Did the vikings smoke weed?

[chilliwilli]

So burning stuff and then inhale the smoke was a common habit all over the world sometime? And the native americans invented the pipe?
Was always wondering if there were any precolumbian smoking devices found? Ancient chinese opium pipe maybe?

 

[Montuno]

So burning stuff and then inhale the smoke was a common habit all over the world sometime? And the native americans invented the pipe?
Was always wondering if there were any precolumbian smoking devices found? Ancient chinese opium pipe maybe?

https://ericarte.foroactivo.com/t44-la-pipa-a-traves-de-la-historia


.

 

[Montuno]

For those little sibsi pipes i think that they was much more used to smoke the kiff than hasch, like the Berbers nowadays i mean..? They probably used something bigger like the Hindu chilum or water pipe for the hasch ? Bigger artefacts like that in the museum you know?
.

Maybe the translation of part of this article will solve your question (?): the nozzles are missing:

"Although the use of hashish or indigo hemp was forbidden in al-Andalus, its consumption must have been commonplace judging by the smoking pipes of this period that have come down to us. It is not known when it began to be consumed. There are already some examples of pipes from the Caliphate period, such as those preserved in the Museo Arqueológico y Etnológico de Córdoba, like this example in the shape of a ship's prow found in Espejo or this other boat-shaped pile found in a Cordovan street.
In the Nasrid period, between the 13th and 15th centuries, it is known with certainty that the habit of smoking a pipe was common, as shown by the growing number of examples preserved in relation to previous periods. This is also attested to by the accounts of figures of the time, such as the religious Ibn Jamis Muhammad al-Ruayni, or the literati Ibn 'Asim al-Garnati and Ibn al Khatib, who mention this subject. The latter refers to some spaces in Granada during the period of Sultan Muhammad VI in which hashish was consumed. In this article we talk about the smoking pipes of the Alhambra Museum and, specifically, the specimens that can be seen in Room VII of the permanent exhibition.

There is a wide variety of Hispano-Muslim smoking pipes, from simple spherical bowl shapes to pipes with more complex exterior decoration. But in general, they all follow a very similar model, change shapes, change size or decoration, but maintain the same structure. In general, they can be divided into two parts: a stove or bowl, which is the part where the substance to be smoked was burned; and an embouchure, a conduit that served as a draft and where the mouthpiece fitted. The nozzle would be quite thin, judging by the thickness of the mouthpiece, and would end up in a truncated cone shape, making it easier to suck through. These nozzles would have been made of an organic material, possibly wood or cane, so there is no archaeological record.

 

[therevverend]

I should explain this because it gets confusing and lost in translation, before Columbus in Eurasia, there were 'vessels for the burning of herbs', including hashish. They've tested, bowls, braziers, cups, saunas, hot rocks, and found cannabinoids and evidence of stuff being burned. They haven't found direct inhalation devices, what we could call pipes. Where you burn one end and suck from the other directly. It's obvious the Andalusa collection are the same type and make as the other early European tobacco pipes. They misdated the pipes. They assumed they were hash pipes because they didn't know that pipes were invented in America. It's a common mistake. They're saying the pipes are from the 13-16th century. When in fact they're from the 16th-17th century. They haven't replied to my questions and I doubt they will.

The only exception to 'no pipes before Columbus' is Africa. If you're interested in the history of smoking read the wiki article it explains all this. I'll quote about the possible water pipes found in Africa from the article.

Four baked clay, non-Arab produced pipes were found at the Iron Age Sebanzi Hill site in the Lochinvar National Park, Zambia. Radiocarbon dating, along with related pottery, on the two oldest specimens indicates they were in use around the 10th to 12th century CE. The pipes have not been chemically analyzed, it has been argued they were used for smoking cannabis because they predate the introduction of tobacco. North of Zambia in Ethiopia, the remains of two ceramic water pipe bowls were recovered from Lalibela Cave and dated to 640–500 BP. Both contained trace amounts of THC according to modified thin-layer chromatography. These reports are controversial because these dates predate the exploration of the New World by Spain and the supposed first introduction of tobacco, pipes, and smoking from the New World into Eurasia.[12]

I've seen pictures of the pipes; it's not conclusive what they are. They need to do more research before it's conclusive but it's possible water pipes were invented separately, maybe for smoking cannabis, in south and/or east Africa.

