New Delhi: Archaeologists have discovered evidence that people used cannabis for its psychoactive effects nearly 2,800 years ago, possibly as part of funerary rituals involving human sacrifice. The findings, published in Science, come from a monumental burial mound in southern Siberia and provide the oldest directly dated archaeological evidence of cannabis being used as an intoxicant.
The study, titled ‘Direct evidence for psychoactive cannabis use 2,800 years ago’, examined the Tunnug 1 burial site in the Uyuk Valley, in Russia’s Republic of Tyva. The tomb belonged to high-ranking members of Scythian society, a group of nomadic, horse-riding peoples who inhabited the Eurasian steppe.
Researchers recovered more than 1,000 cannabis seeds from the burial structures, along with preserved human hair. Radiocarbon dating placed the seeds between 800 and 760 BCE, in the early eighth century BCE.
Chemical evidence in ancient hair
The presence of cannabis seeds alone could not establish whether the plant had been used as a drug. Cannabis was also cultivated for practical purposes, including producing oil, rope and textiles.
To investigate its possible intoxicating use, the researchers analysed hair samples from individuals buried at the site. They detected traces consistent with cannabinol (CBN), a compound produced when tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabis’s principal psychoactive component, breaks down. Weaker chemical signals were also consistent with THC.
“The molecular traces in the hair and the cannabis seeds come from the same grave and suggest that cannabis was used for its intoxicating properties,” Gino Caspari, the study’s lead author and an archaeologist at the University of Bern, told Live Science.
The analysis could not establish how much cannabis the individuals consumed or how it entered their bodies. Researchers therefore cannot determine whether it was smoked, inhaled passively or ingested.
Could cannabis have been used before human sacrifice?
The burial mound also contained the remains of dozens of sacrificed horses and scattered human bones, which researchers believe may indicate human sacrifice as part of the funerary ceremonies.
Caspari also told Live Science that the burials involved extensive horse sacrifices and “most likely, human sacrifices as well”. The researchers suggest that cannabis may have been used to calm people who were selected for these rituals.
The possibility remains speculative, however. The evidence does not establish that cannabis was administered to sacrificial victims or explain precisely how it was used during the ceremonies.
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What does this reveal about ancient cannabis use?
The discovery pushes back the earliest directly dated evidence of cannabis intoxication by roughly 300 years. Earlier evidence of psychoactive cannabis use came from a cemetery in China dating to around 500 BCE.
The researchers are now sequencing preserved cannabis samples to investigate the plant’s domestication and spread. They also hope to learn whether ancient populations deliberately selected plants for their psychoactive properties. The current findings cannot establish the THC content of the ancient plants.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)