Posted on 02/14/2003 8:16:06 PM PST by blam
Dinosaur trees discovered in China
February 12 2003 at 05:33PM
Beijing - Chinese botanists have discovered a rare tree fern in central China which has survived since the era when dinosaurs dominated the earth, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The wild alsophila trees, numbering nearly 30 000, were discovered in Miping township in the Funiu Mountain area in southwestern Henan province.
Some of the trees are over 500 years old with a circumference so great that it requires seven people to join hands to encircle them.
It was the first time that such a large number of the trees have been found in China, according to Zhou Zhichun, a professor with the Chinese Research Institute of Forestry (CRIF).
The alsophila tree, one of earth's earliest known plants, is regarded as a "living fossil". The tree is very valuable in the study of the formation and geographical distribution of plant species, experts said.
The trees yield a substance widely used in treating various cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and in making cosmetics, Xinhua said.
Its properties have shown to be effective in retarding the ageing process of the skin.
The research institute which works under the supervision of the CRIF and the local government plans to develop the use of the trees. - Sapa-AFP
Best this kind of info isn't widely publicized, or there will be 30,000 - 30,000 = 0 trees left next year.
I suspect it would be kind of like the Silphium or giant fennel plant known in Ancient Greek and Roman times to be a very effective contraceptive. It grew wild in the eastern part of the Empire and was harvested to extinction. It is the reason that although Rome was known for uninhibited sex, there are not many accounts of women having 10-12 children like women did even as late as the 19th Century.
I didn't know that. Thanks.
The question is, should I be as skeptical as I am?
It may be too early to say that yet. They are 'discovering' a lot of things lately. I follow the archaeological news from China and you just see a fraction of the news. There seems to be 2-3 items in the news daily. I think it is a shift in attitude in China....and perhaps some prosperity.
The history of west central China will eventually suprise many. It was Caucasian 5-6 thousand years ago. I'm almost convinced that the Xiongnu were closely related to the Scythians. (If not the same people)
I think it is safe to say that if these herbs were really as safe an effective as many of the proponents claim they were, people would still be using them or, at the very least, drug companies would be investigating them. The alternative is to realize that there is a reason why life expectancy was so low until very recently.
Why did not the authority of Hippocrates dissuade abortion practice in his time and that of Rome? The late Dr. Edelstein provides us with a theory:(16) The Oath was not uncontested even in Hippocrates' day; only the Pythagorean school of philosophers frowned upon the related act of suicide. Most Greek thinkers, on the other hand, commended abortion, at least prior to viability. See Plato, Republic, V, 461; Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1335b 25. For the Pythagoreans, however, it was a matter of dogma. For them the embryo was animate from the moment of conception, and abortion meant destruction of a living being. The abortion clause of the Oath, therefore, "echoes Pythagorean doctrines," [p132] and "[i]n no other stratum of Greek opinion were such views held or proposed in the same spirit of uncompromising austerity."
If this is true, then I think there is some question about whether Hippocrates would prescribe it.
No incentives in a communist system???
Perhaps not.
I would argue that there have been scientific discoveries in China all along but they were kept secret from the communists with no scientific curosity or the communists would not allow dissemination.
The announcement is an indication that some freedom has come to China, not that scientists have begun to appear.
So it wasn't an asteroid but 'birth control ferns' that did the dinosaurs in?;-)
It is possible that these plants had contraceptive qualities. One can most certainly use certain poisonous plants to induce abortions. But I largely wanted to point out that these theories are often overstated as part of the pro-abortion anti-family agenda of the left. It is also possible that these plants had other valuable effects (consider the value of stimulants, chocolate, and Viagra, even though none of these make you high and none of them are contraceptives). The author is picking the explanation that they like best.
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