Pick it, pack it
Fire it up, come along
And take a hit from the bong
Put the blunt down
Just for a second
Don't get me wrong
It's not a new method
There's a lot of truth in Cypress Hill's hit song, Hits From the Bong.
The water does smell like shit on the carpet if you spill it; it does go down smooth when you get a clean hit; and bongs are most definitely not a new method.
They’ve been a staple in dorm rooms and head shops since the 1970s, but the use of bongs dates back much further than that. Thousands of years, in fact.
A bong — also known as a bubbler or a water pipe — has a chamber, that’s usually partially filled with water, with a stem (where you put the Cannabis) and a tube or mouthpiece to draw smoke from.
Just about anything can be made into a bong, from an apple to a milk jug, and advances in manufacturing mean they’re becoming more and more ornate, with multiple chambers.
Drawing smoke through water is thought to cool it down and filter out some of the plant material and tar, but studies show it also filters out some of the cannabinoids.
Our understanding of the history of bongs has only really come into focus in the last decade. Until recently, it was believed bongs were first used in Africa starting in the 1100s by tribes in the southern and eastern parts of the continent, as those were the oldest examples found.
Bongs were then carried into Asia, and throughout the rest of the known world via the Silk Road starting around the 1400s, with the advent of smoking.
But our knowledge was expanded in 2013 with the discovery of a 2,400-year-old kurgan — a Scythian burial mound — in what is today southern Russia.
Inside were two ornate, solid gold bongs dating to around 400BC — about 1,500 years earlier than the earliest bongs discovered in Africa. Residue from inside the ancient Scythian relics tested positive for both Cannabis and opium, a combination that’s known as an A-Bomb today.
You can read more about the discovery and see photos in a National Geographic article here.
As recounted by the Greek historian Herodotus in his work The Histories around 430BC, the Scythian consumed Cannabis as a way of communing with the spirit world, and subsequent discoveries suggest Cannabis was consumed regularly by both men and women.
Life would have been tough as a marauding warrior around the fourth century BC, so it’s not surprising they used it to find pleasure and relaxation.
Ancient Scythian artisans obviously didn’t craft the first bongs out of solid gold. They likely evolved from handheld wooden and clay braziers — small carved or moulded containers that could be filled with cannabis, then hot stones or pebbles would be placed on top and the smoke and vapour inhaled.
Scythian culture has strong ties to the history of Cannabis. As is explained in a previous post, their word for it — Kanab — is widely considered the origin of the word Cannabis.
The Scythian were also responsible for spreading Cannabis use across what is today Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. They brought it to Greece (where we get the word Kannabis), and some ancient Arabic scholars said it was brought to the Levant countries around 1100 by mongol invaders.
It makes sense then that Cannabis and the use of bongs would have been carried into Egypt, and then spread further south to places like modern-day Ethiopia around that time.
The English word, ‘bong’ comes from the Thai word 'baung’ which dates to around the 14th century and means a tube, usually made from bamboo, that’s used to smoke Cannabis or tobacco. The Thai word might itself come from the Bong’om tribe in Africa.
The earliest written use of the English word ‘bong’ was in a 1944 Thai-English dictionary by George Bradley McFarland, so it’s plausible the word could have been brought to North America by soldiers returning from the Pacific theatre during the Second World War.
Bongs became popularized in North America in the 1960s and 70s with the growth of plastic, acrylic and glass manufacturing and by soldiers returning from Vietnam.