Ancient Cannabis 'Burial Shroud' Discovered in Desert Oasis | Hacker News Reader

Ancient Cannabis 'Burial Shroud' Discovered in Desert Oasis

news.nationalgeographic.com

58 pointsbenbreen39 comments

People for thousands of years have used the plant for pain relief and spiritual well being. It's oils as ointments and fiber to weave ropes and make cloths. It's amazing that it has taken 100 years to convince todays society of it's benefits.

What a great story and more proof the plant is an important part of humanities history.

I wish people would dispense with the woo and straight out say that people use drugs because they enjoy them. Most people consuming THC are doing it not for some spiritual goal or because they're in pain, they're doing it because it's fun. Humans generally seem to have a desire to alter their states of mind. It can be good and it can be harmful, but trying to make all of it evil has very clearly failed.

It's bizarre; the same people who will happily state they enjoy drinking will be viciously opposed to the enjoyment of other drugs.

It's possible these are the same people who think something is wrong simply because it's illegal.

And since it's wrong it must therefore be kept illegal.

This is literally the reasoning of the German Health Minister

> Humans generally seem to have a desire to alter their states of mind

We're not the only animal to do so for that reason, either, from what I've read.

In my experiences, most people do indeed use cannabis because they enjoy it. There are some (and that number is growing) who use it primarily for the medicinal benefits. Neither choice is wrong, in my opinion.

There is nothing "woo" about using cannabis for medical purposes. The fact that it can get you high does not mean it has no medical benefits.

Also, strains used for medical purposes tend to have low THC and high CBD (e.g. Charlotte's Web).

You're right, but that's not what I'm talking about.

Most people actually want to legalize it because it's fun. It's disingenuous and harmful to pretend this isn't the reason. It has other benefits, but the real core issue is that demonizing the common drive to modify our state of mind is, in itself, the demon. Pretending it's for the medical benefits or for some spiritual woo is harmful. A step backwards.

We need to stop making dangerous things illegal which we should instead be educating how to respect.

The word "most" gets thrown around a lot in political arguments. Do you have some insight into what the majority of people believe that we don't?

> Most people actually want to legalize it because it's fun. It's disingenuous and harmful to pretend this isn't the reason.

I'm really not sure anyone has enough data to know if that's true. Most people actually want to legalize it (in the US), we have data for that. We don't actually know what their aggregate motivations are.

We do know that people care about personal substance use sovereignty (i.e. getting high is fun, and who are you to tell me not to?), criminal justice reform, medical benefits, tax revenue, and yes even spiritual and psychological benefits. All of those are cited by advocates. How those break down in terms of priorities is another question.

Full disclosure: I live in a recreational state (WA), and I work for a cannabis company. Anecdotally I meet people (advocates, in the industry) across the spectrum, from regular users to non-users looking to make money. I know that anecdotes aren't data, but I'm pretty close to the issue in a place where there's little reason to obfuscate; it simply doesn't seem as clear cut to me as you make it out.

People drink wine to get drunk, not for the flavor no matter what bullshit[0] they tell you. Except a few people with medical conditions same goes for every other mind altering drug (including a lot of prescription drugs). There is no shame in that. The only shame is in lying to yourself.

[0]http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamo...

Woah there, that's a bit too far. People who tell you they're drinking only for the flavor are probably lying, but just because something has a bit of ethanol in it doesn't mean the taste motivation goes out the window. Proving students aren't very good at describing flavor or detecting tricks doesn't prove your point.

> People who tell you they're drinking only for the flavor are probably lying

That is my point entirely. They may prefer better tasting wine, but taste is a secondary factor to the effects.

>Proving students aren't very good at describing flavor or detecting tricks doesn't prove your point.

oenology (wine studies) students, If they can't tell a difference what hope does the average consumer have?

All that said, enjoy it. We all have vices. Just don't pretend you are somehow better than the guy drinking ripple on his porch.

The cocktail I had with dinner was delicious, but I honestly wish it didn't have the effects of alcohol because now instead of making good use of my evening I'm just a bit sleepy and unmotivated. You're getting pretty far off into the weeds insisting that the primary reason to drink anything with a drop of alcohol in it is the alcohol.

>If they can't tell a difference what hope does the average consumer have?

What kind of students were they? Were they just starting off? How good was the program they were in? How do they compare to professionals?

If you _intended_ to make a study to prove your point that wine critics are full of shit, you'd pick the most incompetent wine critics possible. It's pretty solidly true that olfactory senses don't translate into language very well. I can experience really complex flavors and smells but it's more or less impossible for me to share them with words in any way that could actually communicate the flavor to others. If I studied flavor and the language to describe it extensively, I might be able to communicate a flavor to another similarly studied person, but that's about it.

