Angus from The Real Seed Co - Cannabis Ancient Past, Seed Taxonomy, & Tai Asian Ancestry - Breeders Syndicate 3.0

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to reader Syndicate three point zero, the next evolution
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That is Canaa.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
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(01:02):
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Speaker 1 (01:33):
Welcome to Breeders didicate. I'm Matthew and here today again
with the real Seed Co and Angus, the owner of
the company, and thanks for coming back. It's always like
some of our favorite discussions on the show. So today
we have a few topics to cover and yeah, thank you,
thank you. Last minute thing.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah great to beha manyez, thanks for inviting me on
it so als fun to ramble about this kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
So yeah, we have other nerds that really enjoy it.
It's a rare Yeah, I love it. So the other
day you wrote an article on your blog. I believe
it's called right they called blog.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Still don't ask me. Yeah, I mean I barely know.
I'm like really like barely tech litterate. I think I
called it a blog. I don't know what people that
Probably people call it something else these days. But yeah,
it was kind of a sort of a ramble inspired
by reading a few papers and seeing a few genomics.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
So let's let's start on that. What was the the
article about that we're referencing, and I'll put it in
the descriptions where people can go to it and read
it themselves what you wrote, and then in there are
the resources that you're speaking about.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, so I think what what what was the title?
The title was.

Speaker 5 (02:50):
Ancient Union and the Thai Roots of Indian cannabis culture
was something like that similar to that, Yeah, yeah, which
was which is which is majorly overstating the case in
terms of it was more like, oh, this might be

(03:10):
one way that uh what I would call gangja land races,
some people would call them Sativa's tropical quote unquote drug
land races.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
How that how the Indian ones sort of the origins
of them basically.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
And like using seed taxonomy too.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, so that was that was the paper that I
read that inspired me to start writing it. So I've
been very good sent a piece a proper scientific, peer
reviewed study. I'd been sent by a bunch of people,
I think students of a of a of a sort

(03:55):
of within this field, very well known archaeobotanist called Professor
Dorian Fuller, who's an American guy who's at university, one
of the London universities. Anyway, he's a he's an archa
buttonist and an old old guy, you know, old compared

(04:16):
to us. And so he's written a few things related
he's he's all about all kinds of old crops, you know,
wheat and rice and militant that kind of things. But
he's also written quite a few different things related to cannabis.
And this is a student of hiss Rita dal Martello.

(04:36):
I think it's her name name in the article, Yeah,
the lead scientist on the paper, so basically her her.
What their idea is that you may be able to
use seed morphology as a way of looking at specialization

(05:00):
of cannabis land races basically yeah. And they're looking at
this site in Unan, which is sort of southern China,
very close to Burma, Thailand, Lao, those kind of places,
and the premises that basically at this site you can

(05:20):
see what they reckon could be the beginning of a
process of kind of divergence.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
It was like an archaeological dig.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, yeah, so Okay, yeah, I should, I should. I
should That's probably more important to clarify at this point.
So it's an archaeological dig at a at a very
important site in unand connected to a kind of Bronze
Age Iron Age civilization called the d N Kingdom. I
think it is. No one's quite sure who exactly the

(05:54):
d N who who were the sort of elites of
the DN Kingdom, but there's a general consense says that
it's very closely associated with kind of proto Thaie like
t a I rather than t h a I proto
Thai people. So either they either either these were sort
of early early Thai elites who actually ran the kingdom

(06:17):
or they or they were certainly connected to it, yes,
part of it, or very closely associated with it. And
this is in sort of if you were to look
at it on a map, it's sort of very far
south in China, next very close to the borders of Burma,
pretty close to the sort of cultural zone of Tibet
as well, so really on the edge of the sort

(06:37):
of in the broadest sense kind of Tibet and the
Himalayas essentially, Yeah, and the Eastern and Eastern sort of
Southeast Asian edge of that. So in French, French academics
sometimes call it the Southeast Asian Massive, the sort of
mountainous zone. It's very ethnically diverse. You've got kind of

(07:00):
the better Berman people, you've got synetic people. You know,
it's like a generally, I mean, this particular area did
get assimilated into the Chinese kind of world hm. But
on the whole it's a very difficult place for states

(07:23):
to control because it's very mountainous, it's very diverse, it's
pretty difficult to sort of impose centralized state authority on it.
But anyway, that's slightly tangential.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
But wouldn't that be awesome to live in a place
like that? Though?

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah? I mean, like there's a there's a there's some
sort of fairly controversial books written on it by anthropologists
who There's there's one called it's really good actually, called
The Art of Not Being Governed by what's his name, uh,

(07:58):
James James C. Scott. This is quite controversial, but it's
sort of very provocative and sort of inspiring to sort of,
you know, ponder over it because it presents the idea
that this sort of general area he calls it Zomia,

(08:21):
which is after one of the sort of ethnic groups
there is. This general area is sort of an area
of kind of where ethnicity is kind of will move
into in an attempt to escape centralized state control, to
escape taxation. M h. I think they call it corve labor,

(08:45):
just a form of taxation. You don't actually take money
from people, you just press gang them into working on
roads or building or whatever, you know. So that's one
reason you find groups like the Mong down in places
like Lao, because they've a lot of them have tended
to flee south into sort of the northern bits of

(09:05):
Lao and northern bits of Thailand as a way of
getting away from Han state building projects. Essentially, this is
all kind of tangential because actually the Thai, as in
th Ai, of whom the Thaie and the Lao and
the Shan are apart, actually did get assimilated into into
hand society down in that bit of unane where the

