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The Origin Of Cannabis

Thule

Dr. Narrowleaf
Veteran
The genetic evidence supports this, that the Eurasian hemp line split from the eastern Himalayan line of cannabis at least 10,000 years ago.


I'd be interested in seeing that study. I'll then try to touch on this matter a bit more.
 

therevverend

Well-known member
Veteran
Look up what the definition of sativa is and you will, beyond any shadow of doubt, know what sativa really is.


It is not a cannabis specific term and is incorrectly used in all of R.C.C. and Sam Skunkmans writings as well as books & articles of others.

No. Indica and Sativa have a meaning in Latin but it's just a name. All our names 'mean something'. For instance a Cooper is a maker or repairer of barrels. It doesn't mean that everyone with that last name does that for a job.

Cannabis Sativa got the handle because it was the common type of hemp grown in England at the time it was blessed by a modern botanist with it's very own name. In case you don't speak Latin, Sativa is Latin for cultivated, why many other types of plants also contain the name Sativa. But they didn't 'have' to call it Sativa. And wild cannabis even if it's never been cultivated is also Cannabis Sativa. Unless it's so very very different it deserves a different name to show off how different it is. Which isn't happening.

And Indica is a reference to the land of India where Europe got it's drug cannabis. The type specimen of that type of cannabis came from India. But there's plenty of other kinds of cannabis from other parts of the world that are also called Indica. Chinese hemp which has nothing to do with India or getting high is also Cannabis Indica. Because it's part of the same species.

After all Tyrannosaurus Rex is the name and genus of a large extinct bird but it's name means 'tyrant lizard king' in Latin. I doubt it ruled tyrannically over a prehistoric kingdom of lizards.

I do agree with pretty much everything you're saying but I'd like to emphasize the fact that both the NLD and WLD genepools are likely to contain hemp genes. Mexican and Jamaican probably more due to historical reasons, Afghani also due to geography. Central Asia is NLH territory. Where the two subspecies meet we tend to see massive diversity.

Great point.
 

White Beard

Active member
I simply do not know enough of the proper language to make my position on the subject clear - perhaps even to myself.

I’ll attempt to educate myself more before I disrupt the conversation any further; for now, I’ll simply point out that hot peppers are a species, no matter how wildly the varieties differ from each other. I hope that the language of cannabis scholarship ends up making as much sense as that.
 

therevverend

Well-known member
Veteran
I’ll attempt to educate myself more before I disrupt the conversation any further

Ha ha I've got to say I'm not that comfortable getting deep into this botany stuff. The blind leading the blind, a stoner trying to explain to other stoners how this shit works. I've learned quite a bit. I'm glad you've been asking the questions White Beard but I've had to work for the answers.

point out that hot peppers are a species, no matter how wildly the varieties differ from each other

I like the pepper analogy because I like to grow and eat them, I know a bit about the diversity. It's a great example of how one genus can split into numerous forms once it's domesticated. That really aren't all that different, just like cannabis.

We're talking about genus Capsicum species annum. Bell peppers, jalapenos, cayenne, Anaheims, all sorts of different shapes and sizes. It's comparable to Cannabis Indica. Even though there's all sorts of leaf shapes and forms and potency variation they're still in one species group.

But there's other pepper plants in the genus Capsicum. Quite a few wild ones but there's a domesticated type Capsicum frutescens. The Tabasco pepper, used to make Tabasco sauce is Capsicum Frutescens. Piri Piri, the African bird's eye pepper, is frutescens as is one of the 3 most popular in Chinese cooking, the Xiomilla.

Then there's Capsicum Chinense. Bonnet peppers. Habeneros, Scotch Bonnets, Bhut Jolokia. It's comparable to Cannabis Sativa. Even though it's closely related and can still interbreed with other types of peppers it's different enough to warrant a different species. Of course it's up to the botanists to decide how 'different' it has to be to make it a different species.