Experience of flavor is wholly separate from being able to describe it. And students who are leaning to are _more_ apt to invent flavor descriptions based on what they think is expected. It's pretty easy to trick people, especially by putting them in an environment tailored to deceive. You could draw more conclusions about the ability of suggestion to affect perception than you can about why people drink wine.

> People drink wine to get drunk

Plenty of people drink wine, but rarely or never to the extent of getting drunk. Some people who drink even drink (either exclusively or occasionally) de-alcoholized wine.

This makes it unlikely that those people are drinking wine to get drunk.

5 ounces of wine (a single standard glass) is the legal limit for driving federally, after that you are impaired. Unless they are drinking less than that they are experiencing a psychoactive effect even if small. Also when self surveyed people dramatically under report consumption.

Considering the side effects of alcohol, why isn't alcohol free wine the majority rather than a insignificant minatory of sales? (I've never even seen it for sale in PA except heavily salted and explicitly for cooking purposes)

> 5 ounces of wine (a single standard glass) is the legal limit for driving federally

No, its not. The limit that the federal government has recently been encouraging states to move to is a 0.05 BAC (Though the higher 0.08 that all states have adopted, in part, IIRC, because of highway funding laws requiring that as the maximum limit, might more accurately be described as the "federal limit", but lets work with 0.05 anyway.) The average adult male weight is about 200 lbs, for which a 0.05 BAC corresponds to about 3 drinks (a 5oz glass of wine is one drink) in a 40 minute period, not a single glass.

> Considering the side effects of alcohol, why isn't alcohol free wine the majority rather than a insignificant minatory of sales?

Because its more expensive, because it involves more involved process.

> (I've never even seen it for sale in PA except heavily salted and explicitly for cooking purposes)

I've never seen dealcoholized cooking wine, which makes very little (but not quite no) sense since cooking will already drive off most of the alcohol in wine. But Pennsylvania has, IIRC, fairly atypical regulation of alcohol, which may make both the usual marketing of dealcoholized drinking wines (typically colocated with regular wines in grocery stores, IME) unlikely and (if the restrictions apply to salted cooking wines, not sure what the boundaries are) might make dealcoholized cooking wines more sensible (so that stores that sold cooking ingredients could sell them, rather than the much narrower set of state/licensed wine and spirits stores.

This is an unnecessary generalization. There are many thousand patients today that suffer from pain relievers that wreck up your bowels.

This view is demonstrably false. Cannabis enables people to treat nausea, wasting, epilepsy, pain, and anxiety, all of which can be debilitating or even disabling. That therapeutic dosages are typically far lower than recreational should be a clear indicator.

The practical uses of hemp are also not to be dismissed. The fibers are strong and the oil is uniquely compatable with human physiology.

Trivializing cannabis because of its potential use as an intoxicant is a mistake.

argumentum ad antiquitatem

Which doesn't make it wrong, per se.

Perhaps you've never heard a dangerous form of music called "jazz"?

> People for thousands of years have used the plant for pain relief and spiritual well being.

Actually, I've been wondering how widely spread was the usage of cannabis. While there were some use of it here and there, has it ever been widely used for recreational purpose in any society?

> While there were some use of it here and there, has it ever been widely used for recreational purpose in any society?

Presumably, you want to ask before some specific recent period, because otherwise, the answer is clearly and obviously "yes".

I had a friend some time back who'd been in the Soviet army, assigned to somewhere in the east, and he told me about a smokeable plant with psychotropic effects that grew wild there. To this day I don't know if he was talking about some kind of Siberian "ditch weed" or if there's just some unknown-to-the-west plant out there on the steppe...

Cannabis ruderalis maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_ruderalis

Possibly Cannabis ruderalis ('wild cannabis'): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_ruderalis. It's endemic in central Russia.

I think that must be Latin for "ditch weed". The latter being the wild, low potency marijuana you can find growing by the road in places like Idaho...

Edit: Nope, apparently it's its own species.

I think that a characteristic of ruderalis is that it's autoflowering. All other types are dependent on photoperiod to induce flowering of the plant. Ruderalis varieties usually flower after x days from germination.

The article linked[1] about breast cancer was also very interesting to me. Might be to someone else.

A siberian noblewoman, afflicted by many diseases, covered in tattoos, buried with cannabis seeds. I just love those little windows into ancient cultures.

1. http://siberiantimes.com/home/born-in-siberia/2500-year-old-...

I didn't have time to read the original source paper, but there seems to be an awful lot of speculation in that article.

That was my impression too but when you're diagnosing a 2500 year old corpse I guess it's inevitable.

The first burning man?

Someone should smoke it... for science.

"nearly all of the flowering heads of the 13 female plants had been cut off before they were placed on the body" - looks like this guy's friends already smoked most if it before they buried him!

It was a beautiful gesture but in the end they realized what a tremendous waste it would be on such good weed not to smoke it. There was a seed, I saw it in one of the pics from the article. What if it was viable? What midevil type of weed would that be?

Sad about that life sentence tho

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