(09:26):
end kingdom is. So it doesn't actually really versus Thai.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
What is the main difference.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
So Thai t Ai is a more general grouping that
includes a whole bunch of different groups. So the Lao
Thai t Ai, the Thai Thai t h Ai a Thaie,
the Shan a Thai as in Shan State in Burma,
when all these groups are very closely associated with like

(09:54):
drug type cannabis, land races. Yeah, and then there's others
like the home and I mean tie down type ding.
There's all kinds of tight subgroups. And again, I feel,
to me, it's like a really interesting topic but also
one that I feel quite uncomfortable about in the sense
that like talking about people in an ethnographic way is

(10:17):
quite cringe in some ways.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
You know, I get that for sure.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
I mean just just for context, Like I read books
about this about English people because it kind of amuses
me to read people anthropologizing about the English, you know,
how we stand in cues and how we're passive aggressively
communicate and you know what I mean, because just just
just to just to put that disclaimer out there. But yeah, so,

(10:44):
but you know, there is a very close association between
the Tai ties like Shan Lao tie and you know,
Gamja land racist classics atievas ty stick type land racist.
And there's no question that you know, you could if
you wanted to paint a kind of picture based on

(11:04):
the idea that this Den Kingdom area was a zone
in which cannabis was undergoing kind of early domestication, and
that that you could if you wanted to see this
is see the seed morphology and the sort of see
that the cannabis seed archaeological cannabis seeds in this big

(11:26):
is telling a story of it kind of going. The
domestication going in two different directions, one towards being a
grain type food crop, fiber crop, very much bigger seeds,
and then the other going in the direction of being
specializing into a specific drug crop. It's which which they're

(11:47):
which they're associating with having smaller seeds. That's that's really
interesting to me. Yeah, and it's a hypothesis, you know, Yeah,
but it's not sort of they don't even in the
paper say this is definitely what was happening, like putting
it out there as an idea and it happened to
a write. I happened to see it and read it
at the same time as I was seeing some preliminary

(12:07):
genomic data which based on on on stuff that I've collected,
and you know, again sort of a caveat like the
thing I've written at the blog isn't meant to be
saying anything conclusive. It's just like, looking at the data,

(12:28):
you could make a case for their being distinct, like
distinct different domestication events going on around the Himalaya and
China sort of area. And because it seems like Southeast
Asian Ganga land races are a very clearly defined group

(12:53):
on a genetic level, and that they're clearly genetically distinct
from the South Asian cluster.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
This has been a hypothesis that a lot of really
experienced Canada cannibologists, I don't know what you call them,
like a bell above I think, I don't know how
to pronounce. Yeah, I mean a lot of people have
kind of leaned this direction before this scientific data was
even in So it's very fascinating.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, it seems like highly highly likely. You know, I
was checking with some proper kind of scientists, like people
who have the you know, know how and whatever to
actually really properly interpret the data, and they're saying, you know,
I don't like that that reading that I was suggesting.
They're saying that is going too far based on what

(13:42):
they've got. The things called camers, which are sort of units,
and you can you can choose genetic units like a
certain number of codons whatever you call them, the nuclear
tides that, yeah, like you can you can choose to
analyze it like groups of three or groups of six
or groups of nine, and based on different unit lengths

(14:05):
you get different results, you know, and some sort of
you can arbitrarily pick reading at a certain number of
nucleotide like slices of a certain number, and that will
give you different pictures. And it just happened that there
was one based on doing nine that gave this particular

(14:26):
one using nine camers that gave this particular picture, you know. Yeah,
so it's not sort of like this is all very
very preliminary, and like I got kind of carried away
with with what I'd seen, But you know, I think
there's a lot in it, and I guess would be
it is going to eventually show that there were multiple
different domestications. You know, there's a reason why everyone who's

(14:49):
looked closely at it has that punch, you know, even
back in nineteen twenty, you know, and whatever. But you know,
maybe maybe maybe that will turn out to not be
the case, and there was only one original domestication event,
and then there were lots of kind of subsequent specializations.

(15:11):
You know, who knows, but but but the but the
Southeast Asian drug type land races ganja land races definitely
show up as a distinctly defined cluster on that particular
way of analyzing it with geromic analysis. And yeah, like

(15:33):
the thing, the thing I said, the thing I started
sort of pondering about, speculating about, was that possibly they
actually sort of contributed to the Indian you know, Indian
cannabis culture by coming across through Assam through this kingdom,
a Thai kingdom called the Ahom who ruled northeast India,

(15:56):
so sort of from Burma all the way through to
ben Call from like the twelve hundreds through to the
mid nineteenth century. Yeah, And the reason why that sort
of just occurred to me is like one of the
funny things about India, despite having you know, this very
close association in people's minds with cannabis, you know, it's

(16:17):
literally cannabis indicare is sort of yeah, one of the
names that was given to cannabis drugs, you know, not
even on a formal taxonomic level. It was sort of
you know, unitalicized yes, it would be on bottles and things. Also,
you know, some people thought of it as a distinct species,
like the mark and people. But anyway, there's this very
close association with India and cannabis. But one of the

(16:40):
funny things is that actually, if you look at the
Sanskrit medical and religious literature, it seems to show up
really really late in That's what I thought, Yeah, in
in Indian, in Sanskrit writings, you know, so that there'll

(17:03):
be a lot of most Sanskritists if you were to
ask them, and this is not just Western Sanskritist. This
is like Indian scholars of a evader will say, you know,
drug cannabis came to India with Muslims in the sort
of you know, eleventh to thirteenth century, and you just
don't see it before that in any of these huge

