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Cannabis in human history
Six articles expanding a historical review of domestication, ritual, medicine, trade and prohibition — marking what is certain and what is still contested. Read them in order or pick a topic.
35,935 words · 163 min read
6 articles
Series · 01
Cannabis in human history
Six articles expanding a historical review of domestication, ritual, medicine, trade and prohibition — marking what is certain and what is still contested. Read them in order or pick a topic.
01/06 27 min readWhere cannabis comes from: botany, names and domesticationHow botanists, pollen specialists and geneticists have tried to pin down what cannabis is, where it first grew and when people began to shape it.Read 02/06 28 min readSeed, fibre and steppe: cannabis in prehistoric EurasiaFrom Jōmon Japan to the Pontic steppe, what fruits, fibres and pollen really tell us about the first ten thousand years of people and cannabis.Read 03/06 28 min readSmoke in the tomb: ritual and medicine in the ancient worldFrom Scythian felt tents to a Judahite shrine, how residue chemistry and old texts reveal the ritual and medical uses of cannabis in antiquity.Read 04/06 27 min readHashish, hemp and empire: cannabis in the medieval and early modern worldsHow cannabis moved through medieval Islamic societies, Africa and the Atlantic world, and why hemp fibre mattered to navies and empires for centuries.Read 05/06 26 min readFrom Calcutta to Geneva: medicine, inquiry and the making of prohibitionHow cannabis entered Western medicine in the 1840s, fell out of it by the 1940s, and was drawn into an international control regime shaped more by empire and diplomacy than by evidence.Read 06/06 27 min readReceptors and reform: cannabinoid science and the turn of 1996–2026How the chemistry of THC and CBD, the discovery of the endocannabinoid system and new medical evidence helped drive three decades of partial legal reform.Read