The Weed That Built Civilizations: 10,000 Years of Cannabis History

Cannabis didn’t suddenly appear in modern wellness culture, it has been part of human survival, medicine, and material life for thousands of years. We take a fast but grounded walk through 10,000 years of cannabis history, starting with early cultivation in ancient China and moving through India, Egypt, and the wider ancient world where cannabis shows up as pain relief, ritual support, and everyday utility.

If you’re into cannabis education, edibles, hemp sustainability, or the real history behind legalization, hit play, then subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more curious listeners can find us.

Ask a question for the upcoming Listener Q&A HERE or send an email to stayhigh@bitemepodcast.com.

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Promise

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Welcome to episode 359. And today we're talking about the We the Built Civilizations. We're going to be looking through 10,000 years of cannabis history, but thankfully only in about 15 to 20 minutes. Don't you worry. I'm your host, Margaret, a certified gangier and TCI certified cannabis educator, and I believe your kitchen is the best dispensary that you'll ever have. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles. Grab a snack or a drink, and let's dive in. Now, before we get into today's episode, which I'm really looking forward to because I always look forward to these episodes, I just want to mention that by the time I'm recording this, but by the time this comes out, the Bite Me Cannabis Club will have a new home. And I want to invite you to come over and check it out. It has recently migrated to BitmePodcast.com forward slash club. It is on my website now. And I'm really excited about it because I love this community that I've built with a whole bunch of really cool cannabis-friendly people. And the other thing I love about it is that it really makes me feel like I have a home because I do love doing the podcast, but I can feel very lonely sometimes. And this is a way to interact and learn from other really amazing cannabis people. And of course, because it's not a social media platform, there's no censorship, there's no restrictions, there's no surveillance. I'm not collecting and selling your data. I don't even know how to do that, but bitemepodcast.com forward slash club. And I hope to see you there.

The Cannabis Club New Home

SPEAKER_00 3:03

And it started honestly during the episode that I did on making edibles for someone who can't, the one about mutual aid and DIY is an act of rebellion. Because while I was pulling that episode together, I I kept I kept coming to this same idea, which is why does that feel so radical right now? Making food for your community, growing your own medicine, using a plant that people have been using for 10,000 years to take care of each other. 10,000 years. So today I want to put cannabis in context. Not that cannabis is having a moment context that you get from every industry newsletter, the real context, the one that stretches back to the beginning of human agriculture, runs through ancient medicine cabinets, gets colonized out of whole communities, resurfaces in the kitchen of Alice B. Tokis, and lands in Robin Swan's herb garden and a pair of waterproof hemp shoes that I love, that I own four pairs of.

Why Cannabis History Feels Radical

SPEAKER_00 4:25

And if that didn't point to the incredible usefulness of this plant, which had nothing to do with consuming it as a medicine or for stress relief or any of the ways that we consume it today. And just as a textile or as a building material or whatever, this plant is incredible. So let's go. The oldest evidence we have of humans cultivating cannabis comes from China. And around 8,000 BCE, and that's not a typo, that's 8,000 years before the common era. And they weren't getting high. The plant was, by any measure, a survival crop. By 2700 BCE, there's a reference in a Chinese pharmacopoeia, the Shenong Ben Kao Jing, which I am apologies for that pronunciation, to cannabis as a medicine for pain, inflammation, and what roughly translates as absent-mindedness, which honestly is maybe the earliest documentation of microdosing. And I will point out here that Robin Swan does mention the references to ancient Chinese texts in the conversation we had together. Cannabis moved west. It showed up in ancient India, where it was woven into Vedic traditions as a sacred plant, described in texts

Ancient Origins And Early Medicine

SPEAKER_00 6:02

that are thousands of years old. In the Middle East, in Egypt, where there's evidence of cannabis pollen on the mummy of Ramses II, and where medical papyri document its use for inflammation and pain. Ancient Egypt, friends, the Greeks and Romans knew about it. The Scythians, a nomadic people who ranged across Central Asia, are documented by Herodotus as using cannabis in ritual seam baths. And he described them as crying out with joy, which does kind of track. The point is, this plant traveled with people. It fed them, it clothed them, it healed them, and it helped them connect to something beyond the everyday. That's not a modern story. That's the oldest story we have. It sounds like a modern story, almost. And so here's something that I think is interesting to think about for a second. Before plastics, before synthetics, before industrialized agriculture, hemp was everywhere. Ropes on ships, canvas sails, the word canvas likely comes from the Latin cannabis. The sails that carried explorers across the oceans were made of hemp. The ropes that rigged those ships, the uniforms, the maps were written on hemp paper. In North America, hemp cultivation was at various points required by colonial governments. Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, farmers were legally obligated to grow it. And it was used as a currency in some colonies. And now we're using it to build houses. Hemprete is a real thing and it's having a moment. It's a building material made from the inner woody core of the hemp stock mixed with lime. It's lightweight, carbon negative, naturally insulating, mold resistant, and gets harder over time. Builders in Europe have been using it for decades. It's picking up in North America now, and I find that really exciting, not just as a cannabis advocate, but someone who thinks a lot about sustainability. And there was a period in