(17:24):
medical texts that would list all these different species of plants,
like you know, hundreds of different species, and these long
lists of avadic medicine, and you know, cannabis would just
seemingly not be there, you know, until suddenly you get
to the thirteenth sort of eleventh to thirteenth century, and
then suddenly it just shows up everywhere, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
So people know we're talking about the common era and
not before.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
The yeah, yeah, yeah, So we're talking, you know, sort
of the era when Islam came to India in a
big way, which was sort of exactly began and then,
and it was a particular kind of Islam, was sort
of central Asian, persian Ate Islam that you found in
places like Afghanistan what's now done and strongly influenced by

(18:11):
Persian culture, but often the people involved are kind of
ethnically Turkic, so that Mughals would be the most famous example,
and they ruled India from you know, right through from
the from the medieval era up to the until British
colonialism started in the sort of eighteenth century. So it's

(18:35):
in most historians' minds and so on that this this
is this is the era of sort of Persianate Islam
when when suddenly cannabis intoxication or whatever, just you just
see it everywhere in literature, you know, in plays, in
tantric rituals, and and it's just conspicuous by its since

(19:00):
prior to that an any any any sort of unambiguous
reference to the idea that this is a plant that
gets you stoned, or even just any unambiguous name, isn't there.
Some people will say you can see it in the
Attava Vader or these kind of Vedic texts. But if
you speak to if you, if you were to ask

(19:21):
these Sanskritists, they say, well, it's just not clear what
it is. It could be anything that's referred to by
this name bang, which is sort of grammatically masculine or neuter,
if you if you know these kind of languages. Whereas
whereas when you get into the Islamic era, there's this

(19:41):
word bang with a long a, which is feminine grammatically,
which is the word that is clearly talking about cannabis.
Whereas in the Atava Vada, these very ancient sort of
Iron age and Bronze age texts, it could be any
number of different things that's being talked about. It could
be fiber hemp, because there is reference to that. It

(20:03):
is associated with textiles and fibers and stuff in some contexts. Yeah,
but it could be any number of things, you know.
So it's just very curious. So anyway, this is connect
the sort of threads. So I thought it was interesting
that that the era in which cannabis drugs very clearly

(20:28):
show up this Thai kingdom was ruling Northeast India. Because
you don't hear you almost never hear Sanskritists talking about
the possibility that that that that these these plants also
came into India from the northeast. It seems to have
been completely overlooked this possibility, and it's a it's a

(20:49):
fairly understudied, obscure kind of aspect of of of Indian history,
the Northeast Indian side of the story. And yet if
you look into the home literature, there's a lot of
references to bar and it's and it could also be
being talked about by the plant could be being talked
about under other names as well. So there's there's a

(21:13):
whole range of possibilities. It's like you've got this very
inaccurate sensor that you're using to detect what's going on,
which is like Sanskrit literature, it's like a very difficult
to date it with any precision. And there's all kinds
of like tendencies to refer to play sort of games

(21:34):
with words and use lots of different epithets. You know,
if you look at all the different epithets with cannabiss
like loads of them, you know, wow, how it's and
like vigia and all kinds of you know, indra, shammer
and all kinds of different names that could be used
that could be talking about cannabis, but they could also
be talking about other things, you know. Sidi murdika is

(21:56):
one of the other ones.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
Are they touching me about it in a drug type
when like with these other words, so it could possibly
be other type drugging types or.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Is it yeah, it can be so you can you
can see, like all kinds there's all kinds of different words,
like I think mother is one of them, and surer,
which can be talking about alcohol, but it can be
talking about any kind of intoxicating bruise. You know, you
can get these bruises made with the toura and cannabis
and areka n and all kinds of different ingredients which

(22:26):
refer to under the same name. But it could also
be really boring things, you know. So like city Murdakar
is one of these names that could mean which is
very closely associated with cannabis, Like in in Bengali legal
literature even in the nineteenth century, they'll talk about city
as one of the names of cannabis, and it's used

(22:50):
specifically to talk about like edible preparations made using with
the leaves and flowers and things like. Bang would be
the other name that you often, like if you if
you went to like a bug shop in Varanasi and
the sense sort of in North India, they'd be selling
this like very basic kind of powdered boiled pressed mixture

(23:15):
of just a green just a green green kind of
sludge basically made into balls which you mix. It's just
like leaf and leaf and flour and stuff that's all
being boiled and then you just mix it with milk
or almond milk or whatever and drink it, you know.
So that's that is that's that's fun. But it could

(23:38):
also be called city in especially in northeast in Eastern India.
But the point I was trying to get to is
just that, Ah, if you look at old kind of
tantric ritual texts, you know that you'll see references to
what pretty clearly seems to be cannabis in that under
the name city or city Murica and city means like

(24:00):
magical power, you know, so it sounds very exciting. So
that are these kind of rituals where you like blow
your mind with huge like fifteen grounds of bung, you know,
drink it and graveyard and like meditate on you know,
dead bodies or something really like left field weird shit,
you know.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
But on the other hand, if you if this names
Sidy movie cur if you looked at it in other
I evadic or like ivadically I evaded traditions influenced by
Indian ivader, it might be talking about like radishes, you know,
like really boring plants. You know, because what it just
means is like what it literally means is kind of

(24:37):
efficacious herb, you know, useful herb basically, and it doesn't
necessarily mean anything kind of out there and esoteric, you know.
So my point was just that it's like it's a
if you think of it in terms of sort of
I don't know, signal, you know, it's like it's a