As far as the name, the idea that the name is special and denotes something about the plant. Capsa means 'box' in Latin. I guess the bell shape? Annum in Capsicum Annum means yearly, as in it's an annual plant, dies off every year instead of a biennial, every two years, or perennial, meaning many years.

Which is wrong, even though the name means 'Annual box' I grow some of my peppers for several years. It's true if you leave your plants out in a field, they'll die from the cold and frost. If you grow your peppers in containers and place them in a well-lit windowsill they'll easily survive the winter. I've got a Capsicum Annum that's 3 years old, directly contradicting it's species name. And it's a Serrano, the peppers aren't box shaped they're cylindrical so the name is not accurate at all.
 

djonkoman

Active member
Veteran
the pepper analogy is interesting to support the idea of multiple subspecies.

however there are also other legal crops with even more variation, but still one species.
the most extreme probably is brassica oleracea. a lot of vegetables belong to that one, like cabbage, kale, brocolli, caulliflower, paksoi, brussel sprouts.

also interesting to compare I think is how some fruitspecies developed.
like pear and apple. they have been grown and selected for a long time by humans, and over time asian and european pears and apples have developed, with different traits based on what people preferred(the little I read about it said in asia they're mostly used processed, like canned or pickled, so they prefer more solid, less juicy pears, while european pears are mostly soft, juicy and sweet and meant to eat raw).
but despite those 2 groups seperating and each being selected towards different purposes, they're still one species.

that's similar to how I look at weed. 2 groups(fiber/drug) that were selected into different directions by humans, but still the same species. I think a lot of the difference between fiber and drug cannabis happened in human hands, not by natural selection. but I'm no historian.
I think the big difference if you call it a subspecies or not, is if you assume the differences developed before or after domestication. my guess is most is after domestication.
 

White Beard

Active member
I was also thinking of the brassicas, but with them (IIRC) the form of the product is distinct while the nutritional content does not (I think), which I felt might detract from the point.

Realizing I’m *not* a botanist, I’d say that internode distance and leaf shape would be a better classification basis than “drug content”, when said content is so much at the mercy of the cultivator.

I love the discussion, y’all - good stuff.
 

therevverend

Well-known member
Veteran
The amount of diversity in Capsicum is crazy, Cannabis botany is straight-forward and simple by comparison. I'll lift a paragraph from the wiki site on Capsicum:

'Capsicum consists of 20–27 species,[13] five of which are domesticated: C. annuum, C. baccatum, C. chinense, C. frutescens, and C. pubescens.[14] Phylogenetic relationships between species have been investigated using biogeographical,[15] morphological,[16] chemosystematic,[17] hybridization,[18] and genetic[13] data. Fruits of Capsicum can vary tremendously in color, shape, and size both between and within species, which has led to confusion over the relationships among taxa.[19] Chemosystematic studies helped distinguish the difference between varieties and species. For example, C. baccatum var. baccatum had the same flavonoids as C. baccatum var. pendulum, which led researchers to believe the two groups belonged to the same species.'

Then you consider the diversity of the family peppers belong in, the nightshade family Solanaceae, and it gets really crazy. I figured out one of the reasons Capsicum Annum is different is because it's stem is not woody. In the tropics there's peppers that will grow into trees, basically. Imagine having a pepper tree and an avocado tree in your yard. Some people really live the life.

The 'same flavonoids' bit in the paragraph above makes me think of related terpenes. We've been over this in so many threads but the lack of research into the genetic diversity of cannabis sucks. It may be that for instance Cannabis variety Mexicana is gone in the field before we find out if it really is a different species or sub species or variety. I'm thinking the tropical drug varieties, especially the new world ones, may be so similar genetically they're almost the same as tropical Indian types but the research has to be done. And like everything else these days nobody is doing pure science it's all to make a buck. I understand that's how the world works but this stuff should have been handled a hundred years ago instead of leaving it to the 21st century drug company feeding frenzy/cluster fuck it's turning into.
 

