World's oldest Marijuana stash

By the title you may find it an unusual theme to be written about by my part, but I assure you that it is totally in a historical and archaeological point of view.

Science today doesn't stop to amaze us, especially when it comes to the study of ancient civilisations and we get to know better the ways of our ancestors, which doen't stop to surprise us also. 
Almost two pounds of a plant material was found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert, this material was still green and it has just been identified as the world's oldest marijuana stash. The tests that have been made to this ancient marijuana shows that it possessed potent psychoactive properties. It was thought that the ancient civilisations only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects, but this finding shows it differently. It appears that these people were using the plant as a drug. Well.. there isn't anything new about this, what is new is that they had a lot of  plantations for the purpose, they didn't just go into the wilds and pick them up, or went to places where the plant was abundant, they already had personal gardens of it.

The excavations took place in the Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, China. The drug was found lightly pounded in a wooden bowl in a leather basket near the head of a blue-eyed Caucasian man who died when he was about 45. This person was buried with a lot of unusual and rare items of great value. Among these items there was a make-up bag, some bridles, pots, archery equipment and a kongou harp. It is believed that this individual was a shaman from the Gushi people, who spoke a language called Tocharian that was similar to Celtic, unfortunately now extinct. The test results of the plant found in the bowl revealed that it was cannabis.

The seeds mixed in with the leaves, along with their color and other characteristics, indicate the marijuana came from a cultivated strain. Before the burial began, someone had carefully picked out all of the male plant parts, ( which are less psychoactive ). Researchers don't yet know how this drug was administered because among the findings there wasn't any pipe nor any other kind of tool associated with the process of smoking. It might have been fumigated or orally ingested.

Apparently this plant was not only used to make clothes and other goods, as there is evidence that the Gushi people did their own clothes out of wool and made ropes out of reed fibers. Probably the marijuana was grown for medicinal and spiritual purposes, maybe that was its greater function.