Earliest human use of tobacco
Uso humano del tabaco
- Date
- c. 10300 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Wishbone site, Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah, United States
- Credited to
- Palaeoindian hunter-gatherers of the Great Basin
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Seeds of wild tobacco (Nicotiana) burnt in a hearth dated to around 12,300 years BP, the oldest evidence of human use of the plant. It predates previous records by nine millennia.
An Indigenous contribution. Published in 2023 (Duke et al.); it does not clarify whether it was smoked, chewed or used ritually.
What it led to
- ceremonial and medicinal tobacco use across the Americas
- the later domestication of Nicotiana tabacum and N. rustica
- the worldwide spread of tobacco after 1492