|
in:
|
|
| Forums > Marijuana Growing > Marijuana Strains and Breeding > Landraces > The Origin Of Cannabis | ||
Post Reply  |
| The Origin Of Cannabis | Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
05-01-2010, 01:40 PM
|
#1 | |
|
Plumber/Builder
  
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: B&Q
Posts: 6,686
  |
The Origin Of Cannabis
8,000 BCE
* One of the oldest archaeological relics in existence has been dated to this time period. * A fragment of hemp cloth was found at Catal.Hüyük (what is now Turkey). Artifacts recovered from sites in China indicate hemp was cultivated since the remote beginnings of agriculture settlements and used for making textiles as well as for food and medicine and fibers  The origin of hemp is thought to be in Central Asia (Kazakistan, Pakistan, Nepal, the Kashmir region of India, and the Tibetan region of China) -- two regions in particular: in the Mesopotamian Valley between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (present day Iraq) and, at the same time, in the Huang He (Yellow River) valley in China. Hemp spread from its native habitat toward the west in two directions. One route led through the Russian lowland plains to Scandinavia, extending to Poland, Germany, and the Baltic region. This distribution included the Carpathian Mountains and as far as the Danube River delta. This is where the northern and central Russian geographical race of hemp originated. The other route led through Asia Minor to the Mediterranean countries and into the provinces of the Roman Empire (Illyria, Gallia, and Hispania). From there, the southern Mediterranean ecological group originated, which encompassed southern Russia, Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Italy, and Spain. In central and northern Europe, hemp was introduced by the Slavs. Quote:
Landrace The landrace varieties are the earliest form of cultivar and represent the first step in the domestication process. Landraces are highly heterogeneous, having been selected for subsistence agricultural environments where low, but stable yields were important and natural environmental fluctuation required a broad genetic base. Landraces are closely related to the wild ancestors and embody a great deal more genetic variation than do modern, high-yielding varieties that are selected for optimal performance within a narrow range of highly managed environmental conditions. The value of both the wild species and the early landrace varieties in the context of modern plant breeding is that they provide a broad representation of the natural variation that is present in the species as a whole. The fact that natural selection has acted on such populations over the course of evolution makes them particularly valuable as materials for breeders. The value added by imposing a low intensity of human selection on the early landraces resides in the fact that some of these early varieties represent accumulations of alleles that produce phenotypes particularly favorable or attractive to the human eye, nose, palette, or other appetites. It is also noteworthy that some of these rare or unique alleles or allele combinations that were selected by humans might never survive in the wild. Wild relatives and early landrace varieties have long been recognized as the essential pool of genetic variation that will drive the future of plant improvement (Bessey 1906; Burbank 1914). Early plant collections made by people such as Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943) or Jack Harlan (1917–1998) inspired the international community to establish long-term collections of plant genetic resources that provide modern plant breeders with the material they need to creatively address the challenges of today (Box 1). Many may question the emphasis on wild and primitive landraces that cannot compete with new, high-yielding varieties in terms of productivity or eating quality, particularly in an age when biotechnology and genetic engineering promise to provide an endless stream of genetic novelty. Indeed, if all forms of novelty were equally valuable, the old varieties would hardly be worth saving. But the security of the world's food supply depends on an exquisite balance between new ideas and the intelligent use of time-tested resources. In 1972, more than a decade before the age of automated sequencing, Jack Harlan commented that, “We are not really much interested in conserving the old varieties as varieties; it is the genes we are concerned about. The old land races can be considered as populations of genes and genetic variability is absolutely essential for further improvement. In fact, variability is absolutely essential to even hold onto what we already have” (Harlan 1972a). Cultivars (domesticated varieties) have been selected by humans in the last 10,000 years and inevitably represent a subset of the variation found in their wild ancestors. Cultivars are recognizable because they manifest characteristics that are associated with domestication in plants. Unusual or extreme phenotypes, such as large fruit or seed size, intense color, sweet flavor, or pleasing aroma are often selected by humans and maintained in their cultivars for aesthetic reasons, while synchronous ripening or inhibition of seed shattering (a dispersal mechanism) are selected to facilitate harvest. These phenotypes may occur in nature but they will frequently be eliminated by natural selection before they are fixed in a population. Because of human selection, cultivars may exemplify a range of exaggerated phenotypic attributes that give them the appearance of being, on the whole, more diverse than some of the wild populations from which they were derived, but in truth, domestication usually represents a kind of genetic bottleneck. Furthermore, cultivars