Example of a Roman pipe (I - II century A.C.):

Looks like an early European tobacco pipe.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...ized-pipes-virginia-history-colonial-america/

As for low bibliography documenting the cultivation and recreational use of cannabis in al-Andalus, I already put you examples of several authors, both medieval and contemporary, in another thread where you discussed the same, but you ignored it.

I saw the bibliography, that's what I was afraid of. They're all from Andalsuia, all by the same local three guys. One is from 1915 and the other two are from around 1990 copying from the 1915 source. The references are very brief; a page or two out of a book hundreds of pages long. It's likely they didn't understand that smoking is only 500 years old in Europe, they assumed a much more ancient age for their find without testing it. Most people assume smoking to be ancient in Europe.

When I tried to find the books I found a link that talked about Ibn Baitar, an Andalusian botanist in the 13th century. He encountered the sufis and cannabis when traveling in Egypt. He didn't like the sufis and wasn't familiar with cannabis. If cannabis was commonly smoked back home he wouldn't have been shocked by the hash users. Here's a link and a quote from the article.

https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1805385&blobtype=pdf

A 13th century Spanish botanist, Ibn Baitar, reporting on his trip to
Egypt, describes the cultivation of "Konnab Indi" (Cannabis indica),
which was called hashish by the local population. He noted that eating
hashish, primarily by the Sufis for their religious devotions, produced
intoxication, jocularity, and a dream-like state. He was the first scientist
to remark that the drug also caused dementia.12 He had little regard for the
Sufis he met, referring to them as "men of the vilest class."

Doesn't sound like hashish was known or popular in Spain, and he thought hashish causes schizophrenia! He certainly wasn't interested in promoting or spreading the use of cannabis. Except maybe as a medicine for serious illness. This guy is the source for all the articles referenced in the Andalusian museum's bibliography. It's clear there wasn't any drug cannabis grown in Andalusia at the time since he encountered it for the first time in Egypt. It's not possible people in Grenada were smoking hashish in the 13th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Baitar

Not sure about pipes but from my reading even before the Arab accounts of smoking hashish, the romans used to smoke "hemp".

Do you have a source? Every reference I've seen is for the Romans using cannabis for hemp, and possibly as a medicine. Cannabis has been used and burned medicinally for thousands of years, for the pains of childbirth in the Middle East during Roman times for instance. I've read about the Afghan nomads inhaling vaporized cannabis from a brazier using a reed within the last 200 years, it's certainly possible the practice is ancient.

Here's a link to an article about 'Earth Bongs'. I didn't realize they were used by Native Americans. You'll notice they cite ancient use but the references are all from the last 200 years. It's possible their use is ancient but not evidence. It's possible the African bongs either evolved from or were part of an earth bong.

https://www.thecannachronicles.com/earth-pipe/

Ancient chinese opium pipe maybe?

No all the pipes found in China are from the 1500s on. They invented the water pipe around that time. From there they spread south to Persia and across the Middle East. Opium smoking didn't become popular until the 17th century. Before Columbus opium was either ingested or burned like incense.

https://theopiumpipe.com/what-is-and-is-not-an-opium-pipe/

Every now and then I see an article that gets my hopes up, then I look closer and realize it's making ridiculous claims. Looking up info on Chinese bongs I found a reference to the 'solid gold Scythian bongs'.

https://www.thecannabist.co/2015/06/01/ancient-gold-bongs-scythians-opium-cannabis-russia/35617/

Maybe the Scythians invented the bong? I was disappointed when I looked at pictures of the 'bongs'. Here's what they look like.

https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=82778&pictureid=2065994

It's not a bong; they were burning the cannabis in a gold bucket inside a tent and inhaling the vapor. If that's what they were doing, I've seen other Russian claims about ancient drugs turn out to be nonsense. I don't think gold makes a good pipe. Too soft and such a waste. In fact I can't imagine what a bong made of metal would be like. It's possible the guys who found the buckets were the ones smoking opium and hash and they contaminated the samples. It's a great example why when you read an author reference 'Romans smoking hemp' or '(name the ancient people) smoking hash' you need to dig deep to find the truth.

 

[Montuno]

Perhaps because Ibn-al-Baytar was born in Malaga when this province was part of the Almohad Caliphate of Marrakech ?!?

