cannabis history and what explains the jump in potency

heres what i know. i will update this thread as i learn more and invite others to do the same.
this first post is on another site, as follows, so as to gather and spread more information.
Banja (bon-ja) was an early African word for cannabis ganja a direct variation. There was an articular i read about an ancient buried person found, thought to be a shaman or play a similar role in it's culture i think it was male over 3000 years old with cannabis still easily identifiable among the things in the burial. fast forward to tobacco.1500s having discovered that the native americans smoked dabs of tobacco in small bowls and ceremonial pipes the Spanish brought tobacco back to Europe where it was cultivated for increased nicotine while European innovators crafted smaller more practical pipes with much larger bowls to smoke it.
i wonder about the history of cannabis. i suspect much of the ancient knowledge of it was burned. this is posted here because history is science and i am interested in the development of cannabis through culture which is largely anthropology and i am interested in the other sciences at play that led to the bonja being 30 to 100 times stronger.
obviusly there is breeding and selecting for potency which was done through out time and esp, in India and china(over what period??).and at some point something happened in Europe, weed got 10 times as potent over a span of 30 years. i have heard that there was stronger street bud in Harlem usa before cannabis prohibition and the drug companies had very potent strains as well that disappeared from the legal as well as the black market when prohibition hit. but i have not independently confirmed that last part. still Europe and the usa may have been where the increase in potency from 1950s to 1980s .
Thats all i got for now. i will be researching the subject and invite you readers to as well. Anyone who has good info on this please post.
Peace

I Haven't breached the subject since posting but this guy responded elsewhere..

Hi there,
A while ago, I've found a book from a Zoroastrian author who collected a lot of historical stuff as old as 500BC or so. I can find the references(mostly in German or Arabic) and post them here after a while.(gotta get them from the appendix of the book)
It was written like the plant was widely used in China(also part of their 50 or 100 medicinal herbs) and grew in Himalayas and after a while it found it way to Persia and got introduced to Arab world through Assassins(Hasan-i-Sabbah) and the word Cannabis is based on the Persian word "Kanab"(Kanaf in Arabic) which is the same as Kanap in Armenian or Qanap in Turkish/Greek.(even in Russian they call it Konoplya(конопля) which is pronounced as "kanaplya")
It was also mentioned that Zoroastrian priests(or equivalent word here) mixed several herbs together(can't mention names here, don't want to get any warning or my post deleted) to make something that would bring them "to the other world" and upon their returning, they shared the wisdom with people in their circle and those who're seeking it.
Soon I'll translate part of that book(since it's written in Persian and there is no English translation available) and share it with you.

2.
And regarding the 'Banj', here(in Iran) our grandparents call the cannabis(in narcotic form) "Bang"(or Bhang in Indian, also the person who smoke cannabis is called "bangi" here) and since Arabs doesn't have 'j' in their alphabet, they call it "banj" and the seeds are called 'Bazr al Banj'(Seed of the Bang) as well.

3
Regarding smoking the cannabis, it was mentioned that until the discovery of America(continent) people didn't smoke it in blunt form or using pipes(since smoking papers were first used by Native Americans who was making them of that thin layer of tissue surrounding corns) and they(people in east) simply used to eat the herb, making juice like "Doogh e Vahdat"(Drink of Unity) or roll some hash and throw them in their chowder. Even nowadays Darvish(or Dervish) are still having this ceremony and in their gatherings, each person bring his own stuff(be it meat, potato or hashish) and they throw all of them into really big pots and make it boil and cook and after that, they sit all together and eat then singing some sort of poem and mantra while having the altered(trance) state of consciousness.

more from the guy in Iran.
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dug-e-wahdat

I assume the increase in potency was due to the hybridization of indica and sativa in the 80s and early ninties as well as better understanding the photoperiod and response.
The cannabis in the US during the sixties was mainly equitorial sativa. The other factor would be the obvious of indoor growing being of better controls.

from 98 - 2013 potency avg of seized u.s. pot went up from 4.5 - 12%
at least one guy (lex) argues that this was due to the internet and the spread of knowledge and seeds through new online communitys
pot was just as strong in 98 as today but more high grade has been seized since then. prop. 215 passed in california in 1998 which could go to explain the phenomenon
is it possible there was weed since the 1920s or before that was just as strong as todays 32% thc?

I don't think so. They didn't know what we do now in the 20's. Leafy stemmy bud I assume.

The one thing to consider was that in 98, there was awesome weed (Best oz I ever got was around that time at least flavor wise) but at the same time, there was some serious dirt still out there. The weed didn't necessarily get better, I just think the bad weed stop being passed around.

Are you in Iran? If so was there a change in herb since the 90s?

I asked the iran guy about potency. will get back when he does. I am in California and noticed more mid grade sice 1998 ...



In Jamaica the weed got much more potent after the European seed banks reached there. I think the 80's or early 90's. ? Anybody know when the cannabis seed banks appeared ??

NaturalFarmer said:

Are you in Iran? If so was there a change in herb since the 90s?

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he said....

Hell yeah!
(street)Hash is getting weaker and weaker(due to less demand and more trash in it perhaps?) while buds are getting more stronger. I remember the (older)friends were smoking much bigger buds(more leafy though) and nowadays what I see is people getting knocked off after getting some hits. I'm just worried about the way that "breeding" and "hybrids" are going, specially since people are easily building tolerance and concentrates are getting more and more popular.(WTF "dab" :-/ )

That makes sense. Indica strains of Iran were very resinous I assume back in the day and probably made some very good hash, but now have been diluted with Sativa genetics from Amsterdam. I would assume the same is the case for Lebanon and Morocco.

I once thought that Durban was a landrace until I grew it. The indica present is obvious.

NaturalFarmer said:

That makes sense. Indica strains of Iran were very resinous I assume back in the day and probably made some very good hash, but now have been diluted with Sativa genetics from Amsterdam. I would assume the same is the case for Lebanon and Morocco.

I once thought that Durban was a landrace until I grew it. The indica present is obvious.

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So no landrace indicas? I think that indica comes from asia. India and china have been breeding drug strains with a preference for ,well indica.
What makes a strain a landrace? I have a notion but ... It looks like the definition of land race is domesticated locally addapted species due to human interaction. Whennit comes to cannabis it means pretty much that.. it was first found in asia and landrace strains are locally adapted often feral strains that have been breed over time with the most local strains .. afagan and Pakistan landraces are mainly indica.

so many country plant cannabis are illegal.

Roche Mars said:

so many country plant cannabis are illegal.

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Exactly

Roche Mars said:

so many country plant cannabis are illegal.

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how is that a factor ?

Yengher 987 said:

Exactly

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how is that a factor ?