are grown in agricultural environments that are generally more uniform than the environments in which wild species grow, and this tends to further narrow the gene pool. Thus, while cultivars may embody a high degree of obvious phenotypic variation, this may not always be a good predictor of the extent of their genetic variation. Modern breeds are descendents of the wild species from which they were derived. The process of domestication dramatically changed the performance and genetic architecture of the ancestral species through the process of hybridization and selection as originally described by Charles Darwin (1859). Despite the low yields and poor eating quality of most wild ancestors and primitive crop varieties, these ancient sources of genetic variation continue to provide the basic building blocks from which all modern varieties are constructed. Breeders have discovered that genes hidden in these low-yielding ancestors can enhance the performance of some of the world's most productive crop varieties. In this essay, I will provide some historical context for the paper by Gur and Zamir in this issue of PLoS Biology (Gur and Zamir 2004). I will discuss how “smart breeding” recycles “old genes” to develop highly productive, stress-resistant modern varieties and why this approach is particularly attractive to increase food security in regions of the world with high concentrations of genetic diversity. The job of the plant breeder is to create an improved variety. This may be accomplished simply by selecting a superior individual from among a range of existing possibilities, or it may require that a breeder know how to efficiently swap or replace parts, recombine components, and rebuild a biological system that will be capable of growing vigorously and productively in the context of an agricultural environment. How the breeding is done and what goals are achieved is largely a matter of biological feasibility, consumer demand, and production economics. What is clear is that the surest way to succeed in a reasonable amount of time is to have access to a large and diverse pool of genetic variation. Variation There is great variation in Cannabis sativa, because of disruptive domestication for fiber, oilseed, and narcotic resin, and there are features that tend to distinguish these three cultigens (cultivated phases) from each other. Moreover, density of cultivation is used to accentuate certain architectural features. Figure 5 illustrates the divergent appearances of the basic agronomic categories of Cannabis in typical field configurations Fig. 1.  Fig. 1. Typical architecture of categories of cultivated Cannabis sativa. Top left: narcotic plants are generally low, highly branched, and grown well-spaced. Top right: plants grown for oilseed were traditionally well-spaced, and the plants developed medium height and strong branching. Bottom left: fiber cultivars are grown at high density, and are unbranched and very tall. Bottom center: “dual purpose” plants are grown at moderate density, tend to be slightly branched and of medium to tall height. Bottom right: some recent oilseed cultivars are grown at moderate density and are short and relatively unbranched. Degree of branching and height are determined both by the density of the plants and their genetic background. Highly selected forms of the fiber cultigen possess features maximizing fiber production. Since the nodes tend to disrupt the length of the fiber bundles, thereby limiting quality, tall, relatively unbranched plants with long internodes have been selected. Another strategy has been to select stems that are hollow at the internodes, with limited wood, since this maximizes production of fiber in relation to supporting woody tissues. Similarly, limited seed productivity concentrates the plant’s energy into production of fiber, and fiber cultivars often have low genetic propensity for seed output. Selecting monoecious strains overcomes the problem of differential maturation times and quality of male (staminate) and female (pistillate) plants (males mature 1–3 weeks earlier). Male plants in general are taller, albeit slimmer, less robust, and less productive. Except for the troublesome characteristic of dying after anthesis, male traits are favored for fiber production, in contrast to the situation for drug strains noted below. In former, labor-intensive times, the male plants were harvested earlier than the females, to produce superior fiber. The limited branching of fiber cultivars is often compensated for by possession of large leaves with wide leaflets, which obviously increase the photosynthetic ability of the plants. Since fiber plants have not generally been selected for narcotic purposes, the level of intoxicating constituents is usually limited. An absence of such fiber-strain traits as tallness, limited branching, long internodes, and very hollow stems, is characteristic of narcotic strains. Drug forms have historically been grown in areas south of the north-temperate zone, often close to the equator, and are photoperiodically adapted to a long season. When grown in north-temperate climates maturation is much-delayed until late fall, or the plants succumb to cold weather before they are able to produce seeds. Unlike fiber strains that have been selected to grow well at extremely high densities, drug strains tend to be less persistent when grown in high concentration (de Meijer 1994). Drug strains can be very similar in appearance to fiber strains. However, a characteristic type of narcotic plant was selected in southern Asia, particularly in India and neighboring countries. This is dioecious, short (about a meter in height), highly branched, with large leaves (i.e. wide leaflets), and it is slow to mature. The appearance is rather like a short, conical