Plants, including many now used as culinary herbs and spices, have been used as medicines, not necessarily effectively, from prehistoric times.
Plants, including many now used as culinary herbs and spices, have been used as medicines, not necessarily effectively, from prehistoric times. Spices have been used partly to counter food spoilage bacteria, especially in hot climates,[5][6] and especially in meat dishes that spoil more readily.[7] Angiosperms ( flowering plants) were the original source of most plant medicines.[8] Human settlements are often surrounded by weeds used as herbal medicines, such as nettle, dandelion and chickweed.[9][10] Humans were not alone in using herbs as medicines: some animals such as non-human primates, monarch butterflies and sheep ingest medicinal plants when they are ill.[11] Plant samples from prehistoric burial sites are among the lines of evidence that Paleolithic peoples had knowledge of herbal medicine. For instance, a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal burial site, " Shanidar IV", in northern Iraq has yielded large amounts of pollen from eight plant species, seven of which are used now as herbal remedies.[12] Also, a mushroom was found in the personal effects of Ötzi the Iceman, whose body was frozen in the Ötztal Alps for more than 5,000 years. The mushroom was probably used against whipworm.[13]