The Fascinating World Of Indigenous American Medicine |1491| Chronicle

this channel is part of the history hits Network the Americas were home to groundbreaking achievements in science and technology long before 1491. in mesoamerica indigenous people developed a complex writing system calendars and books in South America a precise accounting machine was created more than 5 000 years ago throughout the Western Hemisphere sophisticated knowledge and the use of plants as medicine has been practiced for thousands of years some achievements like the earliest use of the number zero and brain surgery were among the most advanced in the world for their time indigenous men and women gathered studied and administered thousands of species of plants for healing purposes skilled ethnobotanists adapted plans for use as sedatives painkillers and other types of medicines native peoples had a very ancient and traditional practice but there were multiple Dimensions to it some of that was as essential as herbs and ethnopharmacology as we call it in other words a Botanical repertoire of things that are medical the reality is much of the medical tradition we have here in the western tradition is born precisely of those herbs and their alkaloids and the way in which we've extracted them indigenous medicine was not simply a process of preparing plants and offering them to a sick person healers had a deep knowledge of plant chemistry and how different plants interacted as medicines in the western tradition there's a tendency to engage in a primitivist rhetoric about Native American Medicine the idea that oh well it's about Superstition and it's about evil spirits and it's about herbs because some of the people could literally walk through a forest and identify plants and their Curative properties simply from visual inspection alone such that the chemovars which are the active ingredients that allow for the healing or the relieving of symptoms could be relieved and they knew which plants those were one of the more common plants that was used is a plant known as yarrow and the arrow is a very good example of Curative plant because this is one that was put on wounds and cuts because if you take a yarrow plant and then just chew it up you masticated you release all the alkaloids that are in there and you put it onto an open wound it actually has properties that will cause the blood to clot faster but other plants such as sweet grass these are plants that are used more in ceremonial uses you know for if you're starting a ceremony and you put sweet grass on there call and the smoke from the sweet grass has the properties that you're looking for for those who don't buy the idea that herbs can cure us the reality is much of the medical tradition we have here in the western tradition is born precisely of those herbs and their alkaloids and the way in which we've extracted them today many modern Pharmaceuticals Trace their Origins to medicines developed by indigenous people aspirin you know uh acetacilic acid which comes from Willow or Aspen the bark this was a very common one that was used from ancient times and the active ingredient was isolated and was then used to become aspirin in modern times and many of those plants and many of these people were being used by the medical industry to find those very substances many of those have been introduced into our medical tradition but in the forms of capsules and pills and and injections and thereby the American Indian is taken out of the equation though they are the discoverers and innovators of these medicines one of the the ancient manuscripts that came down to us had an entire listing of plants used by the Aztecs and there was a an incredible period in which after having examined that book and its Curative Properties or the properties of the plants identified one of them spoke of a disease that basically engaged the withering of the human body and ultimately the death of the individual and it was supposed to be a means by which to relieve the symptoms and or cure the disease and those that were studying this document came to the conclusion that it was a plant that had Curative properties to defeat cancer there's a range of treatments for cancer and other diseases in use today that are based on medicines originally developed by indigenous people but let the plants are common plants that was used in a pharmacopoe of traditional healers was the yew tree and that Barker view tree has also been used in breast cancer treatment because that's where the active ingredient of taxol is taken from that plant history hitters like Netflix just for history fans with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history just for you history hits is the perfect place for any medieval enthusiastic our catalog of History documentaries includes hundreds of hours of exclusive videos such as Essex stocks with Dan Jones we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and Chronicle fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code Chronicle that's checkout through a holistic approach to Healing indigenous medicine men and women of the Americas combined herbology with spiritual care when people used them traditionally they would be used in a complex with prayers and ceremony and you know you can't underestimate the power of the ceremony [Music] brain surgery was being practiced