- [<] Status Log - created:: 2021-04-03 - status-updated:: 2021-04-24 - status-updated:: 2022-03-13 - current-status:: #articleseed - [S] Marketing * Used for [[Tt2021-05 On History]] - purpose:: #articleseed/addendum to support [[2021.11.24a When everything is ritual is anything ritual]] Not everything archaeologists find needs to be described (or frankly, in my opinion, handwaved) as "used for ritual purposes." The idea that the ancients did everything for "ritual" reasons instead of *practical* purposes drives me nuts. > Hemp is native to the Central Asian Plains and Adrienne Mayor's book [[The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor|The Amazons]] has a really interesting chapter (Chapter 9) on drug use among the nomadic cultures (there's more than one; [[Scythian]] is sort of a fuzzy term) of that region to whom she attributes a lot of [[Greek]] understanding of, well, warrior women among the ancient horse peoples of the Eurasian Steppe. > > She specifically says that cannabis was valuable for spiritual _and recreational_ purposes. Her references for this claim include: > > - Olsden and Harding in 2008 > - Barber in 1991 & 2000 > > According to Mayor (and I have no reason to doubt her), Herodotus discusses cannabis use among the Scythian tribes he is familiar with, and the translation I've got in front of me gives no indication that it's intended for a particularly ritual or religious purpose: Herodotus compares inhaling cannabis smoke in large gatherings to the Greek use of wine as an intoxicant. > > The Scythians that Herodotus reports on also apparently used cannabis "seeds" (buds, actually, but the difference isn't always obvious to a non-user) when partaking in steam baths. > > In terms of material evidence, there were also apparently hemp-burning kits found in the graves of Pazyryk culture men and women in the Altai region. These hemp kits were mixed in with other regular daily tools (i.e. not obviously ritual items), so Mayor says that "the archaeologists conclude that cannabis inhalation was not restricted to ritual use but was part of everyday Scythian life." ## See also - [[The Horse The Wheel And Language by David Anthony#ch12p298 The Road to the Northern Cultures]] for a discussion of the hemp trade in the Central Eurasian Plains.