(24:58):
in that kind of science, it's like this this whole
You've got a whole pile of data in the literature
that's just like really ambiguous, you know, yeah, like looking
for UFOs or something.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
It sounds a lot like you were for your topology.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Absolutely, Yeah, people get very carried away, you know, and
so you need a kind of balance of like very
skeptical minded people and more kind of ecstatically minded people
who will be like, you know, it's probably not who knows,
you know.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
Yeah, Unfortunately I'm into that topic too and have to
do with that a lot.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
No, I noticed, I noticed you were, which is why
I brought it up because I'm quite quite into it
as well.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
But yeah, fascinating.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, anyway, that was very long winded ramble.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
But but no, it's all important for people to understand
these different aspects to what we're going to talk about
to make it make sense. So you had to have
to the the.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Thing the thing while it's in my mind that might
make it clear for people, like because I'm quite bad
at explaining stuff. It's like, there are three basic products,
particularly in the Indian context, and then anywhere that's kind
of influenced by Indian cannabis culture, so you know how
into obviously Pakistan and Bengal because they were all part

(26:22):
of it, and Burma and so on, and you know,
even into Afghanistan. So the three basic products are bang
as in sort of the leaf and the flowers. It
could be male and female all powdered up and used
for cooking or eating. And then there's ganza, which is,

(26:43):
since the media, all kind of semi sensi should be
since amelia, and you can, you know, see the sin
simular technique described very clearly back in the eighteen hundreds
and implicitly as far back as the kind of thirteenth century.
You know, oh wow, yeah, because there Sanskrit texts that describe,

(27:05):
you know, how how the females are what you need,
and these are in tropical composed in tropical areas where
it's pretty clear that people were chopping the males down
as early as possible, because the whole text are all
about maximizing resin production. So there's there's bun, which is
the basic stuff. There's gunga, which is kind of sin
samlia or semi sensi. And then there's charis, which is

(27:27):
what what Westerners tend to call hash or hashih. They
hand rubbed, usually for either hand rubbed or or dry sibbed.
So charis is charis actually by origin is more much
more closely. The name is much more closely associated with
dry sibb. You know. The first references you see too, uh,

(27:51):
using the word chartists are in like the context of
like Uzbex and Afghans and Persians. So if you go
to Persia, or you go to Afghanistan, or you go
to Pakistan, or you go to like real proper Central
Asia kind of Wasbekistan, and you ask for Charis or
Charist would be like they normally kind of swallow the
second a if you know what I mean, it's more
like chas. You know, So if you ask for that,

(28:15):
that's the name. That's the main name for dry sived.
That's that's that's the main name for hash you know,
And it's very specifically for hash Whereas if you talk
about or read like if you read old medieval Arabic
or Arabic influenced literature like the Thousand and one Nights

(28:39):
or something where cannabis features now and then when they're
talking about hashish, they're normally talking about the plant, you know,
and basic preparations of the plant. It doesn't that name
Hashish doesn't necessarily mean dry sived or as in. In fact,
the further back you go, the more likely it's talking
about a really big sic preparation of the kind of

(29:03):
bang type that I was talking about. Just like rough
leaf and flour for eating specifically for eating, you know,
but anyway, there's those three those are the three main
kind of products and the you know, since amelia or
ganga is specifically associated with the tropics, and then charis

(29:23):
is specifically associated with Central Asia and the kind of
peripheries of Central Asia sort of the Himalayas h and
Hindu cushion stuff. And you've got, you know, clearly two
different types of plants associated with that, like the kind
of Indica type what's it, a semi dwarf type for
for for charis, and then you know sativas as we

(29:46):
would call them for for Sincamelia and ganga. So and yeah,
they seem to be the genomics are all pointing to
them being pretty clearly distinct populations, you know. Yeah, with
the two distinct possibly possibly you know, like I'm reading,
I'm sort of overreading it in some ways, but two

(30:08):
distinct populations began to the Southeast Asian and the South Asians,
the Indian groups being quite genetically distinct.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
It's always fascinating to my brain because, like you know,
growing up, I've always considered like broad leaf is always
going to be like that. Pakistan Afghanistan area. I don't
really associate it ever with not much at least with India.
When I think of India, I think like the weedy Jungli.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Or look, that's basically right, Yeah, like.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
These things can't the the broad leaf was it still
coming from up in that Tibet area.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
Probably I've probably been like basically because I've explained it
pretty bad. I mean, so the broad broad leafs no, no,
mean your your your your your initial understanding is correct
in the sense that like the broad leaves stuff definitely
is the classic indicate sort of semi dwarf, you know,

(31:12):
Classic indicate is definitely associated with north northern and northwest
northwest Pakistan, Afghanistan, you know, possibly with Pakistan, and then
definitely also Shinjiang kind of which is political inside the
political borders of China. But is you know, historically ethnically

(31:34):
kind of Turkic, Yeah, and persian Ate so and and
but yeah, it's I mean it's possible. And again, like
I don't want to overstate it, but looking at the
very preliminent preliminary data that I've seen, there does seem
to be a little bit of overlap between Chinese land

(31:57):
races and those in the you know, but like really
on the edges kind of overlap. But you kind of
expect that in the sense that it's quite likely that again,
you know, pincher salt, but it's quite likely that Indicas
were sort of domesticated somewhere like Shinjiang, so sort of

(32:17):
on the peripheries of the Chinese proper quote sort of
land race zone. So he wouldn't it's not surprising to
see a tiny bit of like overlap. And then as
you move further into Afghanistan in places, you know, it's
a fair guest you get less of that showing up.
You know, yes, of that chineseness. But you know, people