Hemp Built The World

SPEAKER_00 8:03

my life where I was super interested in one day being able to build a straw bale house. And the hemp crete actually seems like a very similar process to that, with a lot of the same incredible principles and benefits of using these alternative building materials. We're seeing hemp in insulation, bioplastic, car panels, BMW and Mercedes have used hemp fiber composites. And yes, shoes. I wear hemp shoes. I am an affiliate for 8,000 kicks, which makes waterproof hemp sneakers. I'm going to link to those in the show notes because I love them. And also because it feels like a small act of putting my money where my mouth is. Hemp is infrastructure and it always was. And if you're interested, the reason I became an affiliate for them a while ago is because I had the CEO on the show to talk about using hemp as a material, the challenges that it presents, and how he went about making these hemp waterproof hemp shoes and accessories, because they also do a line of backpacks as well. And I think if we want to see more examples of hemp being used in things like clothing and textiles and other areas, then it behooves us to go out and support the companies that are making them. And that framing does a lot of work to erase a much longer, more complicated story. Cannabis and hemp prohibition in the 20th century was not just about the plant, it was about who was using it. In the United States, the criminalization of cannabis was explicitly and deliberately tied to racist enforcement. Harry Anslinger, who ran the Federal Bureau of Narcotics during the 1930s, built the case against marijuana on newspaper campaigns that linked the plant to Mexican immigrants and black jazz musicians. His quotes are on record and they're pretty vile. And I won't repeat them here because we've all heard them. Anybody who's been part of the cannabis community for any length of time probably knows a bit about the history of prohibition. And his words aren't hard to find, but they are important to understand. And the communities that were most targeted by cannabis criminalization were the same communities that had the longest relationship with the plant as medicine, as food, as ritual, and as a connection. And that's also not a coincidence. Hemp prohibition wiped out an agricultural

Prohibition Fueled By Racism And Profit

SPEAKER_00 10:51

sector that had sustained farming communities for generations. The DuPont synthetic fiber industry had a financial interest in that outcome. DuPont, the giant corporation. William Randolph Hearst, who owned timber interests used to make newsprint, had a financial interest in that outcome. The story of cannabis prohibition is in large part a story about capital and racism working together to eliminate a plant that threatened certain profit structures. And I'm not going to pretend that I can wrap that up neatly because I can't, but I do think it matters that when we talk about cannabis as radical or rebellious, we understand what it was rebelling against and who bore that cost. And I think that when I think about my episode on mutual aid, making edibles for the people in your community who can't get to a dispensary, who can't afford the dispensary, who've been criminalized for using this plant their whole lives and are still navigating a system that isn't designed for them. This isn't separate from history. It is continuous with it. Which brings me to Alice B. Tokless. I did an episode on her cookbook, a brief one. And if you haven't heard about it, go back and have a listen. That was just last week's episode. She is fascinating, complicated, and wonderful and belongs in the canon. Her 1954 cookbook included a recipe that she called Hashish Fudge, submitted by her friend Brian Geison. The recipe made it into the American edition by accident, or so the story goes, and it became one of the most famous recipes in the cannabis history. It also got the book banned in some places, which is kind of an achievement, but also not that surprised. Some British, because it was the British, when the British discovered the recipe in the book, it had been printed first in the US without fanfare. Well, as that particular recipe without fanfare, and then the British publishers discovered it, clutching their pearls, no doubt, saying, Oh, what about the children? And that recipe was removed from the book. But here's what I find meaningful about Alice B. Toklas Beyond the Fudge She was a woman. She was Jewish, she was queer, and she was cooking in Paris at a time when none of those identities

