Thirteen well - preservedcannabisplants , each valuate up to 90 centimetre ( 3 feet ) long , have been found wrapped around the corpse of a man who died between 2,400 and 2,800 old age ago in Turpan , compass north - west China . The location was once a fundamental stop along the legendary trading path known as theSilk Road , and the finding slough visible radiation on the popularity and cultural significance of this reverence plant life in ancient times .
detail the discovery in the journalEconomic Botany , research worker explain that the man was likely in his mid - 30 at the clock time of his death , and that his Caucasic feature propose he was not a local . The plants , however , appear to have been grown nearby , and the fact that they were flower suggest that they were probably extirpate in either August or September .
Though this is not the first evidence of ganja being used in Eurasia around this period , the nature of the discovery is rather unique , with the plants being used as a kind of shroud for the body . While the research worker ca n’t be trusted of the identity of the cadaver or the significance of the plants , they speculate that he may have been a priest-doctor , and that the cannabis with which he was buried was most probably used to alter his or his patients’consciousnessin gild to communicate with the spirits or cure illnesses .
Part of the ganja " shroud " . Hongen Jiang / Economic Botany
What they do know is that this mysterious character would have been buried by members of theSubeixi culture , a Bronze - Age kingdom that dominated part of the Eurasian Steppe for about a thousand age until being conquered by the Western Han Dynasty , which sought to hold as much of the Silk Road as possible .
The discovery allow archaeologists to build on the conclusion pull out from another late dig , in which 80 kilograms ( 175 pounds ) offinely cut cannabiswas rule buried next to the corpse of another suspect priest-doctor . Elsewhere , cannabis seed line up in Siberian graves dating back to the first millennium BCE are also considered as grounds for early ritualistic role of the plant in Eurasia at this time .
Some of the cannabis plant found in the grave accent . Hongen Jiang / Economic Botany
