Early Evidence Of Cannabis Smoking Found On Chinese Artifacts
People have been smoking pot to get high for at least 2,500 years. Chinese archaeologists found signs of that when they studied the char on a set of wooden bowls from an ancient cemetery in western China. The findings are some of the earliest evidence of cannabis used as a drug.
The set of 10 wooden braziers come from eight tombs at the ancient Jirzankal Cemetery on the Pamir Plateau in what is now China's Xinjiang region. Researchers found chemical evidence of cannabis in residue on nine of the braziers, which held small stones that were apparently heated and used to burn the plants.
Yimin Yang, an archaeologist at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and a co-author of the study, says the location of those artifacts suggests cannabis smoke was "being used during funeral rituals, possibly to communicate with nature or spirits or deceased people, accompanied by music."
The findings are consistent with what's known about cannabis use across Central Eurasia, Yang says, "possibly reflecting some kind of community of shared beliefs in the Eurasian mountain foothills." There is evidence of ancient cannabis use at funerals from frozen tombs in Russia's Altai Mountains, and fifth century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus wrote of the Scythians using cannabis smoke as a post-burial cleansing rite in The Histories.
The researchers say their findings show that use of cannabis as a drug likely originated somewhere else, on the high plains of Central Asia.
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/15/732084138/pass-the-brazier-early-evidence-of-cannabis-smoking-found-on-chinese-artifacts
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