History of cannabis
History Facts
The history of cannabis and its usage by humans dates back to at least the third millennium BC in written history, and possibly as far back as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (8800–6500 BCE) based on archaeological evidence. For millennia, the plant has been valued for its use for fiber and rope, as food and medicine, and for its psychoactive properties for religious and recreational use.
The earliest restrictions on cannabis were reported in the Islamic world by the 14th century. In the 19th century, it began to be restricted in colonial countries, often associated with racial and class stresses. In the middle of the 20th century, international coordination led to sweeping restrictions on cannabis throughout most of the globe. Entering the 21st century, some nations began to take measures to decriminalize or legalize cannabis.
Ancient uses
Hemp is possibly one of the earliest plants to be cultivated.[4][5] Cannabis has been cultivated in Japan since the pre-Neolithic period for its fibres and as a food source and possibly as a psychoactive material.[6]: 96 An archeological site in the Oki Islands near Japan contained cannabis achenes from about 8000 BC, probably signifying use of the plant.[7] Hemp use archaeologically dates back to the Neolithic Age in China, with hemp fiber imprints found on Yangshao culture pottery dating from the 5th millennium BC.[2][8] The Chinese later used hemp to make clothes, shoes, ropes, and an early form of paper.[2]
Cannabis was an important crop in ancient Korea, with samples of hempen fabric discovered dating back as early as 3000 BC.[9]
Cannabis is believed to be consumed by Hindu God Shiva, and has been part of Hindu practice and culture.[10]
Hemp is called ganja (Sanskrit: गञ्जा, IAST: gañjā) in Sanskrit and other modern Indo-Aryan languages.[11] Some scholars suggest that the ancient drug soma, mentioned in the Vedas, was cannabis, although this theory is disputed.[12] Bhanga is mentioned in several Indian texts dated before 1000 AD. However, there is philological debate among Sanskrit scholars as to whether this bhanga can be identified with modern bhang or cannabis.[13]
Cannabis was also known to the ancient Assyrians, who potentially utilized it as an aromatic. They called it qunabu and qunubu (which could signify "a way to produce smoke"), a potential origin of the modern word "cannabis".[14]: 305 Cannabis was introduced as well to the Scythians, Thracians and Dacians, whose shamans (the kapnobatai—"those who walk on smoke/clouds") burned cannabis flowers to induce trance.[15] The classical Greek historian Herodotus (ca. 480 BC) reported that the inhabitants of Scythia would often inhale the vapors of hemp-seed smoke, both as ritual and for their own pleasurable recreation.[16]
Cannabis residues have been found on two altars in Tel Arad, dated to the Kingdom of Judah in the 8th century BC.[17] Its discoverers believe that the evidence points to the use of cannabis for ritualistic psychoactive use in Judah.[17]
Cannabis has an ancient history of ritual use and is found in pharmacological cults around the world. Hemp seeds discovered by archaeologists at Pazyryk suggest early ceremonial practices like eating by the Scythians occurred during the 5th to 2nd century BC confirming previous historical reports by Herodotus.[18] In China, the psychoactive uses of cannabis is described in the Shennong Bencaojing, written around the 3rd century AD.[19] Daoists mixed cannabis with other ingredients, then placed them in incense burners and inhaled the smoke.[19]
Global spread
Around the turn of the millennium, the use of hashish (cannabis resin) began to spill over from the Persian world into the Arab world. Cannabis was allegedly introduced to Iraq in 1230 AD, during the reign of Caliph Al-Mustansir Bi'llah, by the entourage of Bahraini rulers visiting Iraq.[20] Hashish was introduced to Egypt by "mystic Islamic travelers" from Syria sometime during the Ayyubid dynasty in the 12th century AD.[6]: 234 [21] Hashish consumption by Egyptian Sufis has been documented as occurrent in the thirteenth century AD, and a unique type of cannabis referred to as Indian hemp was also documented during this time.[6]: 234 Smoking did not become common in the Old World until after the introduction of tobacco, so up until the 1500s hashish in the Muslim world was consumed as an edible.[22]
Cannabis is thought to have been introduced to Africa by Indian Hindu travelers, which Bantu settlers subsequently introduced to southern Africa when they migrated southward.[23] Smoking pipes uncovered in Ethiopia and carbon-dated to around 1320 AD were found to have traces of cannabis.[24] It was already in popular use in South Africa by the indigenous[25] Khoisan and Bantu peoples prior to European settlement in the Cape in 1652.[26] By the 1850s, Swahili traders had carried cannabis from the east coast of Africa, to the Congo Basin in the west.[24]: 99
The Spaniards brought industrial hemp to the Western Hemisphere and cultivated it in Chile starting about 1545.[27] In 1607, "hempe" was among the crops Gabriel Archer observed being cultivated by the natives at the main Powhatan village, where Richmond, Virginia is now situated;[28] and in 1613, Samuell Argall reported wild hemp "better than that in England" growing along the shores of the upper Potomac. As early as 1619, the first Virginia House of Burgesses passed an Act requiring all planters in Virginia to sow "both English and Indian" hemp on their plantations.[29]
During Napoléon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798, alcohol was not available per Egypt being an Islamic country.[30] In lieu of alcohol, Bonaparte's troops resorted to trying hashish, which they found to their liking.[30] Following an 1836–1840 travel in North Africa and the Middle East, French physician Jacques-Joseph Moreau wrote on the psychological effects of cannabis use; Moreau was a member of Paris' Club des Hashischins (founded in 1844). In 1842, Irish physician William Brooke O'Shaughnessy, who had studied the drug while working as a medical officer in Bengal with the East India company, brought a quantity of cannabis with him on his return to Britain, provoking renewed interest in the West.[31] Examples of classic literature of the period featuring cannabis include Les paradis artificiels (1860) by Charles Baudelaire and The Hasheesh Eater (1857) by Fitz Hugh Ludlow.
