Ask 100 owners of custom glass hand pipes and custom bongs when the bong was invented and chances are most will say it must have been invented during the 1960s or 70s when weed first exploded into the public consciousness. And while the reasoning behind that guess is pretty solid the answer misses the mark, by about 2,500 years.

You see, the oldest known cannabis water pipe actually dates back to approximately 400 BC. It was found during an archeological dig at an ancient grave site in what is now Russia. That bong tested positive for cannabis, by the way. So it wasn’t just a matter of the ancients using their bong to smoke tobacco or something similar. Nope, they were copping a buzz under the crystal clear nighttime sky and zoning on the stars.

Of course, no one at that time was making and selling customized wholesale bongs, but the existence of this single bong indicates that they were already part of the culture at the time, which suggests that the first bongs go back considerably further than 400 BC.

The History of the Customized Water Pipe

Cannabis use in Asia predates that ancient Russian bong by about 600 years. There is archeological evidence that the Chinese enjoyed a good buzz as long as 3,000 years ago, while the people living in what is now Thailand were using a modified bamboo cylinder that had more than a passing resemblance to the modern bong at around the same time. In fact, the word "bong" is thought to have originated with the Thais who called their bamboo pipe a "buang".

Fast forward a couple of thousand years to Mughal India. The Mughal Empire was founded by descendants of Genghis Khan and controlled essentially all of what is now India from the 16^th to the 19^th centuries. At some point during the 16^th or 17^th century (it's not entirely clear), some enterprising Mughal craftsman invented the hookah. The hookah was, and is, a large water pipe used for smoking opium, hashish, tobacco and cannabis. Like today's bong, it used water to filter the smoke and produce a more pleasant experience.

On a side note, there is also evidence that certain African cultures invented their own version of the water pipe centuries before the bong ever hit the shelf of your favorite wholesale head shop. It’s not known precisely how long the water pipe goes back in Africa but it’s believed to be at least several hundred years.

You Can Take It with You

Before we move on to the bong in modern Western life, let’s take a quick detour back to China, more precisely to the court of the Empress Dowager Cixi, who ruled from 1861 to 1908. Cixi was a shrewd and ambitious leader who instituted some moderate reforms to the imperial system which enabled it to plod on into the 20^th century despite growing calls for its abolition. She was also fond of weed. When she ultimately died in 1908 she was buried with three of her favorite bongs, supposedly so she could cop a righteous buzz in the hereafter.

The Modern Bong Industry

Considering its long history and imperial pedigree the story of the contemporary bong industry can seem a bit pedestrian. But what are you going to do?

During the colonial period in America tobacco was the king of all cash crops. The thing is that then, like now, smoking tobacco in its unfiltered form was pretty nasty business. So people at the time looked for ways to mitigate the negative effects of tobacco smoke. Enter the water pipe. While it wasn’t widespread some people of means in colonial America took to using a form of the hookah to take the rough edges off the smoking experience.

It wasn’t until the 1960s and 70s however, that bong really took off in the US. Riding high on the counter culture movement of the 60s bongs began to appear on the shelves of newly opened retail and wholesale head shops that began to spring up around college campuses. By the time the 1980s rolled around, bongs were common, although they had yet to experience the creative explosion that would ultimately lead to today’s mind-blowing "heady glass".

Lots of people laid claim to the title of "father of the bong" in the US, but the truth is no one person can take credit. The rise of the bong was more of a nationwide phenomenon that occurred as a natural consequence of the rise in popularity of cannabis among the nation’s young people.

Creative Breakthroughs

Toward the end of the 20th-century innovation began to infiltrate the bong industry. The first real breakthrough occurred when borosilicate glass, initially developed to create durable laboratory beakers and the like, found its way into bong manufacturing. Suddenly, the notoriously fragile bong was no longer so notoriously fragile.

But maybe the biggest leap forward in bong design has occurred since the turn of the 21st century with the emergence of so-called "heady glass". These stunning artisanal creations have been rocking the world of cannabis lovers for the past decade, raising the bar of creativity to insane levels and providing stoners the world over with a whole new type of object to focus on when they’re lost in the ozone.

What do bong designers have in store for the future? Not even those of us who sell wholesale custom bongs know for sure. But one thing is certain, the bong is here to stay.