Forests and Indigenous Tribes of Peru and Brazil

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 279-365

We need to protect those those that cannot protect themselves. We need to speak for those that cannot speak for themselves.

In the depths of the Amazon rainforest in Peru live tribes who have no contact with the outside world.

Oil workers and illegal loggers are invading their land and bringing disease. They won’t survive unless this stops.

An indigenous group living in extreme isolation in the Amazon rain forest has stirred fresh controversy and new concerns over the fate of the region's so-called uncontacted tribes. They are  at risk of extinction from disease and land theft.



Aerial footage of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes has been released. Survival's new film, narrated by Gillian Anderson, has launched our campaign to help protect the earth's most vulnerable peoples.

Brazil's indigenous affairs agency, FUNAI, has confirmed the presence of 27 indigenous groups living in extreme isolation in Brazil's vast Amazon region, making it the home of the largest number of uncontacted tribes in the world. (It's possible Brazilian forests may shelter as many as 84 such tribes.) After Brazil, Peru has the second largest number: 15.

A meeting took place between Brazilian and Peruvian officials in Lima, where the two countries agreed to strengthen cross-border monitoring of the volatile region to protect the uncontacted indigenous groups.

Peruvian loggers and The Brazilian state oil company Petrobras is prospecting for gas in the state of Acre, and that is increasing pressure on the tribes.

The Acre state government is reported to have recently built a road straight into the remote region. Experts agree that road construction in the Amazon rain forest leads to land speculation, rampant deforestation, and grave risk to indigenous populations.

Kawahiva tribe, an isolated indigenous people whose few dozen surviving members live in a state of constant flight from loggers and land speculators who have invaded their territory.

Brazil's constitution guarantees indigenous populations the right to the undisturbed use of their traditional lands and obliges the federal government to intervene to protect them.

Uncontacted tribes are extremely vulnerable to any form of contact with outsiders because they do not have immunity to Western diseases.

International law recognizes the Indians’ land as theirs, just as it recognizes their right to live on it as they want to.

Everything we know about these isolated Indians makes it clear they seek to maintain their isolation.

On the very rare occasions when they are seen or encountered, they make it clear they want to be left alone.

If you want to understand the society follow the money!

More than 70% of the Peruvian Amazon has been leased by the government to oil companies. Much of this includes regions inhabited by uncontacted tribes.

Oil exploration is particularly dangerous to the Indians because it opens up previously remote areas to other outsiders, such as loggers and colonists. They use the roads and paths made by the exploration teams to enter.

In the past, oil exploration has led to violent and disastrous contact with isolated Indians.

In the early 1980s, exploration by Shell led to contact with the isolated Nahua tribe. Within a few years around 50% of the Nahua had died.

Now a consortium of companies led by Argentine Pluspetrol is working on the Nahua’s land and plans to expand the massive gas project. It is Peru’s largest gas field, and is known as ‘Camisea’.

Loggers

The other principal threat is illegal loggers, many of them after mahogany. Known as ‘red gold’, mahogany commands a very high price on the global market.

Peru’s rainforest has some of the last commercially viable mahogany stands anywhere in the world, prompting a ‘red gold fever’ for the last of them.

Tragically, these are the same regions where the isolated Indians live, meaning that loggers invade their territory and contact is almost inevitable.

In 1996 illegal loggers forced contact with the Murunahua Indians. In the following years over 50% of them died, mainly from colds, flu and other respiratory infections.

Loggers have also been forcing members of an uncontacted tribe to flee from Peru across the border into Brazil.

Links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUVqF4kLJKA

http://www.survivalinternational.org/films/theevidence

http://www.survivalinternational.org/films/uncontactedencounters

Planting a Tree

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 278-365

Planting a tree is like investing in the future. Planting a tree is a very fulfilling act. It says that you are investing in the future, hopefully planting something now that will continue to produce crops for you and your loved ones for many years into the future, and perhaps even for after you are gone. 

It also initiates an ecosystem centered around that tree – bringing birds and insects to the garden, providing shaded conditions underneath that suit lower-lying plants – guild planting around a central tree is a particularly effective way of placing species – and altering the soil conditions. 

How To?

A tree will typically come with a root ball. It is important to dig a hole suitable to the size of the root ball. You want to dig a hole that is wide and shallow. Ideally the hole will be three times as wide as the diameter of the root ball and only as deep as its height, so that when it is planted, none of the trunk is below the soil line. 