CannaZen

Well-known member
The plant is still mutating, as a domesticated crop it is in our hands. Look at the obscure ABC Mutation seeds that have recently become available I'm growing them and I'm going to try to grow them over generations. The thc is like 5% im also growing landraces thc is in the low teens as a result of successive growth outdoors. In the end i only grow the plants for the resin but i think they're very special genetics worth preserving, i would like to see them evolve to be more successive leading into to a legal climate in a benign plant substance where i may grow several gardens worth of plants because i have the space.





So i can say yes with breeding the genetics are leading somewhere its about looking at what we have I've seen countless variation of each leaf in my lebanese outdoor plant last year, with segregation and epigenetics each individual is a little different each time. I think its about looking at successive growth reciprocally. It will produce growth a little different each time from seed that leads somewhere. Higher resin content hopefully in my seed, I am looking at making the broad leafs have dominance, stockier buddier flower without hybridizing with modern polyhybrids actually it would be cool to develop lebanese.. the plant particularly this "hash field" heirloom seems to contain dynamic proportions between stocky Thick stemmed leafs in moderate heavy wind BLD to narrow NLD characteristics may the present uniformity of the phenotype segregate into full BLD, Does this one IBL contain all of the necessary genes in the genotype to become that. I understand it serves a purpose to be dynamic in the natural environment, In concern to resin concentration that means thicker stockier growth in my climate. I mean the form was really adapt to the weather and she stretched with flowering instead of bending the curve to produce stockier growth with stockier flowers like she could if she conserves energy resources to curve into that. My plants are cultivated in 1 foot-deep topsoil with 14 inches of rainfall each year in the mountains. i have to give them water to grow to proportion but they're like giants at apex and then towards fall (in august) they really turn towards stretching where energy would be better conserved for later production.


Just my thoughts its about looking at what you really have. Each individual is slightly different, maybe my lebanese has all of the necessary ingredients already there as an IBL.
 

CannaZen

Well-known member
I once asked the question whether indica sativa were once originally separate subspecies of cannabis carried here from the wild that were hybridized into what we have here today. It looks like it to me that those genes were carried here from somewhere, The species evolved from the wild to become domestically selected for their resin. Beautiful large leaves short stocky stalks and feral like "sativa" narrow leafs stretching from an evolution which serves a purpose to survive and thrive. So there we have it, today we have two separate denominations of distinct characteristics of a single species we have as indica-sativa hybrids. So yeah.



I see my Heirloom Lebanese "traditional hash-plant landrace" as an IBL hybrid. The only survivor of its immediate family beside hops from the last 10,000 years, from what we now know as the cannabis species. Its better than ever to see those two separate subspecies genes are surviving thriving here today the difference in the way they grow like shrubs, tree like but herbal. I can imagine the lost ancestors or original ancestors were some different.
 
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therevverend

Well-known member
Veteran
Here's a link to a good article that covers quite a bit about cannabis genetics and a lot of the stuff we've been talking about. There's a bit in there about the Chinese Hengduan Mountains plus quite a bit on the diversity of cannabis.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2016.01113/full

And a blurb about the genetic diversity of the Hengduan Mountains. Not just cannabis growing there, 1/3 of all plant species in China are in the mountain range. It's a podcast, I saved myself time by reading the transcript.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/species-split-when-mountains-rise/
 
W

Water-

This is not about cannabis but it shows how a low genetic diversity can be retained for thousands of years.

"It has long been suspected that some grape varieties grown today, particularly well-known types like Pinot Noir, have an exact genetic match with plants grown 2,000 years ago or more, but until now there has been no way of genetically testing an uninterrupted genetic lineage of that age.

Dr. Nathan Wales, from the University of York, said: "From our sample of grape seeds we found 18 distinct genetic signatures, including one set of genetically identical seeds from two Roman sites separated by more than 600km, and dating back 2,000 years ago."

One archaeological grape seed excavated from a medieval site in Orléans in central France was genetically identical to Savagnin Blanc.

This means the variety has grown for at least 900 years as cuttings from just one ancestral plant.

