"A chemical residue study of incense burners from ancient burials at high elevations in western China has revealed psychoactive cannabinoids. The finding provides some of the earliest evidence for the use of cannabis for its psychoactive compounds. " Source: Science Daily.
Note: "The [2500-year-old] THC-containing residues were extracted from burners from a cemetery known as Jirzankal in the remote Pamir Mountains.
"...While modern cannabis is used primarily as a recreational drug or for medical applications, cannabis may have been used rather differently in the past. The evidence from Jirzankal suggests that people were burning cannabis at rituals commemorating the dead. They buried their kin in tombs over which they created circular mounds, stone rings and striped patterns using black and white stones."
"The use of Cannabis as a mind-altering drug has been documented by archaeological finds in prehistoric societies in Eurasia and Africa. The oldest written record of cannabis usage is the Greek historian Herodotus's reference to the central Eurasian Scythians taking cannabis steam baths. His (c. 440 BCE) Histories records, 'The Scythians, as I said, take some of this hemp-seed [presumably, flowers], and, creeping under the felt coverings, throw it upon the red-hot stones; immediately it smokes, and gives out such a vapour as no Grecian vapour-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy.' Classical Greeks and Romans were using cannabis, while in the Middle East, use spread throughout the Islamic empire to North Africa. In 1545, cannabis spread to the western hemisphere where Spaniards imported it to Chile for its use as fiber. In North America, cannabis, in the form of hemp, was grown for use in rope, clothing and paper." Source: Wikipedia.
It seems kind of peculiar to use soft jazz as background music for a video about cannabis use in ancient Egypt, but never mind that.
"Cannabis plants are believed to have evolved on the steppes of Central Asia, specifically in the regions that are now Mongolia and southern Siberia ... The history of cannabis use goes back as far as 12,000 years, which places the plant among humanity's oldest cultivated crops, according to information in the book "Marihuana: The First Twelve Thousand Years" (Springer, 1980)." Source: Live Science (2014)
"Artists may have often turned to drugs at times to help them find inspiration, but it seems cannabis has also played a role in preserving precious artworks within ancient caves in India." Source: Daily Mail.
"A mixture of hemp, clay and lime plaster is responsible for preserving paintings and intricately carved scenes in the sacred Ellora Caves, which were hewn from rock 1,500 years ago."
Note: The Ellora Caves are an "uninterrupted sequence of monuments dating from AD 600 to 1000," according to the UNESCO World Heritage Site. "... these 34 monasteries and temples, extending over more than 2 km, were dug side by side in the wall of a high basalt cliff, not far from Aurangabad, in Maharashtra."
"In Hinduism, bhang(1) is associated with Lord Shiva, a popular deity who is often regarded as the religion’s supreme god. Some passages in ancient Hindu scriptures describe a plant with spiritual properties that Shiva discovered and brought down from the heavens for humans to consume. Shiva is often depicted with a chillum, or smoking pipe." Source: The Atlantic (2014).
(1) "In India, Cannabis Indica has been used for literally thousands of years in the worship of the god Shiva. Cannabis is used in an orally administered form called bhang which can be either the wet resinous leaves formed into pills of a drink made of milk, cannabis, and various spices consumed by worshipers of Shiva on festival days or by smoking the flowering buds of cannabis -- a practice generally reserved for holy men who dedicate their lives to ascetic practice and the worship of Shiva." --"Shiva, Lord of Bhang," PubMed.
"Cannabis has a long history in India, veiled in legends and religion. The earliest mention of cannabis has been found in The Vedas, or sacred Hindu texts. These writings may have been compiled as early as 2000 to 1400 B.C. According to The Vedas, cannabis was one of five sacred plants and a guardian angel lived in its leaves." Source: Psychology Today (2011).
"During the Hindu festival of Holi, people consume bhang which contains cannabis flowers. According to one description, when the amrita (elixir of life) was produced from the churning of the ocean by the devas and the asuras as described in the Samudra manthan, Shiva created cannabis from his own body to purify the elixir (whence, for cannabis, the epithet angaja or 'body-born'). Another account suggests that the cannabis plant sprang up when a drop of the elixir dropped on the ground. Thus, cannabis is used by sages due to association with elixir and Shiva." (Wikipedia)
The audio here is pretty bad, but this is an interesting documentary. There's a lot of speculation that the fumes inhaled by the oracle at Delphi could have been from burning marijuana or some other kind of psychotropic plant, and the use of psychedelic mushrooms has been suggested to explain the trances that priests were said to enter at various sites, but the whole subject of drug use in ancient religions is extremely obscure.
