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When Did Ancient Humans Start Smoking? — Transcript

by Mack · 3,222 words · 606 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00You're standing around a fire. It's
0:0250,000 BC.
0:04The sun just went down. There's no
0:06Netflix. There's no phone. There's no
0:09existential dread about your inbox.
0:12There's just you, the flames, and the
0:15thick choking smoke curling directly
0:17into your face. And somewhere at some
0:19point one of your ancestors looked at
0:21that smoke and thought, "Wait.
0:24What if I did that on purpose?" This is
0:26the story of how humans discovered
0:27smoking. Not cigarettes, not cigars, not
0:31the guy outside the office who you
0:32always end up talking to for too long.
0:35We're talking about the very first time
0:37a human being intentionally inhaled
0:39something burning. And why that might be
0:41one of the oldest habits our species has
0:42ever had. Because here's the thing
0:45nobody tells you. Smoking doesn't start
0:47with tobacco. It doesn't start with
0:49colonial trade routes or Native American
0:51ceremonies or even agriculture. The
0:53desire to inhale smoke might be
0:55hardwired into us on a level so deep it
0:57predates civilization entirely.
1:00And the evidence for this is genuinely
1:03insane.
1:04Let's start with fire.
1:06Because before you can smoke anything,
1:08you need fire. And fire has been part of
1:10the human story for a very, very long
1:13time. The oldest confirmed evidence of
1:15controlled fire used by our ancestors
1:17dates back roughly 1 million years from
1:19a site called Wonderwerk Cave in South
1:22Africa.
1:23Archaeologists found burnt plant ash and
1:25charred bone.
1:27Not the result of a wildfire, but of a
1:29sustained contained fire used
1:31deliberately inside a cave.
1:34Now, a million years ago, we weren't
1:37even Homo sapiens yet. That was Homo
1:40erectus.
1:41Our earlier cousin with a smaller brain,
1:44a heavier brow, and absolutely zero
1:47interest in being told what to do with
1:49it.
1:50They sat around fires just like we do.
1:53They cooked. They stayed warm. They
1:55huddled together in the dark
1:57and they breathed smoke.
1:59Every single day for hundreds of
2:01thousands of years, every human and
2:03pre-human ancestor who sat near a fire
2:05inhaled smoke. It was unavoidable. It
2:08was constant. It was basically the
2:10original air quality situation and
2:13nobody had an app to check it. But
2:14here's where it gets interesting. Some
2:16of that smoke wasn't just wood smoke.
2:19When you burn organic matter, you don't
2:21just get carbon dioxide and water vapor.
2:23You get a cocktail of compounds
2:25depending on what you're burning. Some
2:27plants, when combusted, release
2:29psychoactive chemicals, alkaloids,
2:32terpenes, compounds that interact with
2:34the human nervous system in ways that
2:36are,
2:37let's say,
2:39noticeable.
2:40In other words,
2:41some of our ancestors were absolutely
2:44accidentally getting high around the
2:46campfire and they had no idea why they
2:49felt amazing. This isn't a fringe
2:51theory. Researchers have proposed for
2:53decades that early humans living in
2:55forested environments would have
2:56regularly been exposed to the smoke of
2:58psychoactive plants like cannabis,
3:01Nicotiana species, and various
3:03entheogens that grow naturally across
3:05Africa, Europe, and Asia.
3:08The human brain, it turns out, has
3:10receptors that respond to cannabinoids.
3:13These receptors didn't evolve because of
3:14cannabis. They're part of our
3:16endocannabinoid system, which regulates
3:18everything from mood to memory to
3:20appetite. But the fact that they exist
3:22means that when a human first inhaled
3:24smoke from a burning cannabis plant,
3:26their brain wasn't confused. Their brain
3:28was like,
3:30"Oh, hello. I've been waiting for you."
3:33And that moment, that first accidental
3:35hit of psychoactive smoke around a
3:37prehistoric campfire,
3:39might be the true origin of smoking.
3:42Not a decision, not a plan, just a very
3:45pleasant accident repeated enough times
3:48that someone eventually thought to
3:49recreate it on purpose.
3:51Think about that for a second. The
3:53entire multi-trillion-dollar global
3:55tobacco industry, the centuries of
3:57ritual, the shamanic traditions, the
4:00medical practices, the social customs,
4:03all of it may have started because a
4:04tired hunter sat down wind of the wrong
4:06bush and had a really unexpectedly great
4:09evening. History is sometimes beautiful
4:12in the most absurd ways.
