Prehistoric Tobacco

[LewZephyr]

I came across this yesterday and thought some of you might find it ... well interesting.

12,000-Year-Old Hearth, Artifacts Unearthed in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH—A prehistoric campsite in Utah’s West Desert has yielded a 12,300-year-old hearth surrounded by more than 60 artifacts, including a large spear point, stone flakes, the bones of ducks and geese, and the earliest-known collection of tobacco seeds. “It’s a new world plant, not a plant from the other side of the world, so obviously this raises a lot of questions,” archaeologist Daron Duke of Far Western Anthropological Research Group said in aWestern Digs report.

I was cursory aware of tobacco using going back pretty far, but this was way more than I had thought. Also the fact that it was a collection of seeds implies that they were planting / harvesting. (well I made the leap of logic on the implies.)

 

[deluxestogie]

Several days ago, I communicated with the primary investigator in the Utah dig. They have not yet identified the species of the "tobacco" seed found. My guess is that this undoubtedly non-viable seed is likely Nicotiana bigelovii or Nicotiana quadrivalvis or one of the other endemic species of that region of North America. It is not clear from existing records if Nicotiana rustica, a developed, cultivated species from much farther south even existed 12,300 years ago.

Bob

EDIT:

Wild tobaccos in the Northwestern Frontier. Nicotiana attenuata (black) reaches farthest north of the indigenous tobaccos; Nicotiana bigelovii (cross-hatching), a wild and semi-domesticated species in California, comes next. Also shown in cross-hatching is N. quadrivalvis which survives in North Dakota among the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians (the tribe of Buffalo Bird Woman).
Excerpted from the thread on Tobacco Varieties Before Columbus: http://fairtradetobacco.com/threads/181-Tobacco-Varieties-Before-Columbus

 

[LewZephyr]

Bob that's interesting, and of course I am not surprised you were already aware of the Utah dig.
I just came across it from my news feeds. I have a couple of archaeology threads I keep an eye on and this one came through.

Thanks for the added info.

 

[ArizonaDave]

Very interesting Bob. Has anyone ever tried Nicotaina attenuata (black) yet? Maybe I'll read the link as well. I'm interested in any SW native tobaccos. For some reason, the Brazilian tobaccos also grow well here, and can tolerate the sun well, along with long, narrow leaf tobaccos.

 

[webmost]

This is good news for those who like their wrappers well-aged.

 

[deluxestogie]

Has anyone ever tried Nicotaina attenuata (black) yet? I'm interested in any SW native tobaccos

I'm aware of more than 70 different species of Nicotiana. Most of them produce tiny leaf that is not particularly suitable for smoking. Some of them contain toxic levels of odd alkaloids. Of note is the fact (related by Buffalo Bird Woman) that the Mandan men sauteed their tobacco (Nicotiana quadrivalvis) in buffalo fat, prior to smoking it.

Unlike most wild types of Nicotiana, N. tabacum and N. rustica have been cultivated and "improved" by humans for at least a couple of thousand years.

Bob

 

[Smokin Harley]

Bob that's interesting, and of course I am not surprised you were already aware of the Utah dig.
I just came across it from my news feeds. I have a couple of archaeology threads I keep an eye on and this one came through.

Thanks for the added info.

Of course Bob knew about it ...he was there.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Very interesting Bob. Has anyone ever tried Nicotaina attenuata (black) yet? Maybe I'll read the link as well. I'm interested in any SW native tobaccos. For some reason, the Brazilian tobaccos also grow well here, and can tolerate the sun well, along with long, narrow leaf tobaccos.

These guys have a large number of Nicotiana species' seed other than N.tabacum. They have all kinds of very interesting plants available. It's probably the most interesting seed site I've ever been on. However, it's poorly organized and there's no pictures. It's mostly organized by geographical origin so you'll have to check every region to find all the Nicotiana species they carry.

http://sacredsucculents.com/andean-ethnobotanical-collections/

I'm definitely ordering.

 

[SmokesAhoy]

Speaking of sautéing tobacco in a fat, quite a few snuffs are done this way still to this day. A common fat is ghee for Madras style snuff. It's really good.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Speaking of sautéing tobacco in a fat, quite a few snuffs are done this way still to this day. A common fat is ghee for Madras style snuff. It's really good.

Are you talking chew or snort? I get confused with snuff and snus.

 

[webmost]

.... Of note is the fact (related by Buffalo Bird Woman) that the Mandan men sauteed their tobacco (Nicotiana quadrivalvis) in buffalo fat, prior to smoking it.

Twelve millennia back, they may well have fried their baccy in giant ground sloth fat. Hence the disappearance of giant ground sloths.

Have any of you tried anything along these lines? I'm thinking, for example, about BigBonner's habano wrapper. Big beautiful aromatic leaves; but essentially fireproof. I'm wondering whether a bit of butter might make BigBonner's habano burn better? How would you go about it? Maybe it's as simple as brushing melted butter on the finished stick? Think of the shine, too. Not much buffalo fat round the manse here; but plenty of butter ... as my beer belly can attest. Someone should experiment. Wouldn't that be wonderful.

