World's Oldest Marijuana Stash Found

jage2 writes "Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana in a tomb in a remote part of China. The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly 'cultivated for psychoactive purposes,' rather than as fibre for clothing, or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany. The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China."

Comments

Well, that certainly explains Idle

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd have to be high to think it was a good addition.

Re:Well, that certainly explains Idle

[zoomshorts]

I WAS high until you killed the buzz. :P

Summary is wrong

[click2005]

After researchers tested the stash it seemed seemed like 2700 years had passed. In reality it was only 42 minutes.

Re:Summary is wrong

[CaptainPatent]

After researchers tested the stash it seemed seemed like 2700 years had passed. In reality it was only 42 minutes.

Sources also say that after testing the researchers' hands "looked awesome."

Re:Summary is wrong

[QRDeNameland]

overheard circa 700 BC:

Sun Tzu: "Pssst...hey man, it's Sun Tzu, open the door, I got the stuff..."

Chong: "Sun? Sun Tzu? Sun's not here."

Sun Tzu: "No man, I'm Sun!! Now will you open the door, I got the stuff!!"

Chong: "Sun?"

Sun Tzu: "Yes, it's Sun!!!"

Chong: "Sun's not here!!"

-- several iterations later --

Sun Tzu: "It's Sun!!! S-U-N!!! Now will you open the goddamned door?!?!?!"

Chong: "Oh, sure." -- opens door --

Sun Tzu: "What the hell was that about?"

Chong: "Well, you had this note written on the table: 'If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him.'"

Sun Tzu: "Damn, I must've really high when I wrote that..."

Well there goes my idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA: "Scientists also tried to germinate 100 of the seeds found in the cache, without success."

Re:Well there goes my idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey man, if they can bring back a mammoth, they can bring back a pot plant.

Blue eyes?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did they know he had blue eyes? Now, bloodshot, I would understand.

ObSimpsons

[Anonymous Coward]

> Sources also say that after testing the researchers' hands "looked awesome."

They call them fingers, but I've never seen them fing.

Oh, wait. There they go.

Uh-huh.

[Chris Burke]

The 18 researchers, most of them based in China, subjected the cannabis to a battery of tests, including carbon dating and genetic analysis. Scientists also tried to germinate 100 of the seeds found in the cache, without success.

The marijuana was found to have a relatively high content of THC, the main active ingredient in cannabis, but the sample was too old to determine a precise percentage.

Oh yes, the tests included genetic testing and radio-carbon dating. Good to point that out. I'll just speculate what other tests you could do with 2700 year old weed. On a perhaps related note, since they couldn't use spectroscopy or whatever to determine the precise percentage of THC, I wonder what technique they used to come up with the qualitative measurement "relatively high".

Re:Uh-huh.

[Purity Of Essence]

The 18 researchers, most of them baked in China ...

I'm surprised the editors missed that typo.

Re:Uh-huh.

[forkazoo]

I wonder what technique they used to come up with the qualitative measurement "relatively high".

A highometer was used to run a standard highometric analysis on a scale from "not" to "curiously." On the standard scale, "relatively" is the seventh mark on the indicator.

In a related anouncement....

[Anonymous Coward]

Keith Richards was greatly relieved it was finally found although he can't recall being in China at the time.

Intersting Tomb Contents

[Sponge Bath]

The tomb also contained bridles, archery equipment and a harp...

The ancient equivalent of car keys, a gun, and an electric guitar.
Considering how much weed there was I say this was
probably an ancient rock star and not a shaman.

Re:Intersting Tomb Contents

[Captain Splendid]

probably an ancient rock star and not a shaman.

Shamans were the rock stars of the day.

Re:Intersting Tomb Contents

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It is amusing to note the overwhelmingly strong bias toward "ritual and/or religious" explanations for just about anything we dig up about ancient societies. It makes you wonder what the future will make of us.

Re:Intersting Tomb Contents

[skam240]

I'm pretty sure future societies will at long last recognize our vast numbers of 16 year old shamans.

Re:Intersting Tomb Contents

[myowntrueself]

At the end of "The Golden Bough" there is a piece on comparison between magic, religion and science.

Some quotes:

In magic man depends on his own strength to meet the difficulties and dangers that beset him on every side. He believes in a certain established order of nature on which he can surely count, and which he can manipulate for his own ends.

When he discovers his mistake, when he recognises sadly that both the order of nature which he had assumed and the control which he had believed himself to exercise over it were purely imaginary, he ceases to rely on his own intelligence and his own unaided efforts, and throws himself humbly on the mercy of certain great invisible beings behind the veil of nature, to whom he now ascribes all those far-reaching powers which he once arrogated to himself.

Thus in the acuter minds magic is gradually superseded by religion, which explains the succession of natural phenomena as regulated by the will, the passion, or the caprice of spiritual beings like man in kind, though vastly superior to him in power.

