The academic discipline of ethnobotany (although not yet named as such) was gathering momentum during the 17th century at the time of European and colonial expansion. During a historical review as part of a joint undertaking with U.N.E.S.C.O. and the United Nations University (U.N.U.), they identified that:
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Traditional Knowledge is as ancient as humankind, and it is in Traditional Knowledge that the origins of science are rooted. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with European colonial expansion, the newly established scientific disciplines of ethnobotany and ethnozoology thrived on an influx of new knowledge from Traditional Knowledge holders across the globe. Their primary mission, however, was not to understand these other knowledge systems per se, but rather to glean from them information for the development of colonial science. Their efforts focused on compiling lists of ‘useful’ plants and animals unknown to European science.201 However the principle of ethnobotany has been around for much longer than the U.N.E.S.C.O. report suggests, ‘since the beginning of human civilisation, people have used plants as food and medicine. Indian Sanskrit and Rigveda show thousands of plant species used as food, medicine, agriculture tools, and for religious purposes. Perhaps as early as Neanderthal man, plants were believed to have had healing power’.202
Uddin, ethnobotanist and Head of the Ethnobotany Laboratory, Department of Botany, Chittagong University, Bangladesh, has researched the history of ethnobotany. Uddin observed from Jain and Mudgal that recorded ethnobotany in the Indian subcontinent may be the earliest in the world and date back to 4000-1500 B.C. ‘Plants were recorded in use for worship, medicine, food, fuel and as agricultural implements which are mentioned in the ancient Indian literature and in the religious books of the Hindus. These are Rigveda, Atharvaveda, Upanishads, Mahabharata and Puranas.’203 ‘The earliest recorded uses found in Babylon circa 1770 BC in the Code of Hammurabi and in ancient Egypt circa 1550 B.C.’.204
In AD 77, the Greek surgeon Dioscorides published De Materia Medica, which was a catalogue of about 600 plants in the Mediterranean and the medicines that can be obtained from them. It has been one of the longest and most widely circulated and translated publication of any non-religious book. It was a primary reference book that was commonly used by physicians and in hospitals for over 1,500 years and was still known to be in use in the early part of the 20th century.
Image 5-1a illustrates a cover of an early printed version of De Materia Medica, Lyon, 1554, whilst Image 5-1b shows an illustrated Dioscorides manuscript written in the original Greek language from sixth-century Constantinople showing a blackberry plant and its uses.
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Image 5-1 a&b Early printed versions of De Materia Medica
a. b.
Source: Hefferon205
Throughout the medieval period, botanical knowledge and ethnobotanical studies were primary functions of monasteries where research was undertaken to identify suitable plants to heal applicable ailments. These medicinal plants were then grown in physic gardens alongside hospitals for application of this knowledge.
In 1732 Linnaeus was appointed by the Royal Academy of Sciences to journey to Sápmi, then known as Lapland, on a research expedition ‘to describe the nature of what was then considered a remote wilderness.’206 Linnaeus spent time with the Sami people investigating how they survived in such a harsh environment and identified plants and animals that enabled their survival. Linnaeus published a book from this expedition called Flora Lapponica as seen in Image 5-2, listing plants of the region and their uses. Observations from this expedition, amongst others were instrumental in developing the hierarchical system of the classification of nature.
Image 5-2 Flora Lapponica by Carl Linnaeus
Source: Linnaeus 207
During the 18th and 19th century naturalists, botanists and plant collectors such as Charles Darwin, Joseph Banks and Ferdinand von Mueller were not only focussed on finding exotic plants from far flung countries, but there was particular interest in those plants that had been used by Indigenous People that had a functional
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purpose or potential economic value. Banks was responsible for exporting Australian species to herbariums and plant collectors in England, by 1800 there were 170 cultivated Australian species in Britain.208
However it was Harshberger a botanist and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania who ‘first introduced the term ethnobotany in about 1895,’
according to ethnobotanist Mohamad.209 It was coined in 'the study of the utilitarian relationship between human beings and vegetation in their environment, including medicinal uses'.210
Although Harshberger first used the term, the founding father of ethnobotany, as an academic discipline, is considered to be Richard Evans Schultes (1915-2001).
Schultes was a Harvard trained biologist dedicated to the study of ethnobotany of the plants and Indigenous People of the Amazon. During his field trips he collected over 30,000 herbarium specimens, which upon his death was bequeathed to the Harvard University Herbaria.
Schultes ethnobotanical studies had been fostered and guided by his doctoral advisor Oakes Ames. Ames was Harvard educated and maintained his career at Harvard as the Professor of Botany and Director of the Botanic Garden and Chairman of the Council of Botanical Collections amongst many other positions.
Ames was responsible for the classification of most of the Orchidaceae family and donated his collection to Harvard University, including a large herbarium.
The Harvard University Economic Herbarium of Ames consists of about 40,000 specimens of economically important plants of cultivated and wild origin.211 As a result of ethnobotany becoming accepted as an academic discipline at the early part of the 20th century with Harvard University becoming the epicentre for ethnobotanical education and the benefactor for research expeditions; various educational institutions spawned their own ethnobotanical courses around the world. The resulting alumni from these courses established societies such as The Society for Economic Botany (1959) and The Society of Ethnobiology (1977).
These societies were instrumental in initiating a code of ethics to guide researchers, such as the ethics guidelines of the Society of Economic Botany 1994 and the International Society of Ethnobiology in 2006.
During the 20th century there was an explosion of interest in the use of plants primarily for medicinal, psychoactive and psychedelic drug purposes from pharmaceutical companies to herbalists to the amateur healer or user.
Although the academic study of ethnobotany has been gaining traction during the 20th and 21st centuries, inversely the amount of knowledge holders and their knowledge is in decline. The demise in ethnobotanical knowledge in Europe was attributed to a ‘shift from a rural, agriculturally based subsistence economy to a market oriented one.’212 Much unlike Australia where the T.E.K. of the Indigenous Peoples was largely lost since European colonisation which brought disease, displacement and genocide along with the introduction of foreign animals and plants that destroyed or out competed many indigenous plants.
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