In a Siberian Bronze Age burial complex meant for elites, the earliest physical evidence of the use of cannabis for its psychoactive qualities was discovered. About 1,400 cannabis seeds miraculously remained preserved within the tomb. The seeds date back roughly 2,800 years. The structure belonged to the multi-talented badasses known as Scythians — tattooed nomads, equestrians, warriors, skilled metallurgists, and more.

While evidence of cannabis cultivation in East Asia tracing back 6,000 years had previously been found, until the materials from the Siberian site in question had been analyzed, scientists had only confirmed proof of its use as a drug going as far back as 2,500 years in China.

Research team leader Gino Caspari, from the Institute of Archaeological Sciences of
University of Bern, explained to CNN, “There is a lot of speculation about prehistoric use of plant-based drugs, but through this find we are actually able to show that there is a basis to it.”

The Drug Test Results Didn’t let the community Off the Hook…

Drug tests done on plaited hair supported the theory of cannabis use, though the questions of how much cannabis entered the body and how it was consumed remain open. While the exact meaning that the mind-altering substance held for the ancient Scythians is somewhat uncertain, it doesn’t take a genius to conclude that it played a role in spiritual ceremonies around funerals. Caspari speculates that it also could have provided a means of sedating victims, as the burial site is home to horse sacrifices and what might be human sacrifices as well.

In The Histories Book 4, penned around 440 BC, the Greek historian Herodotus recorded the Scythians’ use of cannabis for purification and burial rituals. The Thracians upheld similar practices.

Caspari and his associates have been working at the Uyuk Valley tomb since 2017, and their efforts remain ongoing. Thus, more interesting facts may still come to light.

Of course, the discovery will be used by extollers of the merits of cannabis to try to sway public opinion and perhaps continue to affect legal change. Whether or not cannabis is more harmful than helpful clearly remains a hot topic. However, the risks associated with the beloved mind-bender are certainly important to consider. Psychiatry Online quoted one former user, “It’s the most deceptive drug I have ever taken.”

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It’s hard to say what feels worse: having a kidney stone the size of a grape, or the embarrassment of archaeologists finding that kidney stone among your remains 5,300 years after you died. At least you’re dead, right?

According to research published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, a Bronze Age man buried in a monumental kurgan tomb in southwestern Russia lived a tough, likely miserable life on the steppe, all the while dealing with what was probably an incredible amount of urological pain.

Archaeologists May Have Found a 5,300-Year-Old Kidney Stone the Size of a Grape

Lead author Natalia Berezina and her team from Lomonosov Moscow State University analyzed the man’s 5,000-year-old skeleton, and based on his body alone, they deduced he lived a rough life. Heavy labor. Suffered from gout. Had multiple healed bone fractures, likely from dealing with cattle or heavy wagons. And then there was the most painful discovery, the find that will cause us to wins over 5000 years later: a jagged, brown, 0.8 inch mineral mass about the size of a grape found among some hand bones.

X-ray diffraction revealed the specimen contained whitlockite, a calcium salt that acts as a telltale sign for bacterial activity. Without the wonders of modern medicine, this guy spent his final years riding horses and hauling freight across the harsh landscape while dealing with a kidney stone that probably made every waking moment sheer misery.

If the stone eventually blocked his ureter, it likely triggered sepsis, ending a life that must have been miserable.  

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Companies like Colossal Biosciences have been flirting with the idea of bringing back extinct animals for years. But now that a team of researchers says they’ve found traces of dinosaur red blood cells that somehow survived 115 million years, we might finally see whether researchers can show a level of restraint that Jurassic Park’s John Hammond clearly didn’t have. Though, we probably won’t have to worry about that kind of problem for a while.

According to new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paleontologists led by Kliti Grice at Curtin University analyzed a 10-foot, 75-pound juvenile Aratasaurus museunacionali dug up in Brazil. Inside the leg bone’s vascular canals, they found oval structures packed with heme, the iron-filled chemical ring in hemoglobin that moves oxygen around the body.

It’s the first time anyone has identified heme within the structures in a dinosaur fossil.

Researchers Discovered a Surprising Clue About Dinosaur Biology Inside a 115-Million-Year-Old Fossil

Those squishy bits survived for hundreds of millions of years without rotting thanks to the low-oxygen mud that seems to have overtaken the creature soon after its death, quickly halting the decay process. Then, a manganese oxide mineral called hausmannite moved in, acting like all-natural bubblewrap that kept the cellular framework and collagen amino acids in place.

While the imagination immediately turns to Jurassic Park and whether anyone with the power to bring dinosaurs back to life actually paid attention to the moral lessons of the multibillion-dollar film franchise, finding heme isn’t the same as finding intact DNA.

Grice insists they aren’t trying to cook up a live dinosaur; instead, they’ll use this discovery to study the creature’s metabolism, how it transported oxygen throughout its body, and its activity levels. And then there’s the much more interesting question posed by this discovery: the chances might be slight, but if there is one set of dinosaur bones out there with some little specks of blood still kicking around, there might be others just like it sitting in museum collections around the world or in the next batch of bone researchers dig up.

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