Dr Abe V Rotor
Science has ethnic roots traced
to our ancestors. Through centuries and countless generations they brought
about a wealth of knowledge and wisdom. But "science" in this case is not devoid of superstitious beliefs.
Like Lola Basiang relating folklore to children, we imagine a campfire,
around it our ancestors exchanged knowledge and recounted experiences, with
spices of imagination and superstition. It was a prototype open university.
Like Homer’s epics, Iliad and the Odessey which were transcended to us, we can explore, retrieve and
study science in olden times through early writings, archeology, and interview
with old folks. With modern science and technology, we can even create virtual
reality scenarios on the screen and in dioramas, reliving the past and deliver
them right in the living room and in the school.
But first we must undertake the
task of gathering the fragments of knowledge transcended through our old
folks. And before we can draw the
threads of wisdom and weave them into a fabric we call modern science, it is
important to separate facts from myths.
Digging into this wealth of information also enlarges and
enhances our history and tradition. Even beliefs and practices which we may not
be able explain scientifically, can be potential materials for research. And if
in our judgment they fail to meet such test, still they are valuable to us
because they are part of our culture and they contribute to the quaintness of
living.
Here are practices and beliefs gathered from different
regions of the country. It is difficult to tell if these are purely ethnic or
indigenous. Certainly there are similar
ones we may find in other countries, particularly in Asia,
albeit of their local versions, a proof that inter-cultural exchanges existed
between and among countries prior to recorded history.
1. Ethnic music makes a wholesome life; it is therapy.
Have you ever noticed village
folks singing or humming as they attend to their chores? They have songs when
rowing the boat, songs when planting, songs of praise at sunrise, songs while
walking up and down the trail, etc.
Seldom is there an activity without music. Even the sounds of nature to
them are music.
According to researcher
Leonora Nacorda Collantes, of the UST graduate school, music influences the
limbic system, called the “seat of emotions” and causes emotional response and
mood change. Musical rhythms synchronize body rhythms, mediate within the
sphere of the autonomous nervous and endocrine systems, and change the heart
and respiratory rate. Music reduces
anxiety and pain, induces relaxation, thus promoting the overall sense of well
being of the individual.
Music is closely associated
with everyday life among village folks more than it is to us living in the
city. The natives find content and relaxation beside a waterfall, on the
riverbank, under the trees, in fact there is to them music in silence under the
stars, on the meadow, at sunset, at dawn. Breeze, crickets, running water, make
a repetitious melody that induces sleep.
Humming indicates that one likes his or her work., and can go on for
hours without getting tired at it. Boat songs make rowing synchronized. Planting songs make the deities of the field
happy, so they believe; and songs at harvest is thanksgiving. The natives are
indeed a happy lot.
2. When earthworms crawl out of their holes, a flood is coming.
This subterranean annelid has built-in sensors, a
biblical Noah’s sense of a coming flood, so to speak. Its small brain is connected to clusters of
nerve cells, called ganglia, running down the whole body length. These in turn are connected to numerous
hair-like protrusions on the cuticle, which serve as receptor. When rain
saturates the soil, ground water rises and before it reaches their burrows,
they crawl out to higher grounds where they seek refuge until the flood or the
rainy season is over. The more earthworms abandoning their burrows, the more we
should take precaution.
3.
To control rhinoceros
beetles from destroying coconuts throw some sand into the base of the leaves.
This insect, Oryctes
rhinoceros, is a scourge of coconut, the larva and adult burrow into the
bud and destroy the whole top or crown of the tree. There is scientific
explanation to this practice of throwing sand into the axis of the leaves. Sand, the raw material in making glass,
penetrates into the conjunctiva - the soft skin adjoining the hard body plates,
in effect injuring the insect. As the
insect moves, the more it gets hurt. As a result the insect dies from wound
infection, or by dehydration. Thus we observe that coconut trees growing along
the seashore are seldom attacked by this beetle.
4. Don’t play with toads. Toads
cause warts.
Old folks may
be referring to the Bufo marinus, a
poisonous toad that secretes white pasty poison from a pair of glands behind
its eyes. Even snakes have learned to avoid this creature described as ugly in
children’s fairy tales.
But what do we
know! The toad’s defensive fluids have antibiotic properties. Chinese folk healers treat wounds such as
sores and dog bites with toad secretions, sometimes obtained by surrounding the
toads with mirrors to scare them in order to secrete more fluids.
Similarly
certain frogs secrete antibiotic substances. A certain Dr. Michael Zasloff,
physician and biochemist, discovered an antibiotic from the skin of frogs he
called magainins, derived from the
Hebrew word for shield, a previously
unknown antibiotic. It all started when researchers performed surgery on frogs
and after returning them to murky bacteria-filled water, found out that the
frogs almost never got any infection.
