Cannabis in Ancient China: How Shennong and 5,000 Years of Medicine Shaped the Plant We Know Today

Long before cannabis was a Schedule III substance, a dispensary product, or a cultural battleground, it was something far simpler: a plant that an ancient civilization believed could heal. And that civilization — China — has a relationship with cannabis that stretches back at least five millennia, making it one of the oldest documented plant-human partnerships in recorded history.

The story of cannabis in ancient China isn't just a historical curiosity. It's a thread that connects modern cannabis science to its deepest roots, revealing that many of the "discoveries" we celebrate today — the medical potential of cannabinoids, the versatility of hemp fiber, the plant's role in spiritual practice — were understood, in some form, thousands of years ago.

The Mythical Emperor and the Plant

The story begins, as so many Chinese cultural narratives do, with a semi-mythological emperor. Shennong, the "Divine Farmer," is said to have ruled China around 2737 BCE. According to legend, Shennong personally tasted hundreds of herbs and plants to catalog their medicinal properties, creating the foundation of traditional Chinese medicine.

The text attributed to him — the Shennong Ben Cao Jing (Shennong's Classic of Herbal Medicine) — is considered the oldest pharmacopeia in the world, though the version that survives was likely compiled during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE) from much older oral traditions. In it, cannabis, referred to as "ma" (麻), is listed among the "superior" class of medicines — those considered beneficial, non-toxic, and suitable for long-term use.

Shennong's pharmacopeia describes cannabis as useful for treating conditions including rheumatic pain, malaria, gout, constipation, and absentmindedness. The text notes that consuming its flowers and seeds in various preparations could produce both calming and stimulating effects depending on the dosage and method of preparation.

Whether Shennong was a real person, a composite of multiple herbalists, or a purely mythological figure is debated by historians. But the medical knowledge attributed to him represents a genuine body of empirical observation accumulated over centuries — and cannabis occupied a prominent place within it.

Ma: The Plant of a Hundred Uses

The Chinese word for cannabis — ma (麻) — appears throughout ancient texts with a frequency that underscores the plant's centrality to early Chinese civilization. But ancient China didn't view cannabis the way modern Western culture does, through the narrow lens of intoxication or medicine. Cannabis was understood as a comprehensive resource plant with applications spanning nearly every aspect of daily life.

Fiber and Textiles: Hemp was one of the earliest cultivated fiber crops in China, with archaeological evidence of hemp cord dating to at least 4000 BCE from a site in Zhejiang province. Hemp fiber was used to make clothing, rope, shoes, and paper. In fact, the earliest paper in the world — dating to approximately the 2nd century BCE — was made from hemp. For common Chinese citizens, hemp clothing was the standard textile for millennia before cotton became widespread.

Food: Cannabis seeds (hemp seeds) were one of the "five grains" of ancient China, alongside rice, wheat, soybeans, and millet. This classification placed hemp alongside the most essential food crops of Chinese civilization. The seeds were consumed as porridge, ground into flour, or pressed for oil. They were valued for their nutritional density and were particularly important as a food source for the poor.

Medicine: Beyond Shennong's early classifications, cannabis appeared extensively in subsequent medical texts. The Mingyi Bielu (Supplementary Records of Famous Physicians), compiled around the 5th century CE, expanded on cannabis's medical applications. The legendary surgeon Hua Tuo, who lived during the late Han Dynasty (circa 140-208 CE), is credited with developing one of the world's first general anesthetics — a preparation called mafeisan (麻沸散), literally "cannabis boiling powder," which he reportedly used to render patients unconscious before performing surgery.

The exact composition of mafeisan has been lost to history, and scholars debate whether it truly contained cannabis, datura, or a combination of multiple plants. But the linguistic connection to "ma" and the historical context of cannabis use in Chinese medicine make a cannabis component at least plausible.

The Spiritual Dimension

Cannabis also played a role in ancient Chinese spiritual practices, though this aspect is less extensively documented than its medical and industrial uses.

Taoist texts from the Han Dynasty reference cannabis as an ingredient in incense blends used during meditation and spiritual rituals. The Wushang Biyao (Supreme Secret Essentials), a 6th-century Taoist text, describes cannabis as an additive to ritual incense that, when inhaled, allowed practitioners to see spirits, lighten the body, and communicate with the divine.

Archaeological evidence supports these textual references. In 2019, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences published findings from the Jirzankal Cemetery in the Pamir Mountains of western China, where 2,500-year-old wooden braziers contained chemical residues of cannabis with unusually high THC content. The braziers were found in burial contexts, suggesting that cannabis was burned as part of funeral rituals — possibly to communicate with or honor the dead.

This discovery was significant because it provided the earliest clear chemical evidence of cannabis being used specifically for its psychoactive properties, predating similar evidence from other cultures. It also suggested that ancient peoples in the region may have been deliberately selecting or cultivating high-THC cannabis varieties — a form of selective breeding thousands of years before modern genetics.

The Duality of Ma

One of the most fascinating aspects of cannabis in ancient Chinese thought is the early recognition of its dual nature. Chinese medical texts often distinguished between the male hemp plant (xi ma, 枲麻) and the female plant (ju ma, 苴麻), noting that they produced different effects and had different medicinal applications.

The Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica), compiled by the great Ming Dynasty physician Li Shizhen in 1578, represents perhaps the most comprehensive ancient analysis of cannabis. Li Shizhen documented both the therapeutic benefits and the potential dangers of cannabis, noting that excessive consumption of the flowers could cause users to "see demons" and behave erratically.

This balanced assessment — acknowledging both the medicinal value and the risks of intoxication — is remarkably modern in its approach. Li Shizhen didn't demonize or romanticize the plant. He treated it as what it was: a powerful substance that demanded respect and informed use.

From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Science

The bridge between ancient Chinese cannabis knowledge and modern science is shorter than many people realize.

When Raphael Mechoulam, the Israeli chemist often called the "father of cannabis research," isolated THC in 1964, he was building on a tradition of inquiry into the plant's active compounds that stretched back through centuries of empirical observation. The ancient Chinese didn't know about THC, CBD, or the endocannabinoid system, but they knew — through careful, systematic experimentation — that different preparations of the plant produced different effects, that dosage mattered, and that the plant had both healing and intoxicating properties.

Modern research on cannabinoids for pain, inflammation, epilepsy, and nausea is, in a sense, a technologically enhanced continuation of the work that began in Shennong's mythical garden. The questions are the same: What can this plant do? How should it be used? What are the risks? The tools are just more precise.

Why This History Matters

Understanding cannabis's ancient Chinese origins matters for several reasons.

First, it demolishes the narrative that cannabis use is a modern countercultural invention. When politicians or commentators characterize cannabis as a dangerous novelty that threatens social order, they're ignoring a 5,000-year track record of human use that includes some of the most sophisticated civilizations in history.

Second, it provides context for the current global shift toward cannabis legalization and medical research. The rescheduling of medical marijuana to Schedule III in the United States in April 2026 is not an experiment — it's a partial return to the historical norm, in which cannabis was recognized as a legitimate medical substance deserving of serious study.

Third, it reminds us that the plant is bigger than any single culture's relationship with it. Cannabis has been a fiber crop, a food source, a medicine, a sacrament, and yes, a recreational substance across multiple civilizations, continents, and millennia. Its story is a human story — one that's still being written.

The next time you pick up a pre-roll, swallow a gummy, or browse a dispensary menu, consider that you're participating in one of the oldest ongoing relationships between humans and a plant on Earth. Shennong would probably approve — as long as you paid attention to the dose.

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