Maya and Columbus: Where the Cigar Comes From

The story of the cigar does not begin in Havana but in the temples of Mesoamerica. There, tobacco was a sacred plant for centuries — smoked not for pleasure but in ritual.

Smoke for the Gods

In the Cross Temple of the Maya city of Palenque, in present-day Mexico, a seventh-century relief shows a figure in full ceremonial dress smoking a thick roll of tobacco leaves and exhaling great clouds of smoke. Scholars interpret it variously as a priest or as a deity of the underworld — what is certain is that it represents one of the earliest known depictions of a smoker anywhere on earth. For the Maya, smoke was more than an indulgence: it carried prayers upward, accompanied ceremonies and served as medicine.

1492: Two Worlds Meet

When Columbus landed on an island in the present-day Bahamas in October 1492, dried, fragrant leaves were among the gifts offered by the local inhabitants. His crew had no idea what to make of them and threw them away. A few weeks later, in November 1492 on Cuba, two scouts of the expedition — named in the records as Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres — became the first Europeans to observe people lighting rolled leaves and “drinking” the smoke. De Jerez, tradition has it, took a liking to the habit and brought it back to Spain, where the Inquisition is said to have imprisoned him: only the Devil, they reasoned, could breathe smoke from his mouth. Whether the episode unfolded exactly as described is unverifiable — it has nonetheless made him “the first smoker in Europe” ever since.

Where the Word “Cigarro” Comes From

The origin of the word is equally uncertain. One widely cited derivation traces it to the Maya word sikar — to smoke — while another points to the Spanish cigarra, the cicada, whose body may loosely resemble a rolled tobacco leaf. Neither can be established with certainty. What is certain is this: the plant, the ritual, and ultimately the word all came from the New World. Europe did not invent the cigar — it inherited it.