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-ancient-dna-roman-medieval-grape.html
 

ramse

Well-known member
this exceptional discovery made at Jirzankal, also offers the first direct evidence that men inhaled cannabis smoke burned to enjoy its psychoactive effects


"The origins of cannabis smoking: Chemical residue evidence from the first millennium BCE in the Pamirs"

Abstract

Cannabis is one of the oldest cultivated plants in East Asia, grown for grain and fiber as well as for recreational, medical, and ritual purposes. It is one of the most widely used psychoactive drugs in the world today, but little is known about its early psychoactive use or when plants under cultivation evolved the phenotypical trait of increased specialized compound production. The archaeological evidence for ritualized consumption of cannabis is limited and contentious. Here, we present some of the earliest directly dated and scientifically verified evidence for ritual cannabis smoking. This phytochemical analysis indicates that cannabis plants were burned in wooden braziers during mortuary ceremonies at the Jirzankal Cemetery (ca. 500 BCE) in the eastern Pamirs region. This suggests cannabis was smoked as part of ritual and/or religious activities in western China by at least 2500 years ago and that the cannabis plants produced high levels of psychoactive compounds.


https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/6/eaaw1391
 
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therevverend

Well-known member
Veteran
this exceptional discovery made at Jirzankal, also offers the first direct evidence that men inhaled cannabis smoke burned to enjoy its psychoactive effects


"The origins of cannabis smoking: Chemical residue evidence from the first millennium BCE in the Pamirs"

It's funny I was just reading an article about this report, now I find the report itself. Great find.

In trying to prove their point about 'smoking' they kind of meander around, they talk about Heredotus. I'm tired of hearing the damn story, it's mentioned every time there's an archeological find of cannabis. I think it's completely irrelevant here.

They correctly point out that the Scythians were burning seeds to create a smoke bath in a 'sweat lodge' after a funeral to cleanse themselves after contacting the dead. (As a side note Herodotus mentions them 'shouting in delight', I wonder if these were really cries of mourning?)

They then mention 'smoking' afterwards to get high, as a means of communicating with the dead. This is a reference to ancient China where Taoist shaman mediums would use cannabis to predict the future and talk to spirits of dead people, animals and such. However ancient China was a very very long way from the ancient Ukraine and earlier they mention

it is highly unlikely that the cannabis plants on the steppe before the first millennium BCE were cultivated, and no evidence for wild populations with high THC levels exists for the steppe.

The difference here is we know the cannabis in China and possibly in this find was purposely bred for higher amounts of THC. It's unnecessary to try to link it to Heredotus and the practices on the steppe because they had different cannabis and different culture. They've tested the Scythian's left over residue which is why they're sure they weren't farming it and it was low in THC. So it probably wasn't imported either.

Then they get to the exciting stuff. In this particular find they're using hot rocks to vaporize the cannabis in their braziers. This is different then smoking and even a bit different then hot boxing. More like knife hits? You can see how this wouldn't lead to constructing pipes and bongs, it's a different way of getting high. In R.C. Clarke's book Hashish he mentions nomads in the Chitral Valley vaporizing hashish on hot rocks.

Even though this is a Chinese find in a region that is part of China geographically, ethnically, and culturally it's part of Turkestan. Right in the middle of the Himalayas. Where the Hindu Kush, Karakorum, Hindu Raj, and Kunlun mountain ranges meet. To the north you have the Alay Valley of Kirghistan, to the east the Yarkand Valley, and to the south the Hindu Kush and Afghanistan's Wakhan corridor. This is Wide Leaf Afghan hashish country, all these areas have always produced great hashish.

This is where it gets exciting. They mention they didn't find any seeds in the braziers. This is something different, in all the other cases they're burning seeds and that may be the main purpose as opposed to getting high. Were they burning leaves or stems, or were they removing seed from flowers which is what the authors suggest? They don't mention what pops into my head when I wonder what do you do with heavily seeded sticky Afghani buds? Could this be the earliest record of hashish use?

