This idea was first put forward by Dr. Richard Evans Schultes, who called the plant, “one of [humanity’s] oldest domesticates, dating back back nearly to the beginning of agriculture.”
Dr. Schultes (1915-2001) made early and significant contributions to the study of cannabis in an era when the plant was not often taken seriously by researchers. He was a preeminent Harvard biologist and the father of modern ethnobotany, “the study of a region’s plants and their practical uses through the traditional knowledge of a local culture and people.”