The Yanghai Tombs, a vast ancient cemetery (fifty-four thousand square miles) situated in the Turpan district of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, have revealed the twenty-seven hundred-year-old grave of a shaman.

He is thought to have belonged to the Gushi culture recorded in the area centuries later in the Hanshu, Chapter 96B.

Near the head and foot of the shaman was a large leather basket and wooden bowl filled with seven hundred and eighty-nine gram of cannabis, superbly preserved by climatic and burial conditions.

An international team demonstrated that this material contained tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive component of cannabis.

The cannabis was presumably employed by this culture as a medicinal or psychoactive agent, or an aid to divination.

This is the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent.

The cache of cannabis is about twenty-seven hundred years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fiber for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The seven hundred and eighty-nine grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odor.

This shaman was Caucasoid, and was well over six feet tall.

He may belong to, or was related to the Yuezhi people or Tocharians known to have lived in the region.

The great Han general Ban Chao had written a request to the Emperor in 100 CE, saying, among other things: "I have taken care to send my son (Ban) Yong to enter the frontier following porters with presents, and thus, I will arrange things so that (Ban) Yong sees the Middle Territories [usually referred to as the 'Western Regions'—mainly the kingdoms in and around the Tarim Basin] with his own eyes while I am still alive." (From the Hou Hanshu (Book of the Later Han), Chapter 77 [sometimes given as Chapter 47], translated and adapted by E. Chavannes.).

The Western Regions in modern Xinjiang province in 107 CE had rebelled against Chinese rule.

Ban Yong had been appointed as a major and, with his elder brother, Ban Xiong, had gone via Dunhuang to meet up with the Protector General of the Western Regions, Ren Shang (?-119 CE), who had replaced Ban Chao as Protector General in 102 CE.

The Chinese had been forced to retreat and, following this, there have been no Chinese functionaries in the Western Regions for more than ten years.

Emperor An in 123 CE gives Ban Yong the title of 'Senior Clerk of the Western Regions' so that he can lead five hundred freed convicts west to garrison Liuzhong (Lukchun, in the southern Turpan Basin).

Ban Yong afterward conquers and pacifies Turpan and …

Ban Yong puts the 'Yili King' of the Xiongnu to flight in the Yihe Valley, close to Turpa .

He wins over more than five thousand men of Turpan to his cause, and communications between Turpan and China are reopened.

He then establishes a military colony at Lukchun.

All the "Six Kingdoms of Jushi" (across the mountains to the north and east of Turpan) in 126 submit to Ban Yong.

…following the Tian Shan westward in 630 to arrive in Turpan.

Here he meets the king of Turpan, a Buddhist who equips him further for his travels with letters of introduction and valuables to serve as funds.

Moving further westward, …

Sogdians and Chinese engage in extensive commercial activities with each other under Tang rule.

The Sogdians are mostly Mazdaist at this time.

Turpan, renamed Xizhou by the Tang after their armies conquer it in 640, has a history of commerce and trade along the Silk Road already centuries old; it has many inns catering to merchants and other travelers, while brothels are recorded as having been numerously available in Kucha and Khotan.

As a result of the Tang conquest, policies forcing minority group relocation and encouraging Han settlement lead to Turpan's name in Sogdian language becoming known as “Chinatown” or "Town of the Chinese".

Tang dependence upon their northern allies is apparently a source of embarrassment to the Chinese, who surreptitiously encourage the Kyrgyz and the Karluks to attack the Uyghurs, driving them south into the Tarim Basin.

As a result of the Kyrgyz action, the Uyghur empire collapses in 846.

Some of the Uighurs emigrate to Chinese Turkestan (the Turpan region), where they establish a flourishing kingdom that will freely submit to Genghis Khan several centuries later.

Ironically, this weakening of the Uighurs undoubtedly hastens the decline and fall of the Tang Dynasty over the next fifty years.