Hemp is one of the oldest crops humans have ever grown. Long before it became a wellness category or a political argument, it was simply one of the most useful plants a person could have access to. Food, fiber, fuel, medicine. Few plants have done so many jobs for so long.
That history matters, because it reframes what hemp actually is. Modern hemp wellness can look like a recent trend, a product of the last few years. The longer view tells a different story. What we are seeing now is not the arrival of something new. It is the return of something very old.
Not a trend, a co-evolution
Humans and hemp have been entangled for something on the order of 10,000 years. The plant was among the earliest that people deliberately cultivated, and over that span it shaped trade, agriculture, and material culture in ways that are easy to forget. When a plant has been growing alongside human societies for ten millennia, calling its current popularity a fad misses the scale of the relationship.
This is the frame worth holding onto. Hemp did not appear in response to a market. Markets appeared, repeatedly, in response to hemp.
Ancient roots in Asia and the Middle East
The earliest records point to East Asia. Hemp was used in ancient China for fiber and food, and Chinese medical texts dating back thousands of years reference cannabis preparations among the era's remedies. From there the plant and its uses spread westward. In India, cannabis preparations became woven into both medicine and ritual life over a very long period. Across the Middle East, hemp fiber and seed traveled along the same trade routes that carried spices, textiles, and ideas.
These early uses were practical and varied. The plant was valued as a textile source, a food, and a medicinal preparation, often all at once, depending on which part was used and how it was prepared.
Rope, sail, paper, and food across Europe and the Americas
As hemp moved into Europe, its industrial value came to the front. Hemp fiber is strong and durable, which made it the backbone of rope and sailcloth for centuries. The age of seafaring ran, quite literally, on hemp rigging. Paper was made from it. Seed and oil fed people and animals. When European settlers crossed the Atlantic, hemp came with them, and it became a common and in some places mandated crop in the early American colonies.
For most of this history, hemp was unremarkable in the best sense. It was simply infrastructure, a plant so woven into daily material life that nobody thought to argue about it. A fuller account of these industrial uses deserves its own treatment, which we will cover in a dedicated article on hemp's industrial history.
One plant, many jobs
What hemp was used for
A medicinal lineage emerges
Alongside the industrial story runs a quieter medicinal one. Cannabis preparations had been used therapeutically across Asia and the Middle East for centuries, but the formal entry into Western medicine has a clearer marker. In 1839, an Irish physician named William O'Shaughnessy, working in India with the East India Company, presented his research on cannabis preparations to the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta. His work helped bring the plant into the Western medical literature, and through the latter half of the 19th century cannabis tinctures became a familiar part of the pharmacy shelf.
This medicinal lineage is the thread that connects the distant past to what LEVEL does now. We will trace it in depth in a forthcoming article on hemp as medicine, but the short version is that the therapeutic use of these compounds is not a modern invention. It is a long tradition that modern science is now able to study with far better tools.
The 20th century and what was lost
Then the thread was cut. Through the early-to-mid 20th century, a wave of prohibition swept hemp and higher-THC cannabis together into legal restriction, with little distinction made between the intoxicating and non-intoxicating varieties of the plant. Hemp, which contains very little THC and will not get anyone high, was caught in the same net.
The cost was real. An industrial crop with thousands of years of use behind it largely disappeared from Western agriculture and medicine for decades. The accumulated knowledge of generations went quiet, not because it was disproven, but because the plant became difficult to legally grow or study.
The modern resurgence
The thread was picked back up over the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Even while the plant remained legally restricted, scientists continued investigating cannabinoids and, in the 1990s, mapped the endocannabinoid system itself, the network of receptors these compounds interact with. That decades-long body of research is what made the modern wellness category possible. It paved the way for compounds like CBD to be understood, formulated, and studied with precision.
The legal turning point came in 2018. In the United States, the Farm Bill federally defined and legalized hemp as cannabis containing no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight. That single legal distinction reopened the door for hemp specifically, separating the non-intoxicating plant from its higher-THC relative, which remains federally restricted. Cultivation, research, and commerce around hemp could resume.
What followed was less an invention than a recovery. Building on decades of cannabinoid science, growers could plant hemp again, and the medicinal lineage that O'Shaughnessy helped document in the 1800s could finally meet modern chemistry, controlled studies, and precise formulation. The plant did not change. Our ability to understand it did.
10,000 years
A timeline of hemp
An interactive timeline. Use the slider or the previous and next buttons to move through seven milestones in the history of hemp. Each milestone shows an image and a description.
Where modern wellness fits
This is the tradition LEVEL sees itself continuing. Hemp's value was never in a single compound or a single use. It was in the way these plant compounds work with the body's own systems, modulating how the body regulates itself rather than forcing a single switch. That is a modern, scientific way of describing something people have observed, imperfectly, for thousands of years.
If you want to follow that lineage into the present, our explainer on how CBD works in the body picks up where the history leaves off, and our overview of cannabinoids and their targeted benefits maps how the individual compounds are understood today.
Frequently asked questions
Is hemp the same as cannabis?
Hemp is cannabis. They are the same plant species. The line between them is a legal one, not a botanical one. United States law defines hemp as cannabis containing no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight, which is not enough to produce intoxication. Cannabis above that threshold is regulated differently and remains federally restricted. So the distinction is real in the eyes of the law, but it describes a single plant grouped by THC content rather than two different plants.
When was hemp first used by humans?
Hemp is one of the oldest cultivated crops, with a relationship to human societies stretching back roughly 10,000 years. The earliest uses appear in East Asia for fiber and food, with medicinal references appearing in ancient Chinese texts thousands of years ago.
Why was hemp banned?
Through the early-to-mid 20th century, hemp was swept into prohibition alongside higher-THC cannabis, with little legal distinction made between intoxicating and non-intoxicating varieties. Because hemp is the same plant species, it was caught in the same restrictions despite containing very little THC.
Is hemp legal now?
In the United States, the 2018 Farm Bill federally defined and legalized hemp as cannabis containing no more than 0.3% delta-9 THC by dry weight. This reopened hemp cultivation, research, and commerce. Cannabis above that THC threshold remains federally restricted, and regulations continue to vary by state and evolve over time.
What is the difference between hemp and CBD?
Hemp is the plant. CBD, or cannabidiol, is one of many compounds found within it. CBD is one of the most-researched cannabinoids and is non-intoxicating. Hemp also contains other cannabinoids such as CBG and CBN, along with fiber and seed used for entirely non-medicinal purposes.
