Why is Pipe Smoking Associated With Medieval Themed Books/Movies/Events?

[jpmcwjr]

"The first tobacco pipes found in Europe, from around 500 BC, were made of wooden stems or reed. Nomadic Indo-Europeans, the Scythians, used them to inhale the smoke from campfires. In turn, Greeks and Romans adopted the tobacco pipe, as well as Germanic peoples and Celtic tribes, who used them to smoke all sorts of herbs, and particularly the leaves from linden trees."

Complete bullshit, as tobacco was not available in Europe then.

Tobacco as we know it today, and the culture that surrounds it, come from America. Over 500 years ago, American-Indians cultivated this plant as a medicinal treatment, but also to smoke it. They rolled up tobacco leaves in the shape of a large cigar that they called ‘tabaco’. They burned these tobacco leaves, along with the other herbs, in their famous tobacco pipe, which we now know as the ‘calumet’.

Evidence is that some 2000 years before that, some native Americans were using tobacco. Apparently it was chewed or drunk for the most part.

 

[Elric]

A lesser known fact is that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a historically accurate account of a pipe club trying to get to the last stock of McLelland Tobacco. The Frenchmen is a metaphor for the gougers getting there just before the pipe club and the police as the ATF ruining all the fun.

You, sir, have won the Internet for the week!

 

[Elric]

"The first tobacco pipes found in Europe, from around 500 BC, were made of wooden stems or reed. Nomadic Indo-Europeans, the Scythians, used them to inhale the smoke from campfires. In turn, Greeks and Romans adopted the tobacco pipe, as well as Germanic peoples and Celtic tribes, who used them to smoke all sorts of herbs, and particularly the leaves from linden trees."

Complete bullshit, as tobacco was not available in Europe then.

Tobacco as we know it today, and the culture that surrounds it, come from America. Over 500 years ago, American-Indians cultivated this plant as a medicinal treatment, but also to smoke it. They rolled up tobacco leaves in the shape of a large cigar that they called ‘tabaco’. They burned these tobacco leaves, along with the other herbs, in their famous tobacco pipe, which we now know as the ‘calumet’.

Evidence is that some 2000 years before that, some native Americans were using tobacco. Apparently it was chewed or drunk for the most part.

Although they must have been smoking something in the middle ages due to the references to "plague pipes" smoked by the "Bring out your dead" folks.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Yes, something other than tobacco. Could have been more like incense, believing the smoke might help keep the disease- and smell!- at bay.

 

[sablebrush52]

I had never really gotten the impression that Ren Fairs were really seriously trying to be historically accurate; more that it is just one great big cosplay.

That is what they are now. In the early '60's when I attended as a kid, the goal was to provide an historically accurate experience. I remember seeing the caged dwarfs, suspended from tree branches that framed the entrance, yelling jesting insults at the attendees.

Once the Faire was transformed from a fundraiser to a commercial business, the rules changed as well.

I can’t swear to this, but I believe the book said it was rare, and also that many or most “smoked” by throwing leaves on a fire, and not through a pipe.

The few translations of early accounts I've read say the same thing, with a addition of using reeds to sip the smoke. It seems to have been very much a communal affair.

 

[mso489]

Historical confusion I guess. It seems to me that tobacco came back from the new world in the sixteen hundreds, Sir Walter Raleigh and all that, so that was well after medieval times and late in the Renaissance. Because of cartoons, many children believe dinosaurs were alive when humans lived on earth, which is not the case. A plastic model I had as a kid had a cave man posed beside a T-Rex to show scale and confuse children. Grandparents are a great source of family history and should take opportunities to give grandkids a feel for earlier history. Kids get confused and think grandpa probably knew George Washington, but they can clear that up as time goes on.

 

[sablebrush52]

dinosaurs were alive when humans lived on earth, which is not the case.

WHAT??!!

 

[mso489]

...still news to some, though probably not sable'.

 

[shanez]

I'll point out that a device used to inhale campfire smoke is inaccurately called a "tobacco pipe" twice here. I'd love to see a photo of such an artifact.
I've read that Europeans were bewildered by the concept of purposely inhaling smoke when tobacco first came to the continent.

First:

Agreed. I;m not sure why anyone would (or even how they could) purposely inhale campfire smoke.

Second:

"Pipe" not required...

 

[davek]

I had never really gotten the impression that Ren Fairs were really seriously trying to be historically accurate; more that it is just one great big cosplay. SCA is the same way, as far as I know. They have fun, and that's what counts.
AFAIK, there are very few places in the US where there are non-professional re-enactments of anything prior to the 18th Century that are really attempting to be historically accurate.

Well, the SCA is fairly accurate as to battling, aren't they?

