A THOUSANDS-YEAR DANCE WITH TOBACCO AND ALCOHOL
THE PRE-HISTORY OF RITUAL, COMMERCIAL AND MEDICINAL USE
By Ethan Caughey & Mikey Zahn
I recently purchased Iain Gately’s books on tobacco and drink, both of which are listed as ‘cultural histories’ of two of humanities favorite pastimes. Reading has long been one of my favorite ways to enter into a subject, the more obscure the better in my opinion. I remember the first time I discovered the endnotes at the back of a book, which essentially function as a modern treasure map. One book leads you to 10 others which lead you to 10 others and before you know it you’re prattling on about Modernist poetry to anyone who will listen. Today, I’d like to wander through a place we can only call prehistory …
Mankind met tobacco (Nicotiana rustica and Nicotiana tabacum) in America about 18,000 years ago when the Bering Strait was crossed, but didn’t start actively cultivating tobacco (primarily Nicotiana tabacum) until somewhere between 5000 - 3000 BC, starting in the Peruvian/ Ecuadorian Andes.
Alcohol occurs naturally anytime sugar-eating yeasts can get their hands on a piece of delectable fruit (aka fermentation). As humans transitioned from nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyles to putting down roots and cultivating grapes, honey, and grain, evidence of alcohol begins to appear. “The analysis of a yellow residue found on the inside of a jar at a Neolithic settlement in Haji Firuz Tepe (Iran), dating to 5400–5000 BC, revealed that the jar had once held wine,” said Iaian Gately, author of Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol. For settlements that hadn’t figured out pottery, watertight basket weaving or even a hollowed-out log did the trick.
Essentially, we’ve been dancing with tobacco and alcohol for a very long time and along the way, the dance has taken many shapes. I’d like to look at three: ritual, commercial, and medicinal.
The Ritual Dance
Beer Straws and Canine Night Vision
Nearly every ancient civilization, whether it was the Mayans, Egyptians, or Babylonians, employed the use of tobacco, alcohol, or both as part of their religious ceremonies. Smoke was a way of prayer and alcohol was poured across altars as a way of trying to get right with forces beyond comprehension. The Sumerian goddess Ninkasi ruled over the art of brewing, which took place at scale in Uruk and Ur. We get a glimpse of their ceremonies from a seal (circa 2500 BC) found in a royal tomb at Ur. The center shows royalty drinking beer, or kash as they called it, from a straw at least a yard long out of their version of a keg. The straw was needed because kash was unfiltered with chunks of bappir (bread), honey and grapes all mixed in.
“We’ve been dancing with tobacco and alcohol for a very long time.”
Across South America, tobacco was known as an effective insecticide and would be blown over crops to ward off insects. The practical often becomes mythical, with tobacco blowing being used on women before sex or on warriors before battle. “Tobacco came to be associated with cleansing and fertility …” said Gately. Hunters would use tobacco juice as eye drops to help them and their canine companions see in the dark. Tobacco also functioned as a “rites of passage between puberty and adulthood.”
THE COMMERCIAL DANCE
Peace Pipes and Pyramids
“Commerce would have been impossible without tobacco as it was the only widely traded material [in America],” said Gately. Every North American tribe used tobacco and they all chose the pipe as their instrument of smoking, with a legend arising that in the heart of America was a sacred mine where all war was ceased in order for everyone to harvest stone. The tobacco pipe was passed around during important meetings to allow everyone a chance to speak. In Oklahoma, the Omaha Indians had two separate pipes, one for war and one for peace. The war pipe was plain, while the peace pipe was full of ornamentation. A messenger could carry the peace pipe like a white flag across hostile territory without fear of attack.
The Egyptian city of Hierakonpolis is “the world’s oldest brewery, dating to circa 3400 BC,” according to Gately, as well as featuring a successful pottery industry that left its mark across the Fertile Crescent. In Egypt, hqt (beer) was for workers, while irp (wine) was kept for the elite. The workers who built the pyramids on the Giza Plateau had a daily ration of one and a third gallons of hqt. The pharaohs had access to both red and white wine, with an entire system of ratings. The best irp was labeled nfr-nfr-nfr.
“Commerce would have been impossible without tobacco”
THE MEDICINAL DANCE
Were-Jaguars, Snakebites, and the Hippocratic Ode to
South American shamans viewed disease as a product of supernatural forces, either an evil spirit had possessed someone thus causing them to be sick or the diseased person’s soul had left them to wander the underworld thus requiring a vision quest to retrieve the lost soul. Gately also said, “the Aguarana tribe … employed [tobacco] enemas to protect apprentice shamans from were-jaguars during initiation ceremonies.” Tobacco smoke was believed to be a guiding spirit and would be used “to examine sick patients” or “bestow a blessing”. Shamans were known to have cigars over three feet long.
“Tobacco and alcohol are still used as commemorative substances ...”
Tobacco became particularly associated with curing snake-bites and even as “a charm to ward off snakes.” The Aztecs had a particularly labor-intensive cure for gout involving a “tobacco tea foot bath, using tobacco leaves that had first been left in a ditch where ants would walk on them, followed by ‘serpentine rabbits’ ground into a powder, a small white or red stone, a yellow flint and ‘the flesh and excrement of a fox, which you must burn to a crisp,” said Gately.
Greece had a deep love affair with wine, with the father of Western medicine, Hippocrates, declaring that wine could be used to cure every illness bar one: “an overpowering heaviness of the brain” — the only cure for a heavy brain was to put the goblet away for a bit.
THE ONGOING DANCE
How much has really changed?
Zooming out, tobacco and alcohol are still used as commemorative substances to highlight the birth of a child or the two becoming one of a wedding. ‘Grabbing a drink’ is many people’s go-to first date. Adulthood is still marked by access to bars and cigar shops. The passage of time changes the clothing and the landscape, but smoking and drinking have always been central to humanity’s quest for meaning.
We warm a house by offering a bottle and offer friendship by warming up a cigar. We no longer believe that lighting a cigar or pouring a drink can push a thunderstorm away, but that doesn’t stop us from trying. Business deals are still done in back rooms with a nice bourbon or out on the golf course with a hefty stogie.
Thankfully, the Enlightenment brought a swift axe down on the old ways of practicing medicine. We haven’t found a cure for everything, but we are certainly well on our way. Still, in the face of ever-mounting anxiety, I’d take a Maduro, some Irish Whiskey and a couple close mates as my salve any day. In ancient Greece, there was a temple to Apollo in Delphi that had two things inscribed above it: “Know Thyself” and “Everything in Moderation.”
