Many of the world’s most famed and prominent ancient civilisations were ambassadors of tobacco and were early advocates for the smoking and chewing of the leaves. Discovering the pleasure that can be accrued from smoking or chewing tobacco, the Aztecs and the Mayans soon shared their discoveries with the wider world as explorers made their way to the Americas.
Famous European explorers such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Christopher Columbus both endeavoured to present tobacco and its benefits to the wider world with the latter even convincing Queen Elizabeth to start smoking.
Over the last 200 years there have been a large number of different advances that have helped shape the modern tobacco industry including friction matches and the development of mass production. All of these factors of the last 2.5 million years have helped make the tobacco industry one of the biggest, most profitable and most beloved in the world.
