9 ms·

Cannabis first domesticated 12,000 years ago

140 points by dnetesn 5y ago

boomskats 5y ago
Not a constructive comment, but it was amusing to see this post with 4 points posted 20 minutes ago.
- jliptzin 5y ago
  What’s amusing about that?
  - kylebyproxy 5y ago
    It's a 4:20 reeference
  - deregulateMed 5y ago
    Search 420 weed to learn more
robbedpeter 5y ago
This coincides with the Dryas impact era - there seems to be a lot of cultural advances, settlements, and other artifacts that pop up around that time. It seems very plausible to me that many of the discoveries aren't the first of their kind, but the first reimplementation after humans began to rebuild. The Dryas impact is a fascinating event - if validated, it has the potential to shake up a lot of the currently accepted historical model of human civilization. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothe... The impact hypothesis suggests a global hellscape was caused, radically and rapidly causing massive flooding- a likely source for great flood mythologies found in almost every culture.
- dboreham 5y ago
  On my todo list for a while has been to dig down to see if I can find the "black mat".
- neom 5y ago
  Thanks for posting this, never heard of the event. PBS has a Youtube channel called "Eons" (seems cool)- I watched their video about it and found it super interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95u2sk_lRoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95u2sk_lRoQ
- vmception 5y ago
  I also generally think the idea of a recently linear progression of human collaboration and advancement is misguided I think fossilization is merely rare and difficult
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- shusaku 5y ago
  I don’t know much about the Dryas impact theory, but skimming the second link it seems to really emphasize the Americas? Should it be matched with data from China like in the main article?
- beowulfey 5y ago
  I love reading about this. I hope one day we will understand what happened back then. In Hawaiian mythology, there is a creation chant[1] that includes names of the purported parents of 800 generations; after those 800 generations, there is an interesting interim passage describing an event: Line 1530: "Born was Polaʻa/ Born was rough weather, born the current/ Born the roaring, advancing, and receding of waves, the rumbling sound, the earthquake/ The sea rages, rises over the beach/ Rises silently to the inhabited places/ Rises gradually up over the land/" It's notable because the previous 800 lines are nothing but names of husband and wife; it must have been a big event to get mentioned as such. I'm sure there are other similar stories in the oral tradition. I wonder if anyone has ever compared them all. I hope one day more geological and archeological evidence can connect all these threads. [1]http://www.ulukau.org/elib/cgi-bin/library?e=d-0beckwit2-000Sec%E2%80%9411haw-50-20-frameset-book%E2%80%941-010escapewin&a=d&d=D0&toc=0 http://www.ulukau.org/elib/cgi-bin/library?e=d-0beckwit2-000...
- fpoling 5y ago
  The criticism section of the second article puts strong doubts about the impact hypothesis. Surely there were sudden drop in average temperatures in the Northern hemisphere, but we do not know what triggered it.
- vimacs2 5y ago
  While I actually do believe in the Dryas impact hypothesis myself, there is definitely quite a bit of stigma surrounding the idea, especially since controversal figures like Graham Hancock have embraced it. While I think a lot of his ideas are pretty out there, I do agree with him that I would need substantially more evidence than there actually is for concluding that civilisation really is only 6000-10000 years old. Modern humans have been around for more than 10 times that length and our actual fossil records are incredibly spotty.
deregulateMed 5y ago
Since this is the first cannabis topic I've seen on HN, I have lots of questions/ideas/problems I want to share. I'm going to post them in no particular order. Maybe someone has a solution >I like weed as a productive drug, it's stronger than caffeine for me, but I develop tolerance and addiction quickly. Any solution to the tolerance problem? Quitting/breaks is obvious. >Is investing in weed stocks encouraging drug addiction/use? Is it ethical to promote drug use? >Is there a way to microdose? I'd like to be able to have tiny, controlled amounts every time. >Is there a solution to munchies? >Has anyone been able to convince a fortune 500 company that they need(medical) marijuana for work? As mentioned I'm significantly more focused, but I don't like the social stigma. I already have the job, it's purely a cultural/social problem. > Are my memory problems due to weed or is this just age? (When not using) I feel like I've lost lots of childhood memories and I have more difficulty than ever with names. >If my focus is better on weed, is there something else I can do for focus that isn't drug related?
- bobiny 5y ago
  >Is there a way to microdose? I'd like to be able to have tiny, controlled amounts every time. -vaporizing and less potent weed >Is there a solution to munchies? -from my experience they go away at some point. You still have the from time to time but much less often. >If my focus is better on weed, is there something else I can do for focus that isn't drug related? -meditation
- hrh 5y ago
  >I like weed as a productive drug, it's stronger than caffeine for me, but I develop tolerance and addiction quickly. Any solution to the tolerance problem? Quitting/breaks is obvious. This is not something I've solved but are you consuming large amounts? I can stay high for months on end, using every hour and while it's not going to hit me like the first hit, I say up. I'd like to be more regular in consumption (every 4 hours), but your guess is as good as mine >Is investing in weed stocks encouraging drug addiction/use? Is it ethical to promote drug use? Is investing in any US-based company encouraging war? Is investing in any company that uses Chinese production promoting slavery? Caffeine is a drug. We take lots of drugs. We are in the infancy of understanding many of them because we're young and because we've been prudes. I'd rather see companies and people I'd trust pushing and producing drug products of any kind rather than abusers. You can see this happening in the hemp adjacent markets - lots and lots of shady fly by night companies have popped up but slowly the good ones are rising to the