But as time goes on this explanation in its turn proves to be unsatisfactory. For it assumes that the succession of natural events is not determined by immutable laws, but is to some extent variable and irregular, and this assumption is not borne out by closer observation. On the contrary, the more we scrutinise that succession the more we are struck by the rigid uniformity, the punctual precision with which, wherever we can follow them, the operations of nature are carried on.

Thus the keener minds, still pressing forward to a deeper solution of the mysteries of the universe, come to reject the religious theory of nature as inadequate, and to revert in a measure to the older standpoint of magic by postulating explicitly, what in magic had only been implicitly assumed, to wit, an inflexible regularity in the order of natural events, which, if carefully observed, enables us to foresee their course with certainty and to act accordingly. In short, religion, regarded as an explanation of nature, is displaced by science.

Re:Intersting Tomb Contents

[lawpoop]

But as time goes on this explanation in its turn proves to be unsatisfactory. For it assumes that the succession of natural events is not determined by immutable laws, but is to some extent variable and irregular, and this assumption is not borne out by closer observation. On the contrary, the more we scrutinise that succession the more we are struck by the rigid uniformity, the punctual precision with which, wherever we can follow them, the operations of nature are carried on.

The universe runs on some punctual precision? Sort of like predicting the weather -- oh wait, no. More like quantum mech-- hm. No, not there, either.

In fact, if there's one thing we've learned about the nature of reality through science in the past 100 years, it's that we *don't* live in Newton's clock-work universe. There is no "punctual precision". We live in space-time relativity and quantum uncertainty. Frazier's description of the linear evolution of human thought turns out to be wrong.

Most anthropologists these days consider Frazier's magnum opus to be a product of his time. Everybody uses "magic" alongside mechanical understanding of their world. There is no linear progress. The remotest tribes of the world have extensive natural science knowledge of the life-cycles of the plants and animals they rely on to live. The first thing that a biologist or botanist will do is hook up with a local shaman or hunter ( called a "guide" ) to show him all the plants and animals they know -- this is in addition to their mythical understandings and interactions. ( Check out "Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice" or "Throwim Way Leg" ) Scientifically educated people wash their hands and flush the toilet to avoid invisible germs, but they have no problems handling germ-laden paper money or dish-cloths.

I think that any time you follow rules to interact with forces that aren't directly apparent to the senses, you are essentially practicing magic. Sure, at some point a scientist can go in with an instrument to measure germs or radiation, but the average person "interacting" with those has no way to perceive germs or radiation in an everyday situation. S/He therefore must rely on ritual.

Re:Intersting Tomb Contents

[Joey Vegetables]

Once upon a time we could not see (much less measure germs). Therefore, by your logic, they must not have existed either.

Re:Intersting Tomb Contents

[geekoid]

It would smell like victory.

missing from the summary

[commodoresloat]

"The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China. The man had a very large smile on his face."

Red Tape

[TornCityVenz]

"Researchers needed about 10 months to cut red tape barring the transfer of the cannabis to England from China, Russo said." This is an obscene amount of time for research related materials to have to wait...they should have just stuffed it into some teething rings and imported them through normal distribution channels.

780 grams? That's not mucking about!

[Fluffeh]

Wow, they really did plan ahead for a rainy day didn't they? I mean, that's a fair bit of shrubbery to be hauling about by anyone's measure.

Also explains...

[Fluffeh]

Why those mongols kept invading till someone built that big nasty wall up between backyards. I can see it now:

Mongol: Pssst, you got a yuan bag?
Wall Guard: Oy! Get out of here, we don't do that at this tower, try two doors down.
Mongol: Pssst, is Fey Shong Wei about? He always hooks me up.
Wall Guard: I said piss off! I got my boss coming for an inspection in a bit.
Mongol: Fine fine, sissy girly man, no wonder you need this big wall to keep out a few baked horsemen!
Wall Guard: Get back to your tent you damned hippie! And get a REAL job! And a HAIRCUT! And have a SHOWER!

And look what happened to the guy who smoked that

[Anonymous Coward]

He's dead!

Take note kids.

Re:Bill & Ted?

[skam240]

And by "blond part" I assume you mean Bill S. Preston Esquire. Jesus... uncultured swine around here.

Hey man....

[Star Particle]

you ever go crawling around ancient Chinese shaman's tombs....... on weed?

Street value

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I know anything about... *cough* yes, we'll just tick the 'Anonymous' box, yes, there we are.

In the Chicago area, for 'Pretty Good' cannabis, you're talking between $200 and $400 per ounce, conservatively. 789 grams is approximately 27.8 ounces, that's $5,400-$10,800 total value, conservative estimate, depending on quality relative to today's standards.