Hair From 2,800-Year-Old Siberian Tomb Shows Earliest Cannabis Use
THC traces in hair and over 1,000 seeds in a 2,800-year-old Siberian tomb are the oldest direct evidence of cannabis use. What was found and what it may mean.
Archaeologists have found the oldest direct evidence that people used cannabis for its mind-altering effects, in a 2,800-year-old burial mound in southern Siberia. Human hair from the grave carried chemical traces of THC and cannabinol, and the tomb held piles of cannabis seeds, according to a study published Nov. 5 in the journal Science.
The find moves the earliest confirmed use of the drug back by about three centuries. The researchers also propose a grim reason it was there: cannabis may have been given to people who were about to be sacrificed, to keep them calm.
What was inside the Tunnug royal mound
The tomb is a so-called royal mound at the Tunnug archaeological site, in the Uyuk valley of southern Siberia. At its center the team found four wooden structures holding several coffins made from logs. Horse skeletons lay on top of the structures, arranged in what archaeologists call a “spectral cavalcade,” a Scythian funeral custom that involved killing horses and people to accompany the dead.
Inside the burial structures were heaps of tiny seeds from Cannabis ruderalis, a wild form of the cannabis plant. The researchers counted more than 1,000 whole seeds and roughly 500 partial ones. Radiocarbon dating placed the seeds between 800 and 760 B.C.
How the hair samples point to drug use
Seeds alone would not prove anyone got high, since cannabis has long been grown for fiber and oil. The stronger evidence came from several samples of human hair recovered from the same grave. Chemical analysis picked up signals that match THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and cannabinol, two psychoactive compounds found in cannabis.
The tests could not show how much of the drug anyone took. First author Gino Caspari, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany, said in a statement that the hair traces and seeds together “suggest that cannabis was used for its intoxicating properties.”
The human sacrifice theory
Caspari said the burials in the tomb came with large horse sacrifices and, most likely, human sacrifices too. In the paper, the team suggests the plant could have helped calm the people chosen for those rituals. This idea is the researchers’ interpretation of the burial setting. The hair analysis itself shows exposure to cannabis compounds and does not reveal who received the drug or why.
Why it matters for the history of cannabis
Cannabis probably first grew in Asia, and people cultivated it for thousands of years for rope and cloth, and 6,000 years ago as an oilseed crop, according to the study. When people discovered its psychoactive effects has been much harder to pin down.
Written hints exist. In the fifth century B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus described Scythian nomads breathing in smoke from burning hemp seeds. The earliest physical evidence until now came from a cemetery in China dated to about 500 B.C. The Tunnug results push that date further into the past and confirm, the researchers say, that cannabis played a part in funerals in Central Asia.
What comes next
The team’s next steps focus on the plant itself. “We have already begun sequencing some of the plant samples,” Caspari said, adding that the genetic work should shed light on how the crop was domesticated and spread.
Source: Live Science