top. 3chi, for example is a popular and I think solid d8 company. But as I told my dad, every single person that was selling pot on the street is trying to get into the drug business and has been for more than a decade...good luck picking winners. >Has anyone been able to convince a fortune 500 company that they need(medical) marijuana for work? As mentioned I'm significantly more focused, but I don't like the social stigma. I already have the job, it's purely a cultural/social problem. > Are my memory problems due to weed or is this just age? (When not using) I feel like I've lost lots of childhood memories and I have more difficulty than ever with names. This is my main concern (and lung damange). I do notice lapses in short-term memory (though I am high when this happens, I haven't noticed a huge drop). The literature sugests it's relatively small over decades IIRC. Willie Nelson and Snoop (sample of 2) are doing ok. >If my focus is better on weed, is there something else I can do for focus that isn't drug related? Get off HN. ;)
tiahura 5y ago
So 4000 years before rice? I’m not subject matter expert, but this doesn’t seem quite right.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  Why ever not? Off the top of my head, weed is miles easier to cultivate, provides far more medicinal benefit, has more complete nutrition, and gives obvious and immediate relief from pain.
  - argiopetech 5y ago
    Also makes great rope.
- klyrs 5y ago
  First off, the press has a bad habit of treating archaeological finds as somehow definitive. I read "first domesticated 12,000 years ago" as "earliest evidence found thus far dated to 12,000 years ago." Rice (and cannabis) could have been domesticated long before that, but without fossil records, we can't claim to know that. But... why would you assume any relationship between these two plants being domesticated?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
guest456789123 5y ago
Where I come from, we used to grow cannabis plants and use their seeds to feed birds kept in cages, in captivity. Birds liked the seeds and were singing a lot when feed on them. My garden and that of many others was fully of over one meter high cannabis plants. We had no other use for it. I learned it was a drug only when capitalist world reached us. Now, it is illegal to grow it. Related: My grandma, now 93, used to say that tea made out of poppy seeds was good for babies that cried a lot. When given that tea, babies slept quite well. No adult I know, ever made use of that. I am not sure about that now. Seeing 12000 years ago cannabis plants via current lens could lead to incorrect interpretation.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  capitalist world wasn't always hard against hemp and cannabis I believe usual politics
wcchandler 5y ago
So glad to see more genomic research around cannabis. I have a jar full of seeds from my late grandfather. He said it was from the same hemp that the Constitution was written on. Doubt the truth behind that but it’d be really cool if one day I could have it analyzed and compared for relatively cheap.
- grasbergerm 5y ago
  It is a common urban legend that the constitution was written on hemp, but not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Constitution_hemp_paper_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Constitution_hemp_paper_h...
  - LightG 5y ago
    I heard the original one was rolled and smoked, so they had to start again. Hence the current constitution.
  - wcchandler 5y ago
    Right. Which is why I don't fully believe my late grandfather. However, it would be nice to know if the strain I have has a direct lineage of the hemp grown during the Colony days.
    - bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
      The paper mentions that the Colonies first started growing European hemp varieties but by the mid 1800s had largely switched to (more recently) Chinese origin hemp varieties. I hope your grandfather's seeds are original Colony day seeds and you get to find out some day for a low cost but based on this paper, chances are that it isn't :(.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Ironic that the penalty for cannabis possession goes up to death now in the place where it was first domesticated. Death for having a plant that makes people feel good and happy. Humans are weird. This study is really neat because as the article says the consensus was always Central Asia for the birthplace of cannabis and now we learn that it is East Asia.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "Death for having a plant that makes people feel good and happy. Humans are weird." It's not just about feeling good (though that can be threat enough for some authorities -- dancing bans[1], for example).. Cannabis can have psychedelic effects at high doses, and has been used for religious and sacramental purposes (there has been speculation that cannabis was part of the anointing oil used in the bible, and perhaps in some of the biblical incenses used for religious purposes). Secular and religious authorities have historically wanted to be in control of what people feel, believe, and think.. so when a plant can alter that or is believed to provide a direct route to communing with a diety or the spirit world instead of relying on the authorities to tell them what to believe or think, then it's easily seen as a threat. In the US cannabis use was also associated with the counterculture, with the antiwar movement, and with anti-authoritarian sentiment, and with minorities.. all seen as threats to the establishment. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_ban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_ban
  - 8note 5y ago
    In the US it was that cannabis users were likely to not vote for Nixon in the next election. If they can't vote, they can't kick Nixon out of power
    - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
      It's inconcievable to me to think that enprisonment in the US forfeits one's right to vote. Such a twisted flavor of democracy. "Everyone is equal except those who have made a mistake."
- 5y ago
chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago
Link to the paper directly- https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/29/eabg2286 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/29/eabg2286
PsrNetMan1 5y ago
I'm not against Cannabis, I think it has some very important applications; but, what does Cannabis have to do with hacking?

