New research being published in the June issue of the journal Geology, and published online early, has found evidence of hemp retting from early society, indicating that humans produced hemp products likely throughout society’s existence.
 |
| An example of hemp retting is soaking stalks in water to separate the fiber from the wood tissue. |
The abstract continues:
“The history of human activities related to hemp (its domestication, spread, and processing) is frequently reconstructed from seeds and pollen
detected in archaeological sites or in sedimentary archives, but this
method does not always make it possible to ascertain whether retting
took place. Hemp is also known to contain phytocannabinoids, a type of chemicals
that is specific to the plant. Here we report on the detection of one
of these chemicals, cannabinol (CBN), preserved in a sediment record
from a lake in the French Massif Central covering the past 1800 yr. The
presence of this molecule in the sedimentary record is related to
retting. Analysis of the evolution of CBN concentrations shows that hemp
retting was a significant activity in the area until ca. A.D. 1850.
These findings, supported by pollen analyses and historical data, show
that this novel sedimentary tracer can help to better constrain past
impacts of human activities on the environment.”
These findings show that hemp retting took place thousands of years
back. Hemp was most likely one of the founding fibers of society.This finding hasn’t garnered much attention, but will lead to further discussion, and the method used, if applied to further research, could lead to hard evidence that hemp production was an integral part of human society since its inception.
- TheJointBlog
No comments:
Post a Comment