Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

Sennacharib 11 (705–681 BC), which contained thousands of clay
tablets and fragments containing texts of all kinds (royal inscriptions,
chronicles, mythological and religious texts, contracts, royal grants
and decrees, royal letters, assorted administrative documents, etc.)
from the 7th century BC. The oldest clay tablets go back to 3000 BC.
2820–2696 BC The transliteration of Chinese into English followed the Wade-Giles
method until1958 when Pinyin took over. ‘Ben Cao’ (Pinyin) or Pen
Tsao (WG= Wade-Giles) – a pharmacopoeia, or book containing an
official list of medicines, has been said to have been compiled under
the direction of the mythical Emperor Shen-nong of China about
2500 BC, but the earliest mention of a text called ShenNong
Jing (Classic of Shennong) is by authors who lived during the
period immediately following the fall of the Han Dynasty (220 AD). It
describes the use of 365 medicinal plants, including opium (Papaver
somniferum), ephedra (Ma huang, Ephedra
sinica/vulgaris/equisetina), hemp, henbane seed (Hyoscyamus
niger L.) and chaulmoogra. It also describes different varieties of
stones and minerals used as medicines, which included cinnabar (
Yoke, 1968). It took approximately 3,000 years before the work of Shen
Nong and his followers was documented in a book called Shen Nung
Pen Ts’ao Ching (WG) [elsewhere it is called Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing
(Pinyin) or Pen-Ching (WG) or Shenong Herbal] by Ts’ao Hung-Ching
(451–536 AD) and finally published in c500 AD. It contained the oldest
known therapeutic description of Cannabis sativa. Henbane: ’forces
one to walk madly and see demons’. ShenNong was reputed to have
tasted all kinds of herbs and encountered seventy kinds of toxic
substances in a single day, but he was a semi-mythical legend and this
could not have been true (Baohua & Xingjun, 1980).
Bronze Age (2,300–600 BC)
2000 BC At an archaeological site, Gonur South, in the Margiana district of
Turkestan in the Kara Kum desert old bowls dating back to between
the first and second millennium BC have been found with traces of
cannabis, ephedra and opium, which are believed to be the
constituents of Soma, a hallucinogenic potion.
Around 2,000 BC, people began to settle on the Japanese islands
and engage in farming. They left behind unique earthenware with
braid-like patterns on them. This period is generally called the
11 Sennacharib= ruler of Assyria (705 – 681 BC).