Human consumption of psychoactive cannabis dates back at least 2,800 years — significantly earlier than previously understood, according to a new study.
Archaeologists leading excavations at a monumental burial site in Siberia said they have uncovered evidence of the earliest known use of cannabis for psychoactive purposes.
The findings suggest cannabis was being consumed at least 300 years earlier than the oldest documented cases in neighbouring China.
Ancient drug consumption has long intrigued scholars.
The Greek historian Herodotus recorded inhabitants of Central Asia smoking cannabis around 440 B.C., and recent archaeological work has uncovered seeds in tombs throughout the region's highlands.
An international team from Germany, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland analysed hair found in the royal tomb alongside cannabis seeds, providing fresh insights into the plant's place in ancient societies.
"It’s extremely rare that we have both preserved plant parts and human soft tissue with the active compounds in it in the same context," said co-author Gino Caspari, an archaeologist at the University of Bern.
It remains unclear whether the cannabis was inhaled or ingested, he added.
The project began in 2017 at a massive burial mound known as Tunnug 1 in southern Siberia’s Uyuk Valley.
The site contains one of the earliest monumental tombs belonging to the Scythians — ancient nomadic groups who migrated from Central Asia into southern Russia and Ukraine.
Working "essentially out in the middle of nowhere," the team lived in tents for months, enduring a season filled with swamps, snowstorms, severe frost and mosquito swarms as free-roaming horses crossed the grassy steppe.
Larger artifacts on the site include weapons in the burials, horse gear and animal-style motifs. But the team “struck gold” as it also found tiny black spots that turned out to be cannabis seeds along with preserved human hair, Caspari said.
“It’s only so often as an archaeologist that you do get to drug test a person that’s been dead for almost 3,000 years," he said.
Radiocarbon dating on some of the more than 1,000 seeds helped establish the time of origin, and “they are not there by accident" but deposited within the tomb, suggesting that the plant material had significance in the community, he said.
Results were published Thursday in the journal Science.
Some independent experts aren’t convinced.
The hair analysis “is scientifically weak” and there’s not enough evidence to tell whether cannabis was used, wrote Volker Auwaerter, head of the forensic toxicology section at the University Medical Center in Freiburg, Germany, in an email.
“For a central part of the study, the article falls far short of what would have been possible,” Auwaerter said. “This matters because the hair data carry the abstract’s main claims (cannabis consumption and use for its psychoactive properties)."
Today, scholars don’t consider ancient accounts trustworthy without corroborating evidence. Because the cannabis plant has other uses — seeds are pressed for oil and fibers used for cloth — their presence alone doesn’t confirm drug use.
Auwaerter, who was not part of the study, said the data didn't distinguish consumption from external exposure — in other words, the hair could have picked up traces of weed simply by being buried together with it. He said a lab test involving forensic toxicology expertise would have been advisable and easy to arrange.
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