Today, in almost any major city, one can walk into a humidor and find an abundance of beautiful cigars - wrappers of every shade, shapes refined over centuries, craftsmanship easily taken for granted.

It was not always so.

Long before cigars became objects of pleasure or status, tobacco was something altogether different: ritualistic, medicinal, and spiritual. Archaeological evidence places tobacco use in Mesoamerica as early as 1000–500 BCE, supported by nicotine residue found in ceramic smoking vessels associated with early Maya culture. This material evidence is reinforced by Classic Maya iconography (circa 600–900 CE), which depicts figures smoking in ceremonial contexts.

By the early second millennium (the years between 1000-2000), tobacco use was firmly established across several Indigenous cultures of the Americas - most notably among the Taíno of the Caribbean, the Maya of Mesoamerica, and later the Aztec civilisation of central Mexico.

These cultures formed the foundation of what would later become modern cigar culture.

The Taíno inhabited the Caribbean - modern-day Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.
The Maya occupied much of Mesoamerica - present-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador.
The Aztec Empire was centred on Tenochtitlan - today’s Mexico City.

Tobacco use among these societies was not recreational in the modern sense. It was used for spiritual rituals, healing practices, meditation, and communion. Tobacco leaves were air-cured and naturally fermented, then rolled - often not in tobacco leaf, but in palm or maize or smoked through tubes.

Among the Taíno, the rolled tobacco bundle was referred to as sikar or sigar. Sound familiar?

Below is a map for the visual learners amongst us, highlighting the regions that took part in these practises.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these regions remain at the forefront of cigar production to this very day, some 1000 years later.

on August 3, 1492, the infamous Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain, two months later, he landed on what is believed to be sal salvador in the Bahamas. Ten years later his third voyage took him to Central America.

Journal entries from these early explorers included illustrations and observations on how the indigenous peoples of these territories were rolling and smoking tobacco leaves. It was initially viewed as medicinal, exotic and even sinful.

A direct translation from one of the journal entries reads:

“The Indians drank the smoke of certain dried herbs placed inside a cane.”

It was not long before some of the explorers took part in this newfound practise.

Naturally, the Europeans would soon globalise this new commodity.

By the early 1500s, tobacco - including rolled forms - began appearing across Europe as explorers returned home. Pipes and snuff dominated early adoption. Cigars existed, but remained marginal.

In the 1550s, the French diplomat Jean Nicot introduced tobacco to the French court, promoting it as medicinal. His name would later be immortalised in the word nicotine.

At this stage, tobacco was not yet normalised. It was elite, strange, and closely associated with medicine and curiosity rather than habit.

By the 1580s–1590s, pipe smoking had spread across England; sailors, soldiers, merchants adopted it fast. Clay pipes became common household items.

By 1600–1620 tobacco smoking is common across much of Europe, namely; England, The Netherlands, Spain and parts of Germany and France.

Taverns and homes smell of smoke, pipes are mass-produced and tobacco trade becomes economically significant.

Opposition exists (famously James I of England hated it - there is always one that detests good things!), but prohibition fails and populist demand wins.

Smoking tobacco is now recognised as “normal”, however cigars still lurked in the shadows.

The cigar’s ascent arose in the early to mid-1800s, as they became fashionable among elites. They were associated with Spain and Cuba, with craftsmanship and prestige. Tobacco shifted from intoxication toward identity.

By the mid-19th century, cigars were firmly linked to:

Cuba emerged as the dominant producer. Handmade cigars became symbols of authority, composure, and power. This was the moment the cigar became recognisable as what we know today.

This period marked the cigar’s cultural peak.

Cigars were publicly smoked, socially accepted, and politically symbolic. They were no longer exotic - they were established. The cigar became a slow, deliberate object, associated with seriousness rather than indulgence.

Then came the revolution…

Cigarettes emerged as a mass product in the late 19th century, accelerated by industrialisation and the invention of the Bonsack machine.

They were:

Tobacco consumption detached from ritual and became frequent, casual, and ubiquitous. Cigarettes were chopped tobacco wrapped in paper - industrial rather than artisanal.

Cigarettes were a product of cities, factories, and daily consumption.
Cigars were going into decline as they did not fit into the cultural shift.

Today, tobacco follows two distinct paths.

Cigarettes:

Cigars:

Cigarettes moved ever further from their natural origins, whilst cigars have remained largely unchanged in their nature and ingredients.

Speed versus time.
Frequency versus presence.
Consumption versus ritual.

These distinctions still define them today.

Cigarettes fall fastest.
Cigars retreat into ritual and subculture, never losing their prestige.

The cigar has endured not because it adapted to modern life, but because it refused to.

From its earliest form, it demanded time, attention, and presence - qualities that have only grown rarer with each century. What began as ritual survived conquest, commerce, and industrialisation precisely because it could not be rushed or reduced.

To smoke a cigar today is not to participate in nostalgia, but in continuity. Understanding its origin does not elevate the act - it simply makes it deliberate and hopefully, the moments more appreciated.

And in an age defined by acceleration, that deliberateness may be the cigar’s most enduring trait.

Whoever first lit those first dried leaves all those centuries ago will forever remain an unknown figure of serious significance in this world.

We owe them more than we realise.

Yours truly,

Cigar Letters

Tobacco reached the Middle East relatively early, but it arrived into a culture already shaped by communal ritual rather than individual indulgence.

By the 16th century, tobacco was circulating throughout the region, carried along established trade routes via the Ottoman Empire and European merchants. It spread rapidly across Anatolia, Persia, Egypt, and the Levant, integrating itself into daily life with remarkable speed.

Yet the form it took mattered.

In the Middle East - and much of Asia - tobacco was adopted primarily through pipes and water pipes. Smoking was:

The hookah, in particular, suited this rhythm. It slowed consumption, softened the smoke, and turned tobacco into a shared experience.

The cigar, by contrast, was personal, slow, and inward-facing. Individually rolled and privately consumed, it did not align with the prevailing customs of the region. As a result, cigars never established themselves as a dominant form of smoking in the East.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, cigarettes spread rapidly across the Middle East, India, and much of Asia.

Their appeal was practical:

Cigarettes fit the economic and administrative realities of empire, trade, and urbanisation. They became the dominant form of tobacco use - not because they were superior, but because they were efficient.

Cigars entered Eastern societies much later, and almost exclusively through European influence. They were introduced by:

As a result, cigars were perceived as Western, elite, and ceremonial - never quotidian. They remained occasional luxuries rather than everyday habits, a perception that persists in much of the region to this day.

Rolled tobacco leaves existed long before cigarettes, originating in Indigenous American ritual practices centuries prior to European contact. Cigars developed as objects of time, ceremony, and status. Cigarettes emerged much later as industrial products, engineered for frequency and convenience.

When tobacco reached the East, it was absorbed into existing communal traditions through pipes and water pipes. Cigarettes later flourished because they aligned with modern economic systems. Cigars, arriving last and carrying different cultural assumptions, remained peripheral.

This divergence explains much of the modern landscape.

In the West, the cigar became a symbol of deliberateness.
In the East, tobacco remained social - but the cigar stayed foreign.

Both outcomes were shaped less by taste than by culture.