Other Islamic states not only did not have the tolerance for wine and cannabis consumption of Spanish-Muslims, but even persecuted these practices "to the death".

The consumption of wine and cannabis is known to have been widely tolerated in the Emirate and the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba, in the Spanish Muslim Kingdoms of Taifas, and in the Nasrid Sultanate of Granada.
However, this was not tolerated in the territory and time of the Almoravid Emirate of Marrakech, nor the Almohad Caliphate of Marrakech .
Almohads and Almoravids were religious fanatics and very repressive of dissent.

Furthermore, Ibn-al-Baytar was of Berber origin (like the Almohads), and not of Muladi origin (Hispano-Muslim), and probably shared their strict and repressive view of the subject.

All of the above can also be applied to tolerance towards the Sufi and their practices, which also existed as a minority in al-Andalus.
In other times and under other states, the Sufi reached very important positions in al-Andalus; a well-known example is that of the Sufi musician and poet Abu l-Hasan Ali ibn Nafi aka Zyrab (789-857 AC) during the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba.


Pd:
I do not know any data from the initial period before independence and the creation of the "first Hispano-Muslim state" (the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba), when almost all of Iberia belonged to the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus; But historians say that it was the almost extermination of the Umayyads at the hands of the Abbasids to replace their Caliphate with their own, the Abbasid of Bagdag, and the proclamation first of the political independence of the Emirate of Cordoba, and then religious independence of the later Caliphate, with the Abbasid Caliphate power of Bagdag, which strengthened and multiplied the hemp crops by al-Andalus, with which to supply the new fleet of this new power.
It is also commented that the Viking invasions surely also influenced that empowerment...

 

[tobedetermined]

A great debate, guys.

the literati Ibn 'Asim al-Garnati and Ibn al Khatib, who mention this subject. The latter refers to some spaces in Granada during the period of Sultan Muhammad VI in which hashish was consumed.

This dates common usage as early as 1360 – 1362, the reign of Muhammad VI.

This also jives nicely with:

When I tried to find the books I found a link that talked about Ibn Baitar, an Andalusian botanist in the 13th century. He encountered the sufis and cannabis when traveling in Egypt. He didn't like the sufis and wasn't familiar with cannabis. If cannabis was commonly smoked back home he wouldn't have been shocked by the hash users. Here's a link and a quote from the article.
https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1805385&blobtype=pdf

Page 820 of the pdf.

“In the Islamic world of the 14th century, the use of hashish became even more prevalent and spread along the East Coast of Africa and west to North Africa and Spain. The botanist Ibn Batuta, in his travels from Persia to East Africa (1348), reported that hashish was eaten by the people, sometimes even in the mosques. He also mentioned the use of alcohol among the Muslim upper classes. In Morocco hashish was called kaif (known as "kif" today) and was used in the religious ceremonies of the Sunusis sect. The drug was also openly consumed in Southern Spain until that country's reconquest by Isabella the Catholic and the reestablishment of the firm grip of the Roman Catholic Church.”

 

[therevverend]

the romans used to smoke "hemp".

I found the source you're referencing earlier but I can't find it again. It's driving me crazy. The key part left out is 'the Romans smoked hemp SEEDS.' A lot of confusion comes from the verb to smoke since it means different things that are lost in translation. You can smoke a salmon or a slab of ribs. You can smoke your hemp. It's well documented that the Scythians smoked hemp seeds as well. I've smoked hemp seeds, it's terrible it always gives me a headache. I hate hearing that POP in a joint.

When the Scythians smoked hemp seed, and I'd assume other ancient peoples, they'd mix it with coriander seed, poppy seed, and other fragrant seeds to purify the air. The ancient world was stinky, much stinkier then the world is today. A lack of indoor plumbing. Horses, dogs, and cattle instead of cars and trucks. No showers. There was a a lot of effort spent burning stuff that smelled good. It took on a religious significance. People didn't understand about disease. They knew shit would get you sick if there was a lot of it around, so they associated bad smells with illness. They'd burn seeds of plants to clear the air, chase away the Jinn or other evil spirits who caused disease.

