“To really understand a plant, one has to look into its history. It became what it is now through its whole course of development.” – Luther Burbank; botanist and ag science pioneer

The Ancient History Of Agriculture

• 26,900 BCE: Use of hemp cord in Czechoslovakia (oldest known object to be associated with cannabis).
• 17,000 BCE: Grains of wild emmer wheat discovered at Ohalo II had a radiocarbon dating of 17,000 BCE.
• 10,000 BCE: Grains of wild emmer discovered at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) site of Netiv Hagdud are 10,000-9,400 years old. The ancestors of modern wheat are introduced: Triticum urartu (wild einkorn), Aegilops speltoides, and Aegilops tauschi.
• 9,600 BCE: Archaeological records suggests that wheat was first cultivated in the regions of the Fertile Crescent around 9,600 BCE. Definitive evidence for the full domestication of emmer wheat is not found until the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, at sites such as Beidha, Tell Ghoraifé, Jericho, Abu Hureyra, Tell Halula, Tell Aswad and Cafer Höyük.
• 8,650 BCE: The earliest clear evidence of the domestication of Einkorn wheat dates from 8,650 BCE to 7,950 BCE from Çayönü and Cafer Höyük, two Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B archaeological sites in southern Turkey.
• 8,000+ BCE: Use of hemp cord in pottery in the area of modern day Taiwan.
• 7,500 BCE: People first began to farm corn (instead of picking it wild) around 7,500 BCE in Mexico.
• 6,700 BCE: In the stone age, man ground grains of wheat with rocks to make flour.
• 6,500 BCE: The cultivation of emmer wheat reached Greece, Cyprus, and India by 6,500 BCE. The oldest evidence for hexaploid wheat has been confirmed through DNA analysis of wheat seeds, dating to around 6,400-6,200 BCE, recovered from Çatalhöyük.
• 6,100 BCE: Bread wheat is an allohexaploid (an allopolyploid with six sets of chromosomes: two sets from each of three different species). Of the six sets of chromosomes, two come from Triticum urartu (einkorn wheat) and two from Aegilops speltoides. This hybridisation created the species Triticum turgidum (durum wheat) 5800–8200 years ago.
• 6,000 BCE: The cultivation of emmer wheat reached Egypt shortly after 6,000 BCE. Ecuador was growing corn by this time. Cannabis seeds and oil used for food in China.
• 5,600 BCE: A large corpus of data indicates that it corn was dispersed into lower Central America by 5,600 BCE.
• 5,500 BCE: Millstones used for grinding flour were introduced. The ability to sow and reap cereals may be one of the chief causes which led man to dwell in communities, rather than to live a wandering life hunting and herding cattle
• 5,000 BCE: The cultivation of emmer wheat reached Germany and Spain by 5,000 BCE. Also around 5,000 BCE Spelt (Triticum spelta), also known as dinkel wheat, or hulled wheat, was cultivated.
• 4,500 BCE: Corn moved into the inter-Andean valleys of Colombia between 5,000-4,000 BCE.
• 4,200 BCE: Between 5,000 and 3,500 BCE, Mesoamericans were already planting mutant forms of corn that showed signs of the husks characteristic of modern domestic corn.
• 4,000 BCE: Textiles made of hemp used in China and Turkestan. Cannabis was farmed as a major food crop in China.
• 3,500 BCE: A much improved race of corn appeared.
• 3,400 BCE: In northeastern Europe, emmer (in addition to einkorn and barley) was one of the most important cereal species; this importance increased from 3,400 BCE onwards.
• 3,000 BCE: The Egyptians were the first to produce risen loaves using yeast. Their method included used a small amount of old dough, or leaven, to “start” the new dough. Both dough were mixed together and allowed to ferment for some time before baking. By 3,000 BCE, wheat had reached the British Isles and Scandinavia. In the Near East, in southern Mesopotamia in particular, cultivation of emmer wheat began to decline in the Early Bronze Age, from about 3000 BC, and barley became the standard cereal crop. Also by 3,000 BCE, cannabis was an important crop in Korea.
• 2,853 BCE: Emperor Sheng-Nung of China named five sacred plants: soybeans, rice, wheat, barley, and millet.
• 2,737 BCE: First recorded use of cannabis as medicine by Emperor Shen Neng of China.
• 2,700 BCE: Ancient Chinese writings from 2,700 BCE describe growing wheat.
