How humans domesticated cannabis?

Every hemp field and every cannabis grow room today goes back to one group of plants in East Asia, and their closest living relatives still grow half wild in China. People started saving those seeds about 12,000 years ago. Somewhere along the way, hemp mostly lost its working THC gene and drug plants lost their working CBD gene, and not one of the farmers who did it knew genes existed. What you'll find in this video: Cannabis is a cousin of hops, the plant that makes beer bitter, and the two split from a shared ancestor about 27.8 million years ago. The best guess for where cannabis started is the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, near Qinghai Lake. For roughly 8,000 years cannabis seems to have been an all-purpose crop, and the hard split into tall fiber plants and short drug plants began only about 4,000 years ago. At the Jirzankal Cemetery in the Pamir Mountains, ten wooden braziers from around 500 BC held burned stones, and every residue but one carried cannabinol, the compound THC breaks down into. The researchers think people there may have picked the stronger mountain plants on purpose. The 1619 Virginia law that gets quoted as forcing colonists to grow hemp only told households with hemp seed to make a trial of it the next season. George Washington took the crop more seriously, and in August 1765 his diary notes putting hemp in the river to rot, which is how the fibers come loose from the stalk. The 1937 Marihuana Tax Act worked through paperwork: a tax on anyone selling cannabis and a yearly registration for growers, dealers, importers and doctors. In December 2020 the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted 27 to 25 to move cannabis out of the strictest schedule of the 1961 Single Convention. In US samples seized between 1995 and 2014, THC went from about 14 times the level of CBD to about 80 times. That's the switch the first farmers pushed without knowing it, moving in just 20 years. Would you keep the rope plant or the flower if you could only have one? Tell us in the comments. Liking the video helps it find more viewers, and subscribing is the easiest way to catch the next one. 0:00 One weed, two very different plants 1:39 A cousin of the hops in beer 3:40 110 genomes point east 6:04 Why early farmers kept it 8:26 THC gene or CBD gene 11:35 Found in tombs and temples 16:41 Hemp comes to America 19:17 Prohibition and potency 23:34 Rope or flower? Everything in this video comes from open sources. Treat it as a starting point rather than the final word. Figures get revised and studies get challenged, and we make mistakes like anyone else. Always check the facts for yourself before you rely on them or pass them on. #cannabis #hemp #why