Siberian Tomb Hair and Seeds Hint at Cannabis Use 2,800 Years Ago

Archaeologists say a monumental tomb in southern Siberia holds the earliest known evidence of cannabis being used to get high, at least 2,800 years ago. According to The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the claim rests on cannabis seeds and preserved human hair found in the burial mound, and it would put the practice at least 300 years earlier than known use in neighboring China.

The study, published in the journal Science, has drawn a split among independent experts. One toxicology specialist calls the hair analysis weak, while another researcher says the methods support the conclusion.

What the team says it found

The international team, with members from Germany, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland, began digging in 2017 at the Tunnug 1 site in the Uyuk Valley. The burial mound is one of the earliest monumental tombs showing the material culture of the Scythians, nomads who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine.

Researchers lived in tents for months. They worked through a spring-to-autumn season that brought swamps, snowstorms, frosts and swarms of mosquitoes. Larger finds included weapons, horse gear and animal-style motifs. The team also found tiny black spots that proved to be cannabis seeds, along with preserved human hair.

Gino Caspari, an archaeologist at the University of Bern and a co-author, said it is extremely rare to have both preserved plant material and human soft tissue containing active compounds from the same setting. Radiocarbon dating of some of the more than 1,000 seeds helped fix their age. Caspari said the seeds were “not there by accident,” suggesting the plant mattered to the community. He said it is unclear whether the cannabis was inhaled or eaten.

Why one expert calls the hair analysis weak

Volker Auwaerter, head of forensic toxicology at the University Medical Center in Freiburg, Germany, was not part of the study. In an email, he described the hair analysis as “scientifically weak” and said the evidence is not enough to show cannabis was used.

He said the data do not distinguish consumption from outside exposure, meaning the hair could have absorbed traces simply by being buried alongside the plant. He added that a lab test with forensic toxicology expertise would have been advisable and easy to arrange. Because the hair data underpin the study's main claims of consumption and psychoactive use, he said, the paper falls far short of what was possible.

Why another expert backs the methods

Elisa Guerra Doce of the University of Valladolid in Spain has written about the use of consciousness-altering substances in prehistory. She was also not involved in the study. She told the outlet that toxicological hair analysis is not new in archaeology and has been used to identify the consumption of psychoactive substances.

In an email, she credited the authors with showing, through their methods, that cannabis was consumed by people tied to the burial rite and was not just left as a funeral offering.

Why it matters for the history of drug use

Ancient drug use has long interested scholars. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about Central Asian people smoking cannabis around 440 B.C., and archaeologists have found cannabis seeds in tombs across the region's highlands. Today, scholars generally do not trust ancient accounts without supporting physical evidence.

Seeds alone cannot settle the question either. The plant has other uses, including pressing seeds for oil and making fibers into cloth. That is why the hair is central to the debate. If it reflects consumption, the finding would push back the earliest known psychoactive use of cannabis. If it reflects only contact in the grave, the tomb shows that people valued the plant but not how they used it.

For now, the result is a single study with a disagreement about its central evidence. The authors and the two outside experts quoted by the outlet read the same data differently.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette