I'm not sure we settled on tobacco. I think it's a legacy of European trade revolution in the last 300 years. Seems marijuana is picking up. Probably other things will come along in future as well.

Regarding discovery of the administration route i think it's surprising from the point of view of city dwellers in modern times but not surprising from the point of view of people who live in nature and smear their bodies with various plant products as pigments and use fire as other people have said. what I think is more surprising than the discovery of the administration route of tobacco is the administration route for yopo, a drug that someone else mentioned on this thread.

For that, people somehow discovered that you need to take snail shells and then reduce them in a fire to quicklime (a very white substance) and then mix that quicklime with
crushed seeds of a certain fern-like plant. Then doing all that you put it up your nose and it gives you some sort of day long hallucinations as a result of tryptamine derivatives. That to me is next level... but perhaps it's not surprising from the point of view of people who are constantly experimenting with crushing plant products to create pigments and then rubbing them on their faces, like many indigenous natives of islands and rainforests around the world. you could imagine the situation where people inadvertently got some pigment up their nose and discovered its effects.

In some sense it's sad that our modern city dwelling lives have become so disconnected as someone else has said from nature.

Regarding the use of tobacco to alter your experience, I think the following is a good additional point to make. You know, it's like overeating. Sure you can tell yourself to stop eating so much or you can tell yourself to eat less, or eat differently, but for many people that's not exactly easy to do and a lot of the effects that they get they can't find, or they don't yet know how to find, in such an easy way doing something else.

these people who already probably understand that it's not healthy for them but they do it anyway even though they could choose to think and act differently. So overeating, or eating your feelings can be comforting, a crutch, and all those people could tell themselves just simply change their thoughts or change their mood or not think too much. That's reasonable isn't it? It's good to remember anyway. Same as with exercising.

But I also think people are not really using tobacco for the mood effect. not everybody anyway. I think some people are using it for the body effect, or the energy effect, or some health effect that doesn't really have anything to do with thoughts or feelings. As an aside tobacco has use in ayurvedic medicine. In the same way that taking some medication to improve some body condition (such as, oh I don't know, say, acne) is not really something to do with thoughts or feelings. No... I'm not discounting the possibility that creating a certain type of correct thoughts or correct emotions can lead to these body outcomes or health outcomes or any outcomes that can be a lot better for the person...but maybe before someone has discovered how to do that some sort of chemical or medication allows them to see that it's possible.

For instance the person taking an acne medication allows them to see themselves as beautiful for the first time or to see that they can have a life or an image beyond these acne that they live with for so many years and then once they are able to see that it's possible maybe later on they can discover the diet or lifestyle changes or energy work or breath work or exercise that somehow creates that same experience for them.

in that sense sometimes these compounds can be like Windows to a possible future to show you some of the things that are possible for you to achieve even when in the future the compounds have nothing to do with it.

So I definitely think it's possible for people to create a lot of those effects themselves at the same time maybe it helps to show them that they can even do that by a compound being able to help them see that it's possible that that is something that they too can experience.