Cannabis and health

History of cannabis

The earliest records of cannabis use date back to 7000 BC, in the Early Stone Age, which is usually defined as the beginning of the ”Neolithic” – the first farmers, and comes from the area of ancient Babylon.

However, the credit for the greatest expansion in the cultivation and versatile use of hemp in history goes to China, where one of the earliest records of the cultural use of the plant comes from the Yellow River Valley.

It is believed that people have known about cannabis and the power of its use long before that. The clothes people wore, the nets they used to catch fish and game, the ropes they used, were all made from the long, strong and durable fibres of hemp. The ancient Chinese, however, relied on the power of this plant far more often than just in cases involving the use of fibre. They consumed every part of it: roots and leaves in medicine, stem for textiles, rope and paper, seeds for food and oil. The Chinese learned to press the seeds into valuable oil using a technique still in use in the 20th century.

Pressed seeds produce 20 to 30% oil. It was used for cooking, in lamps for lighting, in paints, for soap making. The waste after pressing has enough nutrients to be nutritious pet food. Hemp fibres from old clothes and nets were used in the production of paper, which thus gained increased durability and is still preserved in graves dating back to 100 BC (similar paper is currently used to make banknotes in Canada, or for better editions of the Bible). The roots were applied in the form of a dough to wounds to relieve the pain of fractures and during operations. Even the effects of the leaves and flowers did not go unnoticed for long. In China, as in other areas, cannabis, along with other hallucinogenic plants, played a very important role in the establishment of religions and in the life of communities at that time.