It’s exactly like they told you in DARE. You have been miraculously and tragically transported 2,800 years back in time to what is now the Uyuk Valley in southern Siberia. The site will eventually be called Tunnug 1 by the archaeologists who excavated it in 2017. But such is the future, and such is the present, that is, 800 BC. You have come to sit with the Scythians, nomads who roamed the Eurasian steppes on horseback. You’ve even caught a glimpse of their warrior-king, whose long, majestic tresses make him seem like a pretty cool guy. Plus, he smokes. Suddenly, the warrior-king sees you, his reddish eyes glowing in the firelight. He leans towards you, mutters something inscrutable in an eastern Iranian language, and holds out an old joint in his graying hands, leaving you with just one question: Would you like to smoke this shit?
There are, of course, pros and cons. But one thing is clear, according to an article published recently in the journal Science: The Scythians definitely used cannabis to get high. The analysis, led by Fabio-haired University of Bern archaeologist Gino Caspari, represents the first definitive evidence of human use of marijuana as a psychoactive drug, traces of which date back just 2,500 years to where Sogdian mourners once lit up in the ancient cemetery of Jirzankal in what is now western China.
It’s only fitting that marijuana originated in one of the highest places on earth: the Eastern Tibetan Plateau, also known as the Roof of the World. The plant evolved around 28 million years ago, and as early as 4,000 years ago, Chinese farmers were growing it to make rope, clothing and paper. Science. But it’s harder to tell in the archaeological record when ancient people started making so much noise. The wild herb, the ancestor of the domesticated species, contains only a little tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the plant’s intoxicating compound. Some researchers confirmed this when they tried smoking wild weed and felt nothing, also according to Science. (It is unclear whether these researchers are also the authors of the article, which describes cannabis as an “illicit” substance.)
But scholars have long suspected that the Scythians were literally hotboxing, in part because of the testimony of the Greek historian and geographer Herodotus, who was known for sensationalizing his stories (he once wrote about dog-sized ants harvesting gold). Herodotus recorded the following description of the burial practices of the nomads, according to this translation of The stories by George Campbell Macaulay:
The Scythians then take the seed of this hemp and slip under the felt coverings, then they throw the seed on the red-hot stones; and it burns like incense and produces a vapor so thick that no steam bath in Hellas would surpass it; and the Scythians, delighted with this steam bath, howl like wolves.
Let’s return for a moment to the warrior-king. It is true that we do not know for sure if he is a warrior-king, but he would become one of the people buried in the center of the royal tumulus of Tunnug 1, whose tombs contained gold jewelry, animal statues, weapons and, most importantly, almost a thousand whole cannabis seeds that appear to have been deposited around 2,800 years ago. It was here that archaeologists found strands of human hair, preserved in two pristine braids. When they tested the hair, they found traces of cannabinol, or CBN, which is a byproduct of THC. Archeology almost always comes with some degree of uncertainty, but this pile of evidence—weed seeds and grass in hair—makes the case for stoner Scythians pretty open and shut.
Some outside researchers are skeptical, including forensic toxicologist Volker Auwärter, who told the AP he found the hair analysis “scientifically weak,” as well as a commentator called Fabio who wrote “The drug of choice at the time was opium.” But many scientists seem convinced, like William Taylor, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “It’s easy to look at this stuff and say, ‘Oh, the Scythians put the reefer in,'” Taylor said. Scientific American. “But in fact, it is an extremely powerful snapshot of an interconnected world in which the people and cultures of the steppe were beginning to shape life on both ends of a huge continent.”
Extremely powerful snapshots, to be sure, but back to the fact that the Scythians smoked the reefer. I sense an important question that has been lost in the noise of discovery: What would it be like to be smoked out by the Scythians? I have taken the liberty of putting together some pros and cons.
Option 1: 420 BC Blaze It
If you’ve been transported to 800 BC and been offered a joint by a Scythian warrior king, there are plenty of good reasons to take at least a puff. You can imagine the punishment that could result from a king’s refusal. Maybe it would be nice to end 2,800 years of time travel. But most importantly, I think, it would be a real loser’s shit to say no.
But more seriously. The Scythians were famous for their “animal style,” which is not the ancestor of a secret In-N-Out menu item — which a smoking Scythian would have loved, I’m sure — but rather a stylized artistic tradition that rendered highly stylized animals in gold, bronze, and bone. What kind of altered mental state could produce such a fantastic deer?
Imagine the small talk you might have with a traveling band of Scythians. Of course, they spoke a bunch of ancient Iranian languages that you probably wouldn’t understand. Perhaps they would have spoken of their gods, like the goddess of the hearth Tabiti. Perhaps they would have told you how to find one of the steppe rivers, like the Borystheneswhere you can find it kapaor fish. You’d smile and nod at all of this if you were high. So maybe they would have offered you some cheese called hippakē.
If Herodotus is to be believed, smoking with a Scythian would probably not have involved a joint or pipe, but rather a shared inhalation of smoke. But Herodotus makes it seem like a really good time. I too would like to throw the hemp seed onto the red-hot stones and howl like a wolf at the delights of the steam bath! Because the herb was found inside the mound, researchers suspect it may have played a role in a ritual burial practice, perhaps for some sort of religious experience. But there is another, more sinister reason why the Scythians might have wanted you, in Taylor’s particular language, to take the freighter.
Option 2: Say no to the Scythians
Although the wooden tombs at Tunnug 1 contained the graves of important individuals buried in coffins made of tree trunks and logs, these wooden structures were topped with what is often called a “spectral cavalcade”, a fancy word for a pile of sacrificed horses and humans. Horses, of course, but humans? We must return once more to our friend Herodotus, who described in detail the practice of the spectral cavalcade which follows the burial of a king in The stories:
Then, when the year returns, they do the following: they take the most capable of the remaining servants, and these are native Scythians, for these serve whomever the king himself orders to do so, and his servants are not bought for money; and when they have emptied their bowels and cleaned the belly, they fill it with chaff and sew it up.
(…)
On the horses they put bridles and bits, and stretch the bridles in front of them, then tie them to stakes; and of the fifty young men who were strangled, they each mounted his horse, having first passed a straight stake through each body along the spine to the neck; and part of this stake projects below, which they fix in a socket made in the other stake which passes through the horse. After placing riders such as those I have described in a circle around the tomb, they then depart.
Herodotus, again, was known for embellishing. But the researchers who discovered cannabis found evidence of these cavalcades in the piles of human and animal bones that topped the burial structures.
So what could be the purpose of all this weed? As Caspari said New scientist“If you’re trying to sacrifice a human, it might be easier if they don’t resist as well.” This is of course speculation. But it’s definitely something to consider in the precious moments you have before you decide to smoke that Iron Age crap. But damn. If a Scythian warrior-king has decided to impale you on a stake, you probably won’t be able to stop him. When they go low, they might as well go high.
Gn world