What are then
the warts the old folks claim? They must
be scars of ugly wounds healed by the toad’s secretion.
5.
Dogs howl in the night at
unseen spirits.
Dogs have keen sense of seeing, smelling and
hearing, many times more sensitive than ours. Many animals such as members of
the cat family - lions, tigers, and the domesticated cat – are equally, if not
more sensitive, in the dark. They also have infrared vision that enhances their
predatory habits. The limitation of our senses is the mother of many of our
beliefs or superstitions.
6.
Animals become uneasy before
an earthquake occurs.
It is because they are sensitive to the vibrations
preceding an earthquake. They perceive the small numerous crackling of the
earth before the final break (tectonic), which is the earthquake. As a means of self-preservation they try to escape
from stables and pens, seek shelter, run to higher grounds, or simply escape to
areas far from the impending earthquake. Snakes come out of their abode,
reptiles move away from the water, horses neigh and kick around, elephants seem
to defy the command of their masters (like in the case of the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka). We
humans can only detect such minute movements on our inventions such as the
Richter Scale.
7. During full moon crabs are lean.
Crabs feed in the moonlight.
They are mainly saprophytic, subsisting on dead organisms, but they are also
great hunters and predators. They become fat in preparation for the new moon,
living on their food reserve during the dark nights. That is why crabs are
fatter just before new moon.
8. More fish are caught when the moon is out.
Fish have wider range to feed
in the moonlight. Fishing lights attract
more fish when the moon is out, so that fishermen schedule their fishing at the
sea for more catch . However there are
species that are not discriminating in their feeding habits whatever the phase
of the moon is.
Ernest
Hemingway in his novel, The Old Man and
the Sea, did not mention under what condition the old man hooked and landed
his prized blue marlin.
There
are other conditions, other than the phase of the moon that fish bite.
9.
Don’t gather all the eggs
from the nest. Leave one or more,
otherwise the laying hen will not return to lay more eggs.
True. The layer is likely to
abandon its nest when it finds it empty. Leave a decoy of say, three eggs. But there are
layers that know simple arithmetic, and therefore, cannot be deceived, and so
they abandon their nest and find a new one.
10.
Raining while the sun is out breeds insects.
Now and then we experience simultaneous rain and
sunshine, and may find ourselves walking under an arch of rainbow, a romantic
scene reminiscent of the movie and song, Singing
in the Rain. Old folks would rather
grim with a kind of sadness on their faces, for they believe that such
condition breeds caterpillars and other vermin that destroy their crops.
What could be the explanation to this belief? Thunderstorm
is likely the kind of rain old folks are referring to. Warmth plus moisture is vital to egg
incubation, and activation of aestivating insects, fungi, bacteria and the
like. In a few days, they come out in search of food and hosts. Armyworms and
cutworms (Spodoptera and Prodina), named after their huge numbers
and voracious eating habit, are among these uninvited guests
11. Eating shark will make you
behave like a shark.
For a long time people just
let the sharks alone. In fact they were
feared and revered at the same time. Then someone discovered that shark fins
taste good; another found some curative power in its liver oil. Soon the whole shark became a delicacy, and
the shark since then became the prey, and no longer the predator.
What is
mysterious about the shark? The shark does not only live very long, it is a
living fossil, which means it has not changed for the last 100 million years or
so. What could be its secret?
The US National Institute of
Health discovered a previously unknown molecule in the liver of the dogfish
shark. Called squalamine, the natural steroid fights cancer by cutting off blood
f low to tumors. Now we are saying, “Eat shark and be as healthy as the
shark..”
12.
When house lizards (butiki) are noisy, there is a guest coming.
My father used to tell me when I was a child,
that if house lizards make loud and crispy calls, it’s likely that a visitor is
coming.
How do lizards know? Some people attribute this to the house
lizard’s habit of “kissing” the ground at dusk. But this has nothing to do with
predicting a guest’s arrival. But we
know that when a person is anticipating a guest he is extraordinarily keen, and
thus become aware of anything happening in his surroundings – including the
mating calls of lizards.
House lizards take a drink on
the ground and return to their dwellings on top of trees, on ceilings and roofs
where water is scarce. By the way lizards are common where there is a lot of
insects they can feed on, such as areas around fluorescent lamps and street
lights.
13.
Someone will die if the fire tree blooms.
