Abstract
The evidence of an overlap between food and medicinal uses of some plants may reflect a food–medicine continuum. In this chapter, we discuss the role that this continuum may have played in the evolution of our interactions with plants and the origin of medical traditions. Biological and cultural evidence suggest the means by which humans realized and accessed this continuum in the past, providing an important step in the origin of human medical systems. Finally, we argue that the study of the food–medicine continuum can provide an interesting theoretical scenario for ethnobiology investigations.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by funding from the Pernambuco State Foundation for Science and Technology (FACEPE—APQ—1264-2.05/10) and the National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq—Proc. 407583/2013-0).
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Júnior, W.S.F., Campos, L.Z.d.O., Pieroni, A., Albuquerque, U.P. (2015). Biological and Cultural Bases of the Use of Medicinal and Food Plants. In: Albuquerque, U., De Medeiros, P., Casas, A. (eds) Evolutionary Ethnobiology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19917-7_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19917-7_13
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