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We have a lot of archeological evidence that at least from the end of ice age people did travel long distances within short period of time, like several hundred
by _0w8t 5y ago
We have a lot of archeological evidence that at least from the end of ice age people did travel long distances within short period of time, like several hundreds of miles or more. That implies exchange of information on much greater scale then it was possible with a small group leaving in a designated area. Yet we do not have evidence of such travel before the last ice age . Similarly humans started to live in a big villages only after the last ice age according to existing evidence. And again, bigger group implies faster spread of information.
So assuming, as with other activities, that widespread use of herbs to treat specific illness did not happen before the last ice age was a reasonable null hypothesis.
- roughly 5y agoYou’re assuming that there’s a small number of herbs discovered a limited number of times and spread over a large geographic region, as opposed to a large variety of potentially beneficial plants discovered multiple times independently by people who spent literally their entire lives, for generations, interacting with their surroundings. Yes, if someone discovered aspirin, and you want to know if it ever reached another continent, your model is useful; if your question is generally “did humans intentionally consume bioactive plants with knowledge of their effects”, I can pretty confidently say the answer is “yes” for any group of humans who spent even a generation living in the same place. Again, these folks lived primarily forager lifestyle, in which they had to know which plants they could eat or they would literally starve to death. They knew their environment.