Surprising Evidence: Stone Age North Americans Used Tobacco As Early As 12,000 Years Ago

It’s unclear how ancient North American hunter-gatherers used the plant, but they definitely did so.

So far, no one has been able to give a reasonable explanation as to why some of us humans eagerly inhale the smoke of paper-wrapped plant pieces burning at 1300 °F (700 °C), and then blow it out with a rapt face… Well, it stinks, it has been proven harmful, it is expensive. Yet, from the very beginning, thousands of years before the first settlements appeared, we already inhaled and blew tobacco smoke rapturously.

How we actually did it remains unclear though. But according to a new study, we now definitely know that ancient North American hunter-gatherers started using tobacco around 12,500 to 12,000 years ago, roughly 9,000 years before the oldest indications that they smoked the plant in pipes.

This discovery replaces the pipe-smoking report as the oldest direct evidence for the human use of tobacco anywhere in the world. That said, there are still only guesses as to why or how Stone Age people got hooked to the smoke of a shrub-like plant in the potato family.

Excavations at the Wishbone site in Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert uncovered four charred wild tobacco seeds in a small fireplace, says archaeologist Daron Duke of Far Western Anthropological Research Group in Henderson, Nev., lead author of the new study which was published in Nature Human Behavior. The seeds – three of which the researchers radiocarbon dated – likely came from plants gathered on foothills or mountains located 13 kilometers or more from the Wishbone area.

The site was located in a vast marshland at the time of its occupation. The other finds discovered around the fireplace include bones of ducks and other waterfowl, a long, intact, stone point and another point broken in two, a bone implement, as well as seeds of several edible wetland plants.

It’s unclear how ancient North American hunter-gatherers used tobacco, Duke points out. He reckons that wads of tobacco leaves, stems and other plant fibers may have been rolled into balls and chewed or sucked, with attached seeds spit out or discarded. Ancestors of Pueblo people in what’s now Arizona chewed wild tobacco between around 1,000 and 2,000 years ago. Tobacco smoking can’t be ruled out at the Wishbone site, Duke adds.

In this regards, the most widely accepted theory is that our ancestors put tobacco plants on open fires and cheerfully observed that their smoke not only kept mosquitoes away, but also conjured up a pleasant mood. They did not have a pipe, no signs of such thing have been found from this period, so presumably the dried tobacco was wrapped in the leaves of other plants.

The earliest evidence of domesticated tobacco, which comes from South America, dates to only about 8,000 years ago. Duke suspects various ancient American populations independently tamed the plant at different times. “Certain groups wound up domesticating particular [tobacco] species, typically alongside food crops,” he suggests.

It is also suspected that they smoked tobacco not for the pleasure but as a ritual, psychedelic, agent – and they did so in large quantities in hope of experiencing hallucinogenic effects. Or else, in smaller portions, like the elders of the natives of the Wild West did, for example, who lit and circled the calumet only on special occasions, such as to sanctify agreements.

One thing us sure: they certainly didn’t demonize tobacco as we do today. But then, they were probably unaware of the negative effects – every tenth death in the world today is related to tobacco smoking, according to WHO data.

Sources: 1, 2, 3