Marijuana is the dried flowers, leaves, stems, and seeds of the cannabis plant, prepared for their psychoactive and medicinal effects.
Its principal intoxicating chemical is THC, which can alter mood, perception, memory, coordination, and appetite. Cannabis also contains CBD, which does not produce the same high.
Marijuana may be smoked, vaporized, eaten, or taken as an extract. Strictly speaking, cannabis names the plant and its products broadly, while marijuana usually means THC-containing cannabis—especially its dried flowering material.
Cannabis has one of the longest relationships with humanity of any cultivated plant—but its first users probably valued it as food and fiber, not primarily as an intoxicant.
What were its first uses?
We cannot identify the literal first use, but the evidence indicates three early functions:
- Food: The fruits commonly called “seeds” are nutritious and oil-rich. Directly dated cannabis fruits from a Jōmon site in Japan are about 10,000 years old and were recovered in a probable food context.
- Fiber: Fibers from the stalk were made into cordage, fishing nets, bowstrings, cloth, and eventually paper. Cannabis grown chiefly for fiber is what we now call hemp.
- Medicine and intoxication: These uses are clearly documented later. Early cannabis probably contained less THC than modern drug varieties, which were selectively bred for resinous flowers.
A genomic study estimated that humans began domesticating Cannabis sativa in East Asia approximately 12,000 years ago, initially as a multipurpose plant. Distinct fiber-type and drug-type lineages appear to have undergone stronger specialized selection beginning about 4,000 years ago. That chronology is based on genetic modeling, however, not a 12,000-year-old marijuana artifact.
Ancient timeline
- Around 8000 BCE: Cannabis fruits appear at Okinoshima in Japan. Their presence shows that people collected or cultivated the plant, but does not prove that they smoked it.
- Neolithic and Bronze Age East Asia: Cannabis became an oilseed and fiber crop. Archaeologists find seeds, fibers, cord impressions, and textile evidence, although identifying ancient fibers specifically as cannabis can be difficult.
- Second and first millennia BCE: Cannabis spread through Central Asia and across Eurasian exchange routes. Hundreds of cannabis grains dating between approximately 1650 and 400 BCE have been recovered at Haimenkou in southwestern China.
- Around 700 BCE: A tomb at Yanghai in what is now Xinjiang contained nearly 800 grams of carefully selected cannabis material. Chemical and genetic examination suggests it was relatively psychoactive and probably intended for medicinal, ritual, divinatory, or intoxicating use—not merely fiber production.
- Around 500 BCE: The earliest strong, directly tested evidence of people deliberately inhaling cannabis fumes comes from Jirzankal Cemetery in the Pamir Mountains. Cannabis was burned with heated stones inside wooden braziers during mortuary ceremonies. The plants produced stronger psychoactive chemical signatures than typical wild cannabis. This was not a modern joint: it was communal or ritual fumigation.
- Fifth century BCE: Herodotus described Scythians throwing cannabis onto hot stones beneath felt coverings and reacting enthusiastically to the vapor. His account closely resembles the archaeological setup later found in Central Asia.
- First–second centuries CE: The Chinese Shennong Bencao Jing recorded cannabis medicinally. The common claim that Emperor Shennong documented medical marijuana in 2737 BCE is legend, not contemporary written evidence; the surviving tradition was compiled thousands of years later.
Cannabis subsequently became established in Indian medicine and religious practice, classical and medieval pharmacology, and Islamic preparations such as hashish. Hemp meanwhile remained strategically important for rope, sails, canvas, clothing, and paper.
The central historical point is this: cannabis began as a versatile survival crop—seed, oil, fiber, and cordage. Its deliberate cultivation as a strongly intoxicating flower was probably a later specialization, although people may have noticed and used its psychoactive effects long before those effects left unmistakable archaeological evidence.