Schriften zu Genetischen Ressourcen - Genres

Ethnobotanical studies on cultivated plants. A theoretical approach
eas (SZABÓ 1978a, 1981, 1990/92, 2000, etc.). In this respect the (gene)ecological,
economical and environmental importance of ethnic phenomena are above doubts.
Major gene-ecological disasters both on plant side (full genetic erosion) and on human
side (genocidium) are often rooted deeply in grave misinterpretation and mistreatment
of ethnicity, in lack of understanding the importance of ethnobiodiversity.
In the first approach, the plant factor is a minor component in ethnic conflicts. However,
the management of crops, the agriculture is a basic factor in the final approach
because this is the ultimate source of biological energy needed for a sustainable society.
The danger of food shortage and the lack of sustainability are important
sources of controversies. Globalisation causing the erosion of local ethnic and cultural
traditions and followed by the erosion of plant genetic resources may even amplify
some of these controversies.
Many simple questions were perhaps never formulated. For example: has the affection
toward plants a gender-linked component or is the common experience of ethnobotanists
almost everywhere in the world concerning a better plant knowledge
among women just culturally determined? Looking on the “Major Transitions in Evolution”
(MAYNARD SMITH and SZATHMÁRY 1997) we may presume that group knowledge
on plants contributed to the evolution of structured language and communication.
There is a growing set of evidences that these human skills have gender-linked
components.
Another example for intriguing questions is, whether plant gathering and plant cultivation
was correlated on group scale with the evolution of different brain mechanisms
and consequently with components of individual and group behaviour in nomads,
hunters and warriors? This possibility is again not supported yet by any good research.
Consequently, the time is still not ripe to integrate ethnobotany with general
human ethology preferred by CSÁNYI (1999).
Definitions
The plant side
Spontaneous (wild) plant, economic plant, forage plant, food plant s.l. (including
medical food), domesticated plant, cultivated plant are quasi-hierarchical categories,
reflecting different degrees of plant interactions with human groups. The “cultivated”
plant category sensu stricto includes only members totally dependent from human
interactions. Such interactions began in the pre-human phase of evolution, as a continuation
of co-evolution between the animal and the plant world. However, with the
emergence of plant cultivation, the interaction became gradually conscious, and consequently
asymmetrical.
88