Because you want to give the root structure the best chance of spreading out and so develop a broad, firm structure that will hold the tree up for many years, it is important that the hole, even when dug to the right size, act as a barrier to further expansion. This is particularly important in soils with a high proportion of clay. 

If the tree has come with its root ball wrapped in a burlap sack, remove the material and any remnants of twine. If the tree is being transplanted from a container, check that the roots have not become compressed. If they seem tightly bound to one another, carefully tease the roots away from one another so that they will spread out in different directions when they grow.

Once the tree is in place, backfill the hole with good quality topsoil. Use the soil you removed to dig the hole in the first instance, but ensure that it is loosely structured to allow penetration by roots. 

If your tree is fragile, has a thin trunk or may experience strong winds, tie it to a stake to ensure it grows straight and to provide support. 

A newly planted tree should be well watered. Preferably using harvested rainwater, you should water the tree every day for two to three weeks after planting to help promote root growth.

Mulching around the tree is a good way to preserve soil moisture, with the added benefit of suppressing grasses and weeds that can compete with the tree for soil moisture and nutrients. Bark, wood chips and straw make good mulches for trees.

Question

How many trees are planted like this where large areas of land should be reforested?

Initiatives

Since 1 January 2008 the Welsh Government has pledged to plant a tree for every child born or adopted in Wales. The program is called “Plant!” and is helping to create a welsh national forest of native trees. 

There are several sites around Wales that are being planted at this moment. So far there have been over 150,000 new trees planted. Don’t forget that trees produce oxygen! “Why is this important?” you ask – It is important, because we need oxygen to live.

The original idea came from Natalie Vaughan, who thought it would be a good way to make people think about the environment and the role they have in preserving it. Natalie was 11 years old at the time. Each child receives a certificate stating where their tree will be planted. They could come in the future and visit it. 

Links
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYmgrw0PgLU

The Edwin Smith Papyrus about Egyptian medicine The oldest Ever Documented

By Liliana Usvat

Blog 277-365

The Edwin Smith Papyrus is an Ancient Egyptian medical text, named after the dealer who bought it in 1862, and the oldest known surgical treatise on trauma. 

This document, which may have been a manual of military surgery, describes 48 cases of injuries, fractures, wounds, dislocations and tumors. It dates to Dynasties 16–17 of the Second Intermediate Period in Ancient Egypt, ca. 1500 BCE.

While other papyri, such as the Ebers Papyrus and London Medical Papyrus, are medical texts based in magic, the Edwin Smith Papyrus presents a rational and scientific approach to medicine in Ancient Egypt,in which medicine and magic do not conflict. Magic would be more prevalent had the cases of illness been mysterious, such as internal disease.

Egyptian medicine is some of the oldest ever documented. From the 33rd century BC until the Persian invasion in 525 BC, Egyptian medical practice remained consistent in its highly advanced methods for the time. Homer even wrote in the Odyssey: “In Egypt, the men are more skilled in medicine than any of human kind,” and “The Egyptians were skilled in medicine more than any other art.”

The Edwin Smith papyrus is still benefiting modern medicine, and is viewed as a learning manual. Treatments consisted of ailments made from animal, vegetable, fruits and minerals. But the Ebers Papyrus is the most voluminous record of ancient Egyptian medicine known. The scroll contains some 700 remedies including empirical practice and observation. The papyrus actually contains a “treatise on the heart,” which recognizes the heart as the center of the blood supply, with vessels attached.

Even mental disorders, depression and dementia were detailed in one of the chapters. The Egyptians were treating intestinal disease and parasites, eye and skin problems, and even abscesses and tumors.

Remedies from the ancient Ebers Papyrus scrolls:

• Aloe vera was used to alleviate burns, ulcers, skin diseases and allergies

• Basil was written up as heart medicine

• Balsam Apple (Apple of Jerusalem) was used as a laxative and as a liver stimulant

• Bayberry was prescribed for diarrhea, ulcers and hemorrhoids

• Caraway soothed digestion and was a breath freshener

• Colchicum (citrullus colocynthus or meadow saffron) soothed rheumatism and reduced swelling

• Dill was recognized for laxative and diuretic properties

• Fenugreek was prescribed for respiratory disorders and to cleanse the stomach and calm the liver and pancreas

• Frankincense was used for throat and larynx infections, and to stop bleeding and vomiting

• Garlic was given to the Hebrew slaves daily to give them vitality and strength for building the pyramids

• Licorice was utilized as a mild laxative, to expel phlegm, and to alleviate chest and respiratory problems

• Onion was taken to prevent colds and to address cardiovascular problems (How did they know?)

