Though Cuban cigars are perhaps the world's most revered, the stogie probably didn't originate on the island. Cigar smoking first took hold elsewhere in the Americas—exactly where and when remains uncertain. A ceramic pot discovered in Guatemala that dates at least as far back as the 10th century depicts a Mayan puffing on tobacco leaves bound up with string. (The Mayans may also have handed down the object's name: their term for smoking, sikar, likely led to the Spanish cigarro, from which the cigar takes its name.) When Columbus stumbled upon the Americas in 1492, he also discovered tobacco; the New World's natives smoked cylindrical bundles of twisted tobacco leaves wrapped in dried palm or corn husks.
