From weaving to medicine, to religious meditation… the cannabis plant has crossed the history and culture of many peoples of the world and is still much loved today!
Cannabis is a plant that man has known and used in a thousand ways since the most distant times. The oldest evidence of its use dates back to over 10,000 years ago! In fact, fossil seeds found in a cave in Romania and dishes with plant filaments found in China date back to that time.
The origin of the plant is to be found in the immense prairies of southern Siberia: it is there that the Neolithic nomads learned about the strength of its fibres, perfect for weaving, and then also the psychotropic effects of its leaves and seeds.
The first historical evidence of the use of cannabis as a medicine dates back to around 2700 BC: the Chinese emperor Shen Nung, a passionate scholar of herbal medicine, wrote in a treatise that cannabis was very useful for treating gout, constipation, but also “mental weakness”. Far away from the China of the emperors, in ancient Egypt, cannabis was used starting from 2000 BC to treat eye irritations: for this purpose the leaves were chopped together with honey.
The Assyrians, along with several other Middle Eastern peoples, already in ancient times used cannabis for its psychoactive properties. The use of the plant for meditative and religious purposes is documented in many archaic religions and, according to some scholars, also in the Bible, where a particular "scented cane" (kaneh bosm) is described. In the Vedas, the sacred texts of the Hindu religion, there is frequent mention of a herb useful against anxiety and used in religious ceremonies: according to exegetes, it is precisely cannabis!
Although some scholars believe that the herb arrived in the Americas after the
European colonization, recent archaeological excavations have found cannabis seeds even in the burials of pre-Columbian civilizations.
An herb that is widespread throughout the world and used almost everywhere for a variety of purposes from medicinal to textile, religious and recreational could only generate a variety of names: cannabis is known as hemp, as ganja (from Sanskrit), as hasish (from Arabic) and as marijuana (American name) but it is now also the “herb” par excellence!
The fortunes of cannabis in Europe have been rather fluctuating throughout history. The Greeks and Romans were familiar with it, as emerges from the treatises of scholars such as Herodotus, Pliny and Galen. Between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages the plant was known mainly as a
remedy against ear infections: this is how Pope John XXI also describes it, who in addition to being
Bishop of Rome was also a medical doctor. Cannabis may have been quite widespread in Europe during his time, in the twelfth century, but in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII banned its cultivation and use as a medicine, calling it an “evil” plant.
It was Napoleon's soldiers who brought cannabis back to Europe after the campaign
of Egypt. In the North African country, the troops were able to experience first-hand the beneficial effects of the plant. A few years later, in 1839, the Irish doctor William Brooke O'Shaughnessy wrote a famous report on the beneficial effects of cannabis, which he had known and tried in India, and promoted its circulation as a remedy for convulsions, tetanus, epilepsy and rheumatism.
Modern scholars have confirmed the benefits of cannabis, and in particular of
compound called CBD inside it, to promote night sleep, reduce anxiety and
relieve pain.Although many governments continue to ban cannabis (which is the most used “recreational” drug in the world), the debate continues to rage, because the benefits brought by this herb are truly, truly many! This is why, in Italy, after many years of prohibition, an initial success was achieved with the opening to the so-called legal cannabis, rich in CBD but devoid of THC (the substance responsible for the psychotropic effects).