(32:42):
like Dorian Fuller Oka the Arka Button History were talking
about earlier. You know, he reckons that. He seems to
he seems to think that there was a sort of
initial domestication event somewhere in China, sort of around the

(33:04):
Upper Yellow River, which is yeah, and I think he's
sort of you know, he sort of says like kind
of six thousand BCE ish, you know, yeah, probably associated
with millet farmers, and you know that I guess presumably
it was sort of growing as a weed around areas

(33:24):
where they were farming in the upper Yellow River, and
then they could have kind of got gradually brought into
domestication there, and that maybe that's your sort of original
domestication event. And then you've got specialization going off in
different directions, you know. So you've got one if you
go east from there, you're going into China, and it's

(33:46):
primarily a grain and fiber crop.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Hey everyone, this is Matthew. I just wanted to point
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We also have our Breeders Dash Syndicate dot dash shop
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(34:14):
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(34:58):
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I'm really stoked on the merch too, high quality stuff.
We have soft shirts, we have heavyweight shirts, we have
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(35:21):
check it out. I know you guys hate commercials. I
hate commercials too, but I don't really give a fuck.
Everybody else does commercials, why can't I?

Speaker 2 (35:30):
You know. So it's sorry, just to just to rewind.
It's starting out as a multi purpose crop. Okay, I've
got a drug use, food use, textile use, cordage usee
and then as you go east into China, it sort
of gets domesticated exclusive, it specializes towards being just a
grain and fiber crop, and then as you as you

(35:52):
go west into Central Asia, it's specializing more towards drugs.
You know, were also with so it's also used as
a food, but much less as a fiber. Yeah. But
you know, I mean, there's there's there's way more to
the picture than I'm than I'm giving just buy that,

(36:13):
you know. But but yeah, and then you know, in
the Himalayas, it's still a multipurpose crop. You know, Yeah,
it's pretty interesting. So I sort of speculated that maybe
it goes into Tibet as a multipurpose crop, and in
the Himalayas it's remained primarily a multipurpose crop for food
and fiber around drugs. But then as you go down
into tropical India, it becomes exclusively a drug crop. You know,

(36:36):
you can't nobody farms it as a fiber plant in
India in the tropics. Yeah, there are other plants that
are used as sources of fiber, like uh, sun hemp
is one of them. But anyway, but yeah, so the
idea is you know, one way, one one sort of
speculative narrative is that it starts out multipurpose somewhere on

(36:59):
the priiffer of China specializes as it diffuses out into
different places. But I think it's pretty likely there's other
domestication going on in kind of places like southern Russia
and Ukraine. Yea, like once you get over, once you've
gone right up to sort of the Eastern Mediterranean, in

(37:20):
places like Lebanon and Turkey and so on. The the
things I've collected from around there are looking like a
very unexpected kind of mixture of a sort of Eurasian
or euro kind of fiber hemp mixed with what looks

(37:44):
like it might be Indian ganga genetics.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
That's really interesting, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
Which is not at all what I expected. And again
it may maybe this is all completely just a misreading
of the data, and it's just a chance reading. So
don't don't say, like, don't take any of this as
like gospel. But yeah, like looking at things like Lebanese,
it's like that's weird. You know, it's like it's it's
not got any like Afghan or you know, Central Asian

(38:13):
Charist land race in it at all. You know, it's
like sort of Southern European MP for Northern European HIM
and then like kind of you know, ten percent South
Asian drug type, you know, stivent type land races, you know, yeah,

(38:37):
and which is very very weird, like not at all guest,
you know. And you see that same characteristic, although not
quite as extreme in the things from Greece. And similarly
like the Sinai we've got, which is this sort of
semi dwarf, which if you look at it you might say, yeah,

(38:59):
it looks pretty indicate, but it's like it's got a
tiny bit of what might be ah No, it's sort
of it's like got much more South Asian in it,
and then like loads of what was it, Southern European HEMP,

(39:19):
I think anyway, it's like not got it's got hardly
anything of what might be like Afghanan. But this is
just a preliminary sort of like a scan of like
one sample, you know. But it's like it's really like unexpected.
It's like not at all what I would have guessed,
you know, I was I'd always imagine this sort of
wave of of cannabis culture coming out of sort of
personate Central Asia from places like Afghanistan sort of coming

(39:42):
west in the Mongrel conquest era, which is when you
suddenly see all of these references to it in literature,
you know, So it kind of follows that it must
be that what people are growing in those places a
sort of originates over in Afghanistan and stuff, because you know,
they're semi dwarf looking plants kind of in the Cree.
But having said that, if you talk to people who

(40:04):
know these kind of plants well and you've grown them,
like a lot of them will say, no, they're kind
of sativas. They're just like really small sativas that finished
really early, you know. Yeah, so that's like the Lebanese
and Sinai and Greek things, you know.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Yeah, I guess it's not that surprising in a way.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
So it isn't it isn't It isn't it isn't. Yeah,
like I think cs I just grew some of the
Syini and I haven't. I can't remember what exactly he
said about it, but he was comparing also the Syrian
to the there's a Lebanese seed line over here. I
don't know if it came originally from your stock and

(40:45):
someone popped it and kept it going or where it's from.
But it's very similar in scent profile and stuff the Syrian.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Similar to the similar to the Syrian. Yes, I mean
that's exactly what you expect. I mean, if you look
at it on a map, I mean, Beca is like
if you go north into Becca, you know, like once
you've gone through all the kind of what is it
has bar kind of areas I guess not anymore. But
once you've gone through there from from the you go

(41:17):
through the hash bits and you get through the Hasbala
bit and then you're on the Syrian border, you know.
And and if you read all the colonial literature out
of Egypt, in the British produced, they described in quite
a lot of detail like where where all the hash
was coming from? When when it was in the sort

(41:38):
of early early twentieth century through to the sort of
Second World War, and like well actually it started, you know,
it started being originally of course it was all being
produced in Egypt, and then there was a ban on
production in Egypt in the eighteen sixties and it all
went over to the Greece. The production will got shifted
to Greece by the Greeks and sort of Lebanese and

(42:02):
people who were controlling the the trade. And then when
it got banned in Greece in the nineteen thirties, it
all shifted, So there was a major shift towards Lebanon
and Syria. And you know, it's I'd absolutely expect to
see that same fiber influence in the Syrian as well.

