Living in the 21st century is awesome.
I have a computer that can fit in my pocket. I can get food without going to the grocery store. I can get rides from self-driving cars.
I can take elevators instead of walking up stairs.
We have so many perks, but if there’s one thing ancient societies did right, it was the respect they had for nature, and specifically cannabis.
While we, in our advanced, artificial intelligence, 3d printing might, criminalized a plant that’s killed nobody, they revered marijuana as something sacred and medicinal. And by “they”, I mean ancient China, Egypt, and India, the Celts, Thracians, and the Dacians, to name a few. They didn’t have iPhones, but they understood altered states of consciousness, and medicinal use cases for plants like cannabis without the tech we have today.
Talk about impressive.
This is what we’ll dive into today – the role it played in religious ceremonies, and how they used cannabis as medicine, and its influence on lesser-known cultures.
The Ebers Papyrus, dating back to circa 1550 BCE in ancient Egypt, is one of the oldest known medical texts. Photo by Einsamer Schütze / Creative commons, CC-BY-SA
The Ebers Papyrus, dating back to circa 1550 BCE in ancient Egypt, is one of the oldest known medical texts.
It mentions the use of cannabis (referred to as shemshemet) in treating inflammation, sore eyes, and as a general pain reliever, like for hemorrhoids. And today, we’re finding use cases for cannabis for the above, and more.
A big misconception is that because they were older civilizations, and didn’t have the tech we do, they were less advanced, or that their findings were coincidental, but the more you look into them, the more it seems they were on to something.
In ancient China, cannabis was listed in the “Shennong Bencao Jing” , the first pharmacopeia, compiled around the 1st century CE. The text attributes several medicinal properties to cannabis seeds and leaves, recommending them for conditions like inflammation, anxiety, digestive issues, and pain relief. It highlights cannabis’s role in restoring homeostasis within the body, and another ancient civilization that saw cannabis as more than something recreational.
In Ayurvedic medicine, a practice used since ancient India, cannabis is used to balance the body’s energies. Practitioners prescribed it for anxiety, stress relief, and digestive problems.
A statue of Sushruta (600 BCE) at Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in Melbourne, Australia. Photo By Heroesdontexist/CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Texts like the Sushruta Samhita and Charaka Samhita reference cannabis as a treatment for a variety of conditions, highlighting the timeless attributes of cannabis as a tool for healing.
A millennia ago, it was clear that cannabis was medicinal.
And they didn’t have the tech that we do to learn about cannabinoids, terpenes, or how exactly it interacts with our bodies down to the molecular level. And yet they were able to be open minded enough to dig into how the plant can be used as a treatment for things we struggle with today, like anxiety. There is so much lost knowledge from those civilizations, and this is what we have left to remember them by.
It’s surreal.
And it is cool to see and be a part of the era of the rediscovery of cannabis.
Joel Darkwah is a marketing writer. He is obsessed with working out, eating right, spirituality, and his little siblings.