It's easy to confuse this with getting high, I just read an online blog that said 'Scythian shamans smoked cannabis seeds to get high, they were the sky fliers'. This is silly, seeds don't get you high. You might even test an ancient smudge pot used for burning flowers full of seeds and find THC traces. This is what the people talking about pre-Columbian pipes are usually referencing. Unless you were in India, Africa, Persia, and even in these places, much of the cannabis was hemp. High in CBD and certainly medicinal but not psychoactive. Combine this with the widespread belief that smoking in the Old World is thousands of years old and you see the confusion. A lot of people think tomatoes have always been part of spaghetti sauce and curries were always made with chili peppers.

The people that really got high were the hash eaters, and they got really really high. The stoners back then were even more likely then today to be religious fanatics, madmen, dervishes, and the like because common people couldn't afford to waste their days eating hash and getting completely bombed out of their gourd. The Sheikh Haidar story is a great example of what being a stoner was all about in the old days. The Sufis were instrumental in spreading cannabis through the Muslim world but a lot of people didn't like them. Found what they did objectionable and 'against Islam'. A lot of debates about whether hashish was haram or halal.

One place the common people may have encountered psychoactive THC dominate cannabis was at church. Since hashish was a likely ingredient in incense. Along with all the frankincense, myrrh, and other secret herbs and spices. You get a bunch of people together on Sunday in a religious context and breathe some hashish vapors. It partly explains why religious experiences were so common. Along with all the delirium from famines and disease. I don't know of a lot of actual evidence, it sounds plausible and it was part of the incense trade but I don't know on what level.

A very simple reason as to why the Romans, Celts, Scythians, Vikings, etc. didn't invent pipes. What would they smoke through it? Smoking is a weird thing to do and counter-intuitive. Breathing hot smoke and coughing. Until the advent of tobacco there wasn't an addictive enjoyable substance to smoke through pipes. Hashish maybe? Why would you need to? There's no laws against it, you could toss a chunk on your brazier, make your tent smell good, get your lady in the mood, why would you need to smoke it? There's lots of medicinal herbs and seeds that smell good burning and have medicinal effects but you don't need to smoke them. You don't smoke incense through a pipe, it's not a logical leap. The Celts, Vikings, Romans, Greeks, had hemp but not psychoactive stuff. Psychoactive cannabis didn't reach Iraq and Egypt until the 1200s according to most sources.

I know a bit about Native American smoke mixes. Tobacco wasn't the only stuff they smoke. Every group had it's own smoke mix, barks, leaves, and other plant materials they dried and smoked. A friend of mine just picked a bunch of bearberry, he's mixing it with mugwort and smoking and smudging it. Mullein, diviner's sage, sumac, pukeweed, yerba santa are only a few of the plants that were part of the smoking mixes of which tobacco was only one component. These plants all have different effects and add something to the blend. Mugwort for instance will give you vivid dreams. If Europeans were familiar with pipes and smoking there would be 'native European' smoke mixtures.

When tobacco and pipes were introduced in the 16th century you see what you'd expect. An explosion of tobacco smoking followed by an explosion of hashish smoking. After pipes and bongs were introduced cannabis became much more popular, you had 'coffee houses' catering to stoners across the Ottoman Empire. A huge hash trade opened up between Central Asia and India. Psychoactive drug strains quickly spread out of India, Eastern Africa and Egypt, and Persia to new lands and continents. You see the start of a large-scale drug cannabis industry.

One thing most people will find surprising is how closely related most tropical cannabis strains are. Most of the Columbian, Mexican, SE Asian, West African strains didn't split from their South Asian ancestors that long ago. Most within the last 100-500 years. Sieved hashish, using screens, may not have an ancient origin. No one knows how long people have made sieved hashish. It could have been thousands or only hundreds of years old. At a certain point it replaced the older hand rubbed hashish but it isn't documented before the last 500 years. Everything changed when people started smoking cannabis.

I came across a book called 'Cannabis in the Ancient Greek and Roman World'.

https://www.academia.edu/33978318/C...k_and_Roman_World_Lexington_Books_2018_sample

The problem is that academics have started charging a lot to look at their research. Much more then average person would want to spend. I figured for a nice hard cover book I'd spend $30-40. It's $83 new on Amazon, $66 used! I looked at the intro and read a bit about the author and the material. There isn't a lot of new information, I think the biggest bombshell is that cannabis was likely used in wine with other herbs and spices. It'll be interesting to see if they tested for THC or CBD. If you add the flowers during the brewing process the alcohol will activate the cannabinoids over time. It's possible they were adding the herbs to flavor the wine like hops for instance. Rather then for strong psychoactive effects. I may have to pick it up when I can find a used copy for much cheaper.

