How did rainforest shamans gain their boundless knowledge on medicinal plants?.

The short answer — no one really knows

Rhettt A. Butler, mongabay.com
May 14, 2005

 

Ethnobotanists, people who study the relationship between plants and people, have long been aware that rainforest dwellers have an astounding knowledge of medicinal plants. Kaiapo shaman in the Amazon.

Shaman3

For thousands of years, indigenous groups have extensively used rainforest plants for their health needs — the peoples of Southeast Asian forests used 6,500 species, while Northwest Amazonian forest dwellers used 1300 species for medicinal purposes. Today pharmacologists and ethnobotanists work with native healers and shamans in identifying prospects for development of new drugs. The yield from these efforts can be quite good — a study in Samoa found that 86% of the plants used by local healers yielded biological activity in humans — and the potential from such collaboration is huge with approximately one half of the anti-cancer drugs developed since the 1960s are derived from plants.

Perhaps more staggering than their boundless knowledge of medicinal
plants, is how shamans and medicinemen could have acquired such
knowledge. There are over 100,000 plant species in tropical rainforests
around the globe, how did indigenous peoples know what plants to use
and combine especially when so many are either poisonous or have no
effect when ingested. Many treatments combine a wide variety of
completely unrelated innocuous plant ingredients to produce a dramatic
effect. Some like curare of the Amazon are orally inactive, but when
administered to muscle tissue are lethal.

No one knows how this knowledge was derived. Most say trial and error.
Native forest dwellers say the knowledge was bestowed upon them by
spirits of the rainforest. Whatever the mechanism, evidence from
Amazonian natives suggests that indigenous knowledge of medicinal
plants can develop over a relatively short period of time.

Ethnobotanists studying medicinal plant use by recently
contacted tribes like the Waorani of Ecuador and the Yanomani of Brazil
and Venezuela reported a relatively limited and highly selective use of
medicinal plants. They had plants for treating fungal infections,
insect and snake bites, dental ailments, parasites, pains and traumatic
injuries. Their repertoire did not include plants to treat any Western
diseases. In contrast, indigenous groups that have had a history of
continuing contact with the outside world have hundreds of medicinal
plants used for a wide range of conditions. It seems that after
contact, in response to the introduction of Western diseases, these
tribes accelerated their experimentation with medicinal plants. This
notion contradicts the idea that indigenous knowledge of medicinal
plants was accumulated slowly, over hundreds of years.

These questions are becoming increasingly academic as rainforests
around the world continue to fall — the Amazon alone has lost more
than 200,000 miles of forest since the 1970s — and indigenous
populations vanish or become assimilated, often by choice, into
mainstream society.

As youths from these communities leave their traditional societies,
native cultures are forgotten and considerable knowledge about the
processes for developing new medicinal recipes are lost forever.
Anthropologist Wade Davis has written two books that explore both the
indigenous knowledge of plants and the disappearing cultures of the
world. One River touches on the history of ethnobotany in the Amazon along with a plethora of other topics, while Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures
presents photographs and stories from his 30 years of exploring the
planet’s most remote regions. After reading these works, you will
probably come away with the understanding that it’s important to know
what we’re losing before it’s gone.