To celebrate 4/20, let’s learn about the history of getting stoned (seriously) in ancient Greece and beyond

Please partake in this fun #FourTwenty thread filled with heady illustrations and the dankest of footnotes
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Too many articles online about the history of drugs are lazy and unresearched. Using hemp fibers for rope doesn’t equal recreational weed. An exhaustive list of ancient medical uses isn’t any better

This thread ain’t that. It’s the real dope on the ancient history of high
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Homer’s Odyssey (4.220-234) records the first mythical use of recreational drugs. Beautiful Queen Helen mixes a drug (pharmakon) w/ wine to numb painful memories of the world’s evils

The ancient Greek term pharmakon is where we get our word pharmacy (duh…)
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The scouts encountered humans, LotusEaters
who did not hurt them. They just shared w/them
their sweet delicious fruit. But as they ate it
they lost the will to come back&bring news
to me. They wanted only to stay there
feeding on lotus w/the LotusEaters
Od9.91-6 @EmilyRCWilson
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We don’t know a lot. Like what drug is Homer’s lotus? It’s a matter of debate. We don’t know which pharmakon Helen drugged the wine with. It’s called nepenthe (meaning no more sorrow). There is a carnivorous plant after it, b/c it puts insects and lizards out of their misery?
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Herodotus, known as the “Father of History,” was the first to write about recreational cannabis. For those taking notes – to roll up later – he wrote his history book about Greece, Persia, and surrounding lands over 2400 years ago. Translations by A.D. Godley @PerseusDigLib
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Herodotus (4.75) describes the first historical hotbox

“The Scythians then take the seed of this hemp… throw it on the red-hot stones, where it smoulders and sends forth such fumes that no Greek vapor-bath could surpass it. The Scythians howl in their joy at the vapor-bath.”
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Herodotus (1.202) describes another Scythian group that burns the fruit of a certain tree:

“The fumes of it - as it burns - make them drunk as the Greeks are with wine, & more & more drunk as more fruit is thrown on the fire, until at last they rise up to dance & even sing."
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Herodotus’s stoned Scythians are supported by archaeology. Burials of Central Asian steppe horsemen from Ukraine and Southern Russia have included caches of carbonized cannabis or even golden vessels w/ both marijuana & opium residue

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/05/150522-scythians-marijuana-bastard-wars-kurgan-archaeology/
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And similar burials found in a Chinese desert oasis at Turpan included complete plants. Their leaves and buds were still preserved thousands of years later by the dry, desert air. (seriously, that's 2400 yr old bud below)

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/marijuana-cannabis-pot-weed-burial-shroud-china-ancient-discovery-scythians-turpan-archaeology-botany/
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Other tales of ancient highs require deeper dives in future threads

Did you know the inventor of LSD wrote a book on hallucinogens at the mysteries of Eleusis?

Or that the oracular priestess of Delphi inhaled geological vapors?
(painting 1891 by John Collier)
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Plus, I wrote a (nearly) 100-page honors thesis @penn on drugs in Graeco-Roman magic spells found in Egypt. I called it “Magic, Drugs, and Magic Drugs: An Analysis of Wormwood in the Greek Magical Papyri.”

Being an archaeologist & historian ain’t all that bad
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Let’s end at the beginning

The oldest illustration of cannabis is from over 1500 yrs ago in a Byzantine copy of Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica (first written ca. 50 AD). He says eating the seeds reduces sexual activity

Happy 4/20. Don’t skip class & remember to Puff Puff Pass!

For more threads on my research into the ancient Mediterranean see #ClassicalZooarchaeology below https://twitter.com/wfdibble/status/978941931714736133

Or perhaps a thread on ancient tripped out and tatted magicians is more your cup of tea. Check it out below https://twitter.com/FlintDibble/status/1001829360293351424?s=19

More archaeological evidence for cannabis that relates to this heady thread

A recently published study presents oldest example of weed toking 2500 years ago in China

Dope research! https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/12/earliest-known-signs-of-cannabis-smoking-unearthed-in-china