Cotzumalhuapa was an ancient Mayan city located in the southwest of present-day Guatemala. During the classic Mesoamerican period, this enclave of more than 10 square kilometers was a power in the region and its culture reached El Salvador, Nicaragua and even Chiapas (Mexico).
Beyond possessing the oldest legible Mayan calendar known (37 BC) and the famous stele number 1 of El Baúl (one of the oldest inscriptions in Mesoamerica), this society also had hieroglyphic writing that had not yet been deciphered.
Archaeologists have been studying a city that still has many buried surprises for decades. The latest, discovered by researchers at Yale University, were ceramic vases that have revealed the secrets of the ancient healing rituals in Cotzumalhuapa.
The analysis of the residue found inside these containers has shown traces of nicotine, as explained by the experts in an article published in the magazine Antiquity. The surprising thing is that, until now, historical documents only recorded the use of tobacco in ceremonies from the colonial period (16th century) onwards.
"We knew that tobacco was a very important substance used for a variety of ritual and therapeutic purposes in ancient Mesoamerica and throughout the New World," says Dr. Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, co-author of the research. "However, archaeological evidence is scarce because remains of this substance are rarely well preserved," he adds.
The discovery provides evidence, archaeologists say, of early nicotine consumption in the Americas, possibly in therapeutic rituals. As vases were probably used to store and serve liquids, the tobacco may have been made into an infusion rather than smoked.
Cotzumalhuapa was one of the largest cities in Mesoamerica during the Late Classic Period (650-950 AD). His artistic style spread widely across the Pacific coast and highlands of Guatemala, reflecting the city's political and economic importance in the region. However, little is known about the ritual practices that were carried out there.
The use of tobacco in Mesoamerican ceremonies is known from written sources and from sculptures depicting holy herb leaves, but little conclusive physical evidence has been found, especially from the periods before Spanish colonization.
To discover more about the ritual in Cotzumalhuapa, a team of researchers analyzed chemical residues from seven ceramic vessels discovered near the acropolis of El Baúl, located 550 meters above sea level and 50 kilometers away from the Pacific Ocean.
“We hoped that the study of these remains inside the well-preserved vessels would reveal details about the use of plants in ritual activities,” says Chinchilla Mazariegos. But no markers for cocoa, chili peppers or annatto (a food coloring and seasoning) were found.
Instead, of the seven containers tested, three gave positive results for nicotine. The vessels had a typical shape used to contain liquids, so the discovery of tobacco residue was totally unexpected, the experts point out in a statement.
Tobacco was previously known to be smoked in dry leaf form or inhaled in powder form. But the possibility of it being consumed as a liquid infusion was totally unexpected. “Despite its importance, Guatemala's tropical coast is severely neglected in terms of archaeological research,” says Oswaldo Chinchilla.
The widespread use of tobacco for ritual and therapeutic purposes (for archaeologists the two were almost certainly related) is well documented from early colonial times to modern times, but the results indicate that this was happening centuries earlier. "We hope that these interesting results will stimulate further analysis of samples recovered from sites on the Pacific coast," he concludes.