Alice B Toklas And Kitchen Lineage

SPEAKER_00 13:03

made life easy for her. Her kitchen was a gathering place for writers and artists and thinkers of the time. And her cookbook is at its core a record of a life built on her own terms through food, through hospitality, and through community. And that feels very familiar to me. Robin Swann, who I had on the show recently, is one who understands this in a deep way. She works with plants as medicine. She thinks about the history of plant knowledge, and she carries a real awareness of how much traditional knowledge has been suppressed, who held it, and what it costs when it was taken away. And her episode is one that I keep thinking about for a bunch of different reasons. If you haven't listened to that one yet, either, it's pretty fascinating, if I do say so myself. The herbalism tradition, which Robin represents, is also largely a women's history. Women's as women as healers, women as keepers of plant knowledge, women who were burned as witches for knowing what plants could do. That's been well documented. I've read a couple of books on that myself. The kitchen as the place where that knowledge survived because it looked like cooking. Cannabis has always lived in that space in the hands of people who are not supposed to have it, not supposed to know it, and not supposed to pass it on. And yet they did pass it on anyway. So where does that leave us now? Cannabis is legal in Canada where I am. It's legal for recreational use in a growing number of US states. It's legal for medicinal use in an even larger number of US states and around the world. There is more research happening now than at any other point in the last century. Hemp is back in a serious way as a crop, as a material, as a protein source. And yet, the people who are building wealth in the legal industry are largely not the communities that bore the cost of prohibition. The expungement of cannabis convictions is slow, incomplete. Access to legal cannabis is still shaped by economic barriers and geographic inequity. Hemp crete is real, but it's not every building code yet. Hemp fabric is real, but fast fashion still dominates. The system that replaced the plant with petroleum and synthetic fiber just didn't disappear because hemp is technically legal again. And I say not all this, not to be discouraging, but I say it because I think the people who are doing the work of home growing, home cooking, community care are doing

Legalization Now And Who Benefits

SPEAKER_00 15:34

something that is connected to the 10,000-year lineage of people who looked at this plant and said, this helps, let's share it. The kitchen is the best dispensary that you'll ever have. By extension, your garden is too. If you have the privilege to grow either indoors or outdoors where you are. And I mean that as a practical statement about cost and customization, knowing exactly what's in your edibles, but I also mean it as something bigger. Your kitchen's a site of knowledge, of care, of resistance, if you want it to be. And it always has been. And I'm thinking of you folks who are listening right now who are making edibles, growing your own cannabis, sharing your medicine, giving away seeds, and yet you live in a place where it's not legal. I think of you. So if you want to go deeper on any of the threads that I pulled in today, I'll link to everything in the show notes. The mutual aid episode, the Alice B. Tokless episode, Robin Swan's episode is definitely a must listen. The 8,000 Kicks episode, and I'll include the link for the hemp shoes. I stand by them. I have more than one pair. Actually, by now I have four pairs, I have to admit. There's a couple of slip-ons

Kitchen And Garden As Dispensary

SPEAKER_00 16:49

that I love, love, love, love, love. And I've tested many of these products myself personally. If you're making your own edibles and you want to track your batches and build a real reference for yourself, there's the Bite Me Dose Diary, or I have the Bite Me Edibles journal on Amazon worldwide. And I'll put the links to those in the show notes as well. I will mention here for a second the dose diary is a relatively new addition to the lineup of things. There is over there, you can get free sample entries. You don't necessarily have to pay for it. You can buy a more expanded version if you choose. And this was just part of my decision to, you know, kind of move away a bit from Amazon. Because I have Amazon sometimes

Links Tools And Better Dosing

SPEAKER_00 17:39

how do I put this delicately? I'm trying I'm trying to move away from Amazon. Honestly, even if I sell something on there, like the commission is so poor, I'd have to be really pushing a ton of stuff. And I think we collectively as a society need less stuff, not more. So why would I try and direct people to a website that just encourages conspicuous consumption? Anyway, that's a whole other episode. And if you're not already using the Bite Me Dosage Calendar before you make a new batch of anything, why not? Why aren't you? It's free, it's on my website. And if you're making edibles for someone else, which we've talked about in length in that mutual aid episode, the math definitely matters. And you should not, even if you don't have an exact number, having a range or a context that people can use to make an informed choice about what they're consuming is incredibly helpful. I know this from getting edibles from people that are like, here you go, and there's absolutely no dosage information with it. I won't eat those anymore because I'm just not going to take that chance. I'm getting too old for that shit. But if somebody hands me an edible and they're like, I've kind of calculated and I think it's around 20 milligrams, I can go from there. I can work with that. I can say thank you for that information. And if I think that's gonna be too much, I can always cut it in half or in quarters and see how it works for me. At least that's some information. Some information is better than no information. I appreciate all of you so much. I'm constantly in awe that I'm still doing this podcast. I think it's seven years later. And this is a very niche podcast. I don't have huge budgets, I don't have commercials, I'm not, I haven't monetized this show. I do it for the love of it. So I appreciate you spending this time with me. And I just wanted to say that out loud because I think it's important to tell the people that you care about how you feel. And if you haven't done that in real life with somebody that you do care about, do it right now. Send them a text, pick up the phone and give them a call. Write them a note. There's all kinds of ways you can do it. If you like this episode, share it with somebody that you do care about. And until next time, my friends, I'm your host. Stay curious and stay home.