throughout the ancient world as far back as seven thousand years ago in both North and South America thousands of skulls with evidence of surgical treatment have been found which demonstrates that this specialized Medical Practice was widely used to treat injuries and sickness the Precision of these operations and their High success rate is evidence of advanced surgical skills by indigenous people the archaeological evidence makes clear from mummy bundles in Peru to excavated burials in mesoamerica that cranial trefenin or the surgical removal of bone plates from the skull for the purposes of brain surgery or the surgical removal of tumors and the relief of blunt force trauma was a reality it was very common is you find skulls and archaeological sites here on the coast and they've obviously done trepidation and the person survived because there's been healing around the scars of the bone in a survey of over ten thousand uh crania with evidence of trepening it is clear from the surgical practices that were conducted that over 70 percent of the individuals who had suffered blunt force trauma and then had the blunt force trauma relieved by virtue of cranial trepening survived you might say well yes you have 70 percent of some 10 000 crania showing healing osteitis as we call it but what does that mean if you look at it from the perspective of forensics and osteology it was a practice engaged in when you were dealing with the potential death of a casualty of blunt force trauma or other illnesses the Inca Emperor would have the equivalent of six Physicians carry his litter these Physicians were known as yaoyo and the yaoyo were all trained in skull surgery we can no longer contend that this practice does not have a medical correlation it wasn't witchcraft it was medical Innovation that came into play thousands of years ago head trauma wasn't the only Serious injury treated surgically by indigenous Medical Specialists the Aztecs engaged in something that involved compound fractures for example to the armor leg individuals on the battlefield were often subjected to this a treatment individuals who had compound fractures were likely to lose the limb unless something could be done immediately and so surgeries were conducted in which for example the sutures would be made of hair urine was used to wash the wounds and they would open up the arm or the leg and the long bones that were broken would actually be reattached by virtue of an intramedular nail this is basically an equivalent of a spur of bone or wood that would be inserted into the bone itself and they would be reconnected thereby allowing for the long bone to be healed and eventually individual to fully recover that's a system that was only reintroduced in the 20th century these are Traditions that appear all over South America mesoamerica and North America and I would contend the fact that they exist and they exist so broadly and through such remote Antiquity would contend that ancient Native Americans had an incredible grasp on science technology and Medicine well into the remote past every part of the world tradition medicines have been the primary means of treating illnesses for thousands of years the medicines and treatments used by practitioners are based on deep knowledge of plants and healing skills that have been passed down from generation to generation [Music] herbal medicines have been part of Chinese traditional healing practices for several Millennia in addition to using plants the use of acupuncture massage and Tai Chi are used to enhance well-being and prevent health problems [Music] a traditional practice called Muti has been one of the primary means of health care for people in southern Africa for thousands of years the medicines made from trees and plants have therapeutic properties that are used in maternal care and to treat diseases foreign peoples in every part of the Americas use plants trees and other natural materials as part of their traditional healing practices an essential part of this practice was the interrelationship between physical mental emotional and spiritual well-being millions of people rely on traditional medicine for their health care needs many medicines developed by indigenous peoples are still used in alternative medicine the oral histories of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas include references to the sun moon stars and planets solar and lunar eclipses often coincided with political and cultural events that continue to be commemorated hundreds of years later in mesoamerica the planet Venus was Central to the development of the world's most sophisticated ancient calendar systems while in Central North America the Blackfoot and other Plains Nations relied on the stars and planets to time their hunting and harvesting seasons and to interpret the forces of nature ancient people had a lot of knowledge about stars and the movement of stars and the night sky if it's clear skies you go out and you look at the stars and people were able to make sense out of all of this and one of the things that I've seen over and over again is how people used lunar calendars devised lunar calendars traditional calendars always had 13 moons that they recognized and that would be equivalent to months for us we also have to calibrate your lunar calendar with the solar year and people recognize that there is a certain