Marijuana was known and used in the ancient world. According to The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist (footnote, p. 147), the Scythians used a kind of "cannabis steam bath" for ritual purification (Herodotus), and the ancient Hebrews might have done something similar. "The first solid evidence of the Hebrew use of cannabis was established in 1936 ... Cannabis, usually thought to be of Scythian origin, has a much earlier occurrence in Semitic languages and appears several times throughout the Old Testament."
The theory that marijuana was used by the ancient Greek oracles may sound absurd, but the idea isn't really all that outlandish. If the Scythians and Hebrews used the plant, there's no reason why the Greeks couldn't have been aware of its psychotropic properties as well. I don't have any particular evidence to support this, but the use of marijuana and other drugs may go all the way back to the Stone Age shamanic rituals which some scholars believe were the distant ancestors of all our modern religions.
"It’s called mad honey, and it has a slightly bitter taste and a reddish color. More notably, a few types of rhododendrons ... contain grayanotoxin, which can cause dramatic physiological reactions in humans and animals. Depending on how much a person consumes, reactions can range from hallucinations and a slower heartbeat to temporary paralysis and unconsciousness."
"The intoxicating effects of mad honey have been known for thousands of years. Not surprisingly, there have been many famous episodes of human inebriation caused by its consumption. Xenophon, Aristotle, Strabo, Pliny the Elder and Columella all document the results of eating this 'maddening' honey, believed to be from the pollen and nectar of Rhododendron luteum and Rhododendron ponticum. According to Xenophon, an invading Greek army was accidentally poisoned by harvesting and eating the local Asia Minor honey, but they all made a quick recovery with no fatalities. Having heard of this incident, and realizing that foreign invaders would be ignorant of the dangers of the local honey, King Mithridates later used the honey as a deliberate poison when Pompey's army attacked the Heptakometes [1] in Asia Minor in 69 BCE. The Roman soldiers became delirious and nauseated after being tricked into eating the toxic honey, at which point Mithridates's army attacked." Source: Wikipedia.
[1] "In about 65 BCE, Pompey's army was approaching Colchis. Mithridates' allies there, the Heptakometes, were described by Strabo as 'utterly savage' mountain barbarians, dwelling in tree forts and living on 'the flesh of wild animals and nuts.' The tribe was feared for attacking wayfarers - suddenly leaping down on them like leopards from their tree houses. The Heptakometes may have received specific orders from Mithridates on how to ambush the Roman army. What we do know for a fact is that they gathered up great numbers of wild honeycombs dripping with toxic honey and placed them all along Pompey's route. The Roman soldiers stopped to enjoy the sweets and immediately lost their senses. Reeling and babbling, the men collapsed with vomiting and diarrhea and lay on the ground unable to move. The Heptakometes easily wiped out about one thousand of Pompey's men." - Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor. (Source: Roman Times)
Taking mad honey sounds like a dangerous way to get loaded. According to the Drug Classroom, "[t]he core symptoms of mad honey poisoning include nausea, vomiting, salivation, headache, blurred vision, sweating, weakness, circumoral paresthesia, tongue numbing, fainting, drowsiness, drunkenness, tingling, and seizures." The toxins in the honey can also cause "1st to 3rd degree heart block, asystole, and myocardial infarction."
"A small pouch, made from three fox snouts neatly sewn together, may contain the world’s earliest archaeological evidence for the consumption of ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant preparation indigenous to peoples of the Amazon basin that produces potent hallucinations." Source: National Geographic.
"The pouch likely belonged to a shaman in what is now southwestern Bolivia around a thousand years ago, according to José Capriles, an anthropologist at Penn State University and an author of a paper published on the discovery today in the journal PNAS."
Note: An analysis of the pouch's contents "revealed traces of bufotenine [found in toad skins and mushrooms, among other things], benzoylecgonine [a cocaine metabolite] and cocaine (likely from coca leaf), dimethyltryptamine (DMT), harmine [an alkaloid found in ayahuasca], and possibly psilocin, a chemical component of psychedelic mushrooms."
"From hallucinogenic mushrooms and cacti to alcohol-infused enemas and psychoactive dried toad skins, the array of consciousness-altering substances that people in the early Americas used was wider than thought, a new report suggests." Source: Live Science.(2014)
Note: "At least 54 hallucinogenic mushrooms in the genus Psilocybe were used by pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, and those mushroom species can still be found today in Mexico, according to the report. Psilocybin is the hallucinogenic compound in these mushrooms that produces mind-altering effects."