• Parsley was prescribed as a diuretic

Thyme was given as a pain reliever and Tumeric for open wounds

• Poppy was used to relieve insomnia, as an anesthetic, and to deaden pain

• Coriander was taken as a tea for urinary complaints, including cystitis

• Pomegranate root was strained with water and drunk to address “snakes of the belly” (tapeworms). The alkaloids contained in pomegranate paralyzed the worms’ nervous system and they relinquished their hold.

• Persian henna was used against hair loss

Disease and natural cures in Ancient Egypt

Disease was not uncommon in Ancient Egypt. There were many skin afflictions and parasites from the Nile river waters. Worms and tuberculosis were common, sometimes transmitted from cattle. Pneumonia struck people who breathed in too much sand into the lungs during sand storms. But the Egyptian physicians took full advantage of the natural resources all around them in order to treat common ailments. Many of their methods are still very viable today and are considered part of the homeopathic world of medicine.

Thanks to diligent record keeping, scholars have been able to translate the scrolls and appreciate what the Egyptians knew back then about anatomy, hygiene, and healing. Those scrolls, without question, paved the way for modern medicine.

More about the papyrus

The Edwin Smith papyrus is a scroll 4.68 m in length. The recto (front side) has 377 lines in 17 columns, while the verso (backside) has 92 lines in five columns. Aside from the fragmentary outer column of the scroll, the remainder of the papyrus is intact, although it was cut into one-column pages some time in the 20th century.

It is written right-to-left in hieratic, the Egyptian cursive form of hieroglyphs, in black ink with explanatory glosses in red ink. The vast majority of the papyrus is concerned with trauma and surgery, with short sections ongynaecology and cosmetics on the verso.

Author

Authorship of the Edwin Smith Papyrus is debated. The majority of the papyrus was written by one scribe, with only small sections copied by a second scribe. The papyrus ends abruptly in the middle of a line, without any inclusion of an author.It is believed that the papyrus is an incomplete copy of an older reference manuscript from the Old Kingdom, evidenced by archaic grammar, terminology, form and commentary. The text is attributed by some to Imhotep, an architect, high priest, and physician of the Old Kingdom, 3000–2500 BCE.

What is inside the papyrus

It contains the first known descriptions of the cranial structures, the meninges, the external surface of the brain, the cerebrospinal fluid, and the intracranial pulsations.

Here, the word ‘brain’ appears for the first time in any language.The procedures of this papyrus demonstrate an Egyptian level of knowledge of medicines that surpassed that of Hippocrates, who lived 1000 years later.

More about  Edwin Smith and the Papyrus

 Edwin Smith, an American Egyptologist, was born in Connecticut in 1822 – the same year Egyptian hieroglyphic was decoded. Smith purchased it in Luxor, Egypt in 1862, from an Egyptian dealer named Mustafa Agha. The papyrus was in the possession of Smith until his death, when his daughter donated the papyrus to New York Historical Society. 

From 1938 through 1948, the papyrus was at the Brooklyn Museum. In 1948, the New York Historical Society and the Brooklyn Museum presented the papyrus to the New York Academy of Medicine, where it remains today. 

The first translation of the papyrus was by James Henry Breasted, with the medical advice of Dr. Arno B Luckhardt, in 1930 Breasted’s translation changed the understanding of the history of medicine. It demonstrates that Egyptian medical care was not limited to the magical modes of healing demonstrated in other Egyptian medical sources. 

Rational, scientific practices were used, constructed through observation and examination.

From 2005 through 2006, the Edwin Smith Papyrus was on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. James P. Allen, curator of Egyptian Art at the museum, published a new translation of the work, coincident with the exhibition

Links

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/smithpapyrus.htm

http://www.slideshare.net/SalahKamaledeen/edwin-smith-papyrus-1st-texbook-in-surgery-07

http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/flash/smith/smith.html

http://www.touregypt.net/edwinsmithsurgical.htm