SMOKERS 2000 YEARS AGO

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11686, 26 November 1923, Page 9

SMOKERS 2000 YEARS AGO

RELIC'S OF LOST RACE. Descriptions of an ancient race who used tobacco about the beginning of the Christian era were given to the British Association by Dr. A. C. Kruyt, a Dutchman, who is home on furlough from the island of Celebes, in the Dutch East Indies for the first time in 18 years. Dr. Kruyt said he was going back for another five years to complete his investigations of the stone-using people who once inhabited that land. This strange race left stone relics, particularly enormous stone casks in which they kept corpses of their dead. Each pot had a heavy stone lid, and the only tools used for marring these stone pots, idols and coffins were little bronze axes. Those people used tobacco, rolling the leaves into cigars. Tobacco, Dr. Kruyt added, went out of use and was supplanted by betel nut for chewing. The people believed the first human beings were hewn out of stone, and their kings possessed huge stone thrones which they believed had originated from a race of giants. Dr. Ivruyt suggested that the race came to Celebes from Japan.