4:14Now, here's where we have to be careful
4:16about timelines because ancient humans
4:18smoked things and ancient humans
4:21intentionally cultivated things to smoke
4:23are very different claims.
4:26Let's talk about what the archaeology
4:27actually tells us. The oldest direct
4:30evidence of intentional cannabis use,
4:32meaning burned cannabis seeds found in a
4:34context suggesting deliberate
4:36inhalation, comes from a burial site in
4:38the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia,
4:41dating to around 500 BC.
4:45Excavators found wooden braziers
4:46containing stones that had been
4:48superheated alongside residue from
4:51cannabis plants with unusually high THC
4:53content.
4:55This wasn't wild cannabis used for rope
4:58or seeds.
5:00This was the good stuff and it was
5:01placed directly in a ritual burial
5:04context, 500 BC.
5:07That's roughly 2,500
5:09years ago.
5:10But, here's the question that should be
5:12sitting in the back of your mind. Does
5:14the absence of older physical evidence
5:15mean it didn't happen earlier or does it
5:18just mean we haven't found it yet?
5:20Because organic material, seeds, leaves,
5:24plant fiber,
5:25almost never survives thousands of years
5:27in the ground. We find stone tools from
5:293 million years ago because stone is
5:31basically indestructible. But, a wooden
5:34pipe filled with dried herbs, that's
5:36gone in a few centuries under normal
5:38burial conditions. A leather pouch of
5:40cannabis
5:42dissolved back into the earth long
5:44before any archaeologist ever showed up
5:46with a trowel. So, the absence of
5:48evidence in this case is absolutely not
5:52the evidence of absence. There is also
5:54the Herodotus problem. Herodotus,
5:57the ancient Greek historian writing in
5:59the 5th century BC, described in
6:02remarkable detail the Scythians, a
6:04nomadic people from the Eurasian Steppe,
6:07performing what he called a vapor bath.
6:10They would set up small enclosed tents,
6:13heat stones until they glowed, and throw
6:15hemp seeds onto those stones, then sit
6:18inside the tent inhaling the smoke, and
6:21as Herodotus wrote,
6:23howling with pleasure.
6:25For centuries historians assumed he was
6:27exaggerating or misunderstanding what he
6:29saw.
6:30Then archaeologists started excavating
6:33Scythian burial mounds and finding, you
6:35guessed it, bronze braziers, heated
6:38stones, and hemp residue, exactly what
6:41Herodotus described.
6:44The man was just reporting what he saw.
6:46He wasn't embellishing. He was, if
6:48anything, underselling it.
6:51Let's talk about tobacco, because it's
6:53the one most people actually associate
6:55with smoking. Tobacco is a plant in the
6:57genus Nicotiana, and it's native to the
7:00Americas. That matters enormously,
7:02because it means tobacco was completely
7:04unknown to Old World Civilizations,
7:07Europe, Africa, Asia, until contact with
7:10the Americas in the late 15th century.
7:13When European explorers arrived in the
7:14Caribbean in 1492, they immediately
7:17noticed indigenous people doing
7:19something strange.
7:21Columbus himself wrote in his journal
7:23about seeing men and women walking
7:24around with small glowing sticks,
7:26inhaling the smoke from burning dried
7:28leaves, and letting it back out through
7:30their noses and mouths.
7:33His crew was baffled. His crew also,
7:35within weeks, tried it themselves,
7:37because of course they did.
7:39But, tobacco use in the Americas is far,
7:42far older than 1492.
7:45Archaeological evidence of tobacco,
7:47specifically chemical residues in
7:49ancient pipes, has been found dating
7:51back to at least 3,500
7:53years ago in the southeastern United
7:55States.
7:56Some researchers believe it could go
7:58back considerably further, possibly
8:0010,000 years or more, tied to the
8:02development of cultivation in the Amazon
8:04basin.
8:06And here's the thing about tobacco in
8:07ancient America.
8:09It was not recreational.
8:11Not primarily.
8:13It was sacred.
8:15Tobacco was used in healing rituals, in
8:18communication with the spirit world, in
8:20binding agreements between tribes.
8:22Blowing smoke on someone was an act of
8:24blessing, of connection, of respect.
8:27A shaman who smoked wasn't having a
8:29casual cigarette break.
8:31He was opening a channel between the
8:32living and the divine.
8:34The smoke itself was considered a living
8:36carrier, a messenger that traveled
8:38between worlds, carrying prayers upward
8:41and bringing visions downward.