Christmas tree. Until recent times, the cultivation of hemp primarily as an oilseed was largely unknown, except in Russia. Today, it is difficult to reconstruct the type of plant that was grown there as an oilseed, because such cultivation has essentially been abandoned. Oilseed hemp cultivars in the modern sense were not available until very recently, but some land races certainly were grown specifically for seeds in Russia. Dewey (1914) gave the following information: “The short oil-seed hemp with slender stems, about 30 inches high, bearing compact clusters of seeds and maturing in 60 to 90 days, is of little value for fiber production, but the experimental plants, grown from seed imported from Russia, indicate that it may be valuable as an oil-seed crop to be harvested and threshed in the same manner as oil-seed flax.” Most hemp oilseed in Europe is currently obtained from so-called “dual usage” plants (employed for harvest of both stem fiber and seeds, from the same plants). Of the European dual-usage cultivars, ‘Uniko B’ and ‘Fasamo’ are particularly suited to being grown as oilseeds. Very recently, cultivars have been bred specifically for oilseed production. These include ‘Finola,’ formerly known as ‘Fin-314’ and ‘Anka’, which are relatively short, little-branched, mature early in north-temperate regions, and are ideal for high-density planting and harvest with conventional equipment. Dewey (1914) noted that a Turkish narcotic type of land race called “Smyrna” was commonly used in the early 20th century in the US to produce birdseed, because (like most narcotic types of Cannabis) it is densely branched, producing many flowers, hence seeds. While oilseed land races in northern Russia would have been short, early-maturing plants in view of the short growing season, in more southern areas oilseed landraces likely had moderate height, and were spaced more widely to allow abundant branching and seed production to develop. Until Canada replaced China in 1998 as a source of imported seeds for the US, most seeds used for various purposes in the US were sterilized and imported from China. Indeed, China remains the largest producer of hempseed. We have grown Chinese hemp land races, and these were short, branched, adapted to a very long growing season (i.e. they come into flower very slowly in response to photoperiodic induction of short days in the fall), and altogether they were rather reminiscent of Dewey’s description of Smyrna. Although similar in appearance to narcotic strains of C. sativa, the Chinese land races we grew were in fact low in intoxicating constituents, and it may well be that what Dewey thought was a narcotic strain was not. Although some forms of C. sativa have quite large seeds, until recently oilseed forms appear to have been mainly selected for a heavy yield of seeds, usually recognizable by abundant branching. Such forms are typically grown at lower densities than hemp grown only for fiber, as this promotes branching, although it should be understood that the genetic propensity for branching has been selected. Percentage or quality of oil in the seeds does not appear to have been important in the past, although selection for these traits is now being conducted. Most significantly, modern selection is occurring with regard to mechanized harvesting, particularly the ability to grow in high density as single-headed stalks with very short branches bearing considerable seed. The Pioneers “Moreover, from our wild plants, we may not only obtain new products but new vigor, new hardiness, new adaptive powers, and endless other desirable new qualities for our cultivated plants. All of these things are as immediate in possibilities and consequences as transcontinental railroads were fifty years ago.”—Luther Burbank, 1914 Luther Burbank (1849–1926) was one of America's first and most prolific plant breeders. He was inspired by Charles Darwin's Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (Darwin 1883) to explore the potential of creating new varieties of plants by cross-breeding (hybridization) and selection. Over a 50-year period, he developed more than 800 new varieties of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and grasses. One of his earliest creations was the Burbank potato (1871), a variety of baking potato still popular today. When the Plant Patent Act of 1930 was first introduced in Congress, Thomas Edison testified, “This [bill] will, I feel sure, give us many Burbanks.” The bill passed, and Luther Burbank was awarded 16 posthumous patents for asexually reproduced plants (Burbank 1914). Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943), a Russian geneticist and biologist, was one of the first to explore and actively collect wild relatives and early landrace varieties as sources of genetic variation for the future of agriculture. His botanical collecting expeditions (1916–1940) amassed many thousands of rare and valuable specimens that are preserved in the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry in St. Petersburg, the world's first seed bank and inspiration for the International Crop Germplasm Collections (https://www.sgrp.cgiar.org/publications.html ). Vavilov's concepts in evolutionary genetics, such as the law of homologous series in variation (Vavilov 1922) and the theory of centers of origin of cultivated plants (Vavilov 1926), were major contributions to understanding the distribution of diversity around the world. Vavilov himself died of starvation in a Stalinist prison camp in 1943, victim of a debate about genetics at a time when Trofim Lysenko's theories about the alterability of organisms through directed environmental change proved more compelling to the Soviet leadership than Vavilov's own efforts to demonstrate the genetic value of wild