Sogdians, a people of western China are among the earliest users of cannabis as a psychoactive.
At an altitude of 3000 meters high, the Jirzankal cemetery in the Padmir mountains of western China has been found to contain graves in which a wooden brazier or incense burner was used to burn cannabis. The braziers in this cemetery were found among the graves of the elite, some of whom were shamans. It appears that mourners burned cannabis at the gravesite for its intoxicating fumes, approximately 2500 years ago.
While the use of wild cannabis was found to have begun more than 4000 years ago,
the cultivation of cannabis was done as an oil-seed and fiber crop. The plants had very low psychoactive properties and it is unlikely that the people harvesting cannabis for these purposes were smoking or ingesting it to get high.
The Silk Road in Central Asia is where the use of cannabis for its psychoactive properties appears to have originated. The region's high altitude could have created cannabis more naturally high in THC or people could have played a role by selectively breeding cannabis with higher levels of THC.
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