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Ancient civilizations may not have perfected frat-party technology, but the weirdest stories of the past year demonstrate that they could get just as high - and indulge in humor just as low - as your typical contemporary college crowd.
Today we rounded up the top 10 vote-getters in our Weird Science
Awards competition, and the top two tales both had to do with what you
might call ancient diversions:  the discovery of a 2,700-year-old marijuana stash in the Gobi Desert.

A purple-gloved lab worker handles a clump of still-green marijuana found in the
2,700-year-old grave of a man in the Gobi Desert — part of an ancient stash.  This disproves the theory that you can't take it with you.  Only problem is that it won't do you any good!!

and a 1,600-year-old Pythonesque joke from a Greek manuscript.
Philogelos: The Laugh Addict, which has been translated from Greek
manuscripts, contains a joke where a man complains that a slave he was
sold had died.
"When he was with me, he never did any such thing!" is the reply
Both tales represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to
the diversions of ancient times. Life for the typical ancient Roman or
Greek, or Egyptian or Chinese, was even nastier, more brutish and
shorter than it is today - so consolations such as a stiff drink or a
good laugh were widely sought after.
Take the history of marijuana use,
for example: The hemp plant was thought to have been used for
its psychoactive properties in ancient India and Assyria as well as
China and Russia. In his book on the subject, "Cannabis: A History," Martin Booth notes that Russian archaeologists found stone-filled
cauldrons that may have been used for inhaling pot smoke during burial
rites in Mongolia, 2,400 years ago. This not only meshes with the more
recent Gobi Desert discovery, but might also explain the modern-day
meaning of the word "stoned." (Heh, heh.)
The historian Herodotus famously remarked on marijuana's use by
the Scythians during funerals in the fifth century B.C. "The Scythians,
transported with the vapor, shout aloud," he wrote. Some even suggest that cannabis was an ingredient in the recipe for anointing oil laid out in the Book of Exodus (a claim that others have found shockingly sacrilegious).
The Egyptians went in more for beer and wine - as we've mentioned before with relation to the pharaonic "festival of drunkenness" that was documented by Herodotus. (Man, that guy really got around!)
Corn beer was the intoxicant of choice for New World cultures, such as Peru's Incan and Wari empires and the Southwest's Pueblo Indians.
To learn more ancient libations, check out this story about 9,000-year-old Chinese wine, and this one about King Tut's drinking preferences. If you haven't seen it already, don't miss our interactive gallery of gaming and guzzling through the millennia.
Here are a few more ancient jokes:
Philogelos (The Laughter Lover) is a collection of some 265 jokes[1],
likely made in the fourth or fifth century CE. Some manuscripts give
the names of the compilers as the otherwise-unknown Hierocles and
Philagrios. Other manuscripts drop the name of one or other or both.
. When an intellectual was told by someone, "Your beard is now coming
in," he went to the rear-entrance and waited for it. Another
intellectual asked what he was doing. Once he heard the whole story, he
said: "I'm not surprised that people say we lack common sense. How do
you know that it's not coming in by the other gate?"[2]
An intellectual got a slave pregnant. At the birth, his father
suggested that the child be killed. The intellectual replied: "First
murder your own children and then tell me to kill mine."[4]
Obviously, the common people enjoyed poking fun at the 'so-called' intellectuals.
An Abderite saw a eunuch and asked him how many kids he had. When
that guy said that he didn't have the balls, so as to be able to have
children, the Abderite asked when he was going to get the balls.[9]
An Abderite saw a eunuch talking with a woman and asked
him if she was his wife. When he replied that eunuchs can't have wives,
the Abderite asked: "So is she your daughter?"
They didn't seem to have just the highest regard for Abderites either!
Someone needled a jokester: "I had your wife, without paying a
dime." He replied: "It's my duty as a husband to couple with such a
monstrosity. What made you do it?'

Well, you get the idea!!