Читать книгу The Cannabis Grow Bible - Greg Green - Страница 11

Support for the theory that cannabis began its life in the Himalayas comes from historical record. Paleobotany is a branch of paleontology that deals with plant fossils and ancient vegetation. Palynology is the scientific study of spores and pollen. Cannabis fossil evidence is accessible in the form of plant fibers, pollen grains, seed remains, trichome remains, and artificial compounds found at locations of archaeological interest. An abundance of primordial pollen grains have been recovered from many European sites. Asia has lots of cannabis plant impressions on ancient pieces of ceramics, along with seed remains. Africa and Europe have some incinerated residue or ash deposits but the instances are rare. Cannabis trichomes remain the best possible paleobotanical evidence for cannabis’ history because they do not decompose quickly. Ancient trichome remnants have been analyzed for cannabinoid content and can be matched with specific cannabis plant populations.²

Map of Asia: the square indicates where cannabis is believed to have originated.

Mankind has been using cannabis as far back as we know he existed. The burial shroud of a Celtic chieftain found at Hochdoft (550–500 BC) was made from a cannabis fiber textile. Danish Bronze Age skirt cords made from cannabis fiber have been dated back to 1250 BC. The Gravettians were an industrial culture of the European Upper Paleolithic (the Old Stone Age); considered hunters and gatherers, they also developed human technology such as stone tools. Hunting nets made from cannabis and used by the Gravettians have been dated by researcher H. Pringle from 24,980 to 22,870 BC.³ Pringle′s findings at the Czech Republic sites also revealed more impressions of cannabis fiber in the clay floors of excavated living quarters.

Ancient cannabis breeding is archaeologically recorded by the botanist N.I. Vavilov, who worked with wild cannabis populations to reproduce the first domesticated cannabis cultivar, thought to be first bred some 6500 years ago in Mongolia⁴—although throughout this region and into China pollen was transmitted over long distances by bees to northeast India.⁵ Major domestication occurred in northern China and still continues to this day.⁶ While the evidence for the Mongolian cultivar origins is good, there is general consensus that the larger center of domestication was probably Pan-p’o, China, around 4500 BC.⁷

The record of pollen evidence for the dispersal of cannabis across Europe and the Middle East shows that it was established in the Balkans during the Greek and Roman Empire, spreading upward and east.⁸ Evidence for Roman usage is well documented in their literature, but cultivation was almost nonexistent for environmental reasons. Poland has deposits of pollen evidence in lakebeds that are dated to 3500 BC,⁹ with some grains dating back to 5000 BC.¹⁰ Great Britain has provided a wealth of cannabis palynological evidence for early cultivation and usage, dating back to the start of the first century.¹¹

The cannabis plant has managed to travel across the globe without the involvement of humans. As we have learned, the seed has been carried by the wind, bees, in bird droppings, and has attached itself to animals that trek over long distances, thus globally dispersing the plant naturally.

Today, human intervention has forced the cannabis plant to be grown under more controlled conditions and in areas where the plant would not have previously existed. That same intervention has also forced indigenous cannabis and foreign cannabis crops to be destroyed.