140 points by dnetesn 5y ago

boomskats 5y ago

Not a constructive comment, but it was amusing to see this post with 4 points posted 20 minutes ago.

jliptzin 5y ago
What’s amusing about that?
- kylebyproxy 5y ago
  It's a 4:20 reeference
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  Search 420 weed to learn more

robbedpeter 5y ago

This coincides with the Dryas impact era - there seems to be a lot of cultural advances, settlements, and other artifacts that pop up around that time. It seems very plausible to me that many of the discoveries aren't the first of their kind, but the first reimplementation after humans began to rebuild. The Dryas impact is a fascinating event - if validated, it has the potential to shake up a lot of the currently accepted historical model of human civilization. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothe... The impact hypothesis suggests a global hellscape was caused, radically and rapidly causing massive flooding- a likely source for great flood mythologies found in almost every culture.

dboreham 5y ago
On my todo list for a while has been to dig down to see if I can find the "black mat".
neom 5y ago
Thanks for posting this, never heard of the event. PBS has a Youtube channel called "Eons" (seems cool)- I watched their video about it and found it super interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95u2sk_lRoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95u2sk_lRoQ
vmception 5y ago
I also generally think the idea of a recently linear progression of human collaboration and advancement is misguided I think fossilization is merely rare and difficult
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
shusaku 5y ago
I don’t know much about the Dryas impact theory, but skimming the second link it seems to really emphasize the Americas? Should it be matched with data from China like in the main article?
beowulfey 5y ago
I love reading about this. I hope one day we will understand what happened back then. In Hawaiian mythology, there is a creation chant[1] that includes names of the purported parents of 800 generations; after those 800 generations, there is an interesting interim passage describing an event: Line 1530: "Born was Polaʻa/ Born was rough weather, born the current/ Born the roaring, advancing, and receding of waves, the rumbling sound, the earthquake/ The sea rages, rises over the beach/ Rises silently to the inhabited places/ Rises gradually up over the land/" It's notable because the previous 800 lines are nothing but names of husband and wife; it must have been a big event to get mentioned as such. I'm sure there are other similar stories in the oral tradition. I wonder if anyone has ever compared them all. I hope one day more geological and archeological evidence can connect all these threads. [1]http://www.ulukau.org/elib/cgi-bin/library?e=d-0beckwit2-000Sec%E2%80%9411haw-50-20-frameset-book%E2%80%941-010escapewin&a=d&d=D0&toc=0 http://www.ulukau.org/elib/cgi-bin/library?e=d-0beckwit2-000...
fpoling 5y ago
The criticism section of the second article puts strong doubts about the impact hypothesis. Surely there were sudden drop in average temperatures in the Northern hemisphere, but we do not know what triggered it.
vimacs2 5y ago
While I actually do believe in the Dryas impact hypothesis myself, there is definitely quite a bit of stigma surrounding the idea, especially since controversal figures like Graham Hancock have embraced it. While I think a lot of his ideas are pretty out there, I do agree with him that I would need substantially more evidence than there actually is for concluding that civilisation really is only 6000-10000 years old. Modern humans have been around for more than 10 times that length and our actual fossil records are incredibly spotty.