They talk a bit about the wild/feral population of cannabis in the area, Cannabis Indica Kafiristanica. I guess we're calling all Autoflower strains Ruderalis now, that's what the authors called it though it isn't Russian hemp. It's so high in the mountains and the season is so short it's got to finish fast. Kafiristanica is the cannabis that likely was bred into Indica Afghanica, what we call hashplants or Indica.

The paper mentions the high altitudes in being a factor as to why the cannabis was high in THC. It seems like speculation to me, we always talk about the potency of cannabis grown at altitude. I'm not sure if anyone has proven that a landrace or wild strain grown at altitude would become high in THC. I'm curious as to whether this is hemp or Indica, drug cannabis. Or a mix of the two.

If they were making hashish it most likely would be hand rubbed. Hand rubbing is obviously the older of the two collection methods, if you're collecting seeds from wild undried plants you're hand rubbing hashish. Once people settled down and started drying the plants for easier seed removal sieving would become a possibility. Sieving could have come about surprisingly late in history, perhaps it was an invention of the Muslim era in Central Asia or the Middle East?

Hindu areas of the eastern Himalaya in Nepal and India have stuck to the older tradition of hand rubbing which requires no equipment, drying, or storing. Kashmir had both hand rubbing and sieving and further west sieving predominates. I'd guess at some point sieving replaced hand rubbing but no one knows when.

Sieving is far more efficient and time saving but hand rubbing works in hot humid climates where drying buds would mold or be destroyed. Another reason sieving is king in the dry hot and cool deserts of Central Asia while humid India stuck to hand rubbing. The finely woven carpets in central Asia would be easily adapted to sieving I wonder how ancient their manufacture is?

I'd like to know more about these people, were they nomads or farmers? What crops did they grow or gather or trade for? What were they really vaping and were they really getting high? Or were they burning stems and roots or some other strange shit. Always lots of questions when it comes to history. The evidence is there for vaporization of hashish I hope someone explores that possibility.
 

ngakpa

Active member
Veteran
this exceptional discovery made at Jirzankal, also offers the first direct evidence that men inhaled cannabis smoke burned to enjoy its psychoactive effects

do you mean earliest, not first?

because we've known this since Herodotus described the Scythians doing this in c. 450 bce

and the finds at Pazyryk supported his claims when they were excavated iirc in the 50s

not that this find in Xinjiang isn't amazing... it's probably Scythian (Saka) too, given that Shache nearby was a Saka city
 

ngakpa

Active member
Veteran
responded between the paras

It's funny I was just reading an article about this report, now I find the report itself. Great find.

In trying to prove their point about 'smoking' they kind of meander around, they talk about Heredotus. I'm tired of hearing the damn story, it's mentioned every time there's an archeological find of cannabis. I think it's completely irrelevant here.

it's a brazier with hot coals, as described in Herodotus, in an area that was inhabited by Scythians for more than a thousand years - from the late second and early 1st millenium BCE until the early centurues CE and the Saka-Kushan era (Sakas = Scythians)


They correctly point out that the Scythians were burning seeds to create a smoke bath in a 'sweat lodge' after a funeral to cleanse themselves after contacting the dead. (As a side note Herodotus mentions them 'shouting in delight', I wonder if these were really cries of mourning?)

They then mention 'smoking' afterwards to get high, as a means of communicating with the dead. This is a reference to ancient China where Taoist shaman mediums would use cannabis to predict the future and talk to spirits of dead people, animals and such. However ancient China was a very very long way from the ancient Ukraine and earlier they mention

the 'Taoist' texts that mention these practices were in fact from Gandhara, Parthia, and NW India, and should more accurately be called Buddhist... they're texts attributed to Jivaka, who's traditionally regarded as the physician of the Buddha... point being, they're Indic literature and describe practises that originate in Central Asia

Xinjiang, in NW China was the eastern end of the Scythian realm, ie the Sakas. Shache was a Scythian city, aka Yarkand, and is nearby the find... Ukraine was the Western end of the Scythian realm