(42:27):
I Mean, the interesting thing is, you know, like when
you say that, you think, well, there must be quite
ropey plants, but they smell fantastic, the good.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Ones, you know, Yeah, that's and they're really unique.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, very unusual, and you know, like you give them,
you know, take them through a few generations and I'm
sure there's like lovely you could really kind of concentrate
some of those aromas that are just nothing like the
typical kind of Afghan profiles, you know.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yeah, as Syrian actually from pictures, it is so resinous
that I think modern day smokers would be very interested
in it. Yeah, right, that that look to it too,
like that people would be very interested in it.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
It's much more longer bracts, longer foxtails, but the actual
resin production itself is copious.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah, and what what what we've found this that you know,
if you take the if you if you take if
you in breed those, or you know, just select a
little bit for resin even like sort of because we
try not to sort of narrow things down if possible,
so we're just cow obviously crap stuff and and just

(43:39):
you know, select for resin and true to type up
to a point. Yeah, yeah, I slightly regret having selected
against the because in in the in the Syrian there's
a there was the sort of kind of hempy ropie

(43:59):
phenotype shying up mh. The Yeah, it's a minority of
the population, but it's in there, and from a genomics
point of view, it would be super interesting to look
at it. Yeah, I would obviously not something that growers
are likely to be looking for, but yeah, it's like nerves, Yeah,

(44:20):
like is this whole thing of like where is this?
Because because there's there's traits in in in them that
like if you plant them, if you if you've seen
fields in Becavelli and Lebanon, they plant it like you
plant something like finola, you know, like really close so
that the plants will grow to a single stem more

(44:42):
or less, and you can just pack in loads of plants,
which on a you know, per acre, per hectare basis
gives you like way more yield, you know. Yeah, even
though like most Western growers want these like lovely branchy
looking plants with roads between them so you can yeah, yeah,
that's if you're if you're doing it on a yield basis,

(45:03):
you want this very high density planting, which the Lebanese
and people have worked out ages and ages ago. But
the capacity of the plants to do that, to grow
to this single stem, I think is probably something that's
coming from that that hemp heritage, you know. Yeah, and

(45:24):
also the very early finish, so like in in Lebanon,
you know, they sow as early as March and cut
in August, you know, and again that that that sort
of this is very speculative, but it fits with that
big presence of the sort of northern Eurasian origin like

(45:51):
that you know, practically day neutral kind of well actually yeah,
kind of, I guess. But yeah, like when when I
say northern Eurasian, I mean things that seem to be
going back towards that kind of quote unquote ruder alis
kind of yeah, day neutral auto dwarf dwarf kind of thing.

(46:13):
So like if anyone's grown the Siberian line.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
I think we just screw those two and we're trying
to figure out what semi auto men.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
Oh yeah, it's just it's one of those. The thing
is like anyway, the the day neutral trait in these plants,
like you know, it's it's very squishy anyway, So it's
not kind of it's not necessarily like clear cut. Even
within one population. Some of them will just be a
bit like you know, possibly photo period, you know. Yeah,

(46:47):
but I mean it's it's a it's a term. I
think it started getting used in Spain, and it just
means that they'll kind of go into flower like around
eighteen likely, you know, a six to night whatever it is.
I can't be mass yeah, but yeah, they'll just be
like way earlier than my stuff. So they'll be ready,

(47:09):
like like the Lebanese and the Mariotico, the Great One,
and even the Pseudanese and the Syria, and they'll all
be if you were to grow them at like forty
degrees north, they'll be like properly ready in the like
first week of September or something. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Yeah, so so it could so it could be referring
to both like early what we call over here early triggering,
which is just not necessarily break based on height or hours,
but it could be based on both. But it's just
an early triggering type plant where it's constantly wanting to
go into flower, but not necessarily an auto flower as well. Yeah,

(47:46):
I mean an auto flower.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Like basically we need people here who are doing like
much more like hands on work with this stuff than
you know, I'm like read, I'm like sort of actually,
like you know, more often than not when I'm collecting,
I'm not actually seeing the plants growing and stuff. You know,
I understand there's anyway that there's like they've definitely isolated
like an auto at least one like auto gene, and

(48:13):
it's it's less I'm less clear on like to what
extent that is going that, and I think it's associated
with what you'd loosely call with what's collectively known as ruderralis,
you know. Yeah, And and the sort of of the
things I've collected, the Siberian and others are showing as

(48:38):
being like very kind of origin point type representations of that,
and they're from places like bash Kortistan which sorry that
actually was collected by Russian land race Bureau who actually
did the collection of that. Yeah, but then there's like, yeah,
so that and then what are the others? But anyway,

