Boomhouse

Hello and Welcome to the 2^nd Edition of Boomhouse, our weekly newsletter specifically dedicated to the science, history and practical applications of the cannabis plant. This endeavor will not only help us understand the history of the world, but also help us develop an understanding of the history of civilization itself. In the sense, basic questions like the evolution of humanity, the spread of humanity across the world, the origins of agriculture, the fact that Sapiens was not alone and many other things of a curious nature. There is only one purpose: the higher purpose. 

Let’s start booming. 

The ‘Great Leap Forward’ – 70,000 years ago

Homo Sapiens was not alone. 

Homo Sapiens was one among many other human species. 

There is evidence that along with us, Sapiens, there were the Neanderthals, Homo Erectus, Homo Heidelbergensis and the Homo Denisova. Together. Living at the same time.  Only the Sapiens remain. And DNA evidence indicates that several Neanderthal DNA also managed to take a ride with the Sapiens. Many modern humans have Neanderthal DNA in them.

Now that everyone was gone, Sapiens had the leeway to expand their numbers and start experimenting with nature around them. They were mindful of their place in the food chain, standing somewhere in the middle, foraging multiple plants and domesticating animals like cows, sheep and goats; from time to time being hunted by predators like lions or tigers who still dominated the food chain.  

Then, 70,000 years ago, the Sapiens band made the great leap forward, what historian and best-selling author of Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harrari labels ‘the cognitive revolution’, a time period in history where Homo Sapiens began to develop better brains and evolve further generations who would go on to make rapid progress and explore the entire world, reaching virtually every place on earth by foot and eventually separating into different populations, sects and cultures that we know of today. 

In this paper called ‘The Evolution of Cannabis and Coevolution with the Cannabis Receptor’, Doctors John McPartland and Geoffery Guy ask the simple question: why? Why do both the human endocannabinoid system and the cannabis plant produce biochemically similar compounds? The conclusion that stems from the paper possibly makes us ponder: did cannabis have a role to play in human evolution? Of course it did. Culturally, economically and biologically. Since the cannabis plant is older than the first humans, it is prudent to reason that when our ancestors started consuming cannabis, evolution would have equipped modern humans with receptors to sense the plant’s compounds.

The 17th Century

In the next edition of Boomhouse, we’ll find out what happened from 10,000 B.C which was the dawn of the agricultural revolution, a time when societies across the world simultaneously began to play around with a chosen few plants as per their geography to increase food supplies and ‘settle’ in one place, to the end of the 16th Century, a very long time span. For now, let’s think about the 17th century. 

Here’s Janet Burns writing for Forbes:

“By the early 1600s, the British empire and others in Europe were all on board for hemp as a valuable industrial commodity; in the coming centuries, they and their colonies (such as the US) would increasingly embrace cannabis medicine, too (leading to Eli Lilly’s early 20th-century cannabis tonics, for example, and the U.S. government’s late 20th-century patents on cannabis as an anti-oxidant and neuroprotectant — but hang onto that thought for now).”

The more and more we read about cannabis history and science, the more we are coming to terms with the fact that narrow self-interested groups somehow managed to use emotion and lies to manipulate entire countries to criminalize nature’s most useful plant, while leading the modern scientific revolution of the 20th century more and more along the lines of using synthetic sources for all possible applications – from the plastic to pharma. 

“During the same timeframe, the European slave trade was booming, with hemp among the top crops that millions of trafficked and enslaved people of African, Central and South American, and North American Indigenous origin were being forced to grow. In the 1600s, Aggarwal said, cannabis as a cultural and spiritual drug probably first appeared in what is now the Americas among these enslaved populations. It’s interesting to see how it was brought [here] by slaves and indentured servants,” he noted. “It tells you an important aspect of how the plant has always been used: by downtrodden groups, as a way of dealing with difficult living conditions and psychological stress, as from being an indentured servant for your whole life.”

Time and again, we’ve said this and we’ll not stop saying this: we must guard our attention and never give in to something if we don’t understand its full picture. A thinking mind is what multiple forms of governments and organizations are afraid of, they want to keep the masses dumb so that no uncomfortable questions are raised. Today, we intend to be at the forefront of a generation that will not shy away from asking the hard questions. 

Let’s keep booming. Have a great day 🙂