Ancient tomb discovery suggests oldest evidence of person getting high 2,800 years ago

GENEVA — People may have been getting high off cannabis earlier than previously thought — at least 2,800 years ago, a new study suggests.Archaeologists who led a dig at a monumental tomb in Siberia said they turned up evidence of the earliest known use of cannabis for psychoactive purposes.The findings point to cannabis consumption at least 300 years earlier than previously known use in neighboring China.Ancient drug use has long intrigued scholars.The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about inhabitants of Central Asia smoking cannabis around 440 BC, and recent archaeologists have found the seeds in tombs across its highlands.The team from Germany, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland said analysis of hair in the royal tomb where cannabis seeds turned up sheds new light on the plant’s role in ancient societies.“It’s extremely rare that we have both preserved plant parts and human soft tissue with the active compounds in it in the same context,” said co-author Gino Caspari, an archaeologist at the University of Bern.It’s not clear whether the cannabis was consumed through inhalation or ingestion, he said.The dig took place starting in 2017 at a large burial mound at the Tunnug 1 site in the Uyuk Valley of southern Siberia, home to one of the earliest monumental tombs showing material culture of the Scythians — ancient nomads who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine.The team, deployed “essentially out in the middle of nowhere,” lived in tents for months and faced a spring-to-autumn season that variously featured swamps, snowstorms, frosts and swarms of mosquitoes.

Herds of horses ran freely across the grassy steppe.Larger artifacts on the site include weapons in the burials, horse gear and animal-style motifs.But the team “struck gold” as it also found tiny black spots that turned out to be cannabis seeds along with preserved human hair, Caspari said.“It’s only so often as an archaeologist that you do get to drug test a perso...