Lalibela Cave
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| Lalibela Cave | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Country | Ethiopia |
| Site | |
| Type | Cave or rock shelter |
| Period | 13th–14th century |
| Excavated by | J. C. Dombrowski[1] |
| Cannabis finds | |
| Found | Residue |
| Residue in two ceramic water-pipe bowls from level 2 | |
| Dated | c. 1240–1400 CE |
| Dating | Radiocarbon |
| Identified by | Chemical analysis |
Lalibela Cave is a cave site in Begemeder, Ethiopia, near Lake Tana. Two ceramic bowls of water pipes excavated there came from a level radiocarbon dated to 1320 ± 80 CE. Nikolaas J. van der Merwe tested their residues by thin-layer chromatography and concluded that cannabis was smoked around Lake Tana in the 13th or 14th century, before tobacco reached Africa from the Americas.[1]
The pipe bowls
J. C. Dombrowski excavated the cave and described it in his doctoral thesis at Boston University (1971). The two bowls came from level 2, which has an associated radiocarbon date of 1320 ± 80 CE (laboratory number Y-2433); calibration on the bristlecone pine curve did not change the age significantly.[1] The material culture of level 2 differs little from that of the region today. The workmen at the excavation recognised the bowls and how they worked. Each has an opening at the bottom for a vertical stem, which presumably led down into a water container.[1]
Pipe B2 was well preserved and held a crust of residue up to 1 millimetre thick in places. It was identified as "an Awraja's pipe or the pipe of a 'big man'". Pipe A2 was broken and held only a little residue.[1]
Chemical tests
Van der Merwe used a standard thin-layer chromatography test of the kind hospitals and police used to detect cannabis, at the toxicology laboratory of Wilson Memorial Hospital in Johnson City, New York. Samples of under 100 milligrams were soaked in petroleum ether, spotted on silica gel plates, run in benzene and sprayed with fast blue B salt, which turns cannabis compounds orange-red. Fresh cannabis gave a main spot for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) at an Rf value of 0.53, with lesser spots for cannabinol and cannabidiol.[1]
The Ethiopian residues gave none of these spots. In the first test, against a resin extract of 60 per cent THC and known cannabis samples, "Two faint spots, representing unidentified cannabinoids, developed from A2 and B2 at Rf values of 0.69 and 0.84; these spots were absent in the standards." In a second test, modern pipes that had already tested positive for cannabis showed the same two faint spots, as did pipe B2. A third test gave no spots from either Ethiopian pipe, which van der Merwe put down to too little sample. There was not enough material for more.[1] A third pipe, from a context in Liberia older than tobacco, gave no result in three attempts.[1]
Interpretation
Van der Merwe concluded that THC, cannabinol and cannabidiol do not survive long enough to be found in ancient samples, but that the heat of smoking turns one or more of them into two unidentified cannabinoids lasting more than 500 years. In his words, "The presence of these cannabinoids in a pipe positively identifies its use for the smoking of Cannabis sativa or one of its relatives or extracts." He added that the evidence is hard to detect and depends on the size of the sample and the strength of the material smoked.[1]
He held that cannabis was smoked around Lake Tana in the 13th–14th century "in much the same way as it is today". The evidence was clearer for pipe B2, with two positive tests, than for A2, with one. How the plant and its use reached the area was unknown to him, though he thought an Arabic source probable. He suggested that archaeological readings of early African smoking pipes might need review, among them the chronology of West African pipe forms, which assumed that only tobacco was smoked.[1] In 2005 he returned to the find in a paper on the antiquity of smoking in Africa.[2]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 van der Merwe, Nikolaas J. (1975). "Cannabis smoking in 13th–14th century Ethiopia: chemical evidence". In Rubin, Vera (ed.). Cannabis and Culture. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 77–80. doi:10.1515/9783110812060.77.
- ↑ van der Merwe, N.J. (2005). "Antiquity of the smoking habit in Africa". Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa. 60 (2): 147–150. doi:10.1080/00359190509520494.