Archaeologists have reported the oldest evidence of cannabis use from a 2,800-year-old monumental tomb in Siberia, where plant seeds and chemical traces in mummy hair point to a funeral ritual that may have included calming human sacrifice victims, Live Science reported. The study, published Nov. 5 in the journal Science, examined a "royal mound" burial at the Tunnug archaeological site in the Uyuk valley of southern Siberia. Researchers found more than 1,000 whole cannabis seeds and about 500 partial seeds, carbon-dated to between 800 and 760 B.C., along with signals of cannabinol and THC in hair from the grave.
The mound contained four wooden structures with several log coffins. On top of those structures were the skeletons of horses that once formed a "spectral cavalcade," a Scythian funeral tradition that involved sacrificing horses and humans. Inside, archaeologists found piles of tiny seeds from Cannabis ruderalis, a wild type of cannabis. The plant likely originated in Asia and was cultivated thousands of years ago for ropes, textiles, and, about 6,000 years ago, as an oilseed crop, according to the study. It has been less clear when people learned about its psychoactive properties. In the fifth century B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus wrote that Scythian nomads inhaled fumes from burning hemp seeds, and evidence of cannabis use was previously found in a cemetery in China dated to about 500 B.C. The new dates push that evidence back by about three centuries.
"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," first author Gino Caspari, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany, said in a statement. The tests could not determine how much of the drug people consumed. Given the burial context, the authors suggested a darker purpose. "In this princely tomb, the burials were accompanied by extensive horse sacrifices and, most likely, human sacrifices as well," Caspari said. The tradition of human sacrifice, they wrote, "would have potentially made the plant a useful agent to calm individuals who were to be included in the rituals."
That last point is an interpretation of context, not a direct record of a dose given to a named victim. The verified results are the early date, the large cache of seeds, and the chemical traces in hair from the same grave. The study confirms ancient cannabis use in Central Asian funerals and extends the timeline, while leaving open how exactly the plant was consumed and whether it was used to quiet people about to be killed.