Tobacco and the Maya

A recent residue analysis of the microscopic contents of a classic period Maya "tobacco flask" from the Kislak Collection of the Library of Congress found... evidence of tobacco! But that doesn't make the story any less interesting.

A Mayan vessel holds the first physical evidence of tobacco in the ancient culture. From the Kislak Collection of the Library of Congress. Photo courtesy the United States Library of Congress

The vessel illustrated in the picture above is what is sometimes called in the archaeological literature a "poison bottle" or "pilgrim's flask", but eventually linguistic research deciphered the hieroglyphs to read "the house of tobacco" on the exterior. And that's only a tiny tidbit of the whole tobacco story, which includes an ethnographic study of traditional healers in Peru, and another studying tobacco use among modern Maya groups.

• Tobacco History
• Maya Tobacco

Zagorevski DV, and Loughmiller-Newman JA. 2012. The detection of nicotine in a Late Mayan period flask by gas chromatography and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry methods. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry 26(4):403-411.

By the way, the earliest date I could find for tobacco was in the Late Titicaca region, between 1500 and 1000 BC. If anyone knows of an earlier date, could you pass along a reference? Thanks...