(49:01):
there's a gene in those types of plants which is
definitely an auto flowering gene, and maybe it's maybe when
you're seeing like so much of that in things like
that type of genetics in things like lebanese, that is
what's involved in the in how early they are. But
I don't notice the answer, you know, there's so much
that I haven't got down into the details of it yet.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Yeah, it's hard to it's really hard to to like
like pin down why they're going into flower at twenty
four hours a lot. Is it just a specific gene
that just does that, or if there's a range that
make that that is that gene that is like multiple
genes involved where it's you know like early triggering and

(49:42):
can do that and can also yeah, you know, be
just regular flowering.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Yeah, because they were trying to they were they were
trying to phenotype all this like in this single garden gray. Yeah,
and we're finding that it's like, you know, you can
have different plants kind of doing slightly different things which
are very clearly the same land race, and they're like
just some of them, some of them are like behaving.
It's it's not easy to sort of isolate it. So

(50:10):
probably are Probably there's a bunch of different stuff going on,
you know, Yeah, and they just don't know yet, Like
there's all kinds of similarly complicated things with disease resistance,
and that they've sort of isolated various genes, and there
are like not only are their resistance genes, there are
clearly kind of susceptibility genes as well that those have

(50:33):
been inadvertently selected for by selecting, by farmers, selecting for
other things you know, they actually want, and then you're
unintentionally selected for the susceptibility to power mild you.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
Like the link trait, that link traits, and you can't
have one without the other.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah. Probably, I mean again, it's like it's all it's
all so early days with this kind of it. Yeah,
and I'm sort of very prepherally involved with it, you know. Yeah,
but kind of pastor people who I have been working
on it what's going on. Yeah, But it's it's a

(51:11):
bit like with eupology, you know, it's like it's all connected.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
Look, not really, it sounds like a conversation with me
and C. S. I. It'll be like I'm like, look,
it's everything, It's all connecting. It's definitely like no, wait,
wait done.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
You know, yeah, it's it's it's useful to have people
who are prepared to sort of do the kind of
much more pedestrian actual work. Yeah, slowly glowing through like yeah,
testing their hypotheses. But yeah, I'm much more like showing

(51:46):
me the results. I want to like speculate about grand
historical narratives and like origins and exotic ethnicity. Yeah, but yeah,
but yes, the I I think if we are talking
in terms of the sort of history of it, I

(52:08):
think the Turkey is probably a big part of it.
And if we're talking about how much sort of fiber
type influence there is in the uh, you know, Lebanese
and Syrian and and those types of plants, because they
were all of those areas but within the Ottoman Empire, yeah,

(52:32):
as was you know, Greece and stuff, And there's no
question that you know, there's I mean, there are there
are even land races, like there was a Smyrna land race,
Like if I'm pronouncing that right, smanner as in a
place in Turkey, there was a particular land race known
by that name, which was a multi purpose semi dwarf

(52:54):
multipurpose land race didn't produce very good fiber, but you
could grow up for fiber. It was primarily grown for
seed production, but you could also use it for making hashi.
You can see pictures of it in some early American
like science papers by list the list of Dewey I
think is his name. And this type of plant was

(53:15):
grown throughout the Ottoman Empire, which means it was growing
in all kinds of places like Lebanon and Romania and
Greece and stuff even got grown in America for producing
bird seed and things. Oh wow. And you know so
it was very similar type of plant to the Lebanese
pash land race. You know. Yeah. Uh, I'd imagine you.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
Could put me wondering if it's still over here.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
I don't know if it is. I mean, unfortunately, like
all the all the you know, USDA cannabis successions from
from back from that era that they may have had
or got destroyed at some point or what didn't get maintained,
you know. So if you were to look on the
kind of historic databases, you can may well find that

(54:07):
it was at one point in the collection. Yeah, they
had stuff from like shin Jiang. You know, there was
one called Kandiv, which is which they even grew in
Nevada at the USDA station down in Nevada because obviously
ideal place to grow that, yeah, desert ta type land race.

(54:29):
And yeah, it's like a real proper, proper indicate, you know,
big fat leaflets. And they even talk about how it
smelled like skunk. You know, it's just like nineteen fourteen,
you know, nineteen thirteen there's a guy called Frank Mayer
who went around China collecting all kinds of plants, like
the mayor lemon. You know, maya is it? We call

(54:51):
it may yeah, Maya yeah, yeah, so Frank Maya, Yeah,
so maya lemon. And he collected all kinds of different stuff,
including the hash you know, land races from like Yakand
and places like that way down in southern Shinjang kind
of near Tibet and Kashmir in places. And then they

(55:13):
also that they got the British console in Kashgar up
in northern Shinjang to send a bunch of like some
massive shipments of in the conceed over to the US
for them to grow as well, and they destroyed it. Yeah,

(55:34):
so at some point, no one knows who, but it
could have been several different events, but there were sort
of will neglect and probably some deliberate destruction of the collections. Yeah,
at some point. But it's really not clear because obviously,
like people who were around at times when this might
have happened and not likely to want to, like if

(55:54):
they know, to sort of stir up.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Yeah, I wouldn't think so.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Yeah, so I don't think I think it's unlike anyone's
ever going to get to the bottom of it. But yeah,
they and there was there was like a lot of
there was there's quite a bunch of stuff from that
from those you know, there's pictures of literally of the
growth Candivy yeah, in in in and then and then,
and there's some sort of but they did some studies

(56:21):
of it. I think they were interested in its potential
medicinal uses, you know, Oh I'm sure, yeah, yeah, uh
you know, but it was not long after we're talking
nineteen fourteen, it was not long after that that, you know,
the Americans and you know, kind of going back to
what we were talking about, like the Egyptians pushing for

