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Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures

One of the intense pleasures of travel is the opportunity to live among peoples who have not forgotten the old ways, who still feel the past in the wind, touch it in stones polished by rain, recognize its taste in the bitter leaves of plants. Just to know that nomadic hunters exist, that jaguar shaman yet journey beyond the Milky Way, that the myths of Athabaskan elders still resonate with meaning, is to remember that our world does not exist in some absolute sense but rather is just one model of reality. The Penan in the forests of Borneo, the Vodoun acolytes in Haiti, the wandering holy men of the Sahara teach us that there are other options, other possibilities, other ways of thinking and interacting with the Earth.

This lecture moves throughout the world, from Borneo to Tibet, from the high Arctic to the Amazon, as Davis shares his experiences as an anthropologist and plant explorer. For three years he traveled in the Andes and Amazon, living among a dozen or more tribes as he searched for new sources of medicines and studied coca, the most sacred plant of the Inca and the notorious source of cocaine. Collecting some 6000 botanical specimens, working with traditional healers and shamans, Davis traversed the Andean Cordillera at fourteen points and twice descended the Amazon from source to mouth. In 1982, his research took him to Haiti to study zombies, the living dead of Vodoun folklore, and investigate the first medically documented case. Working among the secret societies, he identified a folk preparation that contained a powerful nerve poison capable of inducing a state of apparent death so profound that victims could actually be misdiagnosed as dead. This study, the basis of his dissertation research at Harvard, led to two books, Passage of Darkness and The Serpent and the Rainbow. From Haiti Davis moved to Borneo where he lived among the Penan, a nomadic people of the rain forest whose way of life has within the last twenty years been compromised by the highest rate of deforestation in the tropics. He later chronicled their plight in Nomads of the Dawn and Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rainforest. More recently his research has taken him to the high Arctic, Tibet and the Orinoco delta in Venezuela, research expeditions which are chronicled in his most recent books One River, Shadows in the Sun, The Clouded Leopard, and Rainforest.

If there is one lesson to be drawn from these travels, it is that cultural and biological diversity are far more than the foundation of stability, they are an article of faith, a fundamental truth that indicates the way things are supposed to be. If diversity is a source of wonder, its opposite- the ubiquitous condensation to some blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture witnessed in all parts of the world- is a source of dismay. There is a fire burning over the Earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame and reinventing the poetry of diversity is the most important challenge of our times.

This lecture, illustrated by archival footage and photographs, follows the life and adventures, the tragedies and discoveries of Richard Evans Schultes, the greatest Amazonian plant explorer of the 20th century. In 1941, having studied the peyote cult of the Kiowa and journeyed into the mountains of Oaxaca to solve the mystery of teonanacatl and ololiuqui, the long lost sacred hallucinogens of the Aztec, Richard Evans Schultes took a leave of absence from Harvard and disappeared into the Northwest Amazon. Twelve years later he returned from South America having gone places no white man had ever been, mapping uncharted rivers and living among two dozen Indian tribes while collecting 25,000 botanical specimens, including 300 species new to science and over 2000 plants used as medicines, poisons and hallucinogens by the Indians. Author of 10 books and over 496 scientific articles, he has been called by HRH Prince Philip" The Father of Ethnobotany". The world authority on hallucinogenic plants and rubber, Director Emeritus of the Harvard Botanical Museum, recipient of numerous awards including the Cross of Boyacá, Colombia's highest decoration, he is a living link to the great natural historians of the 19th century and to a distant era when the rainforests stood immense, inviolable, a green mantle stretching across an entire continent.

This lecture, based on the book, One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest, is an eloquent and vivid account of Schultes' explorations, a celebration of the perseverance and wisdom of Indian peoples, and a lament for the terrible rate of destruction of landscape, culture and spirit that time has wrought throughout the Americas.

The Serpent and the Rainbow: An Exploration of Haitian Vodoun, Secret Societies and Zombies

According to popular Haitian belief, zombies are the living dead, individuals raised in a trance from their graves by malevolent sorcerers and led away to face a life of terror and uncertainty. In early 1982 a team of prominent physicians and psychiatrists approached the Harvard Botanical Museum with an astonishing report of the discovery of the first medically documented case of zombification. Professor Richard Evans Schultes, then Director of the Museum, assigned Wade Davis the task of traveling to Haiti to search for the formula of the folk preparation reputedly employed by Vodoun sorcerers to induce a state of apparent death so profound that victims could actually be misdiagnosed as dead. This lecture recounts the discovery of that toxin- a powder containing an extremely potent nerve poison 160,000 times stronger than cocaine which drastically reduces metabolism and brings on total peripheral paralysis, even though consciousness is retained.

In searching for the poison, Davis was propelled into a world beyond his imaginings, a world of spirit possession and animal sacrifice, of sorcerers and priests, secret societies and Tonton Macoute, the dreaded militia of the Duvalier regime. Davis discovered that zombification is but one thread woven through the fabric of an extraordinarily rich culture. He came to realize that the Vodoun religion itself is not a black magic cult but, on the contrary, a complex metaphysical worldview that is but the distillation of profound religious ideas that have their origins in the ancient civilizations of West Africa. In becoming the first outsider ever to have been initiated into the Bizango secret societies, he was able to meet actual zombies, study their past, and explore the reasons for their demise. Based on unprecedented access to the inner workings of these societies, he concluded that zombification as both a magical and physical phenomenon is a form of social sanction, a form of punishment for individuals who transgress the established codes of the traditional society. In providing a material basis and sociological rationale for zombification, this presentation attempts to demystify one of the most misunderstood and exploited of folk beliefs, one that has been used unjustly to denigrate an entire people and their remarkable religion.

This study became the basis of his dissertation research at Harvard and led to his writing two books Passage of Darkness and The Serpent and the Rainbow, an international bestseller that appeared in twelve languages and was later made into a feature film by Universal Studios.

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