Surprisingly the first tree species tamed

It was not plants that provided food and tobacco was the first plant cultivated and cultivated by prehistoric humans.

Of all plants that humans have tamed, tobacco plays a very special role. The chemicals contained in tobacco leaves a clearer mind and boosts energy, but high doses will cause hallucinations and hallucinations.

A study by an archaeological group at Troy University (USA), published in the prestigious journal of the Journal of Archeological Science , concluded that people knew smoking more than 6,000 years ago.

In developing countries the number of smokers is increasing - (Image: MIC).

Beginning of agricultural revolution, help evolution

Historically, archaeologists have been wondering why prehistoric Americans were still developing well with the nomadic and hunter-gatherer lifestyle that suddenly turned to farming farming. The most remarkable point is that this time coincides with the beginning of smoking.

Was it because of the desire for smoking that prehistoric humans began to study domestication and tobacco cultivation, thus creating a revolution in agriculture in America? Because of this, humans also conducted domestication of other food-supplying plants following tobacco growing, so that life and civilization developed to a higher level.

Not only that, many scientists believe that tobacco has contributed to human evolution.

A study by scientists at the University of Oxford (UK) published in 2016 showed that smoking modifies some human genes. As a result, prehistoric people were better able to withstand carcinogens from burnt meat and toxic fumes from the fires they burned daily for cooking and heating.

It is thanks to this beneficial genetic modification that humans have been able to survive the widespread smoking of tobacco and marijuana for millennia. A special feature is that this gene change only appears in Homo sapiens ancestors , but not found in the extinct Neanderthal, which does not smoke.

In the 1960s the United States was the largest cigarette producer and exporter in the world - (Image: Wikipedia).

To lucrative business

The team spent a lot of effort hunting for evidence of prehistoric smoking habits. They unearthed ancient relics and rummaged through museum collections, scraping high-tech samples from smoking pipes that were over 3,000 years old, pulled from the teeth of ancient mummies.

More elaborately, they trace traces of the chemicals in cigarettes left in the hair of the ancients.

Another archaeological group at Washington State University (USA) also conducted excavations in the Pacific Northwest, where due to the cold and humid climate, only two tobacco species Nicotiana quadrivalvis and Nicotiana attenuate are grows. They found 12 smoking pipes made 1,200 years ago, of which 8 were traces of nicotine.

These discoveries prove that Native Americans knew smoking long before Europeans found the new continent. That is also why indigenous Americans now have a much higher prevalence of addiction than immigrant racial groups.

The first Europeans who came to the Americas also tried to smoke because of curiosity and becoming addicted, so tobacco spread to the old continent.

At that time, smoking was considered as one of the main rituals to establish community relations, people gathered to drink alcohol and smoke to socialize and expand social relations.

Not stopping there, tobacco has become a lucrative business. In North America, before cotton-intensive plantations, Europeans established large-scale tobacco farms.

In the period 1617-1793, cigarettes were the most valuable export item in North America to Europe, until the 1960s, the United States was the largest producer and exporter of cigarettes in the world.

Currently, according to a study of the World Health Organization (WHO), globally there are 1.1 billion smokers, of which 80% are from developing countries and most of them are in Asia- Pacific.

Smoking cigarettes after a successful transaction is an indispensable ritual of the Native Americans - (Image: worthpoint).

19th-century Europeans viewed smoking as an integral part of social relations expansion - (Image: Wikipedia).

If the findings of the scientific community are accurate, smoking has created a prehistoric agricultural revolution and improved human genes for the better (there are a few people who are extremely resistant to smoke, so even though they smoke from very young age to old age without being affected), tobacco is a double-edged sword: of great benefit in ancient times, but in modern times Brings extremely dangerous consequences for human health and the environment.