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While cannabis smoking using incense is thousands of years old, pipe smoking only came to Europe in the 1500s, with Tobacco. I find that surprising.
by dr_dshiv 5y ago
While cannabis smoking using incense is thousands of years old, pipe smoking only came to Europe in the 1500s, with Tobacco. I find that surprising.
- realce 5y agoMe too! It's such a simple device and the alternative seems to be creating a large air-tight building to hotbox everyone inside.
- 0des 5y agoIs there somewhere that one could experience this, but in a more modern setting? It seems like a niche that has disappeared.
- realce 5y agoI've found the perfect building to be a 1998 Toyota Carolla - I don't know if that's historically accurate to the BCE era however.
- exsmelliarmus 5y agoHotboxing? Uhhhh, yeah I think we could help you find a few places. For science and history, of course.
- benbreen 5y agoI have an article about this very topic in the history of science journal Osiris... unfortunately it's not out yet, but I wrote a short spinoff article about it here too: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/our-strange-addiction https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/our-strange-addi... The upshot is that while tobacco pipes didn't reach Europe until around 1500 CE, there is evidence that Portuguese mariners may have encountered cannabis pipes from Africa earlier than this date. Part of the evidence is linguistic: the Portuguese word for pipe (cachimbo) is derived from an African language (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cachimbo https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cachimbo). African cannabis smoking dates back at least as far as ~1000 CE and seems to have been part of a larger Indian Ocean complex of cannabis smoking emanating from South Asia and, more distantly, from the religious traditions of ancient Indo-Iranic peoples who moved into the region from the steppes in the Vedic period. That diffusion narrative would seem to fit well with the timeline discussed in this article. This is a really exciting field of historical and archaeological research IMO! The African Roots of Marijuana (Duke, 2019) is the best full length scholarly study of this if anyone is interested: https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-african-roots-of-marijuana https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-african-roots-of-marijuana
- dr_dshiv 5y ago> In 1689 the natural philosopher Robert Hooke gave a firsthand report on the effects of Indian cannabis to the Royal Society of London: “The patient understands not, nor remembers anything that he sees, hears, or does in that ecstasy, but becomes, as it were, a mere natural, being unable to speak a word of sense; yet is he very merry, and laughs, and sings, and speaks words without any coherence.” Awesome find. Wow.
- kadoban 5y agoThat is quite interesting. But...is it me or is that a _very_ exaggerated description?
- dr_dshiv 5y agoThe first few times I smoked cannabis, nothing happened. But then I got high; the first few times I got high on cannabis remind me of this quote. Maybe these were reports from a novice?
- dr_dshiv 5y agoExcellent work! I think there is an opportunity to rewrite the history with some more funding for archeological digs in India—it would just shock me to find that shiva only started smoking 500 years back. Never know. Thanks for sharing!