Primitive smoking pipes

Primitive smoking pipes were widely used by the Mayas of Central America more than 1,000 years ago. The Mayas also had tobacco, a plant native only to the Americas. Stone carvings found on Mayan ruins actually portray priests blowing smoke as part of a religious ritual. Their smoking pipe was no more than a straight, tapering tube, with the tobacco at its wide end and its narrow end lodged in the priest‘s mouth.

The Mayas probably passed on their smoking habits to the Aztecs of Mexico, who had tubular smoking pipes made of silver, wood, bone, reed, pottery and tortoise shell. The straight tube pipe had a major disadvantage, however, in that the tobacco could easily fall out of the tube if the smoker failed to hold his head up. Eventually, pipe-makers began bending the tobacco-holding end of the tube upward, until the smoking pipe evolved into a bowl with an attached stem.

Next articles: What advice would you give...