322 Ethnobiology and Ethnoecology obtained not only by studying ancient texts but also by traveling to the countryside to talk with people Ayurveda, a system of medicine which putatively began in India during the sixth century B.C and spread to Sri Lanka by the third century B.C and into Tibet by the seventh century A.D., was partially based on traditional knowledge According to folklore, shepherds and forest dwellers familiar with the types and properties of medicinal plants first discovered the remedies used in this oriental medical practice Their knowledge was discussed in various literary religious works called vedas (from the Sanskrit word for knowledge), which were apparently written in India approximately 3200 years ago, after millennia of oral transmission Ayurvedic scholars later compiled additional empirical observations in a series of books referred to as the Nighants, or Vedic glossaries During the subsequent period of foreign domination and internal conflict that brought innovation and documentation of local knowledge to a standstill, these standard texts of ayurveda remained unchanged Other ancient written sources that document local biological knowledge were in part the product of culture contact and changes in political and economic dominance In the New World, for example, the Aztecs broadened their own sophisticated knowledge of medicine and agriculture as they sought tribute and learned of new useful plants from the different Mesoamerican cultures they conquered The Aztecs cultivated many newly discovered species in extensive highland botanical gardens tended by people from various geographical regions of Mesoamerica The depth and richness of the preconquest indigenous knowledge of the natural world are demonstrated by scholarly works, including the Badianus Manuscript, an illustrated herbal written in 1552 by two Aztecs who had been educated by Catholic missionaries One author, Martin de la Cruz, was an indigenous physician who had acquired his medical knowledge empirically The Mayas and Incas had similar literate traditions and they doubtlessly recorded some aspects of the ecological knowledge of the various ethnic groups they dominated at the height of their political power and cultural development Many of these New World written sources of local knowledge were victims of the conquest, destroyed by overzealous missionaries and conquerors who wished to impose European culture, languages, and religion on the people of the New World The Renaissance and Exploration During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Renaissance botanists began to emulate the methods that Dioscorides had applied approximately 1500 years previously, bringing an end to the intellectual stagnation that characterized the Middle Ages in Europe They carefully observed plants in the field and inquired about their local names and uses in Germany, Holland, Italy, and other parts of Europe This experience served them well when faced with the influx of exotic species from areas of the world discovered and colonized by Europeans during this period The diversity of biological organisms discovered by explorers stimulated Linnaeus, Darwin, and other natural scientists to formulate many of the concepts that are the building blocks of modern-day systematics and evolutionary studies Although Linnaeus left some notes and sketches on the use of plants by local people, his greatest contribution to the future field of ethnobiology was the incorporation of notions of folk biology and nomenclature, including the concept of morphological affinity as a criterion for defining taxa, in the scientific classification of plants This Renaissance was the golden age of the European herbals The shift from manuscripts (produced by hand) to wood-cut and metal-engraved herbals published in large numbers allowed new botanical knowledge to be disseminated widely The quest to exploit local knowledge and economically important species which went along with colonization inspired adventurers, missionaries, and natural historians to record their observations on traditional biological knowledge in many parts of both the New World and the Old World As ethnobotanist Richard Ford (1978) described, A rapid progression of expeditions came to North America to discover and to colonize, and the chronicles of adventure are a record of the utilitarian value of an unfamiliar landscape and the use the indigenous people made of it Its economic potential certainly had priority to any interest in attitudes about the land The observationsy provided the first natural history of North America and the bases for the beginning of ethnobotany From the sixteenth century onwards, researchers began to focus increasing attention on the biological wealth of tropical countries and the benefits it promised for Europeans To this end, scholars drew on the knowledge of local people, who continually experiment with cultivated and managed species in anthropogenic ecosystems and wild plants harvested in natural ecosystems Scholars consulted both written sources, such as Ayurvedic works and Chinese pharmacopoeias, and oral history to produce extensive encyclopedias of useful plants from around the world, ranging from the Coloquios dos simples e drogas da India, written by the Portuguese explorer Garcia ab Orta in 1563, to the 12-volume Hortus Malabaricus of Van Rheede published in the late 1700s and A Dictionary of Economic Products from the Malay Peninsula produced in volumes by Burkhill in 1935 Another notable example is the herbal of Rumphius, a seventeenth-century natural historian from Germany who spent nearly 50 years in Asia working for the Dutch East-Indies Company Increasingly released from his administrative duties but still under the employ of the company, he focused his attention on studying useful plants, animals, and minerals in various regions that today constitute Indonesia He provided descriptions of more than 700 medicinal or toxic plants, published posthumously in the six volumes of the Herbarium Amboinense Creation of New Fields Although Rumphius and his counterparts approached natural history as a holistic phenomenon, scholarly activity in later centuries began to reveal a fragmentation of research into distinct disciplines, marking the beginning of reductionism in the sciences Subdivisions of science became more clearly defined, and professional practitioners began to specialize in