Open Veils · Answer
What is the earlies known usage of cannabis?
A November 2025 study published in Science, led by Gino Caspari of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, pushes the directly evidenced psychoactive use back to at least 2,800 years ago — 300 years before the Chinese record. Cannabis seeds and THC-bearing compounds were recovered from human hair inside a monumental Scythian tomb in Siberia. The esoteric and Vedic record, however, points even further back, with the Atharva Veda referencing sacred bhanga around 2,000 BCE, and textile fiber cultivation in Japan extending into the pre-Neolithic.
Evidence
- The Scythian find, published in Science (November 2025) by Caspari's international team, recovered cannabis seeds alongside human hair from a high-ranking equestrian burial on the Eurasian steppe.
- The Vedic record complicates the purely archaeological framing.
- Brien Foerster and researchers in the Hancock circle note that hemp fiber cultivation in pre-Neolithic Japan suggests long prior familiarity with the plant's full range of properties — fiber, seed oil, and psychoactivity are rarely discovered in strict isolation across cultures.
- Active compound traces in the hair constitute what the researchers call the oldest directly dated archaeological evidence of intentional intoxicant use.
- Notably, forensic toxicologist Volker Auwaerter of the University Medical Center Freiburg has publicly flagged the hair analysis as 'scientifically weak,' cautioning that the route of consumption — inhalation or ingestion — cannot be confirmed from the data alone.