The origins of cannabis smoking: evidence from the first millennium BCE (2019) | Hacker News Reader

The origins of cannabis smoking: evidence from the first millennium BCE (2019)

science.org

104 pointsbenbreen61 comments

Maybe even more striking: a 2020 article describing THC /Cannabis residue on a Jewish temple altar that dates to the same time period as the above 2019 article. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03344355.2020.1...

This strengthens the argument for Cannabis use by Abrahamic priests. This has been asserted on the basis of textual evidence in the Old Testament (namely the qaneh bosem in the holy anointing oil and the smoke-filled tabernacle). On the basis of the text alone, it might seem far-fetched. But now we’ve got a smoking gun, so to speak. More scholarly discussion here: https://www.ancient-hebrew.org/studies-words/facts-about-kan...

look like cannabis and other drugs were common in our past [0] [1]

but what culture are they talking about in the article? were they Scythians?

https://www.science.org/content/article/did-ancient-mesopota...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenic_use_of_cannabis#Mi...

Article says "Jirzankal cemetery" -- on the banks of the Tashkurgan river in what's now Xinjiang province. I don't think that would be a Scythian area, that's more Pontic steppe, west and north from there. This is on the other side of the mountains.

But could be Tocharian, which were Indo-European speakers, an extinct lost branch of the language family that split off very early and lived in this region. (Read up on the Tarim mummies).

Or any number of Turkic tribes. Hard to know?

Abrahamic Priest here. I can confirm the cannabis useage.

Brings new insight into the burning bush at Mt Sinai

nice try - but from my reading, it appears that a large, driving reason for the evolution and adoption of Abrahamic Religion was that they specifically, exactly, discredited personal religious experience of all kinds, in favor of a collective, written canon. Social advancement in that crowd included better and more insightful reading of the reading, and writing of the writing, you might say.

Add to that explicit Father g*d, worship in a building not in nature, no female priests, and a few others.

I don't understand your point, or what you think is a "nice try". The parent comment you are responding to didn't make any argument as to the reason for the spread and adoption of Abrahamic religions.

I love the spiritual effects of cannabis. I think that’s the right word. It’s something like, “cannabis plus natural beauty equals profound feelings of cosmic meaning”

Also, does anyone else think that Seraphs and Ophanims must surely have been seen by someone who was either under the influence of drugs, or who was hallucinating for other reasons?

> A seraph (/ˈsɛrəf/, "the burning one"; plural seraphim /ˈsɛrəfɪm/) is a type of celestial or heavenly being originating in Ancient Judaism. The term plays a role in subsequent Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seraph

> The ophanim (Hebrew: אוֹפַנִּים ʿōp̄annīm, "wheels"; singular: אוֹפָן ʿōp̄ān), alternatively spelled auphanim or ofanim, and also called galgalim (Hebrew: גַּלְגַּלִּים galgallīm, "spheres", "wheels", "whirlwinds"; singular: גַּלְגַּל galgal), refer to the wheels seen in Ezekiel's vision of the chariot (Hebrew merkabah) in Ezekiel 1:15–21. One of the Dead Sea scrolls (4Q405) construes them as angels; late sections of the Book of Enoch (61:10, 71:7) portray them as a class of celestial beings who (along with the Cherubim and Seraphim) never sleep, but guard the throne of God.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophanim

I mean, look at renditions of what those beings would look like.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ophanim&tbm=isch

https://www.google.com/search?q=seraph+bible+accurate&tbm=is...

Lots of geometric repetition and shapes that all seem like they were taken straight out of a DMT trip or something.

My hunch is Acacia trees as a source of DMT, which are common in the region. Many mosques in particular are also decorated with colorful geometrical patterns all over. It's a bit of a mystery though, mushrooms have been pretty much ruled out, but Ancient Greeks speak of some sort of psychedelic wine, which is not much known about. Ergot from agriculture could be another suspect, but Ergot isn't exactly a great psychedelic by itself.

In case somebody wonders, the Greek drink in question is Kykeon [1] which was consumed during the Eleusinian Mysteries [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kykeon

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusinian_Mysteries

Absolutely. For example people who have taken 5-MeO-DMT report having profound religious-like experiences. Some say if there's a god then you can talk to him through tryptamines.

