I wrote this as a bit of a giggle for my local SCA newsletter. I am not advocating for the use of Cannabis sativa for psychotropic purposes, but I do believe that we should be using the fibre in place of wood. It also makes pretty good shirts.
Cannabis from antiquity to the middle ages
Cannabis sativa. Illustration from the
"Vienna Dioscorides" 512 AD adapted from De Materia Medica by
Dioscorides, 1st century BC.
What is the difference between hemp and cannabis?
They are, in
fact, the same plant. The difference is that one was bred for industrial fibre
production, and the other was bred for the production of THC
(tetrahydrocannabinol), the chemical which gets you ‘high’. The original, wild
Cannabis sativa plant was something in between the two in form, function, and
use.[1]
Origins-
Archaeological
evidence is sparse, but Cannabis sativa (from the Greek word kannabis) may have
originally come from Central Asia (the area between the Caspian Sea and
Mongolia), or South Asia (the area between the Himalayan mountains and the
Indian Ocean).
The etymology
seems to follow that an earlier, late-Paleolithic or early Neolithic word
denoting the seed and fibre uses of the plant originated in the Indo-Iranian
root word of *kan or *ken, and a later word denoting the narcotic uses of the
plant spread from the areas of Iran or Northern India.[2] Associated words from
various cultures- Armenian- kanep, Bulgarian- konop, Old English- hænep, Old
Norse- hampr. The word kannabis was a Greek transliteration of the Thracian
name for hemp.[3]
The Egyptians
and Assyrians knew about cannabis, but it was not known about in Greece until
the 5th century BCE, when Herodotus describes seeing a vapour bath
during a burial ritual where the Scythians he was visiting burned cannabis
seeds in a tent which functioned like a sweat lodge. He related that the
Scythians ‘shouted for joy’. He also described hemp fibres as being almost
indistinguishable from flax. He had never seen this plant before.[4] By the 4th
century BCE cannabis seeds were being eaten recreationally at Symposiums, as
lampooned by the comic poet Ephippus.[5]
Cannabis
surfaces medicinally in the Greek physician Dioscorides’ herbal De Materia
Medica, written somewhere between 50-70 CE, and the Roman works of Galen in the
2nd century CE. The leaves were used as poultices for wounds on
horses, skin sores, and nosebleeds, and the seeds were used against tapeworms,
or steeped in wine or water and heated for blockages and pain in the ears. But
if eaten in quantity they supposedly dried up semen, so were sometimes prescribed
for teenage boys who were having too-frequent nocturnal emissions. Galen
disapproved of this, however, and said that they should only be used to thin
the humours. Cannabis seeds were seen to be warming, drying, harmed the head,
thinned the humours, and prevented flatulence.[6]
Following the
adoption of Greek medical practice in the Muslim countries of the Eastern
Mediterranean in the 8th century CE cannabis was prescribed as a
diuretic, anti-emetic, anti-epileptic, anti-inflammatory, painkilling and antipyretic
(bringing down fever) properties.[7] In the Eastern Mediterranean
cannabis in any form (food, medicine, fibre) seems to have fallen out of daily
knowledge until Muslim scholars started translating the works of Dioscorides
and Galen. Not long after that the knowledge of hemp paper was brought from
China, and in 796 CE the Abbasid rulers set up a paper factory in Baghdad. By
the 10th century paper was being exported to Europe under the name ‘charta
Damascena’. During the 12th century paper began to be manufactured
in Europe.[8]
Hemp seeds (in
a food context), pollen, and fabric impressions have been found in Neolithic
archaeological sites ranging from Northern Europe (Germany, Switzerland, the
Ukraine), to Tibet, and Northern China. Cannabis sativa was used for textiles
in East Asia from the 5th century BCE, but didn’t become known for
that in the West until the Iron Age, when the Greeks learned about it from the
Thracians in the Black Sea area. It was also in the Iron Age that evidence for
narcotic use starts to be found archaeologically.[9]
Flax, Cannabis
sativa and opium poppy seeds (Papaver somniferum) have been found in
archaeological sites from the Anglo-Saxon period in England.[10] Hemp cloth and rope was
found in archaeological sites from Viking age Greenland, but it was probably
imported from Norway.[11] By 1258 there was a guild
of hemp weavers in Paris called the ‘cannevassiers’ (canvas)[12]
The first
printed cookbook also happens to have the first recorded instance of a cannabis
recipe. Bartolomeo Platina’s De honesta voluptate et valetudine (On honourable pleasure and health) was written around 1465 and printed in
1474.[13] It was a book on humanist
philosophy which included recipes by a famous chef Maestro Martino de Rossi.[14] Platina and his circle of
neo-pagan, Classically-influenced humanists were part of an Academy (an
association of learned individuals, not for teaching), called the Roman Academy,
which was led by the humanist scholar Giulio Pomponio Leto (called Julius
Pomponius Laetus in the Academy).[15]
The recipe is
called ‘a health drink of cannabis nectar’, and it instructs ‘use a mallet to
crush clods collected after a good harvest. Add cannabis to nard oil in an iron
pot, crush together over some heat and liquefy.’ He also added ‘carefully treat
food, and divide for the stomach and the head. Finally, remember that anything
in excess can be harmful or criminal’.[16] Nard oil was a kind of
oil extracted from a Mediterranean lavender, and was used for wine flavourings
and perfume by the ancient Greeks and Romans.[17]
There is a
related plant which grows in North America, called Amaranthus cannabinus (a
herbaceous perennial which grows naturally in salt marshes), which led the
European colonists to believe it was hemp at first, which was of interest as
hemp was a major industrial crop for shipbuilding (the English word canvas
comes from the French chanvre, or hemp). Samuel Champlain brought the first
cannabis seeds to Nova Scotia by 1606, and it was grown under the care of the
colony’s herbalist and botanist, Louis Hebert. [18]
By the late 15th
century Vatican disapproval of cannabis had sent the practice of eating it in
any form out of public knowledge. However, in the 18th century Napoleon’s
troops brought back with them from Egypt not just the stories of One Thousand
and One Nights, but also hash… and European intellectuals took it from there.[19]
More online sources:
Cooks and other
people: the proceedings of the Oxford symposium on food and cookery, 1995. https://books.google.ca/books?id=lpOqTUucwhUC&pg=PA214&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
[1]
Marijuana vs hemp: What’s the difference? Rudy Sanchez, The Chicago Tribune,
Aug.15, 2019. Accessed 3/6/2020. https://www.chicagotribune.com/marijuana/sns-tft-whats-the-difference-marijuana-hemp-20190815-nljrmyx7hvdedhca4vhwqj4a3e-story.html
[2]
Barber, p.36.