deregulateMed 5y ago

Since this is the first cannabis topic I've seen on HN, I have lots of questions/ideas/problems I want to share. I'm going to post them in no particular order. Maybe someone has a solution >I like weed as a productive drug, it's stronger than caffeine for me, but I develop tolerance and addiction quickly. Any solution to the tolerance problem? Quitting/breaks is obvious. >Is investing in weed stocks encouraging drug addiction/use? Is it ethical to promote drug use? >Is there a way to microdose? I'd like to be able to have tiny, controlled amounts every time. >Is there a solution to munchies? >Has anyone been able to convince a fortune 500 company that they need(medical) marijuana for work? As mentioned I'm significantly more focused, but I don't like the social stigma. I already have the job, it's purely a cultural/social problem. > Are my memory problems due to weed or is this just age? (When not using) I feel like I've lost lots of childhood memories and I have more difficulty than ever with names. >If my focus is better on weed, is there something else I can do for focus that isn't drug related?

bobiny 5y ago
>Is there a way to microdose? I'd like to be able to have tiny, controlled amounts every time. -vaporizing and less potent weed >Is there a solution to munchies? -from my experience they go away at some point. You still have the from time to time but much less often. >If my focus is better on weed, is there something else I can do for focus that isn't drug related? -meditation
hrh 5y ago
>I like weed as a productive drug, it's stronger than caffeine for me, but I develop tolerance and addiction quickly. Any solution to the tolerance problem? Quitting/breaks is obvious. This is not something I've solved but are you consuming large amounts? I can stay high for months on end, using every hour and while it's not going to hit me like the first hit, I say up. I'd like to be more regular in consumption (every 4 hours), but your guess is as good as mine >Is investing in weed stocks encouraging drug addiction/use? Is it ethical to promote drug use? Is investing in any US-based company encouraging war? Is investing in any company that uses Chinese production promoting slavery? Caffeine is a drug. We take lots of drugs. We are in the infancy of understanding many of them because we're young and because we've been prudes. I'd rather see companies and people I'd trust pushing and producing drug products of any kind rather than abusers. You can see this happening in the hemp adjacent markets - lots and lots of shady fly by night companies have popped up but slowly the good ones are rising to the top. 3chi, for example is a popular and I think solid d8 company. But as I told my dad, every single person that was selling pot on the street is trying to get into the drug business and has been for more than a decade...good luck picking winners. >Has anyone been able to convince a fortune 500 company that they need(medical) marijuana for work? As mentioned I'm significantly more focused, but I don't like the social stigma. I already have the job, it's purely a cultural/social problem. > Are my memory problems due to weed or is this just age? (When not using) I feel like I've lost lots of childhood memories and I have more difficulty than ever with names. This is my main concern (and lung damange). I do notice lapses in short-term memory (though I am high when this happens, I haven't noticed a huge drop). The literature sugests it's relatively small over decades IIRC. Willie Nelson and Snoop (sample of 2) are doing ok. >If my focus is better on weed, is there something else I can do for focus that isn't drug related? Get off HN. ;)

tiahura 5y ago

So 4000 years before rice? I’m not subject matter expert, but this doesn’t seem quite right.