Two books you should look at if you're interested in these topics, looking for accurate well-researched information are Hashish! by Robert Connell Clarke and Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany by Clarke and Mark D Merlin. There's lots of other decent sources but both those books are well-researched and go over a lot of the stuff I've written about. Especially the spread and introduction of cannabis around the world. Hashish! is of course about drug cannabis, it's better if you're interested in the history of hashish eating and smoking, the effect on culture and how to make hashish. Evolution and Ethnobotany contains much more information about hemp then drug cannabis. Since hemp has a much wider and more common distribution then drug cannabis. Places like Europe and East Asia that aren't known for drug cannabis have a long history of hemp grown for fiber and seed along with a huge cultural influence.

 

[therevverend]

Here's a link to an excellent rundown of cannabis in the Muslim world during the medieval period. Including Ibn al-Baitar's (the botanist from Andalusia Spain) encounter with hashish in the Gardens of Cafour in Egypt.

http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/history/first12000/2.htm

His description of cannabis as 'Konnab Indi" (words that later evolved into 'Cannabis Indica) makes me wonder if he was aware of 'Cannabis Sativa', hemp not drug cannabis. It seems likely since Europeans had been using hemp for hundreds of years at that point. It seems strange to me that cannabis was introduced into the Muslim world at what seems like a late date after 1000 AD. You see references to cannabis much earlier by the Greeks, Romans, and Assyrians. What seems likely to me is that the Sufis introduced Indian cannabis, drug cannabis to the Middle East. The earlier accounts were all of Cannabis Sativa, Eurasian hemp which is the common landrace, wild, and feral subspecies west and north of Persia. It's possible the earlier references that are mostly medicinal as opposed to actively getting loaded were to hemp. The Mongols, Turks, and other Asian people moving west along with the Sufis brought drug cannabis with them and introduced it to places like Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Spain, and north Africa in the 1000-1500 AD period to set the stage for the introduction of pipes after 1500 AD.

Found a map on the internet showing what I mean. It shows the spread of 'medicinal cannabis', drug strains that originated in India. It doesn't show the spread of hemp which was introduced to the Mediterranean and Europe much earlier and also used medicinally. It's not 100% accurate, cannabis was introduced from India to East Africa hundreds of years earlier and introduced to Egypt around 1000 AD. The other dated maps I found mixed hemp with drug cannabis, or in other words CBD with THC.

I wish I could find the maps from Clarke and Merlin's book, Cannabis: evolution and ethnobotany. It has maps covering the globe showing when and where fiber hemp, sifted hash, hand rubbed hash, seed and oil cannabis, and flower were introduced as accurately as possible.

 

[therevverend]

I hate firing off multiple posts like this but of course Ibn Baitar knew about hemp before he encountered drug cannabis for the first time. Spain produced a lot of hemp in the medieval period. Of course Ibn al Baitar knew about hemp, the Spanish were growing lots of it at the time.

The Kitab al-Filaha or 'book of agriculture' written in the second half of the twelfth century discusses the methods of cultivating cotton, flax, and hemp and notes that hemp was used to make coarse, fabrics, ropes, and paper. 12th century documents belonging to a Catalan noble family of Montcada include insight into the farming activities of local peasants. They grew hemp to supply fiber for cordage and cloth. By the end of the 12th century a weaver's workshop inland from Barcelona was producing cloth from a combination of hemp and wool. The government in Barcelona in 1271 declared a specific tax be paid by both the buyer and the vendor per 46 kilograms of hemp or wool yarn. That's a lot of hemp plants.

Hemp fiber was also an important component of shoes and crossbow strings at least by the latter part of the 15th century. In the case of shoemaking there was a thriving trade between the Christian cord makers of Valencia and the Muslims of Vall de Uxo, who specialized in the fabrication of hemp sandals. No mention of hashish or drug cannabis which is natural because you'd need to travel at least as far as Egypt to encounter it.

