The Colorful History Of Smoking And Tobacco Pipes

Evidence exists for tobacco pipes shows up first in 5000 BCE in South America. Around 2000 BCE, ancient Egyptian burials sometimes included tobacco and the accompanying pipes near the mummies. They included everything in their burial plot which they would need in the afterlife and apparently some wished to indulge in an afterlife of tobacco pipe smoking. Around 500 BCE, two millennia before any European explorers sailed across the Atlantic, Native Americans performed ritual celebrations with ceremonial tobacco pipes.

Hippocrates, a physician from ancient Greece in the 4th and 5th centuries BCE, utilized tobacco as a cure for female illness. Herodotus mentioned Scythians using tobacco in his 5th century BCE histories. Tobacco pipes spread from Greco-Roman cultures to Germanic, Celtic and Nordic tribes.


Christopher Columbus first mentioned tobacco in his journal in 1492. He says it was given as a gift which was later thrown away. He eventually carried the plant back to Europe, where it gained popularity, especially its medicinal properties. The royal family of France treated their headaches with it and spread its reputation across the country.





Tobacco eventually became used as currency in the New World colonies. Jamestown exported more than a million pounds to England annually. This was an especially useful commodity after John Rolfe figured out how to cure it in the 16th century and therefore kept it from spoiling on its long ocean trip.

In the 16th century, the first recorded tobacco protest took place in Switzerland. A law was established which banned smoking and citizens took vehement offense. Sailors in Norway and Denmark often keelhauled smokers they found on the ship. Capital punishment was administered by the Russians, Turks and Chinese governments when its citizens were discovered smoking. All the relevant countries which were previously against smoking changed their tune once they discovered how much could be made from taxing tobacco rather than fighting it.


Pipes were used before tobacco’s popularity to smoke cannabis in the Middle East and parts of Asia. Opium and tobacco were mixed together and smoked with tobacco pipes and resulted in the Opium Wars of 19th century China.


Early pipes were carved from wood, corncobs and various gourds. Chalk pipes arose around the 16th century. Eventually iron was mass produced for sailors. Meerschaum, a mineral of the Black Sea, became popular for tobacco pipes in the 18th century. The briar pipe came about in France in the 19th century.


Modern pipes of our own times can be manufactured out of a variety of materials or carved by master craftsmen. Antique tobacco pipes are a popular collector’s item and some have reached quite a high price in value. Pipes have many related paraphernalia. Vintage advertisements and tobacco tins are another popular collector’s item.