So I just uploaded a resource called "Phytochemical and genetic analyses of ancient cannabis from Central Asia." It's interesting enough on the surface to merit reading, but I'll post some highlights here. Just some light morning reading.
"The Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region, China have recently been excavated to reveal the 2700-year-old grave of a Caucasoid shaman whose accoutrements included a large cache of cannabis, superbly preserved by climatic and burial conditions. A multidisciplinary international team demonstrated through botanical examination, phytochemical investigation, and genetic deoxyribonucleic acid analysis by polymerase chain reaction that this material contained tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive component of cannabis, its oxidative degradation product, cannabinol, other metabolites, and its synthetic enzyme, tetrahydrocannabinolic acid synthase, as well as a novel genetic variant with two single nucleotide polymorphisms. The cannabis was presumably employed by this culture as a medicinal or psychoactive agent, or an aid to divination. To our knowledge, these investigations provide the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent, and contribute to the medical and archaeological record of this pre-Silk Road culture."
"There were two phthalate peaks at approximately 23.5 min (believed to have originated from the polythene bags in which the samples were supplied" - As most of us know, don't store weed in plastic bags, it alters the smell. But this proves it.
"The first written reports concerning this Gushi clan, drafted about 2000 years BP (before present) in the Chinese historical record, Hou Hanshu, described nomadic light-haired blue-eyed Caucasians speaking an Indo-European language (probably a form of Tocharian, an extinct Indo-European tongue related to Celtic, Italic, and Anatolic (Ma and Sun, 1994). The Gushı tended horses and grazing animals, farmed the land and were accomplished archers (Mallory and Mair, 2000). The site is centrally located in the Eurasian landmass (Fig. 1A, B), 2500 km from any ocean and located in the Ayding Lake basin, the second lowest spot on Earth after the Dead Sea (Fig. 1A, B). Formal excavations completed in 2003 revealed some 2500 tombs dating from 3200–2000 years BP (before present) (Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, 2004). Other evidence from chipped stone tools and other items indicate a possible human presence in the area for some 10 000–40 000 years (Kamberi, 1998; Academia Turfanica, 2006). Due to a combination of deep graves (2 m or more), an extremely arid climate (16 mm annual rainfall), and alkaline soil conditions (pH 8.6–9.1 (Pan, 1996), the remarkable preservation of the human remains resulted in the mummification of many bodies without a need for chemical methods. Numerous artefacts from the tombs included equestrian equipment and numerous Western Asian crops such as Capparis spinosa L. (capers) (Jiang et al., 2007), Triticum spp. (wheat), Hordeum spp. (naked barley), and Vitis vinifera L. (grapevines) (Jiang, 2008), often centuries before their first descriptions in Eastern China (Puett, 1998)."
Apparently they were growing wine grapes and capers 3000 years ago in western China. Cool.
"The results presented collectively point to the most probable conclusion which is that the Gushı culture cultivated cannabis for pharmaceutical, psychoactive or divinatory purposes. In examining the botanical evidence from this ‘old and cold’ site with its unique degree of preservation, the cannabis consisted of a processed (pounded) sample whose seed size, colour, and morphology, at least according to principles of Vavilov (Vavilov, 1926), suggest that it was cultivated rather than merely gathered from wild plants. The considerable amount of cannabis present (789 g) without any large stalks or branches would logically imply a pooled collection rather than one from a single plant. Importantly, no obvious male cannabis plant parts (e.g. staminate flowers, not infrequently observed in Indian herbal cannabis, or bhang (Russo, 2007) were evident, implying their exclusion or possible removal by human intervention, as these are pharmacologically less psychoactive.
The HPLC, GC, and MS analyses confirm the identity of the supplied plant sample as Cannabis sativa L. The predominance of CBN indicates that the original plants contained D9 -tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) as the major phytocannabinoid constituent. The presence of CBO and numerous CBN-related substance peaks further supports this view. CBD and CBC, together with their known thermo-oxidative degradation products CBE and CBL (Brenneisen, 2007), are present, but the GC analysis would appear to indicate that, in both cases, CBC and CBL are represented in greater quantities, as expected in a high-THC cannabis strain wherein CBD is only a minor component. In addition, there is a peak for CBNV which confirms that the plant also contained D9 -tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV), a propyl phytocannabinoid. All of these observations are consistent with strains of cannabis with a high THC content"
"The presence of so many recognized cannabinoid degradants is consistent with very old cannabis samples. The very low concentration levels measured in the HPLC analysis may indicate that the sample provided contained significantly more leaf and twig material than flower material, rather than being evidence in itself that the sample was of low potency originally. This plant material is therefore conclusively cannabis derived from a population of plants within which THC was the dominant cannabinoid. By contrast, a sample taken from a mix of wild-type Cannabis sativa would customarily harbour a more equal mixture of THC and CBD (de Meijer et al., 2003). It would appear, therefore, that humans selected the material from plants on the basis of their higher than average THC content. To elaborate, a chemotaxonomy of cannabis previously outlined indicates three types (Small and Beckstead, 1973): chemotype I (drug) strains with highTHC:CBD ratios, chemotype II low-THC, higher-CBD Fig. 6. Mass spectra of ancient cannabis. Subsections demonstrate the phytocannabinoids cannabinol (CBN), cannabidiol (CBD), cannabicyclol (CBL), cannabinolivarin (CBNV), cannabichromene (CBC), cannabielsoin (CBE), 1#-oxcannabinol, and 1#-hydroxycannabinol. 4178 Russo et al. (fibre) strains, and chemotype II with more equal ratios. THC and CBD production are mediated by co-dominant alleles BT and BD, respectively (de Meijer et al., 2003). By comparison, pooled samples from cannabis fields in Morocco and Afghanistan will normally produce 25% high-THC plants, 25% high-CBD plants, and 50% with lower, mixed titres, combining to yield roughly equivalent amounts of the two phytocannabinoids (Russo, 2007), a pattern not observed in our specimen."
So about 3000 years ago, there were people in Central Asia with enough understanding of cannabis breeding to exclude males and breed for THC and THCv. That's also pretty fucking cool.
"Previous phytochemical analyses of antique cannabis preparations have demonstrated THC remnant fingerprints from 19th century cannabis preparations (Harvey, 1990) including a 140-year-old sample of Squire’s Extract (Harvey, 1985). A study in 1992 reported the presence of D8 -THC (previously termed D6 -THC) from burned cannabis that was reportedly inhaled as an aide to childbirth in a Judean cave 1700 years BP (Zias et al., 1993), supported by the finding of cannabinoid residues in an adjacent glass vessel (Zias, 1995). In the Mustang region of Nepal, mummified human remains of probable Mongolian ancestry have been dated 2200–2500 years BP in association with cannabis, probably transported from elsewhere (Kno¨rzer, 2000; Alt et al., 2003), but with insufficient detail to ascertain its use. Rudenko recovered cannabis seeds, censers, and hempen clothing in Pazyryk, Siberia from Scythian kurgans (burial mounds) from 2400–2500 years BP (Rudenko, 1970; Brooks, 1998), closely matching Herodotus’ descriptions of funeral rites for that culture"