I'd really like to know how much of religion comes from psychedelia.

Religion, probably very little. Religious experiences probably very many.

Santa Claus coming down the chimney has been suggested to be a metaphor for the shaman with his Amanita Muscaria entering your yurt around the firepit at its mouth.

One probably does not want the raw agarics without passing through a reindeer bladder first. Which is why Santa has 7 of em! Always found this metaphor quite funny.

This doesn't read like origins at all, more like the earliest attested instances of what seemed to be an already well-established practice.

2500 years ago sounds like a long time, but humans have been around a lot longer than that.

Yeah, it's not like marijuana is difficult to find naturally, and just eating it has obvious effects so it should have been easy to happen upon. (From my quick research, heating it before consuming shouldn't be necessary to get _any_ effect, but it does increase the effects.)

Can you point to what you found that suggests as much? I have been a regular user for 10+ years and suggesting you don't need to carboxylate it before eating it in order to still feel the effect goes against a large body of conventional wisdom.

Yeah, sure. I feel like I had a better link, more sciency, I'll edit if I find it again. But for now eg: https://maryjanesdiary.com/can-you-eat-raw-weed-get-high/

My understand is that there is _some_ active THC even before heating, but it's relatively low amounts. My theory is that if your tolerance is 0 and you eat a decent amount you'd probably feel it.

A typical user would never know even if they tried though because it'd be a _huge_ waste and their tolerance is non-zero.

Can't say I've tried, I don't have an ~eighth to waste and I suspect it wouldn't taste very good either (though I guess you could still add it to a recipe, just without heating). Also it'd be difficult for me to rule out placebo effects.

I suppose if you had some strong smelling leaves and threw it into something fatty like an animal carcass before applying fire, things might get wild

For film on psychoactives and archaeology in early Central Eurasia consider watching episode 1 of the BBC India series, which features an eccentric Russian archaeologist active in the region.

Can you provide a bit more information that could be put into a search engine? Searching for "BBC India" or "BBC India Russian archaeologist" isn't cutting it.

I'd like to also suggest the documentary series Strain Hunters by Green House Seed co. where they also travel to India in search of landraces for their genetic library.

The Story of India, a 6 part series. Episode 1, Beginnings.

Thanks, I see they also drank a psychoactive drink called Soma. Cannabis may have been an ingredient in this drink. Some sort of psychoactive seems to be constant among the different religions/cultures. The question is - does the substance make one hallucinate or does it in fact give one an objective sense of reality?

While cannabis smoking using incense is thousands of years old, pipe smoking only came to Europe in the 1500s, with Tobacco. I find that surprising.

Me too! It's such a simple device and the alternative seems to be creating a large air-tight building to hotbox everyone inside.

Is there somewhere that one could experience this, but in a more modern setting? It seems like a niche that has disappeared.

I've found the perfect building to be a 1998 Toyota Carolla - I don't know if that's historically accurate to the BCE era however.

Hotboxing? Uhhhh, yeah I think we could help you find a few places.

For science and history, of course.

I have an article about this very topic in the history of science journal Osiris... unfortunately it's not out yet, but I wrote a short spinoff article about it here too:

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/our-strange-addi...

The upshot is that while tobacco pipes didn't reach Europe until around 1500 CE, there is evidence that Portuguese mariners may have encountered cannabis pipes from Africa earlier than this date. Part of the evidence is linguistic: the Portuguese word for pipe (cachimbo) is derived from an African language (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cachimbo). African cannabis smoking dates back at least as far as ~1000 CE and seems to have been part of a larger Indian Ocean complex of cannabis smoking emanating from South Asia and, more distantly, from the religious traditions of ancient Indo-Iranic peoples who moved into the region from the steppes in the Vedic period. That diffusion narrative would seem to fit well with the timeline discussed in this article.

This is a really exciting field of historical and archaeological research IMO!

The African Roots of Marijuana (Duke, 2019) is the best full length scholarly study of this if anyone is interested: https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-african-roots-of-marijuana

Excellent work! I think there is an opportunity to rewrite the history with some more funding for archeological digs in India—it would just shock me to find that shiva only started smoking 500 years back. Never know.

Thanks for sharing!