number of moons within a solar year so how do we know when we've left winter the winter part of the calendar into the summer while they use the the Pleiades because there's only one season where the waxing crescent moon and the Pleiades will share the same part of the sky And when they see this they know that that's the start of this first moon of Summer so that this would be a way of calibrating their their lunar calendars these lunar calendars were vital for predicting the shifting of the seasons the migrations of herd animals and the emergence of berries and plants that indigenous peoples harvested or if you know that a certain constellation is only visible in the winter time you can then make plans about the windows constellation disappears we're moving into a new season by knowing the relative position of the Stars the seven siblings in relation to the North Star they can determine you know things such as traveling navigation or using them for collendrix so knowing these types of movements of the Stars they're able to develop star lore about it and in this way they can make plans they can avoid traveling at certain times or maybe using certain seasons lunar calendars are so common you know everywhere you go in the world you'll find Lunar calendars that's the most common form of calendar that people devise because if you have a if you have devised lunar calendar then you can start making plans several moons in advance the Blackfoot weren't the only indigenous people to depend on the night sky for guidance [Music] in the far North during the darkness of Winter the Stars provided Clues to the passage of time any of the people who have to deal with the fact that parts of the Season there is no sun how do you know morning from night or afternoon from morning if you have no sun in the sky well they recognize that certain Stars parallel the Sun so even if the Sun is not in the sky they can distinguish whether they're in the AM hours or in the afternoon hours by being able to make the association between a certain star and where the position of the sun is the most advanced calendar systems developed in ancient times had their origins in mesoamerica believed to have been developed first by the Olmec it was later refined by the Maya and Aztecs with subtle Village Life you have a demand for produce agriculture all of these things have to be set on a calendar the Maya did that to a level of accuracy that's almost unheard of they were able to calculate the solar year to 365.252 days they were able to do this by virtue of the so-called metonic calendar calendario metonico this system was used by very few World civilizations and those who did did were able to calibrate the solar year by using the lunar cycle in order to record time the Maya went one step further they had a venusian calendar or a venus-based calendar they had a lunar calendar they had the tonalpowali which is essentially the agricultural or sacred Almanac and then they had the solar year each of these was being a calibrated and in looking at these different systems what they were able to do was they took a fixed point in time and having set that point in time August 13th of 3114 BC they began counting forward in time every day from that point constituted the beginnings of what we might call the Long Count besides being Central to their calendar system Venus played a prominent role in the cosmology and spiritual world of the Maya culture it was often for the Maya referred to as the WASP star it was this creature and it's often identified with war and conflict and if you've ever traveled in areas like Guatemala or the Yucatan Peninsula at night the stars come out and what you see Christine the the canopy of the sky is this massive kawil Vision serpent it is literally if you look at it carefully the Milky Way looks like it has an open mo at one end and a tail at the other and that is what they saw and every so often the planet Venus as the morning and evening star as we call it will appear at one point and that goes into retrograde motion and this appeared below the Horizon and then it reappears in another place so it was deemed the Divine twin so the the twins appear in in the mythologies of virtually all Mesoamerican peoples the Maya are recognized for more than their Advanced calendar they were the first civilization in the world to use the number zero in their counting system there was an early finding back in the 1930s of a monument that dated back to about 150 A.D once the FRA the fragments were brought together and other glyphs were found they realized that they had a bar and Dot numeral system and what made it or completed it as a system that was something more than just finger counting was the concept of the zero they invented the zero and the zero allowed to create numerals that extended well beyond the billions at a time when we have to wonder why they would be counting into the billions and the trillions and even Beyond it was invented independently in the New World by the American Indian by either the Maya or other Mesoamerican peoples it extends well before the Common Era so at least three centuries prior uh so we're looking at about 2 300 years ago this system if not at that point perhaps earlier had already been invented uh the zero the bar and Dot numerals and the founding of the calendrical system the Aztec civilization