Overlooked Methods and Ways of Knowing

Did you know?

The numerical system that we currently use, was not found in the Western world, but instead in the plateaus of Arabia and India? There is evidence of inscriptions of numerals as we use them today in caves and literature, dating back as early as the 3rd century BCE in India. The invention of 0 by Indian mathematicians and scholars was also a ground-breaking discovery by those that translated the texts into Arabic and Latin [15].

The Dogon people of Mali were aware of Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s moons, and the spirals of the Milky Way Galaxy. They were able to plot the orbits of the Sirius star system accurately until 1990, more than 100 years ago. They were able to tell that there were two stars in the system, a primary and secondary star. Their work for a long time, was ignored and discredited however, and when it was found to be true, was credited to European sources [16].

When you think of remedies such as aspirin, artemisinin, and childhood cancer treatments, you may think they are completely lab grown. But that is actually not the case. There exists evidence that scientists were able to create these and approximately 40% of all pharmaceuticals in use today, due to natural (medicinal and herbal plants, roots, bark, fruit and fruit bodies) and traditional knowledge obtained from Chinese scientists, Indigenous practices and across the Asian subcontinent [17].

Willow tree bark is the basis of aspirin and was used as a pain reliever and anti-inflammatory agent by Sumerians and Egyptians; and later by Ancient Greeks to ease childbirth pain and fevers [17].

And the use of ginseng can be dated back to as early as 2500 BCE [18]!

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Where are the scientific discoveries from the rest of the world?

You might notice how so much of what we have talked about so far was from the Western and European world, which is a small portion of the whole world. So where are the scientific discoveries from the rest of the world? Well, unfortunately, through colonization and oppression, a lot of the scientific findings from other countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, were lost and some probably still are. Any that were retained and were already proven, were then rehashed, done out of skepticism and then republished by Western scientists because they felt it was inferior to their work and not important or reliable. In addition to the Indigenous peoples who faced their ways of thinking challenged, but not necessarily in the right way, a similar event happened throughout the world where there was colonization by the Western world. Because of that, the current foundations of knowledge are still not the most inclusive, and in some cases not at all inclusive of all of the knowledge from the ancient world.

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