Each cultural group depends upon the plant materials that are available, designating specific plants as useful medicine-yet only a tiny fraction of the 250,000 to 750,000 plants estimated to exist are used as medicines in the pharmacopeias of various societies. Further, often the same genera of plants are represented in the medicines of peoples living in widely separated parts of the world. People must have exchanged knowledge of healing with plants even before they began to keep records of such events. Other healing plants would be newly discovered, newly tried, perhaps converging with developments elsewhere. This knowledge would then be passed on to recent arrivals or other peoples met in the area.
People deal with events according to their cultures.
Nevertheless, although they give different labels to and explanations for health problems, they use a common core of plant, animal, and mineral materials for treatment. For the anthropologist, the history of use of a specific plant can thus lead to understanding what is universal in the ways of healing throughout sundry cultures. People also learn to perceive, interpret, and respond to illnesses in various ways, often determined by their culture. For example, except persons with rare neurological problems all people perceive pain. Let us start then with mankind's beginnings here.