LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Rainforest: Peoples
built 606 days ago
When asked to describe what a rainforest is, most people will describe a wet, tropical region near the equator, one with unique plant and animal life. However, rainforests are ... found in the United States and Canada – not exactly tropical zones.
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As their homelands continue to be invaded and destroyed, rainforest people and their cultures are disappearing. When these indigenous peoples are lost forever, gone too will be their empirical knowledge representing centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of plant and animal species in the rainforest. Very few tribes have been subjected to a complete ethnobotanical analysis of their plant knowledge, and most medicine men and shamans remaining in the rainforests today are seventy years old or more. When a medicine man dies without passing his arts on to the next generation, the tribe and the world lose thousands of years of irreplaceable knowledge about medicinal plants. Each time a rainforest medicine man dies, it is as if a library has burned down.
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The plants of the rainforest generate much of the Earth's oxygen. These plants are ... very important to people in other ways; many are used in new drugs that fight disease and illness.
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