 

[Montuno]

Tres tratados arabes sobre el Cannabis: textos para la historia del hachis en las sociedades Islamicas S. XIII-XVI; by Indalecio Gonzalo Cámara :

https://www.worldcat.org/title/tres...sociedades-islamicas-s-xiii-xvi/oclc/28225169

 

[Montuno]

About the Sufi brotherhoods during the Nasrid period in the Sultanate of Granada, Ibn al-Katib (aka Ibn al-Khatib), wine and hashish:


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjAWegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw0upWXMxwA0Qdckji0PiEoj

 

[mexcurandero420]

Weed found in a 2700 old temple in Israel

https://merryjane.com/amp/earliest-evidence-of-ritual-cannabis-discovered-in-2700-year-old-jewish-temple

 

[therevverend]

Montuno, your links aren't working. You might try searching for the indivdual Moorish Sufis, Ibn Arabi for instance was from Spain and encountered cannabis when he traveled to Mecca and other places. Don't know that he returned to Spain after he encountered it.

Nice catch Mexcurando. It's likely that cannabis was part of the recipe for the oil used anoint the old Jewish kings. They mention cow dung mixed with the cannabis. This sounds weird but it makes sense since in places without wood dried cow pies are what you're using for fire. The link does a nice job of explaining how the cannabis was vaporized on an alter and not smoked. The cannabis was mixed with frankincense, in other words, incense. They also found animal fats, I wonder if the THC was cooked with fat, decarboxylated.

 

[funkyhorse]

Hi all
I hope you dont mind, I dont trust much in current 21st century peered review papers because the incentive is put on just publishing as much papers as you can and it is not really important or necessary to present proof, as opposed to the scientific method used in the 20th century. People are peer reviewing each other and it is not really reliable
This is the full article about the Tel Arad altar:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03344355.2020.1732046

They studied and described the content of the residue at the altar but didnt date it, I personally contributed to the contamination of all kind of biblical sites with hashish smoking and I certainly havent been the only one contaminating. Burn a piece of hash on the altar, cover it with a cup wait for smoke to fill the cup and smoke it at once. Hash is a very interesting and versatile substance that gives different highs depending on consumption method and this one smoking it pure on the cup is a trippy method, much stronger than smoked in a joint or bang mixed with tobacco.


Cannabis a a very mild entheogen, not the kind that will make you build temples in the middle of nowhere where almost nothing grows
They didnt need at the temple to import anything to get totally high and tripping or if they did, it was a small travel by camel of a few days
One of the few things that grow in that inhospitable area is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyoscyamus_niger

In Sinai grows the variety Hyoscyamus boveanus
The paper refers to Sinai cannabis plants as Sinai rudelaris suggesting it has low psychoactivity because it supposedly has low amount of cannabinoids
A friend of mine has in Sinai january 2020 and reported quality is as decent as it was in the 80's, meaning it is the best variety of all the middle east and mediterranean area, which makes me doubt about the knowledge of cannabis of the authors of the article and the peers that reviewed it in exchange for peer reviewing their own
I quote from the article:
"...One cannabis strain, or variety, called Sinai Ruderalis is an Egyptian landrace strain cultivated in the Sinai Peninsula by the local Bedouins (Clarke and Merlin 2013). However, Ruderalis contains very low amounts of cannabinoids. Furthermore, pollen analysis carried out on samples taken from both altars by Dafna Langutt (Tel Aviv University) concluded that no plant material was preserved on the Arad altars. In fact, no cannabis seeds or pollen remains are known from archaeological contexts in the Ancient Near East, as opposed to northeast China or southeast Russia, where all parts of the cannabis plant and seed were found at different archaeological sites and contexts and were dated as early as 2000 BCE (Jiang et al. 2016; Russo et al. 2008; Russo 2014). Therefore, we suggest that cannabis female inflorescences may have been imported from distant origins and were transported as dried resin (commonly known as hashish).

Every people has a messanger, an entheogenic plant which will allow to perform rituals to a different level.
Hyoscyamus has many different names. Hyoscyamus boveanus is the source of the drug hyoscyamine (daturine).

 

[tobedetermined]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyoscyamus_niger

Getting back to the Vikings briefly . . . . from your link above . . .

"Theories

Henbane seeds have been found in a Viking grave near Fyrkat, Denmark, that was first described in 1977. This and other archaeological finds show that H. niger was known to the Vikings. Analysis of the symptoms caused by intoxication of this plant suggest that it may have been used by berserkers to induce the rage state that they used in war."

