World's Oldest Marijuana Stash Found 108
jage2 writes "Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana in a tomb in a remote part of China.
The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly 'cultivated for psychoactive purposes,' rather than as fibre for clothing, or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.
The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China."
Re:Well, that certainly explains Idle (Score:1, Insightful)
*cough*douchebag*cough*
Re:Intersting Tomb Contents (Score:3, Insightful)
Shamans were the rock stars of the day.
Re:Intersting Tomb Contents (Score:3, Insightful)
At the end of "The Golden Bough" there is a piece on comparison between magic, religion and science.
Some quotes:
In magic man depends on his own strength to meet the difficulties and dangers that beset him on every side. He believes in a certain established order of nature on which he can surely count, and which he can manipulate for his own ends.
When he discovers his mistake, when he recognises sadly that both the order of nature which he had assumed and the control which he had believed himself to exercise over it were purely imaginary, he ceases to rely on his own intelligence and his own unaided efforts, and throws himself humbly on the mercy of certain great invisible beings behind the veil of nature, to whom he now ascribes all those far-reaching powers which he once arrogated to himself.
Thus in the acuter minds magic is gradually superseded by religion, which explains the succession of natural phenomena as regulated by the will, the passion, or the caprice of spiritual beings like man in kind, though vastly superior to him in power.
But as time goes on this explanation in its turn proves to be unsatisfactory. For it assumes that the succession of natural events is not determined by immutable laws, but is to some extent variable and irregular, and this assumption is not borne out by closer observation. On the contrary, the more we scrutinise that succession the more we are struck by the rigid uniformity, the punctual precision with which, wherever we can follow them, the operations of nature are carried on.
Thus the keener minds, still pressing forward to a deeper solution of the mysteries of the universe, come to reject the religious theory of nature as inadequate, and to revert in a measure to the older standpoint of magic by postulating explicitly, what in magic had only been implicitly assumed, to wit, an inflexible regularity in the order of natural events, which, if carefully observed, enables us to foresee their course with certainty and to act accordingly. In short, religion, regarded as an explanation of nature, is displaced by science.
Re:Intersting Tomb Contents (Score:3, Insightful)
But as time goes on this explanation in its turn proves to be unsatisfactory. For it assumes that the succession of natural events is not determined by immutable laws, but is to some extent variable and irregular, and this assumption is not borne out by closer observation. On the contrary, the more we scrutinise that succession the more we are struck by the rigid uniformity, the punctual precision with which, wherever we can follow them, the operations of nature are carried on.
The universe runs on some punctual precision? Sort of like predicting the weather -- oh wait, no. More like quantum mech-- hm. No, not there, either.
In fact, if there's one thing we've learned about the nature of reality through science in the past 100 years, it's that we *don't* live in Newton's clock-work universe. There is no "punctual precision". We live in space-time relativity and quantum uncertainty. Frazier's description of the linear evolution of human thought turns out to be wrong.
Most anthropologists these days consider Frazier's magnum opus to be a product of his time. Everybody uses "magic" alongside mechanical understanding of their world. There is no linear progress. The remotest tribes of the world have extensive natural science knowledge of the life-cycles of the plants and animals they rely on to live. The first thing that a biologist or botanist will do is hook up with a local shaman or hunter ( called a "guide" ) to show him all the plants and animals they know -- this is in addition to their mythical understandings and interactions. ( Check out "Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice" or "Throwim Way Leg" ) Scientifically educated people wash their hands and flush the toilet to avoid invisible germs, but they have no problems handling germ-laden paper money or dish-cloths.
I think that any time you follow rules to interact with forces that aren't directly apparent to the senses, you are essentially practicing magic. Sure, at some point a scientist can go in with an instrument to measure germs or radiation, but the average person "interacting" with those has no way to perceive germs or radiation in an everyday situation. S/He therefore must rely on ritual.
Re:Intersting Tomb Contents (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bill & Ted? (Score:1, Insightful)
Is it wrong to imagine Alex Winter appearing in the (deleted) final scene of Matrix 3, shaking Keanu awake and saying "Dude, you were having a BOGUS nightmare. Did you take one of the red pills last night? You know those always freak you out. Now let's go down to Castro Street and get your cute behind some breakfast."
You have to admit the movie would have been massively better that way.