By that time, over ten thousand years ago, man had the knowledge and skills to make fibres for clothing from the stem of the cannabis plant. It is known that the plant was used in the Empires of ancient China, about five thousand years ago. "Pen Ts'ao" by Shen Nung, was the title of the first Medical text, or 'pharmacopoeia'. It was written in the year 2737BC and it calls the plant a "superior herb".

In fact, it is thought that the ancient Empire of China was the first nation to learn how to make paper from Hemp, long before the followers of Islam and Europeans. Having strong and long-lasting paper meant that knowledge and ideas could be recorded and passed along to the following generation; and that the knowledge could be refined, improved upon and examined by anyone. The rest of the world had to pass on information by word of mouth, which corrupts the essence of an idea, and so China was scientifically superior to the rest of the world for 1'500 years.

Around the same time, but in the North-Eastern parts of India, Vedic priests wrote hundreds of poems and prayers and compiled them in the 'Rgveda Samhita'. This is the oldest religious text known to man; these priests also worshipped the plant and it was named 'Soma'. This is the only known case of a single plant being worshipped as a God.

By 1400bc the Hindus of India were using it as a part of religious practise. They smoked it in resin form, gathered by running through fields of huge, flowering cannabis plants and then scraping the resin clinging to their skin. They called this 'Charas', now it is often called 'Hashish'. Only five hundred years on, Gautama Buddha, an important figure in Buddhism was said to have survived a physical ordeal by consuming the seed of the plant; which provided him with plentiful sustenance.

Cannabis made sails for ships, which led to travel, exploration and commerce. It had such economic worth that the Romans were urged into conflict with another ancient Empire, Carthage, over the control of trade routes, for hemp and spices into the Mediterranean.

Cannabis was valued as a medicinal plant; used for pain relief, depression, the treatment of infections, and lack of appetite. Effective medicines had always been hard to come by, and cannabis was the most versatile medicinal plant available to man.