 

[mexcurandero420]

Hi all
I hope you dont mind, I dont trust much in current 21st century peered review papers because the incentive is put on just publishing as much papers as you can and it is not really important or necessary to present proof, as opposed to the scientific method used in the 20th century. People are peer reviewing each other and it is not really reliable
This is the full article about the Tel Arad altar:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03344355.2020.1732046

They studied and described the content of the residue at the altar but didnt date it, I personally contributed to the contamination of all kind of biblical sites with hashish smoking and I certainly havent been the only one contaminating. Burn a piece of hash on the altar, cover it with a cup wait for smoke to fill the cup and smoke it at once. Hash is a very interesting and versatile substance that gives different highs depending on consumption method and this one smoking it pure on the cup is a trippy method, much stronger than smoked in a joint or bang mixed with tobacco.


Cannabis a a very mild entheogen, not the kind that will make you build temples in the middle of nowhere where almost nothing grows
They didnt need at the temple to import anything to get totally high and tripping or if they did, it was a small travel by camel of a few days
One of the few things that grow in that inhospitable area is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyoscyamus_niger

In Sinai grows the variety Hyoscyamus boveanus
The paper refers to Sinai cannabis plants as Sinai rudelaris suggesting it has low psychoactivity because it supposedly has low amount of cannabinoids
A friend of mine has in Sinai january 2020 and reported quality is as decent as it was in the 80's, meaning it is the best variety of all the middle east and mediterranean area, which makes me doubt about the knowledge of cannabis of the authors of the article and the peers that reviewed it in exchange for peer reviewing their own
I quote from the article:
"...One cannabis strain, or variety, called Sinai Ruderalis is an Egyptian landrace strain cultivated in the Sinai Peninsula by the local Bedouins (Clarke and Merlin 2013). However, Ruderalis contains very low amounts of cannabinoids. Furthermore, pollen analysis carried out on samples taken from both altars by Dafna Langutt (Tel Aviv University) concluded that no plant material was preserved on the Arad altars. In fact, no cannabis seeds or pollen remains are known from archaeological contexts in the Ancient Near East, as opposed to northeast China or southeast Russia, where all parts of the cannabis plant and seed were found at different archaeological sites and contexts and were dated as early as 2000 BCE (Jiang et al. 2016; Russo et al. 2008; Russo 2014). Therefore, we suggest that cannabis female inflorescences may have been imported from distant origins and were transported as dried resin (commonly known as hashish).

Every people has a messanger, an entheogenic plant which will allow to perform rituals to a different level.
Hyoscyamus has many different names. Hyoscyamus boveanus is the source of the drug hyoscyamine (daturine).

Could be, could be not.Nearby Tel Arad you have which was the biggest important trading center in history and city Petra in Jordan.Frankincense was brought from Oman via the incense road and spices via the Silk road.

 

[chilliwilli]

I'm not sure if we could compare todays hemp psychoactivity with the hemp from ancient times. For me 99% of wild hemp today is a descendant of industrial used hemp breed over the last decades for low thc. Over the centurys the main goal was fibre and seed selection for hemp which could also be a nice smoke. The low thc hemp is a child of the prohibition imo.

 

[Youngandfree]

I am sure they would prefer drinking it, would put seeds and leaves in alcohol, then wait some time and drink it afterwards. Not sure they used to smoke it though.

 

[therevverend]

I'm not sure if we could compare todays hemp psychoactivity with the hemp from ancient times.

Hemp, Cannabis Sativa (the botanical definition, not vernacular), is genetically predisposed to CBD the same way Cannabis Indica, drug cannabis, is predisposed to THC. The wild and feral hemp across North America and Eurasia is low in THC and high in CBD. None of it would get you high. Of course this is different then modern industrial hemp which isn't just low in THC, it contains almost no THC.

It is possible to selectively breed hemp to have higher amounts of THC. The ganja found in this guy's grave

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...iscovery-scythians-turpan-archaeology-botany/

was found to be genetically closer to Cannabis Sativa then Cannabis Indica. Which means his people were likely selecting for THC. There's a theory that the Mediterranean drug strains, Moroccan, Lebanese, Turkish, and Sinai varieties that have varying amounts of CBD and THC contain a considerable amount of hemp genes. I know Turkish hash strains were basically hemp, contained what we would consider low amounts of THC.

 

[Coeus]