Marijuana chemical residue has been found in incense burners apparently used dur...
WASHINGTON - Marijuana chemical residue has been found in incense burners apparently used during funerary rites at a mountainous site in western China in about 500 BC, providing what may be the oldest evidence of smoking cannabis for its mind-altering properties.
The researchers used a method called gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify organic material preserved in the braziers, detecting marijuana’s chemical signature. They found a higher level of THC, the plant’s main psychoactive constituent, than the low levels typically seen in wild cannabis plants, indicating it was chosen for its mind-altering qualities.
“We believe that the plants were burned to induce some level of psychoactive effect, although these plants would not have been as potent as many modern cultivated varieties,” added Robert Spengler, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History’s Paleoethnobotanical Laboratories in Germany.
Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, wrote in about 440 BC of people, apparently in the Caspian region, inhaling marijuana smoke in a tent as the plant was burned in a bowl with hot stones. The Jirzankal Cemetery findings also fits with other ancient evidence for cannabis use at burial sites in the Altai Mountains of Russia.
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