Archaeologists confirmed - in a newly published study - that they found new evidence of humans chewing tobacco more than 12,000 years ago, 9,000 years earlier than scientists previously thought.
In a report published by the American magazine "Newsweek", writer Annabelle Dolliner says that tobacco, which is the main filling for cigarettes at the present time, is primarily a derivative of the "nicotiana" plant, native to North and South America, where the indigenous people domesticated the plant before For thousands of years, it has often been used on religious occasions and ceremonies, in addition to medicinal uses.
The oldest known record of tobacco use indicates that it was smoked with a pipe.
The authors of the study, which was published a few days ago in the journal Nature Human Behavior, stated that tobacco had the "most significant social and economic impact" of all the "stimulant plants favored by humans."
Humans chewed tobacco more than 12,000 years ago, 9,000 years older than scientists previously believed (Getty Images)
A team of researchers led by Daron Duke, lead author of the study, found 4 charred seeds of a variety of desert tobacco known as Nicotiana attiwana, during an extensive search and excavation conducted by the team at the Wishbone site in the Great Salt Lake desert, Utah. in the United States.
"This species was never domesticated, although it is still used by indigenous peoples in the area to this day," Duke said.
Researchers: Humans have been using tobacco since ancient times, but the method of its consumption is still unknown (Getty Images)
The finding of these seeds in the remains of an ancient stove indicates that people of that era were using tobacco.
According to the study, "the seeds found in prehistoric stoves likely represent evidence of human use, unless it was due to natural factors."
The author adds that the team of researchers has become sure that humans have been using tobacco since that date, but the method of its consumption is still unknown.
Duke and colleagues emphasized that "it is not possible to determine the exact method of human use of tobacco at the discovered site, but some considerations are useful to reduce the number of possible possibilities. We currently have one idea, which is that tobacco was used as a human activity near the stove in addition to the process of food preparation."
Tobacco is the main filling of cigarettes at the present time, and it is primarily a derivative of the Nicotiana plant (Getty Images)
"We know very little about their culture," Duke explains. "The thing that interests me most about this discovery is the social window that this simple activity opens for us to understand an undocumented past."