500 CE: Human skeleton wrapped in cannabis plants

500 CE: Human skeleton wrapped in cannabis plants.

In a report in the journal Economic Botany, archaeologist Hongen Jiang and his colleagues describe the burial of an approximately 35-year-old adult man with Caucasian features in China’s Turpan Basin. Thirteen cannabis plants, each up to almost three feet long, were placed diagonally across the man’s chest.

“This unique discovery provides new insight into the ritualistic use of cannabis in prehistoric Central Eurasia,” the team writes. “[They] reveal that cannabis was used by the local Central Eurasian people for ritual and/or medicinal purposes in the first millennium before the Christian era.”

Research and text © Hempshopper Amsterdam.