> In 1689 the natural philosopher Robert Hooke gave a firsthand report on the effects of Indian cannabis to the Royal Society of London: “The patient understands not, nor remembers anything that he sees, hears, or does in that ecstasy, but becomes, as it were, a mere natural, being unable to speak a word of sense; yet is he very merry, and laughs, and sings, and speaks words without any coherence.”

Awesome find. Wow.

That is quite interesting. But...is it me or is that a _very_ exaggerated description?

The first few times I smoked cannabis, nothing happened. But then I got high; the first few times I got high on cannabis remind me of this quote. Maybe these were reports from a novice?

Cannabis helps me have wonderfully vivid ideas. Visions of the future, of new opportunities, etc. The ideas are often a more powerful and joyous high than the cannabis itself.

Now I don’t mind getting plainly stoned now and then, but I really enjoy virtuous pot smoking. If I go running, eat vegetarian (or fast), clean my room, immerse myself in natural beauty, work on some mission-driven project or read Plato, I swear, I always get a better high.

I agree, but it really depend on the cannabis some will make you sleepy some will make you more hyped, i think its the difference in maturity of the buds/flowers the earlier its harvested the more heartbeating and anxious you feel where if its harvested later IT seems to get you more sleepy and relaxed Lesser heartbeating more drowsy eyes, harvesting it in between is the goal to get a decent ratio, this obviously differs for plants and are purely anecdotal :)

What cultivar (strain) were they growing in the past?

Landrace strains are so rare nowadays.

They're only rare because they grow wild in very specific places. Usually far from humans in Tibet, northern India, Kush mountains, South America, Jamaica.

But if you go to those places you'll find a wide variety of land races. These days most are influenced by humans but that's still natural, we're still part of nature.

They are rare because the law led to indoor growing and selection of hybrids for flower times.

Genetically they are more rare, because of the mass proliferation of hybrid breeding.

I am interested in any ancient records of the concept addiction. Did people understand that in fact cannabis is making you dumb instead of a mighty creative god? Did they understand the side effects etc. Probably not. But still interesting. I smoked weed for 10 years almost daily btw

Making you dumb? Did you start before you were an adult? I'm a fairly new user in my late 30s and haven't noticed any effects. That said, I just a weekend user.

Marijuana doesn’t “make you dumb”. There are lots of specific effects and I do not generally advocate that anyone start taking marijuana, but I will say I am a 37 year old robotics engineer and I vape marijuana (doses on the lower end of pure sativa) basically every day, throughout the day. I design circuit boards, do mechanical design, fabrication, assembly and test, and write Python code all with some level of marijuana in my system. (Obv have to be careful about dosage or I will be unable to work until it wears off.) In the last three months I designed a four axis robot arm with four custom planetary gearboxes of my own design.

I know that my marijuana consumption is not ideal for my health and I aspire to reduce it eventually. But I have been doing this for years and I’m getting better at designing and building robots, not worse.

I can (and do) smoke a lot of herb, medicinal reasons. Never has severely stupefied me. My nephew doesn't care for weed, because it does stupifiy him.

Cannabis, more than most other drugs, takes different people differently. Much of the misunderstanding and "talking past each other" seems to come from no one wanting to acknowledge that.

Good for you. But pot does make a whole bunch of people dumb. Not a bad thing though, thats precisely why I use it!

I think dosage plays a role that a lot of users might not understand. I was introduced to marijuana in a college setting and would seemingly randomly have a very hard time with the effects of the drug. In hindsight, I was trying to be macho and take huge hits in a circle of college guys, and I simply had too large of a dose.

But yes I get what you are saying. A larger dose can be nice to kind of shut off for a while, and many users do that intentionally. I just want to articulate this distinction, which is that a large dose (varies by user) of marijuana will make a person pretty slow and forgetful. More controlled lower doses of the right strains can actually have helpful uplifting effects.

In fairness, vaping marijuana and specifically vaping "the lower end of pure sativa" is not at all representative of the wider cannabis smoking public. In places where it's illegal in particular, you're stuck with whatever variant is currently in circulation with your local dealer and those are almost invariably high strength hybrids - because those are just more economical in a black market economy where the cash crop has ideally as little of a footprint as possible.

