otherwise attributable inscription, a stylistic link to a documented workshop active elsewhere in Roman Syria, or comparative technical analysis of pigment and technique connecting the Dura Europos paintings to a named or identifiable school of painters.

Expertise Needed Ancient art history, Roman provincial archaeology

Question posed in Kraeling, "The Synagogue" (Dura-Europos Final Report VIII, Part I), 1956, Carl H. Kraeling.