Archaeologists Drug-Tested a 2,800-Year-Old Nomad—and Found the World’s Earliest Stoner

3 min readSome 2,800 years ago, Scythian nomads in what is now southern Siberia were using cannabis to get high, and researchers believe they finally have the evidence to prove it. Exactly how the horse-riding nomads took the drug is still unclear (the best guess is that they unsurprisingly inhaled it), but the find stands as the oldest direct evidence of mind-altering cannabis use anywhere in the world.“The findings suggest that the plant was used for its psychoactive qualities across Eurasia, where specific wild populations might have had naturally higher active compound levels,” a group of researchers wrote in a study published in the journal Science. “In this study, we present the earliest direct evidence of cannabis use: offerings of plant parts and chemical compounds in ancient human hair recovered from a monumental tomb in Siberia.”Researchers from the University of Bern and the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology studied the tomb of a high-ranking Scythian in southern Siberia. The tomb contained over 1,000 cannabis seeds, but more interesting was the examination of preserved human hair from the central burial chamber showing cannabis consumption.“The seeds show that cannabis played an important role in the ritual surrounding the burial,” Gino Caspari, an archaeologist and the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “This study is particularly insightful because it combines the analysis of plant remains with molecular traces in the human body.”Cannabis is the world’s most widely used illicit psychoactive plant, but prehistoric evidence of people consuming it is rare. Plant remains seldom survive for thousands of years, and most of the archaeological record points to cannabis being used for oil and fiber rather than for getting high. To date the Siberian burial, the team radiocarbon-dated six of the surviving seeds, which put the site at about 2,800 years old. They then analyzed the hair for chemical signs of consumption. If the results hold up, they push back the earliest known psychoactive use of cannabis by at least 300 years. The previous record came from a roughly 2,500-year-old site in western China.The seeds are likely from wild plants, and the hair samples revealed clear signals consistent with cannabinol, produced by the oxidation of tetrahydrocannabinol, the most intoxicating compound in cannabis. “The molecular traces in the hair and the cannabis seeds come from the same grave and suggest that cannabis was used for its intoxicating properties,” Caspari said.“It’s only so often as an archaeologist that you do get to drug test a person that’s been dead for almost 3,000 years,” Caspari told the Associated Press, adding the 1,000 cannabis seeds are “not there by accident” but instead show that the plant held great significance for the ancient Scythians.For roughly 2,500 years, the best-known account of Scythian cannabis use came from a Greek writer. Around 440 B.C., Herodotus described Scythians throwing hemp seeds onto red-hot stones inside felt tents and howling with pleasure in the smoke. Archaeologists have since found burned seeds and cannabis-stained braziers that seem to support his story, but direct evidence that ancient people actually took the drug has remained hard to find.“There is a lot of speculation about the use of psychoactive substances in the past,” Caspari told Scientific American. “It is extremely rare to find real evidence for it. We bring a bit of realism into these debates, and we show that cannabis has a deep cultural history which might factor into ongoing societal discourse on legalization and medical use.”Not everyone is convinced. Volker Auwärter, head of forensic toxicology at the University Medical Center Freiburg in Germany, told the Associated Press that the hair analysis is “scientifically weak.” Because cannabis was widely grown for oil and fiber, he argued, the presence of the plant doesn’t prove anyone took it as a drug. He also said the hair may have absorbed traces of cannabis from the seeds buried nearby.Caspari said the team is sequencing some of the plant samples to learn more about the history of the domestication and spread of the cannabis crop. “We show that the practice of cannabis consumption dates back at least 2,800 years,” the authors wrote, “anchoring debates around contemporary usage and informing discussions on cannabis.”Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.