and early landrace diversity. In the United States, Jack Harlan (1917–1998) was also well known for his plant collection expeditions and eloquent expositions about the value of wild relatives and early domesticated forms of crop plants (Harlan 1972b). What particularly sensitized Jack Harlan to the value of these genetic resources was the fact that he lived through a period of revolutionary change in the way agriculture was practiced, watching as the Green Revolution's high-yielding semi-dwarf varieties of wheat and rice replaced the old landrace varieties throughout Asia and Latin America (Harlan 1975). He understood that the new varieties brought massive and immediate increases in grain production that saved millions from starvation. He also understood that displacement of the traditional varieties from their natural environment presented serious challenges that would require renewed efforts to collect, document, evaluate, and conserve plant genetic resources. “For the sake of future generations, we must collect and study wild and weedy relatives of our cultivated plants as well as the domesticated races. These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation on a scale we cannot imagine” (Harlan 1972b). Charlie Rick (1915–2002) was an avid collector of exotic tomato germplasm. He noted that up until the 1940s, progress in tomato improvement lagged and few major innovations were achieved. The turning point, according to Rick, was the introduction of exotic germplasm. As a cultivated species, tomato had experienced a severe genetic bottleneck that led to extreme attrition of genetic variability compared to the wild species of Lycopersicon (Rick and Fobes 1975). Yet, Rick observed that crosses between wild and cultivated species generated a wide array of novel genetic variation in the offspring, despite the fact that routine evaluation of wild and exotic resources often failed to detect the genetic potential of these resources (Rick 1967, 1974). He outlined “pre-breeding” strategies that were designed to uncover positive transgressive variation in backcrossed (inbred) progeny derived from interspecific crosses and believed that this approach would invariably lead to greater utilization of the favorable attributes hidden in tomato exotics (Rick 1983). ^^^the above is not my words,,,,i save many things on my computer and this is some of it,,,,i tryed to add as mutch as i could but to be perfectly honest it woul just take forever,,,,,below is some links to the real text,,,,if anyone can offer anything else on the subject of "The Origin Of Cannabis" or "Cannabis Evoloution" please do,,,,thanks for reading :rick https://www.innvista.com/health/foods/hemp/history.htm https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/ncnu02/v5-284.html
__________________
i.c.mag saved my life |
|
|
12 members found this post helpful. |
|
05-01-2010, 02:22 PM
|
#2 |
|
Member
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 913
|
wow some nice information you got there! very interessting, never knew what the diffrence between industrial hemp and narcotic cannabis was in growth structure...
some basic info i gathered - im not sure if the lineage is right:  hope this helps
__________________
250w, 64plants vertical sog, white widow, chronic, super skunk, shiva skunk - octagon growketle project feel free to join: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=125244 my G13xSSH pictures: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.p...65#post2320065 |
|
|
1 members found this post helpful. |
|
05-01-2010, 02:33 PM
|
#3 |
|
Dr. Narrowleaf
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: State of Mind
Posts: 1,834
|
Hehe, been meaning to make such a thread too
 This should be fun.
|
|
|
|
|
05-06-2010, 12:59 AM
|
#4 |
|
Dr. Narrowleaf
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: State of Mind
Posts: 1,834
|
Dug up this map about vegetation zones during the last glacial maximum in order to track down the urheimat of cannabis. Most of the East European and Siberian steppes where cannabis thrives today were desert back then but there were vast savannahs between Turkey and India. I circled the two most cannabis friendly areas in red. The earliest traces of cannabis in India are only 4000 years old, but climatewise I see no reason why cannabis could not have survived there. There must have been a cannabis refugia at the visinity of the Caspian Sea, and who knows, maybe seeds of the ruderalis type survived under the ice sheets further north and to the east. There were icy tundras between Central and East Asia which may have formed a natural barrier during the ice age. This could explain why we have two genepools today. Anyways by 8000 B.C cannabis was in use at the opposite ends of the continent, marked by black dots in the map. That was 4000 years before the domestication of the horse and 6000 years before the silk routes. |
|
|
3 members found this post helpful. |
|
05-07-2010, 12:01 PM
|
#5 |
|
Guest
Posts: n/a
|
Great map Thule,thanks...but don't you have a smaller version...maybe America and Groenland aren't necessary...just sayin this cause it seems you circled Turkey as a possible original places?
|
|
|
|
05-07-2010, 01:05 PM
|
#6 | |
|
Dr. Narrowleaf
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: State of Mind
Posts: 1,834
|
Quote:
I didn't find such a map about Asia only, and cutting out America from this one would have also cut out the explanations for the vegetation types. Turkey is infact where some of the oldest traces of cannabis are found, but I think it might originate on the shores of the Caspian Sea where it spread with indo Iranian people to the rest of the known world much later.. |
|
|
|
|
|
05-07-2010, 01:17 PM
|
#7 |
|
Guest
Posts: n/a
|
Thanks for clearing that up!
