Language extinction triggers the loss of unique medicinal knowledge.
biocultural diversity
ecosystem services
indigenous languages
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
ISSN: 1091-6490
Titre abrégé: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 7505876
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
15 06 2021
15 06 2021
Historique:
entrez:
9
6
2021
pubmed:
10
6
2021
medline:
15
12
2021
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Over 30% of the 7,400 languages in the world will no longer be spoken by the end of the century. So far, however, our understanding of whether language extinction may result in the loss of linguistically unique knowledge remains limited. Here, we ask to what degree indigenous knowledge of medicinal plants is associated with individual languages and quantify how much indigenous knowledge may vanish as languages and plants go extinct. Focusing on three regions that have a high biocultural diversity, we show that over 75% of all 12,495 medicinal plant services are linguistically unique-i.e., only known to one language. Whereas most plant species associated with linguistically unique knowledge are not threatened, most languages that report linguistically unique knowledge are. Our finding of high uniqueness in indigenous knowledge and strong coupling with threatened languages suggests that language loss will be even more critical to the extinction of medicinal knowledge than biodiversity loss.
Identifiants
pubmed: 34103398
pii: 2103683118
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2103683118
pmc: PMC8214696
pii:
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Informations de copyright
Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
The authors declare no competing interest.
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