TOAnchopatra, a 15th-century poet-saint who lived in what is now western India, is said to have died while trying to escape a forced marriage to a king. She was buried in the Vitthala Temple in the exact place where, according to text since 1762, sacred tarati Later a tree with bright yellow flowers appeared.
This and other centuries-old stories have shed light on the diversity of wild flora found in the tropical savanna ecosystems of western India, long thought to be man-made wastelands. And these literary discoveries could support future conservation efforts.
Scientists previously thought of tropical savannas as remnants of forests destroyed by human activities, such as timber harvesting by British colonists in India in the 19th and 20th centuries. Similar explanations have been applied to savannas in countries in Africa and South America, including Madagascar and Brazil. This way of thinking still influences politicians and the public today. Now a varied hodgepodge of traditional literature from Western India is adding more evidence against this version, according to new paper published in People and nature.
To piece together the ecological history of tropical savannas in western India, an international team of researchers examined a collection of texts written in Sanskrit and Marathi, a language spoken by millions of people in western and central India. This literature, written between the 13th and 20th centuries, includes folk songs, myths and poetry. Researchers came across references to 44 species of wild plants, almost two-thirds of which are associated with savannas. These include tarati tree, or The capers have splitand beloved Hivara tree, or Vacellia leukophloa.
“For me, the takeaway is how little has changed,” study co-author Ashish Nerlekar, a grassland ecologist at Michigan State University, said in his paper. statement. “It’s amazing that something from a hundred years ago can correspond so closely to what’s happening around us today, and contrast so much with how people romanticize the landscape of the past.”
Along with the findings from these texts, the paper identifies evidence for the existence of savannas in the region some 10 million years ago. These included hunting records, paintings, pollen fossils, and images of animals on ancient pottery. Similar results from Africa, South America and South Asia also indicate the evolution of savanna ecosystems long before human-caused deforestation.
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Despite all this evidence, a forest myth still surrounds tropical savannas, the authors write, “with serious consequences for biodiversity and people.” For example, tree planting projects are being considered in tropical savannas as a tactic for sequestering carbon and combating climate change. But this could harm native plant diversity, the paper notes, and these ecosystems already act as natural carbon sinks. Such projects could also impact the livelihoods of an estimated 20 percent of the world's population, who rely on grasslands and savannas for income from grazing, medicinal plants and fuelwood, among other sources.
And, as can be seen from the texts analyzed in the article, savannas have long been considered sacred places. Ultimately, the authors write, “an explicit appreciation of traditional literature as an archive of biocultural history can become a catalyst for the conservation of both nature and culture.”
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Main image: Polmati Vinod/Wikimedia Commons