• 2,500 BCE: It’s believed that beginning about 2500 BCE, corn spread through much of the Americas.
• 2,100 BCE: Northern Flint corn descends from the flint corn introduced into the southwestern United States 4,100 years ago and provides a substantial portion of the genetic background of modern corn hybrids.
• 2,000 BCE: Bhang (dried cannabis leaves, seeds and stems) was mentioned in the Hindu sacred text Atharvaveda (Science of Charms) as “Sacred Grass”, one of the five sacred plants of India. The ancient Egyptians used cannabis in suppositories for relieving the pain of hemorrhoids and also used cannabis to treat sore eyes.
• 1,900 BCE: In the British Isles, wheat straw (thatch) was used for roofing in the Bronze Age (2,000 BCE – 500 BCE), and was in common use until the late 19th century.
• 1,700 BCE: Egyptian papyrus that mentioned medical cannabis: the Ramesseum III Papyrus.
• 1,600 BCE: Soybean plants were domesticated between 17th and 11th century BCE in the eastern half of China where they were cultivated into a food crop.
• 1,500 BCE: Scythians cultivated cannabis and used it to weave fine hemp cloth. Scientists in Egypt developed a new kind of wheat – bakers could mix the wheat with yeast from beer-making and make risen bread. By 1,500 BCE, people were growing wheat in China, but not for bread – they didn’t have the right kind of wheat for risen bread. Instead, people made noodles, which needed much less fuel to cook. Sedentary village farming in Mesoamerica came into being by about 1,500 BCE. Corn (maize) was one of the most important crops. Indigenous Americans were taught to soak corn in alkali-water, made with ashes and lime (calcium oxide), since at least 1,200 to 1,500 BCE by Mesoamericans.
• 1,340 BCE: “three-ply hemp cord” in the ruins of El Amarna, the city of the Pharaoh Akhenaton.
• 1,300 BCE: The Berlin Papyrus and The Chester Beatty Medical Papyrus VI mention medical cannabis.
• 1,213 BCE: Ramesses II, the Egyptian pharaoh, mummified on his death. Cannabis pollen was later recovered from the mummy.
• 1,100 BCE: The earliest known name for the soybean was shu , a term used in north China as early as the 11th century BCE.
• 1,000 BCE: Developments in milling techniques began with the invention of the rotary mill, which made better quality flour. In India, the medical and religious use of cannabis began.
• 900 BCE: Assyrians employed the psychotropic effects of cannabis for recreational and medical purposes.
• 750 BCE: In the Iron Age (750–15 BC), spelt became a principal wheat species in southern Germany and Switzerland.
• 700 BCE: Scythian tribes left Cannabis seeds as offerings in royal tombs. There is some conjecture that cannabis was used along with wine in a preparation known as nepenthe, which was recorded by Homer around 700 BCE as being used in Greece to “banish pain and sorrow” .
• 664 BCE: In the Kuan-tzu , a work attributed to a Chinese statesman of the 7th century BCE but not actually compiled until Han times, it is stated that an army sent to punish the Mountain Jung brought back “winter onions and soybeans ( Jung-shu ) for dissemination throughout the various states.” This expedition is known to have taken place in 664 BCE. Although soybeans were known in China before 1,000 BCE, they did not become widely disseminated until after 664 BCE.
• 650 BCE: The Zoroastrian Zendavesta, an ancient Persian religious text of several hundred volumes, referred to bhang as the “good narcotic.”
• 600 BCE: Hemp rope appeared in southern Russia.
• 500 BCE: Spelt wheat was in common use in southern Britain. Cannabis was commonly used by 500 BCE in Asia as herbal medicine. Gautama Buddha said to have survived by eating hempseed. Cannabis used in Germany (Hochdorf Hallstatt D wagon burial site). First botanical drawings of cannabis in Constantinopolitaus.
• 480 BCE: The classical Greek historian Herodotus reported that the inhabitants of Scythia would often inhale the vapors of hemp-seed smoke, both as ritual and for their own pleasurable recreation.
• 470 BCE: The philosopher Socrates said, “No man qualifies as a statesman who is entirely ignorant on the problems of wheat.”
• 300 BCE: Physician Dioscorides prescribed cannabis for toothaches and earaches. Greek doctor Claudius Galen noted it was widely consumed throughout the empire. Women of the Roman elite also used cannabis to alleviate labor pains. Carthage and Rome struggled for political and commercial power over hemp and spice trade routes in the Mediterranean.
