The International Work Archives of CHI

Copán, an ancient Mayan city in western Honduras near the Guatemalan frontier

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 06:13:20 -0500

A treat for all my archaeology buds out there.

Copán is translated to Wooden Bridge, however, the Mayan name is pronounced [something like] “chu pee”, for, “City of the Bat” or “City of the Bird”. Located in Honduras, near the frontier of Guatemala, Copán is renowned for it’s courts, altars, and stele, laden with hieroglyphics explaining the details of the ethnosphere in the Mayan city.

In its’ small size, Copán, was a great experience with an extremely well done museum preserving the finds. Our guide said that “If Tikal is New York, then Copán is Paris.” - he is brilliant! The following is a compilation of videos from the courts, pavilions, and tunnels of the original Bat City - Copán!

Enjoy, Jonathan Ferrier

Itzamna Garden’s Maya Healers Revisit Flora in the Bladen Nature Reserve, Belize, Central America, with Canadian Researchers

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 13:35:52 -0500

Graduate student researchers Sophia Colantonio (University of Ottawa & Yale) and Jonathan Ferrier (University of Ottawa & New York Botanical Gardens) are in Belize to conclude their field research on plant medicines used by the Q’eqchi’ Maya for treatment of diabetes and associated symptoms. With Belize Indigenous Training Institute (BITI) and Q’eqchi’ Maya healers, University of Ottawa students are guided by their Belize Partners and their professor Dr. Thor Arnason. Arnason’s mandate is to help protect the Q’eqchi’ way of traditional healing by working with the healers and helping them develop their collaborative garden, aptly named, Itzamna, after the Maya goddess of medicine.

Itzamna garden, is located along the Golden Stream in Indian Creek, ten minutes from the Bladen Nature Reserve. Under the constant care of Maya healers, the garden is growing in diversity, and is home to many of Belize’s featured birds and insects, with a troop of resident howler monkeys. The important feature of Itzamna however is that the garden thrives as a living mosaic of vines and lianas flowering to the canopy of the tree tops which support orchids and other epiphytes, all creating the deadfall for the garden’s fungi. Itzamna is a living piece of Maya antiquity serving as the pharmacy for Itzamna’s Maya healers.

Maya medicine grows about a collection of habitats that can be found throughout Belize: limestone slopes and clay forest floors, inland swales and swamps, rivers, epiphytic and scandent across trees, and cultivated on the Milpa. Because the Itzamna garden is naturally composed of these habitats, it is an excellent location to find a diverse plant collection from the Maya pharmacopoeia. In fact, many of the rare plants within Itzamna have been rescued from slash and burn sites, a Mayan way of life, but also a main contributor to Belize deforestation and cultural habitat loss.

For researchers the Itzamna garden is a fantastic location to base studies of ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology. Focusing on contemporary health care items like pain and inflammation, psychologic, neurologic and dermatologic conditions, and symptoms of diabetes, Itzamna’s healers can not only treat pandemic diseases and conditions, but also demonstrate the incredible importance of traditional knowledge in modern medicine. When medical plant extracts used for millennia by healers are demonstrated safe and effective within the chemical and biological research lab, they are quite often more effective with less side effects than regularly prescribed pharmaceuticals. But the message is not that one treatment is better than the other; the message is that they belong together, integrated respectfully in national healthcare systems. When this happens, the forest’s safety will be secured, and humankind will be healthier for it.

Recently Ferrier conducted a research expedition with Mayan healers into the nearby Bladen Nature Preserve. The goal was to exercise the minds of healers with plants that have been destroyed by deforestation elsewhere. Here they were able to photograph and discover rare plants that were not in flower elsewhere, thus allowing their scientific identification.

Click the photo to visit the gallery for excerpts from their expedition:

Botany 2137 - Ethnobotany Intro Class.pdf

Fri, 5 Nov 2010 23:26:01 -0400

A lecture based on various countries, their cultures, and plant medicines used within their tribes. Various forms of economic botany are exemplified along with international political, societal, and environmental situations.

Herbarium use for determining medical plants

Wed, 3 Nov 2010 21:30:23 -0400

This is a brief intro video to the New York Botanical Garden Herbarium (NYBG). I use it for identifying medicinal plants from around the world. In this case I’m determining Acacia cookii Safford with NYBG’s vouchers. There are over 7 million (and growing) botanical specimens to utilize here.

Tags: Jonathan Ferrier, ethnobotany, taxonomy, Subin (tree with ants), Acacia cookii Safford, Fabaceae - Mimosoideae - Acaciae,

A Phytochemical Characterization of Vaccinium species from Bosnia & Canada.pdf (click to download presentation)

Tue, 2 Mar 2010 21:03:11 -0500

From the Thesis:

A Cross Cultural Analysis of Type II Diabetes Mellitus and Traditional Antidiabetic Plant Treatments From Belize, Bosnia, and Canada

Jonathan Ferrier

Supervisors:
Dr. John Thor Arnason - Department of Biology, University of Ottawa

Dr. Alain Cuerrier - Montreal Botanical Gardens (Jardin Botanique de Montréal)