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PL THE PLANT
Cannabis has travelled with humans for at least ten thousand years. One of the oldest cultivated plants, cannabis has been used for fibre, food, medicine and ritual across most of recorded history. Its story is inseparable from human trade, migration and, more recently, prohibition.
Deep origins
Cannabis is thought to have evolved on the steppes of Central Asia. Archaeological and pollen evidence points to human use stretching back roughly 10,000 years, making it one of humanity’s earliest crops, first valued for its strong bast fibre and nutritious seed.
Spread across the world
From Asia, cannabis followed trade routes outward: into China for fibre and seed, into India where it took on a central ritual and medical role, across the Middle East and Africa, and eventually to Europe and the Americas.
As it spread it diversified into the landrace populations that later breeders drew on.
Medicine, then prohibition
Cannabis appears in Chinese, Indian, Greek and Arabic medical texts over thousands of years. In the 19th century it entered Western pharmacopoeias.
In the 20th century a wave of prohibition, led by the United States and formalised in international treaties, pushed cannabis out of legal medicine and research for decades.
The modern turn
From the late 20th century onward, medical use, decriminalisation and legalisation spread across many countries and US states, reopening research and a legal industry. The plant’s long history is now meeting modern science.
Why the history matters
Continue exploring
Genomic domestication history and phytochemical archaeobotany
Whole-genome resequencing of global landraces and cultivars indicates that Cannabis sativa was first domesticated in early Neolithic East Asia roughly 12,000 years ago from a basal wild gene pool before diverging into fiber-selected hemp lineages and cannabinoid-selected drug lineages around 4,000 years ago (Ren et al., 2021, Science Advances, PubMed PMID 34272249). Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis of wooden braziers excavated at the 2,500-year-old Jirzankal cemetery in the Pamir Mountains provides direct chemical proof of ancient ritual burning of high-THC cannabis (Ren et al., 2019, Science Advances, PubMed PMID 31206026).
Frequently asked questions about the history of cannabis
Where was cannabis first domesticated?
Genomic evidence published in Science Advances (2021) traces the earliest domestication of Cannabis sativa to early Neolithic East Asia roughly 12,000 years ago.
What is the oldest chemical evidence of high-THC cannabis inhalation?
Residues analyzed by GC-MS in wooden braziers from the 2,500-year-old Jirzankal tombs in the Pamir Mountains provide the earliest direct chemical proof of burning higher-THC cannabis.
When were THC and the endocannabinoid system discovered?
Raphael Mechoulam and Yechiel Gaoni isolated and elucidated the structure of delta-9-THC in 1964, followed by the discovery of the CB1 receptor (1988-1990) and anandamide (1992).
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