"There is no denying that the world Bosch shows us is a world of dreams. Can these strange visions have been due to drug-taking? Dare we assume that the painter resorted to some [phantasmagoric] drug so as to give free rein to his subconscious self and attain one of those 'abysses of the psyche' to which Henri Michaux had access under the influence of mescaline?" Source: The Alchemy Website.
The Alchemy Website suggests that Bosch may have used a "stimulant named 'witches' pomatum,' the recipe for which was apparently discovered in a "16th century book' by Professor Will Erich Peuckert of Gottingen University, who "made some, and tested it on several persons. All, after a deep sleep of twenty hours, had the same tale to tell; all had dreamed of flying, of orgies in the company of satanic creatures, of visits to the netherworld."
As far as I know there's no evidence to support this theory, but Bosch's paintings are all the evidence I need that he had personal experience with hallucinogens of some kind. Ergot is a good candidate, but so are the gruit beers of the time (1). Before hops came along, these beverages were made with a variety of herbs, some of which had psychoactive properties. Just looking at Bosch's work, I'd guess that he had tried mescaline at some point, but peyote is apparently only found in North America, primarily Mexico. A more likely candidate is the amanita muscaria mushroom (2), but this is all speculation. It's possible that Bosch just had a particularly strange imagination.
(1) I'm not sure if gruit beer was still common during Bosch's lifetime (1450-1516 AD). According to Wikipedia, "The exclusive use of gruit was gradually phased out in favor of the use of hops alone in a slow sweep across Europe occurring between the 11th century (in the south and east of the Holy Roman Empire) and the late 16th century (Great Britain)."
Next video shows several examples of the Apocynaceae or Dogbane family. The audio's terrible, the narration almost incomprehensible, but this is one of the best Apocynaceae videos I could find. For some reason, most of the YouTube videos about these plants were made in India. I'm not sure how many of the plants shown here actually contain Ibogaine, but at least the video shows what they look like.
"The psychoactivity of the root barks of [the] Iboga tree, from which Ibogaine is extracted, was first discovered by the Pygmy tribe of Central Africa who passed the knowledge to the Bwiti tribe of Gabon [see below] ... Ibogaine-containing preparations are used for medicinal and ritual purposes within African spiritual traditions of the Bwiti, who claim to have learned it from the Pygmy peoples." (Wikipedia)
Video from 2015.
The origins of the pygmies is a mystery. "A commonly held belief is that African Pygmies are the direct descendants of Late Stone Agehunter-gatherers of the central African rainforest, who were partially absorbed or displaced by later immigration of agricultural peoples, and adopted their Central Sudanic, Ubangian, and Bantu languages. This view has no archaeological support, and ambiguous support from genetics and linguistics." (Wikipedia)
Considering the fact that these are hunter-gatherers living in the African rainforest, the lack of archaeological evidence isn't surprising. The prehistory of Ibogaine is just as obscure, but it seems likely that the Stone Age ancestors of the pygmies used the plant for ritualistic and healing purposes. According to the Crossroads Treatment Center, "The Iboga plant — found in West Africa’s Gabon and Cameroon — has existed, most likely, for thousands of years. As a psychoactive guide, traditionally, the root bark of the plant was eaten to induce visions and heal an assortment of ailments."
Next video shows a traditional Bwiti ritual in Gabon which makes use of the Iboga plant.
"Bwiti practitioners use the psychedelic, dissociative root bark of the Tabernanthe iboga plant, specially cultivated for the religion, to promote radical spiritual growth, to stabilize community and family structure, to meet religious requirements, and to resolve pathological problems. The root bark has been consumed for hundreds of years in a Bwiti rite of passage ceremony, as well as in initiation rites and acts of healing. The experience yields complex visions and insights anticipated to be valuable to the initiate and the chapel."
Note: Some people believe that Ibogaine can be used to treat heroin addiction and other problems like alcoholism, but from what I've read there isn't enough evidence to support these claims. According to Wikipedia, "clinical studies of ibogaine to treat drug addiction began in the early 1990s, but concerns about cardiotoxicity led to termination of those studies."
Hunter Thompson, in his classic book, Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, famously claimed that there was a "rumor" floating around that Democratic presidential candidate Ed Muskie's strange behavior was caused by his secret use of ibogaine. Thompson later expressed incredulity that so many people took the rumor (which he started himself) seriously. In the next video, he talks about the ibogaine rumor at 1:30.