• 200 BCE: The Romans started to use animal power to grind wheat. Hemp rope appeared in Greece. The Chinese Book of Rites mentioned hemp fabric.
• 170 BCE: Tofu-making was first recorded during the Chinese Han dynasty some 2,000 years ago. Chinese legend ascribes its invention to Prince Liu An (179–122 BCE).
• 168 BCE: The Roman Baker’s Guild, or Pistorum, was created. The importance of bread to daily life meant that bakers were recognized as freemen of the city. All other craftsmen were slaves.
• 150 BCE: The full season crop soybeans of northern Japan came from north China via Korea between 200 BCE and CE 220 (Han dynasty), the period during which China controlled Korea.
• 130 BCE: The term dadou (ta-tou; literally “great bean”) came to be the standard Mandarin term for the soybean, and first appeared in the Huai-nan tzu written in about 130 BCE.
• 100 BCE: The Fan Sheng-chih Shu of the first century BCE contained the first detailed information about soybean planting and harvest. First evidence of hemp paper, invented in China.
• 87 BCE: Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was buried with textiles and paper made from cannabis.
• 1 CE: By about 1 CE, the Pueblo people in North America grew corn. The psychotropic properties of Cannabis were mentioned in the newly compiled herbal Pen Ts’ao Ching.
• 50 CE: Pliny the Elder noted that, although emmer was called far in his time, formerly it was called adoreum (or “glory”), providing an etymology explaining that emmer had been held in glory. Pliny the Elder’s The Natural History mentioned hemp rope and marijuana’s analgesic effects.
• 70 CE: Roman medical texts listed cannabis as a cure for earache and as a way to suppress sexual desire. Dioscorides, a physician in Nero’s army, listed medical marijuana in his Pharmacopoeia.
• 80 CE: Plutarch mentioned Thracians using cannabis as an intoxicant.
• 100 CE: Imported hemp rope appeared in England.
• 150 CE: Greek physician Galen prescribed medical marijuana.
• 200 CE: Hua T’o, the founder of Chinese surgery, used a compound of cannabis, taken with wine, to anesthetize patients during surgical operations.
• 207 CE: First pharmacopoeia of the East listed medical marijuana.
• 300 CE: The earliest known mention of soybeans in Korean literature.
• 535 CE: The oldest reference to wheat gluten appears in the Qimin Yaoshu, a Chinese agricultural encyclopedia written by Jia Sixie in 535. The encyclopedia mentions noodles prepared from wheat gluten called bo duo. Also at this time, the Ch’i-min yao-shu was written. It contained an entire chapter on soybeans and their cultivation, by far the most detailed information at that time.
• 550 CE: The Jewish Talmud mentioned the euphoriant properties of Cannabis.
• 712 CE: The earliest Japanese reference to the soybean is in the classic Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters).
• 730 CE: The Todaiji Shosoin Monjo was written in Japan. It stated that taxes were being paid in miso and hishio, and contained tax receipts from the following year for soy nuggets.
• 800 CE: Hashish (a purified form of cannabis smoked with a pipe) was widely used throughout the Middle East and parts of Asia after about 800 CE. Its rise in popularity corresponded with the spread of Islam in the region.
• 840 CE: Soybeans and azuki beans were used as an emergency food to relieve a food shortages in Japan [in the Zoku Nihon Koki (Vol. 9) and Reishukai (Vol. 13)].
• 850 CE: Corn became a staple crop in the Eastern United States from 800 CE to 900 CE. Also during this time the Vikings first took hemp rope and seeds to Iceland.
• 867 CE: The Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku (Vol. 14) reported that in CE 867 Japanese farmers burnt a holly mountain in order to grow soybeans.
• 900 CE: Arabs learned techniques for making hemp paper.
• 1000: Arabic physician Ibn Wahshiyah’s On Poisons warned of marijuana’s potential dangers. Arabic scholars al-Mayusi and al-Badri regarded cannabis as an effective treatment for epilepsy. The English word ‘Hempe’ first listed in a dictionary. Hemp ropes appeared on Italian ships.
• 1025: Medieval Persian medical writer published “Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine”, stating that cannabis was an effective treatment for gout, edema, infectious wounds, and severe headaches.
