Origins of Cannabis Smoking

The cannabinoids detected on the wooden braziers are mainly CBN, indicating that the burned cannabis plants expressed higher THC levels than typically found in wild plants. However, 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. Wild cannabis exists across much of Central Eurasia from western China to Eastern Europe and is an abundant component of the vegetation community; hence, claims that the western steppe peoples of the third and second millennia BCE were spreading the plant as a kind of “camp follower” (6, 30) need to be clarified.

Source: advances.sciencemag.org