In brief
In a burial mound in the Altai region, researchers found evidence that people used cannabis for its psychoactive properties as early as 2,800 years ago. The discovery, published in Nature, preempts earlier accounts of cannabis use in the Near East and China and suggests ancient ritual or medicinal practices. Further research aims to map broader plant use patterns in prehistoric Eurasia.
In a burial mound deep in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia, scientists have found the earliest direct evidence that people used cannabis for its mind‑altering effects more than 2,800 years ago.
The site, a sealed chamber in a Bronze Age cemetery dated between 500 BCE and 400 BCE, yielded preserved hair and fragments of a plant that, after careful analysis, were identified as cannabis.
University of Zurich researchers, working with a partner in Russia, extracted DNA from the plant tissue and the human hair and compared it with known cannabis genomes. The analysis showed the species present carried high concentrations of psychoactive cannabinoids, a trait that suggests the plant was cultivated specifically for its intoxicating properties.
This finding pushes back the earliest confirmed use of cannabis by several millennia. Previous archaeological evidence of cannabis in the Near East and China dates to a later period, so the Siberian discovery represents the earliest direct proof that the plant was intentionally processed for medicinal or ritual purposes.
The researchers say that the high cannabinoid levels indicate the people who buried the body may have used the plant in ceremonial or therapeutic contexts. The study, published on May 21 in the journal Nature, also points to a broader pattern of plant use that may have been common in Bronze Age Eurasian societies.
The project combined expertise in archaeology, forensic science and botanical genetics to examine the material culture of early Bronze Age societies in the Altai region. By integrating genetic data with typological and contextual analysis, the team was able to identify the plant species and infer its use from the context in which it was buried.
According to the authors, the next step is to investigate similar burial sites across the region to trace how widespread cannabis use was and to map the spread of its psychoactive practice throughout prehistoric Eurasia.
