Since I am relatively new to the forum, I might have missed similar topics discussed earlier. I wonder whether some facts and news about traditinal knowledge and wisdom can be collected without going too much in to, culture, religion and such. Here are a few articles that I noticed recently:
Varahamihira on earthquake prediction:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/a...ow/1259393.cms
Story of how a Thai tribe escaped devastation during the tsumani:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in667167.shtml
Recently, there is a highly praised book about the traditional wisdom of
Amazon tribes by David Campbell called "A land of Ghosts", Jonathan Cape, 2005. From a review:
""WHEN Dona Cabola wants to know where to plant her crops, she watches the bees. She has the jeito, wisdom accumulated over generations - and is just one of the entrancing characters we meet on David Campbell's expedition to record the plants in his Amazon study site."
More recently, there seem to be efforts to record many of India's traditional medicines.From:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4506382.stm
"The ambitious $2m project, christened Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, will roll out an encyclopaedia of the country's traditional medicine in five languages - English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish - in an effort to stop people from claiming them as their own and patenting them.
The tulsi (holy basil) plant has medicinal qualities
The electronic encyclopaedia, which will be made available next year, will contain information on the traditional medicines, including exhaustive references, photographs of the plants and scans from the original texts.
Indian scientists say the country has been a victim of what they describe as "bio-piracy" for a long time.
"When we put out this encyclopaedia in the public domain, no one will be able to claim that these medicines or therapies are their inventions. Till now, we have not done the needful to protect our traditional wealth," says Ajay Dua, a senior bureaucrat in the federal commerce ministry.
Putting together the encyclopaedia is a daunting task.
For one, ayurvedic texts are in Sanskrit and Hindi, unani texts are in Arabic and Persian and siddha material is in Tamil language. Material from these texts is being translated into five international languages, using sophisticated software coding. "