The History of Cannabis Museum

The Cannabis (Hemp) plant evolved from Northern China at the dawn of civilization, and is believed to be the first cultivated fiber plant. The earliest archaeological record of the use of fiber from Cannabis was in China twelve thousand-years ago. Archaeologist unearthed an old Neolithic site at Yuan-Shan, and among the remains dug up included pottery with hemp cord markings on it along with a rod-shaped stone beater, used to pound hemp. Cannabis (Hemp) was also used to make items such as fishing nets, rope, clothes, and paper.

The Chinese are thought to have invented hemp paper. Cannabis seeds were used for food, as was cannabis oil, in China. Finding hemp use and cultivation in this date range puts Cannabis as one of the first and oldest known human agriculture crops.

As explained by Richard Hamilton in the 2009 Scientific American article on sustainable agriculture “Modern humans emerged some 250,000 years ago, yet agriculture is a fairly recent invention, only about 10,000 years old … Agriculture is not natural; it is a human invention. It is also the basis of modern civilization.” This point was also touched on by Carl Sagan in 1977 when he proposed the possibility that marijuana may have actually been world’s first agricultural crop, leading to the development of civilization itself.