“Unveiling Ancient Rituals: Did Our Ancestors Smoke Pot to Honor the Dead?”
“It’s hard to say if the sacrifice is related to smoking,” Yang told VICE. “So we just interpret that the funeral ritual may have included flame, music, and smoking.”
X. Wu/Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social SciencesWooden braziers found at the burial site. People burned cannabis over the brazier so the smoke could be inhaled by multiple people.
The study hypothesized that the elaborate funeral ceremonies were performed in order to help people communicate with the spirit world.
Historically, the Jirzankal Cemetery was at the center of the early silk road trade routes, which is why many of those buried at the ancient graveyard have been found to be outsiders or non-locals. On this trade route, vendors sold harvested crops like walnuts, apples, pistachios, and – possibly — cannabis.
“This is a wonderful example of how closely intertwined humans are and have been with the biotic world around them, and that they impose evolutionary pressures on the plants around them,” said co-author Robert Spengler, who is also the laboratory director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
The discovery of an ancient weed-smoking ritual that took place thousands of years ago has given researchers more clues into the behavior of past society and the history of marijuana.
The ancient pot smokers used wooden braziers to burn the cannabis so that the smoke could be inhaled in groups. The custom matches the descriptions by ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote about how people in the Eurasian Caspian Steppe region would sit in small tents and burn the cannabis plants over stones.
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