developed their own dual calendar system their lunar calendar had 13 20-day months and was used for agricultural purposes the Aztec also had a sacred solar-based calendar the solar year was also charted and that solar year consisted of 18 months of 20 days and so for 360 days with five days that the Aztecs referred to as Nemo Demi the Aztec Day Count calendar and the Maya short Count calendar each had 260 day cycles the short count is is really something that developed after the lung count those are two systems that we know from contact with the Aztecs but we also know that the Maya were able to introduce a love level of precision that we don't see in the later systems by studying the sun moon stars and planets our ancestors developed Advanced calendar systems and planned their lives around the changing seasons the origins of a written language in mesoamerica can be traced to a 3 000 year old Olmec Stone tablet found in eastern Mexico hundreds of years later the Maya developed a complex writing system that used symbols to represent sounds and words found in the Maya spoken language most indigenous peoples in the Americas recorded their history by passing it down orally from one generation to the next mesoamerica had the only written language and it was recorded using 800 unique hieroglyphs the glyph system is an amazing contribution bear in mind that there were only five World civilizations that produced literate traditions and contrary to what one of my professors used to tell me in graduate school that the Maya did not write histories the Americas were a place non-literate and prehistoric the reality is the Maya completely dispensed with that whole thing and it wasn't so much that the Maya were a non-literate tradition it was that we Western Scholars were incapable of understanding this literate tradition we couldn't read it and therefore it was irrelevant Maya writing was painted on walls and pottery carved in stone and written down on bark paper in books known as codices while many of these books were destroyed by the Spanish after 1491. some murals and sculptures still exist that describe day-to-day life and important events like battles and conquests the language used to record the Maya World reveals a culturally Rich storied civilization that placed a significant value on preserving its history for future Generations we now know it to have been a fully literate tradition with over 800 characters and it was not only logographic but it was also phonetic just as we write in block letters and italics they had more fonts than you can imagine today close to 90 percent of Maya glyphs have been deciphered revealing a wealth of knowledge about this civilization [Music] the development of writing systems took place independently in Mesopotamia and Egypt around 5000 years ago other societies that had writing systems since ancient times are the Olmec and Maya in mesoamerica and the Chinese in Asia the earliest Mesopotamian writing was carried out with a blunt instrument that made wedge shape marks on clay tablets this inspired other nearby societies to use pictograms as the basis for their writing systems [Music] thank you the Rosetta Stone was created more than two thousand years ago and features the Egyptian and Greek languages written in three different Scripts the message on the stone was recorded by priests to honor the Egyptian pharaoh Maya writing evolved from A system that was developed earlier by the Olmec Society of mesoamerica using more than 800 symbols Maya scribes recorded significant political and religious events on folding books called codices the evolution of early writing systems in mesoamerica Asia Africa and the Middle East offer a window into the worlds of ancient people dating back thousands of years about two thousand years before the birth of a written language in mesoamerica a unique system of information storage was invented in South America the discovery of a nodded string device called a kipu in the five thousand year old city of caral makes it one of the oldest record-keeping instruments in the world kipu was a coded accounting system for both small and large Societies in South America information and data was recorded using multiple strands of knotted string or rope strung together along a Main Court is a device this is artifact for Tool get numbers for recording quantities and qualities of products it's like a computer because the society is so complex as Kara needs to have organization about the work that you need to build a pyramid you need to have an organization of the numbers of the people and the products that you are taking or sharing almost 4 000 years after kipu was used by the people of Kerala they were still an important record-keeping tool in Andean cultures including the Inca Empire one of the main functions of kipu was to record numbers such as population tributes and levels of crop and art production s but another kipu sample found at the caral site proved to be far older San Marcos foreign the oldest kipu from karal were made from cotton while those from the Inca period were usually made from alpaca wool information was recorded on the device through variations in the cord color length type of knot location on the string and even how the cord was twisted the kipu had a base 10 numeric system the knots were made at specific intervals to indicate groups of tens