• 1100: Since its first appearance in the 11th century CE, the Chinese term for “soy oil” has been written with the two characters meaning “bean” and “oil.” Also at this time, hashish smoking became very popular throughout the Middle East.
• 1150: Muslims introduced the manufacture of paper from cannabis, first in Spain then in Italy.
• 1155: Persian legend of the Sufi master Sheik Haydar’s personal discovery of cannabis and his own alleged invention of hashish with it’s subsequent spread to Iraq, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria. Another of the earliest written narratives of the use of cannabis as an inebriant.
• 1230: Cannabis was introduced to Iraq during the reign of Caliph Al-Mustansir Bi’llah by the entourage of Bahraini rulers visiting Iraq.
• 1250: During the Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt, cannabis was introduced by mystic devotees from Syria.
• 1295: Journeys of Marco Polo in which he gave second-hand reports of the story of Hasan ibn al-Sabbah and his “assassins” using hashish. First time reports of cannabis have been brought to the attention of Europe.
• 1300: Arab traders brought cannabis to the Mozambique coast of Africa. Ethiopian pipes containing marijuana suggest the herb spread from Egypt to the rest of Africa.
• 1378: Ottoman Emir Soudoun Scheikhouni issued one of the first edicts against the eating of hashish.
• 1400: The Chinese term for the soy presscake first appeared in during the 1400s.
• 1484: Pope Innocent VIII singled out cannabis as an unholy sacrament of the Satanic mass.
• 1492: When Columbus “discovered” America (1492), he also discovered corn, which people in Europe did not know about at that time.
• 1494: Hemp paper making started in England.
• 1500: The English settlers of North America, circa 1500, made corn into bread similar to the wheat bread they had eaten back home in England, which we know now as cornbread.
• 1533: King Henry VIII fined farmers if they did not raise hemp for industrial use.
• 1545: The Spaniards brought industrial hemp to the Western Hemisphere and cultivated it in Chile.
• 1549: Angolan slaves brought cannabis with them to the sugar plantations of northeastern Brazil. They were permitted to plant their cannabis between rows of cane, and to smoke it between harvests.
• 1554: Spanish brought cannabis cultivation to Peru.
• 1563: Queen Elizabeth I decreed that landowners with 60 acres or more must grow cannabis else face a £5 fine. Portuguese physician Garcia da Orta reported on marijuana’s medicinal effects.
• 1564: King Philip of Spain followed lead of Queen Elizabeth and ordered cannabis to be grown throughout his Empire from modern-day Argentina to Oregon.
• 1565: North America has no indigenous soybeans. The earliest date of arrival is highly speculative, but it may have been as early as 1565 (via the first Chinatown in the New World, which was in Acapulco, Mexico).
• 1578: The earliest known reference to soy oil as a food appears in the Pen-ts’ao kang-mu (1578-97), China’s famous and voluminous materia medica written by Li Shih-chen. The passage reads: “Yellow soybean. The flavor of soy oil is acrid and sweet. It is heating and mildly toxic. As a cure, it may be applied as a plaster on sores and to alleviate baldness.”
• 1597: The first description of soyfoods by a European, when Francesco Carletti, a Florentine visiting Nagasaki, Japan, described miso.
• 1600: England began to import hemp from Russia. Corn was Introduced to Africa by the Portuguese during this time.
• 1606: Cannabis cultivated for hemp at colony in Port Royal. French Botanist Louis Hebert planted the first hemp crop in North America in Port Royal, Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia).
• 1607: “hempe” was among the crops Gabriel Archer observed being cultivated by the natives at the main Powhatan village, where Richmond, Virginia is now situated.
• 1613: The English Captain, John Saris, described tofu in Japan; this was the first mention of a soyfood in English. The Virginia, Massachusetts and Connecticut colonies required farmers to grow hemp.
• 1616: Jamestown settlers began growing the hemp plant for its unusually strong fiber and used it to make rope, sails, and clothing.
• 1621: Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy suggested cannabis may treat depression.
• 1632: Pilgrims brought cannabis to New England. Cannabis cultivated for hemp at colony in Plymouth.
• 1650: Use of hashish, alcohol, and opium spread among the population of occupied Constantinople. Hashish became a major trade item between Central Asia and South Asia.
• 1653: The earliest (European) written description of the soybean plant was by Dutch naturalist George Eberhard Rumpf, who described the plants of Amboina (today’s Ambon), in the Moluccas in East Indonesia.
