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Nor is it only the West that has scorned traditional learning. When communist China imposed tight control over Tibet in 1959, the aggressors tried to eradicate the captive country's culture. In particular, the communists denounced Tibetan medicine as feudal superstition, and the number of doctors practicing the 2,000-year-old, herb-based discipline shrank from thousands to 500. But since the Chinese began to relent on this issue in recent years, Tibetans have returned to their traditional medicines, which they often find more effective and less harsh than Western drugs.
Even in the Third World, governments have tended to look at their indigenous cultures as an impediment to development and nationhood. In Papua New Guinea, for instance, European administrators, influenced by colonial practices in Africa, sought to discourage tribalism by consolidating power and commerce in cities far away from the villages that are the centers of tribal life. According to John Waiko, director of Papua New Guinea's National Research Institute, this decision has fueled instability by making government seem remote and arbitrary. Among dozens of nations and regions with substantial native populations, only Greenland and Botswana stand out for their efforts to accommodate the culture and interests of these people.
Growing Appreciation
Attitudes are beginning to change, however. Scientists are learning to look past the myth, superstition and ritual that often conceal the hard-won insights of indigenous peoples. Sometimes the lessons have come in handy: during the gulf war, European doctors treated some wounds with a sugar paste that traces back to Egyptian battlefield medicine of 4,000 years ago.
Michael Balick, director of the New York Botanical Garden's Institute of Economic Botany, notes that only 1,100 of the earth's 265,000 species of plants have been thoroughly studied by Western scientists, but as many as 40,000 may have medicinal or undiscovered nutritional value for humans. Many are already used by tribal healers, who can help scientists greatly focus their search for plants with useful properties.
Balick walks tropical forests with shamans in Latin America as part of a study, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, designed to uncover plants useful in the treatment of AIDS and cancer. The 5,000 plants collected so far, says the NCI's Gordon Cragg, have yielded some promising chemicals. If any of them turn out to be useful as medicines, the country from which the plant came would get a cut of the profits.
In the past decade, researchers in developed countries have realized that they have much to learn from traditional agriculture. Formerly, such farming was often viewed as inefficient and downright destructive. "Slash and burn" agriculture, in particular, was viewed with contempt. Following this method, tribes burn down a section of forest, farm the land until it is exhausted and then move on to clear another patch of trees. This strategy has been blamed for the rapid loss of tropical rain forests.