Traditional Botanical Knowledge in a Contemporary Popular Science Magazine: A Case Study of Sinjilex Uxagan (1980–2020)
This study analyzes forty years of the Mongolian-language magazine *Sinjilex Uxagan* to catalog and validate 124 plant taxa with traditional utilization values, revealing that the publication serves as a vital, community-driven bridge for documenting, preserving, and transmitting Mongolian traditional botanical knowledge for biocultural conservation.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of a preprint that has not been peer-reviewed. It is not medical advice. Do not make health decisions based on this content. Read full disclaimer
Long before modern laboratories and digital databases, human communities developed a deep, practical understanding of the plants growing around them. This body of knowledge, often passed down through generations of herders, farmers, and healers, is known as traditional botanical knowledge. It is not merely a list of which plants are edible or medicinal; it is a complex system of survival that dictates how to care for livestock, predict the weather, and maintain the health of a community in harsh environments. In many parts of the world, this wisdom is vanishing as lifestyles change and languages fade. Scientists who study these relationships, called ethnobotanists, have traditionally relied on direct interviews with elders to record this information. However, a significant portion of this knowledge has also been quietly preserved in the pages of local magazines and newspapers, waiting to be rediscovered.
A new study brings this hidden archive into the light by examining a forty-year run of a Mongolian-language science magazine called Sinjilex Uxagan, which translates to "Science." Published in Inner Mongolia, China, this magazine served as a vital bridge between modern scientific concepts and the daily lives of herders and rural residents. For decades, it featured articles written by local people—herders, teachers, and traditional doctors—who shared their own observations about the plants they used. Researchers from Inner Mongolia Normal University decided to treat this magazine not just as a periodical, but as a massive, untapped database of botanical wisdom. They spent years scanning every issue from 1980 to 2020, looking for any mention of plants, their uses, and the stories behind them.
The team sifted through more than six thousand articles to find the forty that contained specific records of traditional plant use. From these pages, they extracted information on 124 different types of plants, ranging from common grasses to flowering shrubs. They worked to match the local Mongolian names found in the articles with standard scientific names, verifying the identities of the plants using their own long-term field surveys and botanical reference books. The result was a detailed catalog of how the Mongolian people utilized their environment. They found that the plants were used for a wide variety of purposes, but three categories stood out: medicine, food, and animal feed. Nearly seventy species were recorded as medicinal, forty-six as edible, and thirty-eight as fodder for livestock.
What makes this collection particularly valuable is that it captures knowledge that was often overlooked by formal academic studies. When the researchers compared the magazine's records with seventy-two other existing studies on Mongolian plant use, they found that while most of the information matched what was already known, the magazine held unique treasures. About twenty percent of the records described uses that had never been documented in scientific literature before. These included specific ways to treat livestock diseases, such as using certain plants to prevent bloating in camels or to heal wounds in horses. The magazine also recorded plants used for making ropes, constructing yurts, and even predicting rainfall based on how the leaves of a tree changed before a storm.
The study highlights that this knowledge was not just theoretical; it was practical and deeply integrated into daily life. For instance, the magazine detailed how herders knew exactly which plants to feed their animals in the spring to help them regain weight after winter, and which ones to use in the autumn to help them build fat reserves for the cold. It also revealed a sophisticated understanding of "food and medicine" being one and the same, where plants eaten for nutrition were also known to treat specific ailments. The authors noted that a large majority of the articles were written by the people who actually used the knowledge—herders, traditional healers, and local teachers—rather than by outside scientists. This suggests that the magazine successfully gave a voice to the community, allowing them to document their own heritage.
However, the researchers also pointed out the limitations of relying on a popular magazine for scientific data. Because the articles were written for a general audience, they often lacked precise details about exactly where a plant was found or its specific physical characteristics. Some plants could only be identified to a general group rather than a specific species. Furthermore, the magazine changed its focus in 2013, shifting from a broad audience that included herders to a target of school children, which meant that the recording of this traditional knowledge largely stopped. Despite these gaps, the study confirms that such publications are a crucial, yet often ignored, source of information. They preserve a snapshot of how a community interacted with its environment over four decades, offering a unique perspective that complements direct field surveys.
Ultimately, this work demonstrates that the wisdom of local communities is not just found in the memories of elders or the notebooks of researchers, but also in the paper archives of everyday life. By systematically reviewing these old magazines, the researchers were able to recover and validate a significant amount of traditional botanical knowledge that might otherwise have been lost. They found that the Mongolian people possessed a rich, multifaceted understanding of their plant resources, using them for health, food, and the maintenance of their livestock and homes. The study suggests that to truly understand and protect the biological and cultural diversity of a region, scientists must look beyond traditional fieldwork and into the historical records that communities have created for themselves. This approach not only saves valuable data but also honors the role of local people as the primary keepers and creators of their own scientific knowledge.
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