Archaeologists have found the earliest definitive evidence that people used psychoactive cannabis, in a royal burial mound in southern Siberia dated to around 2,800 years ago. A team led by Gino Caspari of the University of Bern in Switzerland reported that the find pushes back the known record of drug use by several centuries.
The discovery comes from the Tunnug 1 mound in the Uyuk Valley, a Scythian-era burial site. In the central excavation trench, the researchers recovered nearly 1,000 whole cannabis seeds. Radiocarbon dating places them in the early 8th century BC. Preserved human hair from the same period also contains THC and cannabinol, the compounds associated with cannabis's mind-altering effects, suggesting that the person buried there likely experienced those effects.
The team has not established how the cannabis was consumed. It may have been smoked or the seeds may have been eaten. The mound also holds dozens of sacrificed horses and scattered human bones, and the researchers suggest the plant could have been part of a ritual funeral practice or may have been used to sedate those sacrificed. That sedation link remains unconfirmed, and the archaeologist Adam Brumm has described it as highly speculative.
Until now, the oldest known evidence of drug use came from Chinese braziers about 2,500 years old. Cannabis was domesticated in China roughly 12,000 years ago, so people may have been using it well before the Siberian burial. The plants may even have grown as weeds near early campsites, which could mean that drug use predates the surviving archaeological record.