Some Marijuana History

[kiwi_farmer]

Dorsett Bennett for Salem-News.com

Jan-23-2009 07:27

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/january...-sb_1-22-09.php

Copyright © 2008 Salem-News.com

 

Ancient pot graffiti: Korean traders bringing cannabis to Japan. Courtesy: cannabisculture.com

 

 

(SALEM, Ore.) - The history of cannabis products and their use has been long, colorful and varied. "To the agriculturist, cannabis is a fiber crop; to the physician, it is an enigma; to the user, a euphoriant; to the police, a menace; to the trafficker, a source of profitable danger; to the convict or parolee and his family, a source of sorrow".

 

The fact is that cannabis has been held simultaneously in high and low esteem at various times throughout recorded history, particularly in our own times.

 

Archaeologists discovered an ancient village in China, containing the earliest known record of the use of the cannabisplant. This village dates back over 10 000 years to the Stone Age.

 

Amongst the debris of this village, archaeologists found small pots with patterns of twisted hemp fibre decorating them. This use of the cannabis plant suggests men have been using the marijuana plant in some manner since the dawn of history.

 

Cannabis fibre (hemp) was not only used in China as decoration, but it was also used to make clothes, ropes, fishing nets and paper. It was also important as a food plant and was originally considered one of China’s five cereal grains. The cannabis plant took on such great importance in the Chinese culture that early priest doctors began using the cannabis plant’s stalk as a symbol of power to drive away evil.

 

Evidence of the inhalation of cannabis smoke can be found as far back as the third millennium BC as indicated by charred cannabis seeds found in a ritual Brazier at a ancient burial site in south Asia.

 

In 2003, a leather basket filled with cannabis leaf fragments and seeds were found next to a 2,500- to 2,800-year-old mummy in the northwestern Uygur Autonomous Region of China. The most famous early users of cannabis were the ancient Hindus of India and Nepal. The ancient drug Soma, mentioned in the Hindu religious text Veda as a sacred intoxicating hallucinogen, was sometimes associated with cannabis.

 

Cannabis was also known to the Assyrian people, who discovered its psychoactive properties through the Aryans. Using it in some religious ceremonies, they called it qunubu (meaning "way to produce smoke"), a possible origin of the modern word 'Cannabis'.

 

Cannabis was also introduced by the Aryans to the Scythians and Thracians, whose Shaman's burned cannabis flowers to induce a state of trance. Members of the cult of Dionysus, believed to have originated in Thrace, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, are also thought to have inhaled cannabis smoke.

 

The medical use of the cannabis plant goes back at least 5,000 years to ancient China, where the emperor Shen Nung listed it in his classic pharmacopeia, the Pen Ts'ao. It is also listed in the medical works of India including the famous Hindu surgeon Susruta, and the Roman physicians Pliny and Galen.

 

Most of the herbal guides of the Moslem and European cultures also gave frequent reference to its medical value, and cannabis has been one of the world's primary medicines for millenia on end.

 

Cannabis also has an ancient history of ritual use that has been found. Hemp seeds were discovered by archaeologists studying the Pazyryk, an ancient nomadic people who lived in the Altai Mountains lying in Siberian south of the modern city of Novosibirsk.

 

Early ceremonial practices like eating cannabis by the Scythians occurred during the 5th to 2nd century BCE, confirming previous historical reports by Herodotus. Some experts have claimed that cannabis was used as a religious sacrament by ancient Jews and early Christians due to the similarity between the Hebrew word qannabbos (cannabis) and the Hebrew phrase 'kana-besem' (aromatic cane). This is another possible origin of the name. It was used by Muslims in various Sufi orders, especially in South Asia, as early as the Mamluk period by Sufi Mystics called the Qualandar.

[Jedi Hippie]

Interesting read.

 

Peace