Only semi-on topic. A repairman came into work today and we began discussing smoking as I got him where he needed to be. He is a cigar smoker (as I used to be), when he found out I smoke a pipe he told me that he planned to smoke a pipe when he got to his mid-fifties… when he was old enough.

 

[anotherbob]

well the article seems to be translated from french so it's not hard to imagine something small like smoking pipe being translated as tobacco pipe. Also the Scythians really liked weed a lot and would throw that on their fires, which is why they would want to inhale the vapors. I personally suspect that the reason they were the first culture to master horse riding is connected. Seriously if you'd never seen someone riding a horse you'd have to be high to have the thought "dude if I sat on that animal we could go all over the world on our ass".

 

[hugodrax]

The English renaissance happened a bit later than that of the more civilized world. A tiny clay would be quite appropriate for an Elizabethan court.

 

[seldom]

Seriously if you'd never seen someone riding a horse you'd have to be high to have the thought "dude if I sat on that animal we could go all over the world on our ass

Right. Because a horse and ass are two different animals!

 

[greeneyes]

Here's an article in the journal Science. No, there was no tobacco. Yes, people were intentionally smoking a variety of other things, inhaling "campfires" and smoke from specialized vessels. Smoking was not a surprising phenomenon to the Europeans of antiquity.

"Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the nomadic Scythians, who controlled vast areas from Siberia to Eastern Europe, made tents and heated rocks in order to inhale hemp vapors that made them "shout for joy."'

Oldest evidence of marijuana use discovered in 2500-year-old cemetery in peaks of western China - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/oldest-evidence-marijuana-use-discovered-2500-year-old-cemetery-peaks-western-china

 

[anotherbob]

Right. Because a horse and ass are two different animals!

should I have said bottom? Nah that wouldn't create any confusion, so not an option.

 

[seldom]

Here's an article in the journal Science. No, there was no tobacco. Yes, people were intentionally smoking a variety of other things, inhaling "campfires" and smoke from specialized vessels. Smoking was not a surprising phenomenon to the Europeans of antiquity.

That people were using cannabis in the Middle East isn't in question. Was smoking a surprising phenomenon to Europeans? Your post doesn't convince me one way or the other. With respect, I do not see how you reach your conclusion that "Smoking was not a surprising phenomenon to the Europeans of antiquity". What I gather is that it was perhaps unsurprising to those in Asia and the Middle East. I still wonder, why the association of pipe smoking with medieval Europe?

 

[greeneyes]

That people were using cannabis in the Middle East isn't in question. Was smoking a surprising phenomenon to Europeans? Your post doesn't convince me one way or the other. With respect, I do not see how you reach your conclusion that "Smoking was not a surprising phenomenon to the Europeans of antiquity". What I gather is that it was perhaps unsurprising to those in Asia and the Middle East. I still wonder, why the association of pipe smoking with medieval Europe?

No you're absolutely correct. It's a mistake scholars frequently make: failing to realize that Europe was in fact an island in the Atlantic, and culturally and historically unconnected to the faraway Middle East and Asia (via something trade routes, for example, which were impossible). Furthermore European scholars completely burned all the texts of the Greeks and Romans before them, having recognized them as fictional accounts of contact with other cultures with which they couldn't have possibly been exposed. Imagine how different things would have been if land had connected Europe with the Middle East and Asia! And further still if the scholars of antiquity had recorded the strange and unusual habits of the inhabitants they encountered on their travels, and who traveled to Europe itself!

 

[cosmicfolklore]

The East Indian Trading Company started in 1600, but shipping and trade by sea between Europe and the Middle East, India, and Asia was well established by then. Then you have the crusades...
There have been several accounts of recorded hemp use in Elizabethan times... one of which was the pipe of William Shakespeare.

Hemp was the source for ropes used in sailing... sailors were the source for hemp.

 

[davek]

America was founded on hemp and tobacco. Clipper ships were the state of the art technology of the time and used miles of hemp rope and possibly had hemp sails. Jamestown was the first successful colony due to tobacco and hemp.

 

[greeneyes]

I find it highly unlikely that all of these ancient (pre-dating the European colonization of the Americas) cultures were ritualistically using and smoking e.g. cannabis, and they were mentioned to varying degrees by scholars of antiquity, traded extensively with Europeans, and were in fact ancestors of Europeans themselves, and that somehow smoking (using whatever apparatus it may be) is somehow a shocking and completely unknown practice to Europeans.

Now, whether European Christian "civilized" society marginalized smoking later on is an entirely different matter. Smoking in one form or another was widespread the world 'round.

Entheogenic use of cannabis - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenic_use_of_cannabis