8:44That framing matters.
8:46It explains why tobacco use was so
8:48disciplined, so ritualized, so
8:51controlled in many indigenous cultures
8:53for thousands of years.
8:55When something is sacred, you treat it
8:57with reverence.
8:58You don't chain smoke it while watching
9:00TV.
9:01The idea of tobacco as a casual everyday
9:04habit, something you do on a lunch break
9:06or while waiting for the bus, is an
9:08almost entirely European invention.
9:11And a fairly recent one at that.
9:13Now, let's go back even further, because
9:16there's a piece of this story that most
9:17people have never heard, and it might be
9:19the oldest evidence of intentional
9:20smoking in the entire archaeological
9:23record.
9:24In 2019, researchers made a remarkable
9:26discovery at a site in the Great Salt
9:28Lake Desert in Utah. They found a
9:30hearth, a cooking and heating fire,
9:33roughly 12,000 years old, containing the
9:36seeds of Nicotiana attenuata, a wild
9:39tobacco species native to North America.
9:42These weren't seeds that had
9:44accidentally blown into the fire. They
9:46were concentrated, present in a way that
9:48suggested deliberate placement.
9:51The site predates any known pottery or
9:53pipe artifacts in the region by
9:55thousands of years. This pushed back the
9:58possible timeline of tobacco use in the
9:59Americas by a significant margin.
10:03And it raised a genuinely fascinating
10:05question. If people were throwing
10:06tobacco into fires 12,000 years ago,
10:09whether to inhale the smoke or for
10:10ritual purposes or both, what were
10:13people in other parts of the world doing
10:14with their local psychoactive plants at
10:16the same time?
10:18Because 12,000 years ago, humans were
10:21everywhere. They were in Africa, in
10:23Asia, in Europe, in Australia. And the
10:27human desire to alter consciousness, to
10:30seek out altered mental states, that is
10:32not an American phenomenon. That is a
10:35human phenomenon.
10:37Let me throw something at you that might
10:39sound wild, but is taken seriously by
10:41respected anthropologists, the
10:44intoxication hypothesis.
10:46The basic argument goes like this.
10:49Across virtually every human culture
10:51ever documented, people have sought out
10:54ways to alter their consciousness.
10:56They've drunk fermented beverages, eaten
10:58psychedelic mushrooms, inhaled smoke,
11:01chewed plant leaves, and swallowed
11:03seeds.
11:05This behavior is so universal, so
11:07persistent, and so independent across
11:09cultures that some researchers believe
11:12it isn't accidental.
11:14Ronald Siegel, a psychopharmacologist at
11:16UCLA, proposed in the 1980s that the
11:19pursuit of intoxication is a fourth
11:22drive alongside hunger, thirst, and sex,
11:26that is biologically embedded in animal
11:29behavior, not just human behavior.
11:33Elephants deliberately seek out
11:34fermented marula fruit.
11:36Reindeer in Siberia have been observed
11:39eating Amanita muscaria mushrooms and
11:41then drinking the urine of other
11:42reindeer who ate the mushrooms because
11:45the psychoactive compounds pass through
11:47intact.
11:48Reindeer
11:49doing drug recycling in Siberia.
11:53Honestly, respect.
11:55The point is if the drive to alter
11:57consciousness is this deep and this old,
12:00it's entirely reasonable to propose that
12:02early humans, long before they
12:04domesticated any plant, long before they
12:07had pottery or pipes or any of the tools
12:09we normally associate with smoking, were
12:11deliberately exposing themselves to
12:13smoke from psychoactive plants because
12:15they had learned through experience that
12:17it changed something in their mind.
12:19Maybe they burned those plants
12:21intentionally during rituals. Maybe they
12:24selected campsites near specific plants
12:26for exactly this reason.
12:28Maybe they learned which smoke made you
12:29feel good and which made you feel like
12:32you were dying, which with some plants
12:35is a distinction that kills you once
12:37before you figure it out.
12:39This is trial and error, prehistoric
12:41style.
12:42Very high stakes. Occasionally,
12:44literally fatal.
12:47But the ones who survived,
12:49they remembered.
12:50They told others.
12:52They passed it down through generations
12:54of knowledge that never got written,
12:56but got lived.
12:58That's how most human knowledge worked
13:00for most of human history. Not
13:02libraries.
13:03Not schools.
13:05Lived experience
13:06passed mouth to ear
13:08around a fire
13:10in the dark.