I might look around to see if I can find any more of that leaf. Think I gave it away. You got some?

 

[deluxestogie]

Twelve millennia back, they may well have fried their baccy in giant ground sloth fat. Hence the disappearance of giant ground sloths.

I'm wondering whether a bit of butter...

The reasoning about the ground sloth's demise is amusing, but may not be too far off. Actually, the same archaeologists identified elephant residue on large stone spear points at a nearby dig site. Yup. Elephants in Utah. Maybe elephant fat?

Clarified butter might be a better bet than unrendered butter. Clarification removes the casein and other milk solids. Blech.

Bob

 

[webmost]

The reasoning about the ground sloth's demise is amusing, but may not be too far off. Actually, the same archaeologists identified elephant residue on large stone spear points at a nearby dig site. Yup. Elephants in Utah. Maybe elephant fat?

Clarified butter might be a better bet than unrendered butter. Clarification removes the casein and other milk solids. Blech.

Bob

Good stinkin. Bearswatter has a funny lookin lil doodad expressly for drawing off clarified butter. Looks like I'm nominated. First, have to dig round and see if I still have some of that fireproof habano left.

 

[deluxestogie]

Have a class B fire extinguisher ready.

Bob

 

[webmost]

Have a class B fire extinguisher ready.

Bob

How bout class ghee instead?

Here's my quickie:

Found an old batch of BigBonner habano that'd been prepared for use. It's been sitting in a damp state so long it has white mold spots. I wiped them off of one leaf and wrapped it round a quickie blank. Gonna leave it out a few days to dry. There's an Indian food store beside the yoga studio. I go in to yoga before 7 and get out round 8:30. Dunno if the store will be open then. Gotta check their hours. Anyhoo, I'm thinking I should be able to score some ghee there. Brush it on thin as possible, then set it in a hot window for the stuff to sink in. Maybe a touch of the old hair dryer.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

How bout class ghee instead?

Here's my quickie:

Found an old batch of BigBonner habano that'd been prepared for use. It's been sitting in a damp state so long it has white mold spots. I wiped them off of one leaf and wrapped it round a quickie blank. Gonna leave it out a few days to dry. There's an Indian food store beside the yoga studio. I go in to yoga before 7 and get out round 8:30. Dunno if the store will be open then. Gotta check their hours. Anyhoo, I'm thinking I should be able to score some ghee there. Brush it on thin as possible, then set it in a hot window for the stuff to sink in. Maybe a touch of the old hair dryer.

I'm on the edge of my seat!

 

[deluxestogie]

Seems like something is missing. Like grape jelly or grits.

Bob

 

[webmost]

I spose we all have our collections of uglies. The ones that didn't turn out well enough to stash away. Decent ones go in the box, and when the box gets full, it's stashed away. Uglies get jumbled in with the other uglies, and you promise to smoke them when nobody's lookin, just so you don't throw the baccy away.

I pulled out two of those uglies today and gheed them up.

Scored my preparation at Amrat Halal, from a bearded fellow who gave me that sideways head slide and simultaneous fingertip brushing away gesture, so as to express his disgust at those Bengal barbarians and their crude delicacies... so I know it's genuine. My uglies are wrapped in that reddish corojo, which, though not fireproof, is at least reluctant. The banded parejo is honduran habano; the perfecto with a Sheik band is Jorge's spicy stuff. There's the ghee jar, too, so that you can see the color of it. Turns out, as I read today, ghee is fermented a bit. I expected it to be clear yellow. Not so. Smells a mite fermenty at first. But once I shone a hair dryer on each buttered stick, the odor turned very golden buttery. Makes them shine, that's for sure.

I'll give it a couple to settle in.Prolly fire 'em up round Sunday.

 

[Lorenzai]

Interesting article. It's interesting to me because there is so much we have just assumed we know about history, and it's things like these that prove that we probably don't know the half of it.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I spose we all have our collections of uglies. The ones that didn't turn out well enough to stash away. Decent ones go in the box, and when the box gets full, it's stashed away. Uglies get jumbled in with the other uglies, and you promise to smoke them when nobody's lookin, just so you don't throw the baccy away.

I pulled out two of those uglies today and gheed them up.

Scored my preparation at Amrat Halal, from a bearded fellow who gave me that sideways head slide and simultaneous fingertip brushing away gesture, so as to express his disgust at those Bengal barbarians and their crude delicacies... so I know it's genuine. My uglies are wrapped in that reddish corojo, which, though not fireproof, is at least reluctant. The banded parejo is honduran habano; the perfecto with a Sheik band is Jorge's spicy stuff. There's the ghee jar, too, so that you can see the color of it. Turns out, as I read today, ghee is fermented a bit. I expected it to be clear yellow. Not so. Smells a mite fermenty at first. But once I shone a hair dryer on each buttered stick, the odor turned very golden buttery. Makes them shine, that's for sure.

I'll give it a couple to settle in.Prolly fire 'em up round Sunday.

Did he live?