How Tobacco Was invented

In honor of the upcoming fathers day. I thought I’d relate a story that Dad once told me about his idea for how Tobacco was discovered.

We start way back with the “Quest for Fire“. Most animals are scare of fire, early man learned to use it as a tool. However, they had been using fire for a fairly long time before they learned to how to actually create the fire.

So let’s say a bolt of lightening caused a tree to catch fire. Someone (aka: the firekeeper) would be resonsible for collecting the burning embers for re-use in campfires as these nomatic people moved from one place to another.

Now, if you’ve ever stayed near a campfire – and the smoke has blown into your face. You can imagine what life was like for the firekeeper. A lot of choking sounds, a bad taste in your mouth. They probably even had a lower life expectancy constantly breathing in the fumes from the burning embers, just so the tribe would have a warm fire for the night and tasy food to eat.

For the firekeeper to do his job, he would have to learn (probably passed down from the firekeeper above him) the various plants that would keep a long, slow burning ember. Some plants would do much better then others. [Can you see where I am going?]

It probably would not have been too long before these firekeepers learned to reconize plants that had a slow burnering ember, plus which caused them not to feel so bad when carring them around (in fact it was probably getting them high). The plants weren’t necessarily tobacoo but something similar or a related drug.

Assuming they were somewhat sociable, the firekeepers passed this information along to other firekeepers, to keep an eye out for these “magical fire plants”, possibly they eventually learned to grow them or mark the areas where they were commonly found wild.

I always thought this sounded like an interesting theory and at least somewhat plausable. In those days life expectancy was already low, and as I’ve said early the firekeepers life expectancy was even lower. So a plant that at least comforted the firekeeper during his duties probably did not cause all the health problems we see today with tobacco and marijuana and all of the others that have come along since. Of course, I am sure if you tried to explain to early mad the idea of “running for exercise” on a stationary treadmill or bike they would think you were the crazy one not them !