Moving on with the pursuit of Hemp around the world, we shall explore the remaining relevant parts and countries of Asia, besidies China, Japan and India, all of which you can find in our previous articles.
India was not the only country to be invaded by the Aryans.
By 1500 B.c., Persia, Asia Minor, and Greece had been overrun and the Aryans were establishing permanent settlements as far west as France and Germany. Although the people who settled in these countries eventually developed into different nationalities, with different customs and traditions, their common Aryan ancestry can still be traced in their languages which collectively are called Indo-European. For example, the linguistic root, which is found in various Cannabis related words, can be found in French in the word chanvre and in German as hanf.
Our own word Cannabis is taken directly from the Greek, which in turn is taken from canna, an early Sanskrit term.
When the Aryans first settled in Persia (modernday Iran, "the land of the Aryans"), they separated into two kingdoms—Medea and Parsa (Persia).
Four centuries later, Cyrus the Great, the ruler of Parsa, unified the country, and with the combined forces of the Medes and Parsa behind him, he led his armies eastward and westward.
By 546 B.c., the Persian Empire reached from Palestine to India. Twenty years later, the Persians defeated Egypt and extended their control over that great kingdom as well.
It was not until 331 B.c. that the Persian empire finally collapsed; its nemesis—the Greeks and their brilliant leader—Alexander the Great.
The Aryans who settled in Persia came from the same area in central Russia as their cousins who invaded India, so it is hardly surprising that the Persian word bhanga is almost identical to the Indian term bhang.
The farthest west marihuana fibers have ever been found in the ancient world is in Turkey.
Sifting through artifacts, archaeologists unearthed pieces of fabric containing hemp fibers in the debris around Gordion, an ancient city located near present-day Ankara.
Although the Scythians had contacts with the people of Babylonia, who lived to the west of the Phyrgians, no hemp fiber or definite mention of hemp (Cannabis sativa) to the west of Turkey can be found until the time of the Greeks.
There is also very little evidence that the Egyptians ever cultivated the plant during the time of the Pharaohs.
Papyrus documents from ancient Egypt list the names of hundreds of drugs and their plant sources, but there is no unequivocal mention of marijuana in any of its forms.
No mummy has ever been discovered wrapped in fabric made from cannabis.
In the ruins of El Amarna, the city of Akhenaton (the Pharaoh who tried to introduce monotheism to ancient Egypt), archaeologists found a "three ply hemp cord" in the hole of a stone and a large mat bound with "hemp cords," but unfortunately they did not specify the type of hemp.
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