It sounds more
of a plan than prediction. In olden times there are tribes that go headhunting
when the fire tree (Delonix regia) is
in full bloom. In the Philippines the early Ilongots of the Cordillera Mountain used to descend to claim their
victims from among the lowlanders. The
sacrifice was part of a ritual to win a woman’s heart. How true is the story,
we do not know. But among the Aztecs and Mayans, sacrificing
human beings to their gods was a common practice before they were converted
into Christianity.
One
explanation of this belief is that the fire tree blooms to its fullest in the
face of extreme drought, most likely due to El Niño, a condition that causes
untold death and misery. It is the upland dwellers that is worse affected,
forcing them to go to the lowlands in
search for food or seek refuge, inevitably causing trouble.
14.
A conceiving mother who gets near a fruiting
tree causes its fruits to fall prematurely.
There is no scientific evidence to link a conceiving
mother with the premature dropping of fruits. Craving for certain food, such as
those rich in Vitamin C - green mango, young sampaloc, kamias, and the
like - is generally observed among conceiving mothers. Such craving has a physiologic explanation,
but maternal impression (pinaglihi-an)
is purely an unfounded belief.
15.
Say tabi-tabi
when entering a thicket.
Tabi-tabi in
Tagalog, bari-bari in Iloko, is a
courteous word to let one pass.
There’s no harm in believing in it, and practicing it. It
warns any would-be attacker such as a snake, or any helpless creature to give
way. It is good to be conscious and cautious in an unknown territory. Uttering
the word is building self-courage, too. Keep in hearing distance if you are in
company.
16.
People with large ears live longer.
Study the ears of centenarians and you will conclude
it is not true. Well, in the animal kingdom, elephants, which have very large
ears live as long as 70 years - so with the giraffe which has small ears.
Having large ears (pinnae) means picking up sounds better, like the rabbit
does. In the same way, having large ears helps us in coping with certain
situations, especially in times of danger.
17.
Thunder and lightning spawn mushroom.
In the province, it is a tradition to go hunting for
mushrooms in bamboo groves, on anthills, under rice hay and banana stalks
during the monsoon season, specifically after a period of heavy thunder and
lightning. And what do we know? Old folks are right as they show you the prize
- baskets full of Volvariella (rice
hay or banana mushroom), Plerotus
(abalone mushroom), Auricularia (tainga ng daga), and a host of other wild species.
Where did the mushroom come from? When lightning strikes, nitrogen, which comprise
78 percent of the air is combined with oxygen (21 percent of the air) forming nitrate (NO3). Scientists call this
process, nitrogen fixation or nitrification. Nitrate, which is soluble
in water, is washed down by rain. Lightning occurs every second in any place of
the earth, keeping the earth sufficient with this life-giving compound. Not
only green plants are benefited from this natural fertilizer, but also
phytoplankton (microscopic one-celled plants) - and the lowly mushroom whose
vegetative stage is but a cottony mass of mycelia enmeshed in decomposing media
such as plant residues. With nitrate now
available, rain softening the culture medium, and other conditions favorable,
the saprophyte transforms into its reproductive phase. This is distinctly the mushroom we commonly
see – one with an umbrella atop a single stalk.
In all its luxuriance and plenty, one may discover clusters and hills of
mushrooms in just a single spot.
18.
It is not worth farming a land where cogon grass is abundant.
Known as Imperata
cyclindrica, this tough perennial grass survives extreme dry
condition. After a brush fire, its
underground stem (stolon) survives and waits for rain. It produces numerous tillers growing in
abundance to the virtual exclusion of competitors, and even grazing
animals. It is because its leaves and
stalks are rough and abrasive, being highly impregnated with silica, making cogon a poor forage, but a good
roofing material. Its roots exude a
strong allelopathic substance that
discourages, if not kills, other plants growing around.
19.
Kapok laden with pods means there’s going to
be a poor harvest.
Ceiba
pentandra,
or cotton tree, has large secondary roots to compensate for its lack of primary
root that can penetrate the deeper source of water. Nature endowed this plant with fleshy trunk
and branches to store large amount of water for the dry season. Insufficient
rains or early onset of summer triggers flowering, as it is the case in many
species under stress. Thus it is one of the indicators of poor harvest farmers
rely on. It has been observed that a bumper crop of kapok fiber occurs during
El Niño, a climatic phenomenon characterized by extreme drought.
20.
Nangka bears fruits underground.
Olfactory sense leads one to a nangka tree (Artocarpus
integra) searching for the characteristic aroma, and finding none on its
trunk and branches, he thinks the spirits must be playing tricks on him. But
wait. What is beneath the bulging base
of the tree?
It is a rare discovery – an underground fruit! It is sweeter than the normal nangka fruit. This is a rare example of a metamorphosed
root – a root capable of producing flowers and subsequent fruits, which is
indeed a rare botanical phenomenon.