I hate it personally because I turn into an abject moron when I'm totally stoned - which is hard to avoid when your options are so limited. If I had a choice, I would probably go for a low strength sativa as well and maybe the occasional indica when I'm suffering from pain.

Strong hybrids, CBD-only flower (aka hemp), the possibilities are endless!

Ditto. Utter drooling moron. Unless I am very careful.

Basically all of my friends smoke.

Half seem to handle it pretty okay.

The other half turn into morons but they don't seem to care.

Also have you noticed how you don't remember your dreams after smoking? I've noticed that. And I've heard it from a few other people too.

I pretty much avoid it now.

This is true. What's happening is the THC causes a delay on the onset of REM sleep. Theoretically, this should cause a sudden ramp up of dreams when you take a hiatus from cannabis use. However, this does not happen to me personally which is strange because I do experience this with alcohol - another drug that causes a delay on the onset of REM sleep :shrugs:

Yes, I am in the California Bay Area so we have probably the best selection in the world for weed products.

And I do know whenever someone offers me street weed I suggest they don't, because the indica effects will make me extremely sluggish, i'll get major munchies and eat so much I get a stomach ache, and I can't really do anything productive.

I guess I made my comment to highlight this distinction that it is not true that marijuana makes you unproductive full stop, but that certain strains of marijuana and/or too high of a dose will have that effect.

You are right that this is hard to avoid in places without the selection I have, but that is only an argument for more legalization, not an argument that marijuana has few positive effects.

Any reason you don’t do edibles? I take a black market 10mg gummy every 2-3 hours to help with my anxiety. I’m a software developer and don’t feel “dumb” as my brain generally works that way anyway. It’s just easier to dose and consume whenever wherever when it’s an edible. I’m in a legal state which can’t figure out how to open retail stores so ironically my black market gummies are legal once I crack them out of the mailbox.

I am going for a certain kind of sativa-dominant effect that doesn't seem to be the same with any edibles I have tried. But I should probably see what the latest and greatest edible science has to offer.

I get solventless hash edibles. Full spectrum. I buy cbd pills from hemp too that I take two a day as well. I think that would help tilt the scales towards a “sativa” for you.

When I smoke I too like sativas. Specifically and “blue dream” strains.

Don't want to be flippant but every daily user of marijuana that I knew in my life told me that they wanted to reduce their intake somewhere in the near future.

That's only because we've just met :) I find it helps a lot with my own general sense of well being, and though I've found my personal limits once or twice, I plan to go up from here as time allows. Normal neuro-typical adult, married and employed in the tech trades.

I didn't start until after schooling was over, so that may be part of how it has assimilated into my life gracefully over the last 15-20 years.

That tends to happen with overconsumption, which, many users who light it on fire regularly end up doing.

I believe you but I didn't say the near future. It seems to work pretty well for me, but I hope to reduce my usage at some point. I really only say this because I am making a public comment endorsing a drug and I do not want people to read this and think I am saying it is 100% good and everyone should do it.

You seem to be implying that daily use is too much. However your observation is also consistent with marijuana users simply making light conversation about their fluctuating habits. We all say things like "I think I need to cut down a bit on the coffee" from time to time, but that can mean cutting back from 3 cups of coffee a day to 2. We don't usually consider that evidence that daily use is bad.

Your resentment is understandable. Though, hardly anyone is led to believe nowadays that cannabis will make you a great person. Lots of people use it to unwind, which is the opposite of pushing oneself further. I think that if you give yourself a chance you'll find that no one is dumb because he or she smoked cannabis in the past. That is, it's not a predetermining factor if anything.

Everyone's got this pretty well covered, but wanted to emphasize:

SMOKING makes you dumb and less blood-oxygenated, cannabis likely far less so.

Vaporize loose leaf herbs, or use oil/edibles.

Don't listen to the ashtray.

Ancient cannabis was nowhere near as potent as what we have today. Even the marijuana in modern times before the widespread use of sensimilla in the 80s was only around 3% THC (compared to 15-30% for dispensary-grade flower today).

Estimates I’ve read on potency of wild strains without selective breeding is closer to 1%. These guys weren’t getting mind-meltingly high, likely just a good mellow and probably not daily.

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