(56:47):
you know, international prohibition of yeah, of cannabis at the
League of Nations. You know, that's so weird. Yeah, and
you know, using material from a lot of it from
Egypt in India that had been collected under the British
and kind of you know, quote unquote lunatic asylums to

(57:07):
sort of push prohibition of cannabis, even though the British
themselves were ironically at the League of Nations going, maybe
we could just leave cannabis off the legislation. You know,
it's quite useful for us in our colonies, making us
a lot of money. And the Americans and the Egyptian
delegates to going, no, it's the you know devil's weed,
and yes, yeah, it turns you into a lunatic. Ban

(57:30):
it all and like stick it onto the same legislation.
And this was all in Egypt. It was the epicenter
of where this started. So because there was this real
problem with what they called white drugs coming from Yeah,
it's so funny how it used to be, like coming

(57:51):
from Switzerland and Germany and places. There was a massive
influx of like pharmaceutical heroin into Egypt in the sort
of nineteen twenties, I guess, so just before and basically
there was a sort of from the perspective of the
British counternarcotics police and you know, the Egyptian Egyptians themselves,

(58:15):
was basically what they call the kind of plague, you know,
they called it h the new plague of her and addiction,
And this was what precipitated the push for the first
like really sort of serious attempts to like actually ban everything,
to kind of create a mechanism for like international prohibition
of all of this stuff. So this is pretty much

(58:37):
one hundred.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Years ago now, Yeah, and still and still an issue.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Yeah, still fucking mess. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
Ever since there's some of those things just just I
don't know, eminate for centuries through religion and any any agenda,
any agenda to control.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
I think a lot of it is about control. I mean,
I'm very much these things should be a question of
personal choice. Sure, I think it's just a massive overreach.
I'm talking all I'm talking all all all drugs, you know, Yes,
I agree, the really controversial ones like meth and fertimin
and aaron all the way through to psychoelics. I think

(59:18):
it's a huge mistake to sort of try and which
is what's happening now, is trying to sort of psychedelic
exceptionalism or cannabis exceptionalism. Yeah great, Yeah, Okay, you can
legalize all these things, but you then leave actually the
most serious problem that's all connected to class and race,

(59:39):
youth meth being quite quite white trash drug, and you
know exactly, and all of that being a sort of
black inner city drug and whatever else. It's just all
of the worst aspects of it as a kind of
proxy for race war and a proxy for class war. Yeah,
the main place, and then all the kind of nice
white people primarily get there, like LSD and magic mushrooms

(01:00:01):
and whatever. And it's a very good point. Yeah, I'm
sort of a real bugbear for me. I've been reading
stuff today about its various basically psychedelic corporation. It's trying
to get their hands on five d MT five mythoxy
DNT as this sort of wonder drug. And you know

(01:00:22):
they're talking about we've been developing it, We've been have
these programs to develop what are you developing? It already
exists in nineteen thirty fucking five. You know, it's in
nature already, Like who the fuck are you?

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
You know, yeah, yeah, off this.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Thing and like cash in. You knowd T is a
sort of it's basically you know, I mean, it's just
d MT with a methoxy group stuck onto it. Okay,
So metham threttening is just threatening with a methoxy group
stuck onto.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
So that's the connection. Is the methotic group connection.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Yeah, that's the that's yeah. And you know it's a
it's a classic like you know with the whole kind
of powder cocaine versus crack cocaine, like one is just
free base and one is the soul. Yeah. And then
you know, am fetamine, like adderall is amfetamine. Meth is
just adderall with the methoxy group stuck on it. No

(01:01:14):
one has conclusively proven there's any difference in the farmac
kinetics of how it actually affects you when it's in
your body, you know. Yeah, And yet meth is this
sort of horror drug that makes your teeth fall out
and turns you into the walking zombie skeleton, and adderall
is something you give to your eight year old because
they won't sit in a chair. Drevening on about algebra

(01:01:36):
or something. It's like, yeah, it's amazing how we can
sort of delude ourselves.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
You know, yeah, it is, it really is.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
You can get an Adderall prescription in the UK now,
like super easy. You know. Yeah, I'm not advocating for it.
I'm just saying like, no, no, yeah. A friend of
mine is a GP and she just says she's got
these kids who've been on TikTok. I say, kids are
probably something you've been on TikTok. I've just been watching
all these influences about ADHD and stuff, and they're just

(01:02:06):
pouring in, like, you know, trying to get a prescription
for adderall. And she's saying, apparently, if you go private,
she has never heard of anyone who's gone private in
the UK being refused a prescription for fetterman. You know,
like you've got to pay like five hundred dollars or

(01:02:28):
something for consultation, but she said she's never heard of
anyone being refused. So you know, if you memorize the
symptoms and you're good enough for acting, you know, you
can just get yourself an unfettermine prescription.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
Go get spun. If you have the money.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Yeah. Meanwhile, it's like, if you look at the arrest
statistics for the States these days, like meth is like
way way the most extreme, and it's if you look
at who's actually being arrested, it's it's almost entirely like Quoe,
Hispanic people, and of those, almost entirely men. So it's

(01:03:06):
basically like fifty percent of the arrest so like twenty
thirty something Hispanic guys who are being picked up for it. Yeah,
so it's the same fucking story.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
Same story, just depends on what class and yeah, how
it's moved.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
Yeah, yeah, I don't want to pick.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
Want to sit at the table with the syndicate. Check
out our Patreon and our link.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
Tree or description below.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
Our merch side is officially live.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
We have all.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Sorts of shirts, hoodies and goodies to sort you out,
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Angus from The Real Seed Co - Cannabis Ancient Past, Seed Taxonomy, & Tai Asian Ancestry

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