The More You Know ★
Out of context: Reply #396
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- hans_glib1
Forget Conservative leadership candidates; nobody throws a party like the inhabitants of the Pamir Mountains. The only problem is that we’re a couple of millennia late.
New evidence from this rural area of Xinjiang in China suggests that cannabis was being smoked 2,500 years ago, the earliest conclusive evidence of its use as a drug. THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, was detected in tombs in the 5th-century BC Jirzankal cemetery.
Instead of pipes or cigarettes, getting high in ancient Pamir involved introducing a hot stone to a brazier filled with the drug and inhaling the smoke. Ten of these braziers, along with four charred stones, were removed from the cemetery. All but one showed evidence of cannabinol, a by-product of the burning of THC.
Little is known about the origins of cannabis. One of the earliest mentions of this kind of smoking is found in Herodotus’s Histories from about 440BC, describing a similar ritual that “gives out such a vapour as no Grecian vapour-bath can exceed”.
Although evidence of hemp farming and cannabis oil predates the latest discovery, the new study, published in the journal Science Advances, offers “the earliest unequivocal evidence of the use of the plant as a drug”, its authors say.
It is suggested that high-THC cannabis was cultivated for its psychoactive effects and then burnt in burial rituals to communicate with spirits. It was even suggested that the skeletons in the tombs, marred with skull perforations, fatal cuts and broken bones, had been victims of ritualistic human sacrifice.
Also found were artefacts including silk from eastern China and plates, bowls and harps from Central Asia.
Robert Spengler, who led the study with Yimin Yang, described the mountainous region on the borders of modern China, Afghanistan and Tajikistan as “one of the main hubs of communication and exchange for the entire ancient world” and suggested that cannabis played a part in trade routes that would become the global Silk Road.
Dr Spengler said there had been a revolution in our understanding of the region’s history. “It is a really exciting time in central Asian archaeology because modern scientific methods are really exploding on to the scene,” he said.
- In other words, smoking weed predates all organized religions. They're not related facts but I like them together regardless.zarkonite