INDIGENOUS SOCIETIES

Introducción

En the present time, the tobacco wastes away burning the leaves of the plant fundamentally and inhaling the smoke that take place. It can also be chewed or to be placed, in snuff form, in contact with the mucous membranes of the mouth. The predominance of these methods is a relatively recent phenomenon, and the pattern of more common consumption, the manufactured cigarette, only has something more than one century. In the America, however, the tobacco is used for thousands of years by means of diverse administration roads and with numerous cultural and social purposes. In the exhibition that continues, the history of the use of the tobacco will be revised in the indigenous societies, although it won't be tried to deepen in her.  Algunas of the described practices is not very common or they are already extinguished; other they are still used, but all contribute to define the function carried out by the tobacco in the cultural life and nun of these societies. 

Nicotine is an old gender; the two species of the same one of more importance in South America, N. peasant and N. tabacum, produce big quantities of their main alkaloid, the nicotine. In the antiquity they existed in the Cone South numerous species of tobacco, although they didn't wake up a lot of interest until about 8000 years ago, when the changes taken place in the supply of foods forced the population to pass from the hunt and the collection to the cultivation of the earth. In that time, the populations emigrated from the savannas open of the south of the continent, not very appropriate for the agriculture, to the tropical forests of the Amazons and even more regions to the north, including the Caribbean. The tobacco became one of the habitual cultivations of these first farmers.