Does China hold the secret to the origins of cannabis… possibly?
Controversial or what?
Could it be that cannabis doesn’t owe its origins to South Asia, Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush?
Is it the case that all those trivia nuts who frequent bars on quiz night may not be so smart after all?
Well, if you believe a team of researchers from Switzerland and China, it looks like we’ve been looking in the wrong place for the origins of cannabis.
The team have compiled 110 whole genomes of wild and domesticated varieties of the marijuana and hemp plant in both the USA and China and separated the results of their analysis of these plants into four groups.
the way, a genome is the chemical code for what we call DNA.
The results revealed that these two types of the plant in China were separated from a basal cannabis plant roughly 12,000 years ago.
This basically indicates that it was around then that cannabis plants became ‘domesticated’.
More to the point, this timeline coincides with pottery fragments found which date back to the same period in time.
However, when it comes to the first records of cannabis in India, that was not until roughly 3,000 years ago.
Consequently, as with many other species of plant introduced to India by the Chinese, the cannabis plant can also be included.
It is fair to say that the original cannabis plants were likely to be nowhere near as psychoactive, and, in truth, it was only the writings of the famous Greek historian Herodotus around 1,000 BC that any reference to cannabis and the Central Asian steppes was made.
Conversely, the excavation of a burial tomb which dates back to 2,500 BC in western China has revealed the earliest clear evidence of humans using cannabis for its psychoactive properties.
Wooden fragments and burnt stones from pots in the tomb showed the chemical signature of cannabis, specifically that with a high amount of THC.
However, it was unlikely that cannabis was smoked in the same way it is today. More likely, it would have been burnt like incense in an enclosed space to release vapours.
Now this isn’t by any means fact, but it is based on scientific research, but who knows, perhaps your own studies have an entirely different argument, so let us all know about it in the comment section below.
Medications Using Cannabinoids From Marijuana
While the FDA has not approved marijuana as a treatment for any illness, it has approved several medications containing cannabis-derived cannabinoids. Epidiolex, a purified form of CBD, is approved to treat seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome. Other approved cannabis-based medications include Cesamet, Marinol, and Syndros, which contain synthetic THC and dronabinol. Cesamet is used to relieve nausea from cancer chemotherapy, and nabilone is used to treat weight loss in HIV/AIDS patients.