hundreds and thousands the Inca had highly trained information Keepers who recorded the data and also memorized the stories connected to it some researchers have suggested that the kipu was also used to record oral histories and genealogies but if this is true it would be challenging to decipher these stories today is the fact that kipu was in use in South America for several thousand years demonstrates the important economic and record-keeping role this device had in successive Andean societies [Music] in ancient societies the need to keep track of crops materials and populations led to the development of recording instruments that ranged from beaded counting tablets to string counting devices [Music] the Abacus is a counting device that uses sliding beads on a frame to perform math calculations it was used by many ancient societies including China Rome Greece Mesopotamia and Egypt [Music] a bone tool found in a cave in South Africa is one of the oldest examples of a record-keeping instrument ever discovered the animal bone has 29 notches cut into it and may have been used to count objects or track the cycle of the moon foreign [Music] also known as talking knots were made from colored cords that were knotted in a specific order to signify numbers they recorded important Civic information like crop yields population and tax payments record keeping is an important part of every society and some of these ancient Innovations are the models for the calculators and computers that we use today the ancestors of today's Inuit people have lived in the Arctic region for about 5 000 years to adapt to one of the world's harshest climates Northern peoples developed a wide range of Innovations for hunting shelter and clothing that ensured their survival we lived in igloos and salt Huts you know all winter long and we will travel mostly out on the sea ice hunting seals all winter because that's what we lived on seals we would travel and when we stopped we would build an igloo and we would you know spend the night and go traveling the next day or if the hunting was good we would stay for a while but mostly in the winter we lived on a sea ice oh foreign [Music] food source of the Inuit but caribou and other game were hunted for meat and hide in the winter we wore a coats that were made of caribou skins we the inner coat uh we wore with the fur on the inside uh right up against our skins and on top of that if we were going to be outside for long periods we wore another coat which is uh quote with the fur on the outside the seal skin [Music] Coats were made [Music] um in a very special way so that you know they weren't too bulky under your arms and they gave you you know free movement and they've been designed you know a long long time ago and then they're still used that way today one of the necessities of Arctic survival was a Dependable source of transportation which included sled dogs we made all our sleds we made all our own harnesses for the dogs and even the little booties in the spring when the ice was really sharp they would you know cut the pads on their on their feet the origins of domesticated dogs in the Arctic dates back more than 4 000 years historically their primary role was to work with Hunters to track seals and other prey the earliest archaeological evidence of sleds with dog harnesses dates back about 800 years when we had regular sleds you know which are maybe 12 14 16 feet long we would have about eight nine ten dogs to pull the stride a lot of the runners of our sleds used to have Caribou antler that was shaped to be thin and flat and that's what we would use on our little sleds you know little sets about this pig to protect their eyes from the harsh glare of the Sun and snow the Inuit devised a unique type of snow goggles they're mostly made of bone like Caribou antler you know and with a little slit and the nice thing about them is that they don't fog up you know unlike regular sunglasses you know they don't fog up because they're just slits and they're they're really good for you know getting rid of the glare because in the spring where we come from you know the Sun is up all the time in the summer and uh we got glare off the ice and snow [Music] thank you [Music] foreign not a jet power email good to me hey foreign [Music] anointed [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] in the summer months when the Arctic Ice would melt dog sleds were replaced by small-skinned boats we built kayaks and the kayak was invented because we have so little wood you know where I grew up and where I come from we don't have any trees so wood was very very scarce to build a kayak you use very little wood you know the ribs are made out of wood of course usually and and I suppose in the old days you know they were built um a lot of them were built out of uh bone you know the whale bone and seal bones and Caribou bones Caribou antlers and that kind of thing I think it's absolutely amazing how people can survive you know in this very harsh land for thousands of years to live we have invented all these amazing things you know we have invented the kayak we invented sleds and we invented this incredible structure called an igloo and skin tents and all the stuff and salt huts and we survived uh because uh we learned how to get along with each other we have a great camaraderie with all the other Arctic