According to new scientific research, our ancestors had discovered the cannabis plant at least 10,000 years ago, that is, well before the Earth emerged from the last ice age
The archaeobotanical scientific research carried out by researchers at the Free University of Berlin estimates that around 5,000 years ago, the use of cannabis spread to Europe and Asia, carried by nomadic tribes, as part of an archaic intercontinental trade during the Bronze Age.
The Yamnaya nomads of the Eurasian steppes, one of the three main “components” that contributed to the creation of today’s European population and civilization (along with local hunter-gatherers and migrant farmers from the Middle East), are considered to have played a key role in the spread of cannabis.
But the beginning had been made much earlier, by people of the Paleolithic era in both Europe and Asia, who, independently of each other, had discovered the usefulness of the cannabis plant and probably its psychoactive substances for “journeys” of the mind.
Cannabis was until recently thought to have been originally used and probably cultivated in China or Central Asia. However, German researchers, who review all the latest findings of “cannabis archaeology”, point out that the plant appears in excavations in both Eastern Europe and Japan at almost the same time, 10,200 to 11,500 years ago.
According to scientists, the most systematic use of cannabis by humans over time, for thousands of years, had taken place in Western Eurasia, until 5,000 years ago the trade and use of the plant became further internationalized, both towards the East and the West.
This was thanks to the nomadic horsemen of the steppes, who could cover enormous distances with their horses (along with the cannabis they sold or rather exchanged), following almost the same routes that would later be called the “Silk Road” – and which with a little imagination could be characterized as the “Cannabis Road”.