e gods, a sacred medium for communion with the spiritual world and as such it has remained in some cultures to the present. (Schultes, 1973)
There has been interesting scientific speculation that the psychoactive properties of cannabis may have played a role as a catalyst in the time period of advancement that is known as the Great Leap forward, where it may have aided prehistoric man with novel new ways of thought processes, and development in tool making. Doctors John McPartland and Geoffery Guy, in their fascinating paper, The Evolution of Cannabis and Coevolution with the Cannabis Receptor – A Hypothesis, postulate that a plant ligand, such as the cannibinoids of the hemp plant, “may exert sufficient selection pressure to maintain the gene for a receptor in an animal. If the plant ligand improves the fitness of the receptor by serving as a ‘proto-medicine’ or a performance-enhancing substance, the ligand-receptor association could be evolutionarily conserved” (McPartland & Guy, 2004).
A recent scientific study out of the USA led by Washington State University researcher Ed Hagen, has suggested that our prehistoric ancestors may have ingested cannabis as a means of killing of parasites, pointing to a similar practice among the primitive Aka of modern day central Africa. We do know that references to cannabis medicine appear in the world’s oldest pharmacopeias, such as China’s ancient Pen Ts’ao, in ancient Ayurvedic texts, in the medical papyrus of Egypt, in cuneiform medical recipes from Assyria, first on a list of medicinal plants in the Zoroastrian Zend Avesta and elsewhere.
It can be reasonably suggested that soon after agriculture started, if not at its very inception, the cultivation of cannabis began to spread widely, carrying its name and its cult with it. In his study on the botanical history of cannabis and man’s relationship with the plant, Dr. Mark Merlin put forth that “perhaps hemp was one of the original cultivated plants… [of]the progenitors of civilization” (Merlin, 1973). Merlin was not alone in this train of thought. In his The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, the late Carl Sagan also speculated that early man may have begun the agricultural age by first planting hemp. Sagan used the pygmies from southwest Africa to demonstrate his hypothesis; the pygmies had been basically hunters and gatherers until they began planting hemp which they used for religious purposes (Sagan 1977). More recently Entheobotanist Christian Ratsch explained:
No other plant has been with humans as long as hemp. It is most certainly one of humanity’s oldest cultural objects. Wherever it was known, it was considered a functional, healing, inebriating, and aphrodisiac plant. Through the centuries, myths have arisen about this mysterious plant and its divine powers. Entire generations have revered it as sacred…. The power of hemp has been praised in hymns and prayers. (Ratsch 1997)
Based on collected archaeological evidence, we can see that Cannabis has been used for its resinous psychoactive properties for more than 5 thousand years. The late archaeologist Andrew Sherratt of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, pointed to the use of cannabis incenses at a gravesite of a group known as the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the Kurgans, who occupied what is now Romania 5,500 years ago. The discovery of a smoking-cup which contained remnants of charred hemp seeds at the site documents that at 3,500 years before Christ humanity had already been using cannabis for religious purposes for millennia. (Sherratt, 1995)
In Incense and Poison Ordeals in the Ancient Orient, Alan Godbey felt that in such immolation of psychoactive plants, we may find the Genesis of the concept of “divine plants”:
As to the antiquity and genesis of such practices, it is to be recognized…that they began when the primeval savage discovered that the smoke of his cavern fire sometimes produced queer physiological effects. First reverencing these moods of his fire, he was not long in discovering that they were manifested only when ce