The difference here is we know the cannabis in China and possibly in this find was purposely bred for higher amounts of THC. It's unnecessary to try to link it to Heredotus and the practices on the steppe because they had different cannabis and different culture. They've tested the Scythian's left over residue which is why they're sure they weren't farming it and it was low in THC. So it probably wasn't imported either.

in fact, it's the finds from central China that show predominantly or only CBD... residues from the finds in Scythian areas like Xinjiang and Stavropol indicate THC

Even though this is a Chinese find in a region that is part of China geographically, ethnically, and culturally it's part of Turkestan. Right in the middle of the Himalayas. Where the Hindu Kush, Karakorum, Hindu Raj, and Kunlun mountain ranges meet. To the north you have the Alay Valley of Kirghistan, to the east the Yarkand Valley, and to the south the Hindu Kush and Afghanistan's Wakhan corridor. This is Wide Leaf Afghan hashish country, all these areas have always produced great hashish.

broad-leafleted plants haven't been documented in Xinjiang


It's so high in the mountains and the season is so short it's got to finish fast.

if you go to Chitral, which is relatively speaking not far from the find, farmers prefer to harvest in early November


while humid India stuck to hand rubbing. The finely woven carpets in central Asia would be easily adapted to sieving I wonder how ancient their manufacture is?

it's not that humid in harvest season in the Himalaya - you can sieve ok anywhere in the charas regions of the Himalaya, including Nepal... but you can't sieve through a carpet anywhere... sieving is done through taught cotton or silk

I'd like to know more about these people, were they nomads or farmers?

nomads often farmed, the Scythians being a good example of that - the find is very likely Scythian or another Iranian group such as the Wusun, who may have essentially been Scythians too
 

Emperortaima

Namekian resident/farmer
Cannabis is millions of years old and the cradle TIBET i myself have pondered this and finally SCIENCE proves


Biogeographers assign the Cannabis centre of origin to “Central Asia”, mostly based on wild-type plant distribution data. We sought greater precision by adding new data: 155 fossil pollen studies (FPSs) in Asia. Many FPSs assign pollen of either Cannabis or Humulus (C–H) to collective names (e.g. Cannabis/Humulus or Cannabaceae). To dissect these aggregate data, we used ecological proxies. C–H pollen in a steppe assemblage (with Poaceae, Artemisia, Chenopodiaceae) was identified as wild-type Cannabis. C–H pollen in a forest assemblage (Alnus, Salix, Quercus, Robinia, Juglans) was identified as Humulus. C–H pollen curves that upsurged alongside crop pollen were identified as cultivated hemp. Subfossil seeds (fruits) at archaeological sites also served as evidence of cultivation. All sites were mapped using geographic information system software. The oldest C–H pollen consistent with Cannabis dated to 19.6 ago (Ma), in northwestern China. However, Cannabis and Humulus diverged 27.8 Ma, estimated by a molecular clock analysis. We bridged the temporal gap between the divergence date and the oldest pollen by mapping the earliest appearance of Artemisia. These data converge on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, which we deduce as the Cannabis centre of origin, in the general vicinity of Qinghai Lake. This co-localizes with the first steppe community that evolved in Asia. From there, Cannabis first dispersed west (Europe by 6 Ma) then east (eastern China by 1.2 Ma). Cannabis pollen in India appeared by 32.6 thousand years (ka) ago. The earliest archaeological evidence was found in Japan, 10,000 bce, followed by China
 

ngakpa

Active member
Veteran
yep, the McPartland paper points to Qinghai and Gansu reion, which means it could be that the first dope farmers were Indo-European nomads, similar to the Yuezhi/Tokharians
 

CannaRed

Cannabinerd
Realizing I’m *not* a botanist, I’d say that internode distance and leaf shape would be a better classification basis than “drug content”, when said content is so much at the mercy of the cultivator.

I love the discussion, y’all - good stuff.

The only problem I see with that is, diffrent spectrums of light will cause differences in internodal space.
I have heard that some spectrums will cause changes in leaf morphology, but not sure.
 
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