Gift of the Gods

Imagine a plant. One that humans have cultivated for twenty five thousand years. Found in the oldest fabrics ever discovered. Revered by ancient civilizations as a divine gift. Capable of replacing every harmful petroleum product with something natural and renewable.

This is not fantasy. This plant exists.

It is hemp.

From the moment humanity settled and began working the soil, hemp became inseparable from civilization. As fabric, it proved far more durable than cotton. It required no pesticides because insects avoided it naturally. It needed a fraction of the water cotton demanded. It grew to harvest in just three months.

For millennia, hemp fiber clothed humanity. The oldest surviving textiles contain it. The original Levi's jeans were made from it. Ropes and sails that carried explorers across oceans were woven from hemp. Without this plant, the age of discovery would have been impossible.

Ancient Sumerians cultivated it. Chinese emperors mandated its growth. Australian aborigines used it. Indian traditions celebrated it.

The Greeks associated hemp with Amphitrite, goddess of the sea and wife of Poseidon. They understood its importance to maritime civilization.

But hemp offered more than fiber.

Ancient priests and shamans used preparations from this plant in religious ceremonies. They believed it opened channels to divine communication. Modern dismissals paint this as primitive intoxication. The reality was more sophisticated.

The compound in hemp that affects consciousness is THC. In proper doses, combined with meditation and ritual preparation, it calms the nervous system. It activates the hippocampus, the brain region associated with creativity and transcendent experience. Trained practitioners could achieve states of profound insight.

This was not recreational drug use. It was technology for exploring consciousness.

Hemp seeds provided complete protein, rich in Omega fatty acids. Hemp oil burned clean in lamps. Hemp pulp made paper that lasted centuries. The documents that survived antiquity often did so because they were written on hemp paper.

The great painters worked on hemp canvas. Their masterpieces endured for hundreds of years because the material itself resisted decay.

One plant. Thousands of applications. Woven into the fabric of human civilization for longer than recorded history.

Then, in the twentieth century, it vanished from daily life.

Someone decided humanity should forget.