Longer, sourced pieces on shamanism, sacred trees, teacher plants and the history of plant medicine in Anatolia.
Plants in prehistory: how archaeology reveals our bond with plantsTraces of datura and ephedra in 3,000-year-old locks of hair from Menorca, braziers of burned cannabis in the Pamirs, a thousand-year-old shaman’s bundle in the Andes and the domestication of the poppy in the Mediterranean: with sources.
World trees: the birch, Yggdrasil, the ceiba and the Bodhi treeThe birch reaching to the sky in the Altai, the ash that holds up the world in the Edda, the Maya world axis ceiba, the date palm of Assyrian palaces and the fig under which the Buddha awoke: the tree at the centre of the world, with sources.
Sacred trees: the birch, Umay and the tree of lifeThe birch reaching to the sky among the early Turks, the two trees that came down to earth with Umay, the birch root in the cradle and the custom of tying rags to trees that reached Anatolia: with sources.