Hair from a burial in the Tunnug 1 mound in southern Siberia carries a chemical trace of cannabis, and cannabis seeds laid in the same grave date to about 2,800 years ago. Gino Caspari of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and the University of Bern led the team that reported the find in Science on Nov. 5. The authors call it the earliest securely dated direct evidence that ancient people used cannabis for its mind-altering effects.
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Cannabis itself is far older as a crop. It was cultivated in East Asia at least 6,000 years ago, probably first for its oil-rich seeds, and indirect signs of intoxicating use stretch back at least 2,500 years in funerary and ritual finds across Central Asia. Plant remains rarely survive, which is why direct proof has been scarce.
Tunnug 1 in the Uyuk Valley and the frozen ground of Tuva
The mound sits in the Uyuk Valley of southern Siberia, and the Max Planck-linked release describes it as one of the earliest and most important monumental burial mounds in that valley. The University of Gothenburg’s account says the Scythians, a nomadic pastoralist people, built it. Waterlogged, frozen ground kept seeds, hair, skin and textiles intact for almost three millennia, a rare run of preservation.
The seed tally depends on who is counting. The Max Planck release speaks of more than 1,400 seeds. The University of Bern’s separate summary, posted on EurekAlert, says about 1,000 seeds, six of them radiocarbon-dated to the early eighth century BCE, and Live Science reports over 1,000 whole seeds plus roughly 500 partial ones, which would reconcile the figures. Their small size suggests wild or wild-like plants rather than varieties bred for oil or fiber.
Hemp was the only plant the Scythians placed in the graves at this site, according to the Gothenburg account, and the large quantity of seeds suggests the plant carried ritual significance. It may have been an offering or part of a shamanic ritual that accompanied the burial and the horse sacrifice. Live Science identifies the seeds as a wild cannabis type and says radiocarbon dating places them between 800 and 760 BCE, which fits a mound built at the start of the eighth century BCE.
Gothenburg’s Riabogina gave the frozen ground much of the credit for the find. Without it, hair and seeds would have decayed long before anyone could analyze them, and the chemical signal in the hair would not have survived.
Cannabinol in the hair, and the limits of the chemistry
Chemical analysis of human hair found cannabinol, a compound that forms when THC oxidizes, along with weaker signals consistent with THC itself. Natalia Riabogina, an archaeobotanist at the University of Gothenburg who developed the methods for recovering and analyzing the plant remains, said the uniqueness of the discovery lies in having both the seeds and direct chemical evidence of psychoactive use.
The tests cannot say how much people consumed, how they took it, or how potent the plants were. Inhaling smoke is one possibility the Gothenburg account raises, nothing more. Caspari framed the reading cautiously in the coverage of the paper, saying the finds suggest cannabis was used for its intoxicating properties. In the Science paper, the authors add that early cannabis use emerges not simply as a pharmacological curiosity, since ancient societies ritualized its psychoactive qualities.
Two things keep the result in proportion. The hair cannot show dose, and the seeds say nothing about the plant’s THC content, so the grave documents intent more than intensity. The authors also describe the broader point modestly, as an addition to the growing global record of archaeological evidence for plants used as mind- or mood-altering drugs.
Horse sacrifice, human sacrifice and the calming hypothesis
The grave was no ordinary burial. Horse skeletons lay atop the wooden structures in a Scythian funeral tradition, and Live Science quotes Caspari calling the tomb princely and saying it most likely involved human sacrifices as well. The researchers suggest cannabis could have been a useful agent to calm people chosen for the rituals, a hypothesis drawn from the burial context rather than something the chemistry proves. The same report says the dates push back earlier evidence, such as a Chinese cemetery from about 500 BCE, by roughly three centuries.
Riabogina described the work as an accidental discovery that then received a comprehensive analysis. It spanned more than seven years, beginning in 2019, and archaeologists from St Petersburg who excavated in Tuva supplied the material. The full paper is listed under the DOI 10.1126/science.aeg3800. Open questions remain about domestication, and the finding is narrow by design: one mound, one set of hair samples, one cluster of seeds that the authors date and interpret together. Caspari said the team has begun sequencing some of the plant samples, and the genetic results could show whether the Tunnug seeds sit on the wild side of the plant’s history or hint at early breeding, and how the crop later spread.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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