How did Latakia into my pipe?

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the macdonald

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I realized the other day that I have no idea when Latakia it came into fashion as a smoking material. I know that is a spiced treatment of tobacco and not a particular plant, and not, contrary to some vicious rumors involved in anyway with camel dung, but how did this variety come to be so ubiquitous with English, Scottish and Balkan blends?

I assume that tobacco use spread from the Virginian colony, to England and to Europe. The fact that there are distinct “oriental” varieties through out the Mediterranean areas, and into the Middle East, obviously does not support that train of thought. So I guess that makes my question two fold; when did tobacco arrive in the Middle East and how did it get to or back to English blenders?
 
Interesting topic. As a English blend fanatic I would be curious to the answer also. I hope one of our other pipe smoking and blend aficionados have the answer.
 
Even' All, I'll take a stab at this one, probably it, ie; Latikia, followed British Colonalism, d'ya think? Ken. :tongue:
Pacem en Puffing! :tongue: From The Northeast Kingdom! :tongue:
 
From what I've read, the mother strain of all modern tobaccos was originally native to the Carribean -- preferred because it was much less noxious than its North American cousins. This was planted in Virginia and, from there, eventually everywhere.

There are plants that undergo changes when planted far from their homes -- pot being one such. North African, for example, morphs into North American by its third generation here. For that matter, Astrikhan sheep lose their characteristic tightly-curled fleece when raised away from their native habitat.

Tobacco is seemingly one of the plants that morph into local adaptive forms (re. leaf size & shape). Plus soil, elevation &c. have a ton to do with it.

:face:
 
While tobacco use was a widespread and important social practice among Native Americans during the Historic Period, the prehistoric origins of the practice are poorly understood. Among the gems scattered throughout Smoking and Culture, we learn that one of the earliest known smoking pipes, recovered from a prehistoric site of ceremonial context in Tennessee is dated approximately 2000 B.C. Smoking pipes significantly predate botanical evidence of tobacco in Eastern North America. A promising technique for addressing this problem is gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy (GC/MS) analysis to identify nicotine or related compounds in smoking pipe residues. GC/MS analysis of a smoking pipe dating to approximately 300 B.C. from the Boucher Site, a Middlesex-complex site from Vermont, has produced evidence of nicotine decay products. This is interpreted as evidence for an Early Woodland Period origin for tobacco use in Eastern North America.
 
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