peoples of the world because you know we were Nomads like we traveled you know to Alaska Greenland all over the North and then we have all these stories you know these incredible legends that teach us how to live with each other a lot of us really don't think of it as surviving and we think of it as living you know because even though it's really cold it's a most incredible uh part of the world [Music] in every part of the world people develop calendars to Mark the passage of days weeks months and years the Moon Sun and planets were the basis for most of these calendar systems [Music] bone found in France may be the oldest lunar calendar in existence marks on the bone appear to show the phases of the Moon [Music] calendars used during the Middle Ages in Ethiopia were based on cycles of 532 years these calendars set the date of biblical creation as the starting point [Music] the Maya developed an accurate calendar system more than 2500 years ago that used the cycles of the Moon Sun and the planet Venus to measure time since ancient times people have used calendars to plan their religious Agricultural and hunting practices tracking the passage of time is one of Mankind's greatest achievements archaeological evidence and the oral histories of indigenous peoples confirmed that the earliest inhabitants of the Americas were seafarers with extensive knowledge of ocean navigation and Marine lifestyles over the Millennia our ancestors developed different styles of boats to travel and fish the rivers lakes and coastlines of North and South America water travel offered greater access to fishing and hunting and to trade with distant Nations these are people who may have been able to travel on the open ocean without much compunction it's quite clear that plenty of people along the coast had perfectly good boat technology in fact the onion or Alia people have some of the most extraordinary tradition of boating skills in tiny incredibly fragile little craft made out of nothing but skin and Driftwood and yet they would travel hundreds of kilometers over some of the world's most dangerous and difficult water routinely going from island island just to visit family the coast off of Washington and Oregon has no Sheltering Islands so without the Inside passage they must have been traveling out on the open water yet there was nothing wrong with that likewise clink it folks in recorded history have traveled extraordinary difference distances in open canoes indigenous people developed a range of seafaring skills to safely Journey along coastlines including Celestial navigation and the use of landmarks in the Pacific Northwest the Tlingit devised a unique system of open ocean navigation that included an understanding of waves tides and winds in fact Clinic culture has a story of a man who with his nephews was blown out in a terrible storm out into the open ocean and he washed up with his nephews on apparently a tropical island because klinket maintains the word for bamboo and it's in this story that it's described how there wasn't any water on the island because there was no Rivers but they figured out that rain water was caught in the broken off stems of bamboo and that's what they used to survive on while they killed seals and then filled their the the seal stomachs up with more water for their Journey so oral history even tells us that these folks not only traveled to some very remote island where bamboo grows which could be midway or further south but still quite far out in the open ocean but then made it back using traditional navigation techniques laying in the bottom of the boat to detect the Rippling patterns of the North Pacific storms bouncing off of the islands and each of these storms has its own pattern of waves that hit the shore and bounced back and by studying how those waves cross over each other you can use them to triangulate in the direction of the shore and so this was a technique that that the this the seal hunters and Whale hunters out of yakitat would would use whenever they got blown so far off off of Shore that they couldn't find their way back studying the patterns of storm waves wasn't the only navigational tool that Tlingit and other seafarers used for Ocean Travel watching the birds and we see the same story coming from the Polynesians the birds that travel out during the day and always go back to shora at night if you know what time of day it is you know what direction the shore is because of the direction that they're traveling by applying their intimate understanding of boat technology and the ocean itself these ancient Mariners mastered navigation over some of the most challenging Waters in the world from navigation to brain surgery from snow goggles to accounting systems the indigenous peoples of the Americas are responsible for countless discoveries in science and technology Innovations like the first use of the number zero and life-saving medicines are still in use today these legacies are a tribute to our ancestors Ingenuity and remind us that their accomplishments were as significant as those made by other societies in the world before 1491. foreign [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 211,100

Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages, chronicle

Id: RaVDqAzge00

Length: 46min 24sec (2784 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 19 2022