Now what would be great is to find a map with population migration at the same period...
|
|
|
|
05-07-2010, 02:31 PM
|
#8 | |
|
Green Mujaheed
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Free Republic of Mrikostan - 50°N
Posts: 1,968
|
Quote:
Caspian sea area & caucasus are most probably a craddle of the plant indeed, and considering that oldest agriculture traces are found in Turkey, it might not be exagerated to suppose an origin of the plant in this region (eastern Turkey). I wouldn't be surprised that the first spreaders of the plant where hunters-gatherers, who would have taken seeds around with them as food stock (or even to knowingly spread the range of the plant). Irie !
__________________
"To forbid or even seriously to restrict the use of so gracious an herb as hemp would cause widespread suffering and annoyance and to large bands of worshipped ascetics, deep-seated anger. It would rob the people of a solace in discomfort, of a cure in sickness, of a guardian whose gracious protection saves them from the attacks of evil influences, and whose mightly power makes the devotee of the Victorious, overcoming the demons of hunger and thirst, of panic, fear, of the glamour of Maya or matter, and of madness, able in rest to brood on the Eternal, till the Eternal,possessing him body and soul, frees him from the haunting of self and receives him into the Ocean of Being." Indian Hemp Drugs Commission "Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead "I can, I shall and in the future I will have done" C. Montgomery Burns |
|
|
|
|
|
05-08-2010, 02:49 AM
|
#9 |
|
Dr. Narrowleaf
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: State of Mind
Posts: 1,834
|
Thanks mriko, I need to update my map. You have a link to the study? I think i read it too but can't find it anymore.
I'm not on my own computer now, so can't really get into this thoroughly but these maps about ice ages refugias and european haplogroups could help.  
|
|
|
|
|
05-08-2010, 09:48 AM
|
#10 | |
|
Green Mujaheed
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Free Republic of Mrikostan - 50°N
Posts: 1,968
|
Here it is : https://www.palinopaleobot.unimo.it/s...i%20Albano.pdf
this glaciation thing makes me think... research released this week shows that Homo sapiens have interbred with Neanderthal, and we Indo-European hold about 1% to 4% of Neanderthal genes ! damn, I knew it ! just fascinating... By the way, here's some interesting reading about how entheogenic plant might have been the trigger the start of civilization (historically speaking). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6 X1G-45B65N3-2&_user=10&_coverDate=12%2F31% 2F2002&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig =search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&vi ew=c&_searchStrId=1327228540&_ rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C0000 50221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0 &_userid=10&md5=3515dac1492f16 42a11f8d765f65bd44 My, I just found something talking about cannabis pollen having been found in 2000 years old stratas in... Madagascar ! Not a scientific one alas, gotta search deeper; Ehre's the link, in the last paragraph. Sorry, it's French, no time for translating now I am in a googling spree, haha ! https://www.ile-bourbon.net/Madagasca...01histoire.htm Quote:
__________________
"To forbid or even seriously to restrict the use of so gracious an herb as hemp would cause widespread suffering and annoyance and to large bands of worshipped ascetics, deep-seated anger. It would rob the people of a solace in discomfort, of a cure in sickness, of a guardian whose gracious protection saves them from the attacks of evil influences, and whose mightly power makes the devotee of the Victorious, overcoming the demons of hunger and thirst, of panic, fear, of the glamour of Maya or matter, and of madness, able in rest to brood on the Eternal, till the Eternal,possessing him body and soul, frees him from the haunting of self and receives him into the Ocean of Being." Indian Hemp Drugs Commission "Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead "I can, I shall and in the future I will have done" C. Montgomery Burns Last edited by mriko; 05-08-2010 at 10:08 AM.. |
|
|
|
|
| Post Reply |
«
Previous Thread
|
Next Thread
»
|
|
All times are GMT +2. The time now is 09:34 AM.