13:11Let's also talk about something that
13:13rarely comes up in this conversation.
13:16Smoking as medicine.
13:17Long before smoking was recreational,
13:20long before it was spiritual,
13:22it may have been medical.
13:24The Ebers Papyrus, one of the oldest
13:26known medical documents in the world,
13:28dates to ancient Egypt around 1550 BC.
13:32It describes treatments involving the
13:34inhalation of smoke from heated herbs,
13:36specifically for conditions affecting
13:38the throat and lungs.
13:40This is wildly counterintuitive from a
13:42modern perspective.
13:44You're telling me the ancient Egyptians
13:46treated lung problems by inhaling smoke?
13:49Yes.
13:50Yes, they were.
13:51And while that seems insane, it's worth
13:53noting that the specific herbs they
13:55used, including henbane and various
13:57aromatics, do have genuine
13:59pharmacological properties when inhaled.
14:02The ancient Greeks used fumigation,
14:04therapeutic smoke, regularly.
14:07Hippocrates, the guy you take an oath
14:09named after if you become a doctor,
14:11wrote about the inhalation of herbal
14:13vapors to treat diseases of the lungs
14:15and other conditions.
14:17The thinking wasn't crazy by the
14:19standards of the time. Smoke reaches the
14:21lungs directly, so if the plant has
14:23medicinal properties, delivering it via
14:25smoke makes a certain logical sense.
14:28The lungs as a delivery mechanism.
14:31Inhaled medicine. We still do this today
14:35with asthma inhalers and anesthetic
14:37gases and nebulizers.
14:39The delivery method survived.
14:41The burning part, thankfully, mostly
14:44didn't.
14:45Ancient Indian Ayurvedic medicine,
14:47dating back over 3,000 years, describes
14:49a practice called Dhumapana,
14:52literally smoke drinking, involving the
14:55inhalation of medicinal herbs through
14:57pipes.
14:58The texts describe specific plants,
15:00specific conditions, specific
15:02preparations.
15:04This wasn't casual or improvised. It was
15:06a sophisticated medical system with
15:08detailed protocols and centuries of
15:11refinement behind it.
15:12Across ancient China, ancient
15:14Mesopotamia, ancient Greece, ancient
15:17India, in virtually every early
15:19civilization on record, there is
15:21evidence of people inhaling smoke
15:23deliberately for therapeutic purposes as
15:26a recognized medical practice, not
15:28because they were addicted, not because
15:30they thought it was cool, because it
15:32worked, or at least it worked sometimes.
15:35Or at least it worked enough times that
15:37they kept doing it. And in a world
15:39without antibiotics, without surgery,
15:41without any of the tools modern medicine
15:44takes for granted, works sometimes was a
15:47pretty meaningful bar to clear.
15:50There's another angle to this story that
15:51doesn't get enough attention, and it has
15:53to do with social bonding. Humans are
15:55deeply social animals. We evolved in
15:58groups, and group cohesion,
16:01the ability of a group to stay together,
16:03trust each other, act in coordination,
16:06was literally a matter of life and death
16:08for most of our evolutionary history.
16:11Isolated individuals died.
16:14Groups survived.
16:15Anything that enhanced social bonding
16:17had genuine survival value. And shared
16:20rituals, including shared consumption of
16:22psychoactive substances, are
16:24extraordinarily powerful tools for
16:26social cohesion.
16:28When a group of people undergo a shared
16:30altered experience together, it creates
16:32a sense of connection,
16:33of trust, of mutual understanding that
16:35is very hard to replicate any other way.
16:39Modern neuroscience has confirmed this.
16:41Shared rituals synchronize neural
16:43activity, increase trust, and deepen
16:46group identity in measurable, documented
16:49ways.
16:50So, when a group of ancient sat together
16:52in a closed space breathing in smoke
16:54from burning cannabis or other herbs,
16:56and collectively entered an altered
16:58state, that wasn't just recreational.
17:01That was social technology. That was how
17:04you built the kind of deep trust and
17:05group cohesion that let you go into
17:07dangerous situations together and come
17:09back alive.
17:10The ritual smoke circle wasn't just a
17:12party.
17:13It was infrastructure.
17:15Here's where we arrive at the
17:17uncomfortable part of the story.
17:19The transition from sacred smoke to
17:21casual habit is historically an absolute
17:25disaster.
17:26When tobacco arrived in Europe in the
17:2816th century, it spread with a speed
17:30that should remind you of something.