mandmandam 5y ago
Why ever not? Off the top of my head, weed is miles easier to cultivate, provides far more medicinal benefit, has more complete nutrition, and gives obvious and immediate relief from pain.
- argiopetech 5y ago
  Also makes great rope.
klyrs 5y ago
First off, the press has a bad habit of treating archaeological finds as somehow definitive. I read "first domesticated 12,000 years ago" as "earliest evidence found thus far dated to 12,000 years ago." Rice (and cannabis) could have been domesticated long before that, but without fossil records, we can't claim to know that. But... why would you assume any relationship between these two plants being domesticated?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

guest456789123 5y ago

Where I come from, we used to grow cannabis plants and use their seeds to feed birds kept in cages, in captivity. Birds liked the seeds and were singing a lot when feed on them. My garden and that of many others was fully of over one meter high cannabis plants. We had no other use for it. I learned it was a drug only when capitalist world reached us. Now, it is illegal to grow it. Related: My grandma, now 93, used to say that tea made out of poppy seeds was good for babies that cried a lot. When given that tea, babies slept quite well. No adult I know, ever made use of that. I am not sure about that now. Seeing 12000 years ago cannabis plants via current lens could lead to incorrect interpretation.

agumonkey 5y ago
capitalist world wasn't always hard against hemp and cannabis I believe usual politics

wcchandler 5y ago

So glad to see more genomic research around cannabis. I have a jar full of seeds from my late grandfather. He said it was from the same hemp that the Constitution was written on. Doubt the truth behind that but it’d be really cool if one day I could have it analyzed and compared for relatively cheap.

grasbergerm 5y ago
It is a common urban legend that the constitution was written on hemp, but not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Constitution_hemp_paper_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Constitution_hemp_paper_h...
- LightG 5y ago
  I heard the original one was rolled and smoked, so they had to start again. Hence the current constitution.
- wcchandler 5y ago
  Right. Which is why I don't fully believe my late grandfather. However, it would be nice to know if the strain I have has a direct lineage of the hemp grown during the Colony days.
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 5y ago
    The paper mentions that the Colonies first started growing European hemp varieties but by the mid 1800s had largely switched to (more recently) Chinese origin hemp varieties. I hope your grandfather's seeds are original Colony day seeds and you get to find out some day for a low cost but based on this paper, chances are that it isn't :(.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

Ironic that the penalty for cannabis possession goes up to death now in the place where it was first domesticated. Death for having a plant that makes people feel good and happy. Humans are weird. This study is really neat because as the article says the consensus was always Central Asia for the birthplace of cannabis and now we learn that it is East Asia.

pmoriarty 5y ago
"Death for having a plant that makes people feel good and happy. Humans are weird." It's not just about feeling good (though that can be threat enough for some authorities -- dancing bans[1], for example).. Cannabis can have psychedelic effects at high doses, and has been used for religious and sacramental purposes (there has been speculation that cannabis was part of the anointing oil used in the bible, and perhaps in some of the biblical incenses used for religious purposes). Secular and religious authorities have historically wanted to be in control of what people feel, believe, and think.. so when a plant can alter that or is believed to provide a direct route to communing with a diety or the spirit world instead of relying on the authorities to tell them what to believe or think, then it's easily seen as a threat. In the US cannabis use was also associated with the counterculture, with the antiwar movement, and with anti-authoritarian sentiment, and with minorities.. all seen as threats to the establishment. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_ban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_ban
- 8note 5y ago
  In the US it was that cannabis users were likely to not vote for Nixon in the next election. If they can't vote, they can't kick Nixon out of power
  - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    It's inconcievable to me to think that enprisonment in the US forfeits one's right to vote. Such a twisted flavor of democracy. "Everyone is equal except those who have made a mistake."
5y ago

chizhik-pyzhik 5y ago

Link to the paper directly- https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/29/eabg2286 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/29/eabg2286

PsrNetMan1 5y ago

I'm not against Cannabis, I think it has some very important applications; but, what does Cannabis have to do with hacking?