2,400-year-old bongs of pure gold, believed to have been used by royalty, were uncovered by archeologists at a Scythian kurgan (burial mound) at the Caucasus Mountains in southern Russia. The site, discovered in 2013, had been looted and not much was presumed to lie within, however they found the bongs with drug residue under a thick layer of clay on the ground.

Tests on residue within the discovered “ancient bongs” confirm that they were used for smoking cannabis and opium. Historians believed that they were used for drug rituals by the Scythians. The notorious drug parties of the fierce nomadic people were noted in the texts of ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who died in 425 B.C. He wrote, “Scythians used a plant to produce smoke that no Grecian vapor-bath can surpass!” He also stated that “transported by the vapor, they shouted out loud” in ecstacy.

Antonn Gass of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, Germany, believes without doubt that both drugs were used simultaneously.

Scythians were feared by Greeks and Persians alike as they left no ruins behind them. A tell-tale sign of the ferocity can be seen on the designs on the ancient bongs. One shows a bearded man slaying young warriors and the other has griffons ripping apart a horse and a stag.

Gass believes that the first scene with the old man slaying young warriors may indeed be a depiction of the “Bastard Wars” described in Herodotus, who wrote of a 28-year war against Persia, when Scythian tribesmen killed the men in their tents who were none other than the illegitimate children that their lonely wives had with their slaves.

Scythia was located roughly where the southern Ukraine is today.