[4]
Herodotus. The Persian Wars. Loeb Classical Library, 2020. Accessed online
5/28/2020. https://www.loebclassics.com/view/herodotus-persian_wars/1920/pb_LCL118.275.xml
[5]
Butrica, James L. Medical Use of Cannabis Among the Greeks and Romans. Journal
of Cannabis Therapeutics, Volume 2, 2002, p.51-70. Accessed online 6/3/2020. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J175v02n02_04
[6]
Ibid.
[7]
Lozano, Indalecio. The Therapeutic use of Cannabis sativa (L.) in Arabic
medicine. Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics, Volume 1, 2000. Accessed online
6/3/2020. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J175v01n01_05?src=recsys
[8]
Grotenhuis, Elizabeth Ten. Stories of Silk and Paper, in World Literature
Today, v.80, Jul-Aug 2006. Accessed through JSTOR 5/6/2020.
[9]
Barber, E.J.W. Prehistoric Textiles: The development of cloth in the Neolithic
and Bronze Ages, with special reference to the Aegean. Princeton U Press, 1991.
P.15. Accessed online 4/6/2020. https://books.google.ca/books?id=HnSlynSfeEIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=hemp+Prehistoric+Textiles:+The+Development+of+Cloth+in+the+Neolithic+and+Bronze+Ages+with+Special+Reference+to+the+Aegean.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6tbfLmOjpAhXCm-AKHdxaCoMQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=hemp%20Prehistoric%20Textiles%3A%20The%20Development%20of%20Cloth%20in%20the%20Neolithic%20and%20Bronze%20Ages%20with%20Special%20Reference%20to%20the%20Aegean.&f=false
[10]
The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. Eds. Helena Hamerow, David A
Hinton, et al. OxfordUPress:UK, 2011. Accessed online 7/6/2020. https://books.google.ca/books?id=xucNJfS42PwC&pg=PA355&lpg=PA355&dq=hemp+seeds+archaeology&source=bl&ots=BGQy2dW4li&sig=ACfU3U23xrHJF8q_Z2tsIlyhRgOx1ul91g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjW4IaQnuvpAhWFbs0KHZ3ODk0Q6AEwD3oECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=hemp%20seeds%20archaeology&f=false
[11]
Nedkvitne, Arnved. Norse Greenland: Viking peasants in the Arctic.
Routledge:NY, 2019. Accessed online 7/6/2020. https://books.google.ca/books?id=Xs5wDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT207&dq=norse+archaeology+hemp&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiw5I-NrPLpAhUhmeAKHVASDOAQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=norse%20archaeology%20hemp&f=false
[12]
Jorgensen, Lise Bender. Textiles in European Archaeology: Report from the 6th
NESAT symposium. P.307. Accessed online 8/6/2020. https://books.google.ca/books?id=etPbAAAAMAAJ&q=viking+archaeology+hemp&dq=viking+archaeology+hemp&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIo6v5rPLpAhVKhXIEHYDDCVwQ6AEIQzAD
[16]
Griggs Lawrence, Robyn. Pot in Pans: a history of eating cannabis.
Rowman&Littlefield, NY, 2019. P.52. Accessed online 5/6/2020. https://books.google.ca/books?id=cSyKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA52&dq=pot+in+pans+cannabis+medieval&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_j5m4_-rpAhX4hHIEHTL6COoQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
[18][18]
Cannabis in the Americas. When and from where did it arrive? Carl Feagans,
Archaeology Review, May 21, 2019. Accessed 5/28/2020. https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2019/05/cannabis-in-the-americas-when-and-from-where-did-it-arrive/
[19]
Griggs Lawrence, Robyn. P.53.
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