17:32Within decades, smoking had gone from an
17:34exotic curiosity to a continental
17:37obsession.
17:38By the 1600s, tobacco was being traded
17:41globally.
17:42By the 1700s, snuff,
17:45powdered tobacco inhaled through the
17:47nose, was fashionable across European
17:50aristocracy.
17:52By the 1800s, cigars were everywhere.
17:55By the early 1900s, the industrially
17:57manufactured cigarette had been
17:59invented, making tobacco consumption
18:01cheaper, more convenient, and more
18:03addictive than anything that had come
18:04before.
18:06What had taken indigenous Americans
18:07thousands of years to incorporate into a
18:09measured, ritualistic, deeply cultural
18:12practice was, in the hands of European
18:14industrialists, turned into a
18:16mass-market consumer product within four
18:18centuries.
18:19The tobacco industry in the 20th century
18:22then spent decades and billions of
18:23dollars suppressing the evidence that
18:25cigarettes caused cancer.
18:28Evidence their own scientists had
18:29compiled internally.
18:31They marketed cigarettes to children.
18:34They hired doctors to endorse their
18:35products.
18:37They added chemical compounds
18:38specifically to make nicotine hit faster
18:40and harder, and leave the system more
18:42quickly, maximizing addiction.
18:45They turned something ancient and
18:47ritualistic and communal into a product
18:49specifically engineered to be as
18:51physically destructive and as
18:53financially extractive as possible.
18:56A shaman and a tobacco executive both
18:58worked with the same plant. They had
19:00almost nothing else in common.
19:02The gap between a shaman in 500 BC
19:04placing cannabis on hot stones in a
19:06ritual burial
19:08and a tobacco company executive in 1960
19:11signing off on marketing cigarettes to
19:12teenagers
19:14is one of the larger moral chasms in
19:16human history.
19:18Both involve smoke.
19:20Almost nothing else is the same.
19:23So, when did ancient humans start
19:25smoking?
19:26The honest answer is
19:28we don't know exactly.
19:30And we probably never will.
19:33The physical evidence takes us back
19:3512,000 years with some confidence and
19:37possibly much further with reasonable
19:39speculation. The behavioral drive that
19:41underlies smoking, the desire to alter
19:43consciousness, to share ritual
19:45experiences, to use inhaled substances
19:48as medicine
19:49is almost certainly far older than any
19:51artifact we've found.
19:53It may be as old as fire itself.
19:56It may be as old as the cognitive leap
19:58that made us human in the first place.
20:00The ability to connect cause and effect,
20:02to look at a burning plant and think,
20:04"Last time that happened, I felt
20:06different. Let me do that again." That's
20:09not addiction. That's intelligence.
20:11What we do know is this.
20:13The behavior is extraordinarily old. It
20:17predates agriculture. It predates
20:19pottery. It predates every civilization
20:22you've ever learned about in school.
20:24What is absolutely clear is that by the
20:26time the historical record begins in
20:28every corner of the world where humans
20:30lived, they were already finding ways to
20:33put smoke into their bodies. The
20:35specific plants changed. The rituals
20:37changed. The purposes changed. But the
20:40behavior the behavior was already
20:42ancient by the time anyone thought to
20:44write it down.
20:45There's something almost poetic about
20:47that. For all the things that separate
20:49modern humans from our ancestors, the
20:51technology, the medicine, the internet,
20:53the truly baffling amount of content we
20:56consume every day, there are these thin
20:58threads of continuity that run unbroken
21:00through 100,000 years of human
21:02experience.
21:04Fire, smoke, breath.
21:07The oldest humans sat around fires and
21:09breathed the same smoky air you'd smell
21:11at a bonfire tonight. Some of them, at
21:14some point, started paying attention to
21:15what that smoke was doing to them. And
21:17then they started choosing it, and then
21:19they started passing that choice down to
21:21their children and their children's
21:23children, and eventually to the
21:24Scythians howling with pleasure in their
21:26tents, and the Egyptian physicians
21:28prescribing henbane, and the Mayan
21:30shamans reading visions in the rising
21:32smoke, and the Taino people on a
21:34Caribbean beach watching confused
21:36Europeans try tobacco for the first time
21:39and cough until their eyes watered.
21:41Either way, next time you flip a light
21:43switch or sit around a summer fire or
21:45catch a whiff of wood smoke on a cold
21:46night, you're participating in something
21:48far older than you realize. You're doing
21:51what humans have always done. You're
21:52breathing.

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