10000 BCE
Use of hemp cord in pottery identified at ancient village site dating back over 10,000 years, located in the area
6000 BCE
Cannabis seeds and oil used for food in China.
4000 BCE
Textiles made of hemp are used in China and Turkestan.
2737 BCE
First recorded use of cannabis as medicine by Emperor Shen Neng of China.
2000-800 BCE
Bhang (dried cannabis leaves, seeds and stems) is mentioned in the Hindu sacred text Atharvaveda (Science of Charms) as “Sacred
1500 BCE
Cannabis cultivated in China for food and fiber. Scythians cultivate cannabis and use it to weave fine hemp cloth.
700-600 BCE
The Zoroastrian Zendavesta, an ancient Persian religious text of several hundred volumes refers to bhang as the “good narcotic.”
600 BCE
Hemp rope appears in southern Russia.
700-300 BCE
Scythian tribes leave Cannabis seeds as offerings in royal tombs.
500 BCE
Scythian couple die and are buried with two small tents covering containers for burning incense. Attached to one tent stick
430 BCE
Herodotus reports on both ritual and recreation use of Cannabis by the Scythians (Herodotus The Histories 430 B.C. trans. G.
200 BCE
Hemp rope appears in Greece. Chinese Book of Rites mentions hemp fabric.
100 BCE
First evidence of hemp paper, invented in China.
100-0 BCE
The psychotropic properties of Cannabis are mentioned in the newly compiled herbal Pen Ts’ao Ching.
0-100 CE
Construction of Samaritan gold and glass paste stash box for storing hashish, coriander, or salt, buried in Siberian tomb.
The Oxford English Dictionary records the earliest usages of cannabis meaning the plant “common hemp, Cannabis sativa” in 1548 and meaning parts of the plant “smoked, chewed, or drunk for their intoxicating or hallucinogenic properties” in 1848. The OED traces the etymology to the New Latin botanical term cannabis – proposed in 1728 and standardized in Carolus Linnaeus’s (1753) Species Plantarum – from an earlier Latin cannabis, coming from Greek kánnabis.
Herodotus (c. 440 BCE) recorded the use of cannabis in The Histories. “The Scythians, as I said, take some of this hemp-seed [presumably, flowers], and, creeping under the felt coverings, throw it upon the red-hot stones; immediately it smokes, and gives out such a vapour as no Grecian vapour-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy.”