Vicarious smoking

[Burned tobacco seeds found at an archaeological site in Utah, including this seed shown here from multiple angles, date to more than 12,000 years ago]

It might not be a good idea to smoke any more and maybe it won't be very long before the purchase of tobacco becomes difficult. Perhaps it will become a prohibited substance just as cannabis becomes a permitted substance. Instead, we appear to have a thriving topic of research. We can't enjoy a fag any more, but we can read all about how they managed 10,000 years ago.

[An archaeologist digging the hearth at the prehistoric Wishbone site in Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert. Possibly either Daron Duke or someone known to him]

With the story at reference 1 being that the evidence for 10,000 years ago consists of four charred seeds turned up in an ancient fireplace, a fire seemingly used for cooking ducks. A place, somewhere in the Great Salt Lake Desert, a little to the west of Salt Lake City. A place which, 10,000 years ago, was marshy and probably a bit more inviting than it looks now.

The theory is that neither pipes nor cigars had been invented at this time, and that the tobacco was consumed by chewing.

I would have gone for the full story, but Nature want $8.99 to read it and $32 to download it, a bit strong for a quiet read of an afternoon, particularly when there is plenty of other stuff waiting on the floor of my study. And neither Bing nor Google can turn up a leaked copy, apart form a pre-publication version, rather unattractively presented, at reference 3. Not even keen enough for that, although I have learned that tobacco originally came from South America, creeping north as humans crossed the Bering Straits and started creeping south, presumably meeting somewhere in the middle.

Plenty of coverage of the story in the media, back in October, but that passed me by, with the story only washing up here at Epsom much more recently. Including the Independent, the Daily Mail and the Epoch Times. The first two of these are prominent in the low grade, not to say red top, Microsoft news feed, while I last noticed the last at reference 5. Not much better.

PS: Research Square appear to be in the business of getting stuff out onto the Internet before staider journals like Nature get around to it. It may be that you can pay to help things on their way, in which case it becomes an academic version of vanity publishing. Not that I am in any position to knock that sort of thing!

References

Reference 1: The earliest evidence of tobacco use dates to over 12,000 years ago: It’s unclear how ancient North American hunter-gatherers used the plant - Bruce Bower, ScienceNews - 2021.

Reference 2: Earliest evidence for human use of tobacco in the Pleistocene Americas - Daron Duke, Eric Wohlgemuth, Karen R Adams, Angela Armstrong-Ingram, Sarah K Rice, D Craig Young - 2021.

Reference 3: https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-139445/v1_covered.pdf?c=1631852343.

Reference 4: https://www.researchsquare.com/.

Reference 5: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/12/epochs.html.