New Scientist
Image: duncan
Cannabis – the source of the drug marijuana – grew wild across Europe at the end of the Stone Age, but by the time early farmers reached the continent it was vanishing. It seems Europe’s first farmers just missed out on the opportunity to cultivate cannabis and reap its benefits – including its mind-bending properties.
Researchers often use ancient pollen from archaeological deposits to work out which plants once grew in a place. However, it’s difficult to do this for cannabis, because its pollen looks just like that of a related plant, the common hop.
Now John McPartland at the University of Vermont in Burlington and his colleagues think they have a solution to the cannabis/hop identity problem. He argues that wild versions of the two plants grow in different environments: cannabis on cold grassy steppes, hop in warmer woodlands. If the other pollen trapped in an ancient deposit comes from steppe-like plants, McPartland says, we can assume any cannabis-like pollen really does come from wild cannabis.
The team re-examined pollen data from almost 500 European archaeological sites, dating back between 18,500 and 1200 years. They concluded that wild cannabis grew across Europe deep in prehistory. But the continent warmed up between 10,000 and 7500 years ago, so steppe-like conditions gave way to forests – and cannabis gave way to the hop. “That’s global warming for you,” says McPartland. Read more on newscientist.com…
