Trail Blazing – Cannabis Footprints Around the World (Map)

Trail Blazing - Cannabis Footprints Around the World (Map) | Third Monk image 3

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A new report describes how cannabis use originated thousands of years ago in Asia, and has since found its way to many regions of the world, eventually spreading to the Americas.

Cannabis plants are believed to have evolved on the steppes of Central Asia, specifically in the regions that are now Mongolia and southern Siberia. The history of cannabis use goes back as far as 12,000 years, which places the plant among humanity’s oldest cultivated crops.

Burned cannabis seeds have also been found in kurgan burial mounds in Siberia dating back to 3,000 B.C., and some of the tombs of noble people buried in Xinjiang region of China and Siberia around 2500 B.C. have included large quantities of mummified psychoactive marijuana.

For the most part, it was widely used for medicine and spiritual purposes during pre-modern times. For example, the Vikings and medieval Germans used cannabis for relieving pain during childbirth and for toothaches.

The idea that this (cannabis) is an evil drug is a very recent construction and the fact that it is illegal is a “historical anomaly”.

Marijuana has been legal in many regions of the world for most of its history.

–  Barney Warf, Professor of Geography at the University of Kansas

Marijuana became widely used in India, where it was celebrated as one of “five kingdoms of herbs … which release us from anxiety” in one of the ancient Sanskrit Vedic poems whose name translate into “Science of Charms.”

Over the next centuries, cannabis migrated to various regions of the world, traveling through Africa, reaching South America in the 19th century and being carried north afterwards, eventually reaching North America.

Path of Cannabis Map – From Asia to America

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Marijuana’s History: How One Plant Spread Through the World | Live Science

Hotboxing Caves – Oldest Evidence of Cannabis Use Discovered

Hotboxing Caves - Oldest Evidence of Cannabis Use Discovered | Third Monk

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Archeologists working at 120,000 year old cave in the Hindu Kush mountain range have unearthed the most ancient evidence of cannabis use to date.

A team from Quad-i-Azam University in Pakistan discovered a cave containing ancient Indica seeds along with various other objects belonging to a cave dwelling, cannabis-loving shaman.

According to the location and context in which the cannabis was found, leads us to believe it was used for ritual purposes.

It seems that the occupants of the site threw large quantities of leaves, buds and resin in the fireplace situated on the far end of the cave, filling the entire site with psychotropic smoke. – Professor Muzaffar Kambarzahi, World News Daily

The discovery of resin inside a jar found on site confirms the fact that our stone age ancestors were not so different from us after all. They were hot-boxing their cave, a practice that is alive and well in contemporary culture.

While this may be the oldest known case of ritual cannabis use, it’s far from unique. Cannabis has a well documented history in ancient culture: Aryans, Scythians, Thracians, even the Dacians used Cannabis to induce trance-like states of altered, if not heightened consciousness.

Cannabis Sativa also served more practical purposes in ancient cultures. Hemp cord was found in some 10,000 year old pottery unearthed in what is now Taiwan, suggesting that it may have been one of the first crops grown in the early days of agriculture.

Moreover, such evidence inspired Carl Sagan to speculate on the possibility that marijuana cultivation may have been instrumental in the development of agriculture and, consequently, civilization as we know it.

Archaeologists Discover Marijuana in 120,000 Year-Old Prehistoric Site | Marijuana News

Romans Used Nanotechnology – 1600 Year Old Lycurgus Cup Proves It

Romans Used Nanotechnology - 1600 Year Old Lycurgus Cup Proves It | Third Monk image 1

lycurgus

The Lycurgus Cup, as it is known due to its depiction of a scene involving King Lycurgus of Thrace, is a 1,600-year-old jade green Roman chalice that changes colour depending on the direction of the light upon it.

It baffled scientists ever since the glass chalice was acquired by the British Museum in the 1950s. They could not work out why the cup appeared jade green when lit from the front, but blood red when lit from behind.

The mystery was solved in 1990, when researchers in England scrutinized broken fragments under a microscope and discovered that the Roman artisans were nanotechnology pioneers:

They had impregnated the glass with particles of silver and gold, ground down until they were as small as 50 nanometres in diameter, less than one-thousandth the size of a grain of table salt.

The Lycurgus Cup

The work was so precise that there is no way that the resulting effect was an accident. In fact, the exact mixture of the previous metals suggests that the Romans had perfected the use of nanoparticles. When hit with light, electrons belonging to the metal flecks vibrate in ways that alter the colour depending on the observer’s position.

The super-sensitive technology used by the Romans might help diagnose human disease or pinpoint biohazards at security checkpoints. Gang Logan Liu, engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his colleagues, conducted a study last year in which they created a plastic plate filled with gold or silver nanoparticles, essentially creating an array that was equivalent to the Lycurgus Cup.

When they applied different solutions to the plate, such as water, oil, sugar and salt, the colours changed. The proto­type was 100 times more sensitive to altered levels of salt in solution than current commercial sensors using similar techniques.

It’s not the first time Roman technology has been studied. Scientists studying the composition of Roman concrete, submerged under the Mediterranean Sea for the last 2,000 years, discovered that it was superior to the modern-day concrete in terms of durability and being less environmentally damaging.

The knowledge gained is now being used to improve the concrete we use today.

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> 1600 Year Old Roman Goblet | Rise Earth

Evidence of Ancient Psychedelic Use in Prehistoric Eurasia (Study)

Evidence of Ancient Psychedelic Use in Prehistoric Eurasia (Study) | Third Monk image 2

2. Ritual dance

A study published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (March 2014) suggests that ancient humans did not use mind-altering substances for hedonistic pleasure, as we often do in the modern day.

Elisa Guerra-Doce of the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain contends that the use of these substances was integral to the beliefs of prehistoric peoples, and that their use was believed to aid in communication with the spirit world. Her research adds to the growing body of cutting-edge literature about the cultural and historical context of mind-altering substances in prehistoric Europe.

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In the paper entitled The Origins of Inebriation: Archaeological Evidence of the Consumption of Fermented Beverages and Drugs in Prehistoric Eurasia, the argument is based on evidence found in archaeological sites covering a wide geographic and cultural range in Europe: opium poppies in the teeth of an adult male of Neolithic Spain, traces of barley beer on ceramic vessels recovered on the Iberian Peninsula, artistic depictions of hallucinogenic mushroom use in the Italian Alps, and charred Cannabis seeds in bowls found in Romania.

It’s proposed that the use of these ancient psychedelic substances was intended to alter ordinary consciousness or achieve an advanced trance state. Since the majority of these finds were in tombs and ceremonial spaces, Guerra-Doce came to the conclusion that these substances were strongly linked to ritual use. While details of the rituals remain unclear, her hypothesis is that the substances played a significant role in mortuary rites, as a means of providing sustenance for the departed in their afterlife journey, or as an offering for deities of the underworld.

Far from being consumed for hedonistic purposes, drug plants and alcoholic drinks had a sacred role among prehistoric societies.

It is not surprising that most of the evidence derives from both elite burials and restricted ceremonial sites, suggesting the possibility that the consumption of mind-altering products was socially controlled in prehistoric Europe.

– Elisa Guerra-Doce, Universidad de Valladolid in Spain

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Our Ancestors Were High as Fuck | Ultra Culture