The history of using cannabis for its anesthetic qualities can be traced as far back as the Neolithic period, approximately 4000 BCE. Hash consumption began a little later in Persia (primarily Iran) and Central Asia (primarily Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). It’s likely that hash, like cannabis, traveled the Silk Road out of eastern Asia to the Middle East. Early on it was more likely used as incense than for anything else. Incense, like that produced using frankincense and myrrh, was quite valuable in ancient times. These substances were also resins that had been used as medicine and in religious ceremonies for centuries.

Charas, or resin produced by gently rubbing growing cannabis plants, was the earliest form of hash. But when agriculture came into being, around 9000 BCE in India, woven sieves were developed to separate grains from plants. Those same sieves were used to separate cannabis resin from the rest of the harvested, dried plant, creating the first hash, according to preeminent hash scholar Frenchy Cannolli. Charas is still made, mostly in India, by hand rubbing live plants. Hash is differentiated by the fact that it’s sieved, by hand or mechanically, from dried, cured cannabis.

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