they will ruin it by crossing it with whatever commercial strain that seemingly everything is derived from these days. gone are the days of old where variety was the spice of life. where are the strains like the early 2000s NY haze and diesel when we need them most!

It would probably be extremely weak in comparison to the modern varieties. Not necessarily a bad thing (a more balanced, less THC-heavy strain might lead to a more pleasant high) but hard to sell many people on a much, much milder strain than what they're used to.

Dogfish Head brewery sold a lot of beer developed in a similar way.

Midas Touch was inspired by remnants found in ancient drinking vessels associated with King Midas and brought to life with the help of biomolecular archaeologist Dr. Patrick McGovern.

https://www.dogfish.com/drink/beer/midas-touch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreational_drug_use_in_anima...

It's not unreasonable to think it possible.

> This could have been used for medical purposes

Yes, and the researchers/scientists are quoted saying as much in the article

“ Now they have hemp growing in their land, which is very like flax except in thickness and in height, for in these respects the hemp is much superior. This grows both of itself and with cultivation; and of it the Thracians even make garments, which are very like those made of flaxen thread, so that he who was not specially conversant with it would not be able to decide whether the garments were of flax or of hemp; and he who had not before seen stuff woven of hemp would suppose that the garment was made of flax.

75The Scythians then take the seed of this hemp and creep under the felt coverings, and then they throw the seed upon the stones which have been heated red-hot: and it burns like incense and produces a vapour so thick that no vapour-bath in Hellas would surpass it: and the Scythians being delighted with the vapour-bath howl like wolves.[72] This is to them instead of washing, for in fact they do not wash their bodies at all in water.”

Herodotus.

— Now Herodotus is not exactly a reliable historian, but I don’t think there is any reason for him to have just invented this.

Also, “medicinal” use wasn’t really a category that they would have recognized, nor was there a taboo on intoxication that would make them invent such a category. There might have been ritual element to it, or some other instrumental reason behind it, but I think a contemporaneous description of them seeming to enjoy it is pretty good reason to believe that part of it was that it was just a good time.

I was really surprised how the article danced around the use of cannabis. The article framed it as possibly related to ritualistic and or funerary purposes. I see no reason that it wasn’t simply a lifestyle choice. Although even modern use may seem ritualistic. I just think it would be more honest to just say it was used.

Wallhop is great by the way. Thanks for introducing me to it by way of a post on another article I think.

> Cannabis traces have also been found in ancient Egyptian mummies, many millennia before Columbus, despite being an American plant

The genus Cannabis originated in Central Asia (specifically the northeastern Tibetan Plateau region) and shares a family (Cannabaceae) with its closest related sister genus, Humulus (hops) (McPartland, 2018; Kovalchuk et al., 2020).

References Kovalchuk, I., Pellino, M., Rigault, P., van Velzen, R., Ebersbach, J., Ashnest, J. R., Mau, M., Schranz, M. E., Alcorn, J., Laprairie, R. B., McKay, J. K., Burbridge, C., Schneider, D., Vergara, D., Kane, N. C., & Sharbel, T. F. (2020). The genomics of Cannabis and its close relatives. Annual Review of Plant Biology, 71, 713–739. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-arplant-081519-040203 Cited by: 225

McPartland, J. M. (2018). Cannabis systematics at the levels of family, genus, and species. Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, 3(1), 203–212. https://doi.org/10.1089/can.2018.0039 Cited by: 513

Life kills.

You can consume cannabis in a wide variety of manners that are not smoking it.

The most popular alternative is putting it into a vaporizer, but eh, still bad for the lungs. But you can also make tea out of it, you can make edibles (most popular: cannabutter and brownies), you can make extractions like hash, you can make tinctures for your skin, and there's even suppositories for rectal and vaginal use.