• 1670: Dutch traders started to import soy sauce from Japan to France at the request of Louis XIV, who used it as a seasoning at his sumptuous palace banquets.
• 1696: the Englishman J. Ovington stated in his Voyage to Surat : “Souy is the choicest of all Sawces.”
• 1700s: Soy sauce became the first truly popular soy food in Europe.
• 1701: Jethro Tull devised a simple seed drill based on organ pipes, which resulted in eight times as many grains harvested for every grain sown.
• 1705: The first reference to southern dent corn came in 1705 as reported in Robert Beverly’s History of and Present State of Virginia. In his description, he describes it as having a dent on the back, “as if it had never come to perfection.” The dent on back was due to a higher amount of soft starch compared to the flint corn.
• 1712: A turning point in soyfoods history came in 1712, when the German traveler and scientist Englebert Kaempfer published his famous book Amoenitatum Exoticarum (exotic novelties, also entitled Amoentitates Exoticae ). This book gave the earliest known European description of the soybean plant (accompanied by a good illustration), first showed that soyfoods (shoyu and miso) were made from soybeans, and gave the earliest known descriptions of how shoyu and miso were made in Japan, where Kaempfer had studied their manufacture from 1690 to 1692.
• 1726: The first mention of the soybean in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) was by Paul Hermann in Musaeum Zeylanicum, over a century before the first mention in India.
• 1737: The first European record of soybean cultivation is in the Hortus Cliffortianus (“Plants Grown in the Garden of George Clifford”) published by the great Swedish botanist, Carolus Linnaeus, in which he described the soybeans grown in this garden at Hartecamp, the Netherlands.
• 1739: Soybeans were probably first received in France in 1739, when French missionaries in China are thought to have sent them to Compte du Buffon at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.
• 1753: Swedish botanist Linnaeus called soybeans Dolichos soja ; this was also its first scientific name, and the first time the “soy” cognate had been used to describe the plant. Linnaeus classified Cannabis Sativa in 1753, as well.
• 1764: Medical marijuana appeared in The New England Dispensatory.
• 1765: The earliest known references to soyfoods in America were by Samuel Bowen. He brought soybeans to the British colony Georgia from China, where they were first planted in 1765. Also during this time, George Washington was interested in farming hemp and questioned the potential medicinal uses of marijuana in his journals.
• 1770: Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) recognized five species of wheat: T. aestivum (Bearded spring wheat), T. hybernum (Beardless winter wheat), T. turgidum (Rivet wheat), T. spelta (Spelt wheat), and T. monococcum (Einkorn wheat). The second earliest known reference to soyfoods in America was by Benjamin Franklin. In 1770, he wrote his friend John Bartram in Philadelphia about soybeans and Father Navarette’s account of tofu in China, written in 1665.
• 1776: Kentucky began growing hemp. The U.S. Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper.
• 1777: Wheat arrived in the American colonies. The colonists, however, planted wheat as a hobby crop rather than a food crop.
• 1790: Soybeans were planted at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England, but merely as a botanical curiosity. U.S. founding fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams grew hemp.
• 1793: The British imposed regulation and begin collecting taxes on all forms of cannabis in India.
• 1794: Medical marijuana appeared in The Edinburgh New Dispensary.
• 1798: Thomas Robert Malthus predicted a population growth crash based on the calculation that it was impossible to improve wheat yields quickly enough to feed to the world. Also in 1798, Napoleon discovered that much of the Egyptian lower class habitually used hashish. Soldiers returning to France brought the tradition with them, and he declared a total prohibition.
• 1800s: It was not until the 1800’s that yeast was identified as an organism that converts sugars into alcohol, producing a leavening gas (carbon dioxide) in the process. Because wheat is the only grain with sufficient gluten content to make leavened bread, wheat quickly became favored over other grains grown at the time, such as oats, millet, rice, and barley. Also during the 1800s, Upper Canada’s Lieutenant Governor, on behalf of the King of England, distributed free hemp seed to all Canadian farmers. Marijuana plantations flourished in Mississippi, Georgia, California, South Carolina, Nebraska, New York, and Kentucky. Smoking hashish was popular throughout France and to a lesser degree in the US. Hashish production expanded from Russian Turkestan into Yarkand in Chinese Turkestan.