Where Was Cannabis First Discovered? From Taiwan to the Pamir Mountains

Cannabis was first used in East Asia: hemp fibers turn up in a Taiwanese village around 8000 BC, and the earliest medical text that mentions the plant is a Chinese compendium attributed to Emperor Shen Nung, traditionally dated to 2737 BC. From China it spread to India, Persia and North Africa, picking up medicinal and then recreational uses along the way.

That text describes cannabis as a medicine for ailments like rheumatism, gout and malaria, and even mentions it for absent-mindedness, which some modern writers read as an early nod to attention problems.

A quick history of cannabis

Humans discovered and started using cannabis long before anyone was writing history down. The exact dates are fuzzy, but archaeological evidence and historical records give us a pretty good timeline of how ancient civilizations used the plant.

Humans are thought to have started growing hemp around 8000 BC, using its fibers to make textiles in a village in Taiwan. Early on, it was mostly about fiber, but archaeological evidence suggests that by around 3500 BC people were already burning hemp, as shown by burial mounds in what's now Romania.

That shift points to a more varied use of the plant, and this period likely marks the start of humans using cannabis for something other than cloth.

Where medical cannabis began

Cannabis has also been widely used as medicine throughout history. The oldest known Chinese book of medicine, the "Pen Ts'ao Ching," is traditionally dated to 2737 BC and describes cannabis as a remedy. That medical use spread across cultures and continents, helping knowledge of the plant's therapeutic properties travel with it.

When did people start getting high?

Recreational use, meaning using cannabis specifically for its psychoactive effects, shows up later in the record. In 2019, researchers made a major find in the Pamir Mountains of western China: wooden braziers containing high concentrations of the cannabinoid tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

That find, dated to around 500 BC, is physical proof that humans have been using cannabis for its psychoactive effects for at least 2,500 years. It's a big piece of evidence in the long history of people getting high on purpose.

From China to India

As it spread from China to India and then into North Africa, cannabis started being used not just as medicine but recreationally too. In India especially, recreational use is well documented, and in the Muslim world, where the Quran forbids alcohol, cannabis became a popular alternative.

It was in this context that Muslims introduced hashish, a concentrated form of cannabis, which caught on fast in Persia (modern Iran) in the 12th century and across North Africa. At first its medicinal properties were valued most, but over time recreational use spread widely, especially in regions where religion banned alcohol.

The modern history of medical cannabis

In modern history, cannabis has played a starring role as medicine in cultures all over the world. As modern medicine took shape in the 19th century, medical cannabis became a go-to remedy in many countries.

Irish physician William O'Shaughnessy pioneered the reintroduction of cannabis into Western medicine in the 1830s. After seeing its benefits in patients in India, O'Shaughnessy brought cannabis tinctures into Victorian British medicine, where they were used for everything from rheumatism to epilepsy.

In the 1840s, French physician Jacques-Joseph Moreau dug deeper into cannabis research, cementing its place in early Western medicine. Moreau reported that cannabis helped with headaches, stimulated appetite and improved sleep.

By the 1850s, medical cannabis had spread to more countries, including the United States, where it was used for a wide range of conditions such as neuralgia, gout and opiate addiction.

What happened in the last century?

Despite its wide use as medicine in the 19th and early 20th centuries, cannabis took a sharp legal turn in many countries. A period of prohibition and criminalization began and lasted nearly a century. Around the turn of the millennium, though, the tide started to shift, and a new wave of re-legalization began, marking a turning point in how cannabis is seen and regulated.