Early Iconography of Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article was to track down the earliest known illustrations of Cannabis. Our in silico search methodology utilized computerized search engines and electronic databases for citation tracking. Many botanists prior to Linnaeus, beginning with Dioscorides, described more than one presumptive type of Cannabis. In some cases they were describing male and female plants of Cannabis sativa L., sometimes they were describing a species of a genus other than Cannabis, and in some cases they were describing a second putative species, Cannabis indica Lamarck. The oldest extant illustration we found of C. sativa dates to 512 AD in the Juliana Anicia Codex, although its authenticity is in question; the next oldest icon may date to ca. 650 AD, or possibly 800–900 AD. The oldest illustration of Chinese hemp (a biotype of C. indica) that we know of in a mechanically printed book dates to 1248 AD. The first illustration of C. sativa in a mechanically printed book dates to 1484 AD, less than 30 years after the first printing of the Gutenberg Bible (although the Chinese invented movable type printing about 400 years earlier), and the first illustration of C. indica by a European dates to 1578 AD.