The mystery regarding the origin of marijuana has finally been solved and as it turns out it originated 28 million years back on the Tibetan plateau.
Researches have been aware of the fact that cannabis originated somewhere in Central Asia but its exact origins have been hard to figure out given that the leaves of the plant don¡¯t leave very strong print fossils and only two collections of the plant fossil are available to us at this point.
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That¡¯s why the researchers used the hundreds of pollen fossils available and analysed those to arrive at the results they did.
Researchers led by the University of Vermont went through 155 existing fossil pollen studies from Asia for examination and from the cannabis pollen analysis found that growth of the plants dated back to 28 million years ago in the area of Qinghai lake on the Tibetan plateau.
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The study published in the journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany also notes the connection between India and cannabis, stating that:
'Early floristic exchanges between India and Asia were shaped by plate tectonics. As the Indian plate migrated towards the Asian plate, it made a 'glancing contact' with Sumatra 57 [million years ago], followed by Burma, and then a 'hard collision' with Tibet 35 [million years ago]. The glancing contact between continents resulted in floristic exchanges during the Eocene. Cannabis holds significance in human history and life today as a triple-use crop.¡¯