Original subtitles

Our perceptions of the Amazon are mostly mythical.

But in Amazonia,reality is more amazing than mythology.

Amazon

South America has the biggest river

largest forest, the longest mountain range

and the greatest variety of life forms of all the continents on Earth.

Rivers from five nations

pour into the vast flood land of equatorial Brazil

to form the greatest moving mass of fresh water in the world.

The Amazon river flows toward the rising sun

and with it 1/5 of the continental water on the planet.

Among the distant sources of the Amazon is the timeless land of the Incas.

Men of the Kallawaya tribe were medicine-men to the royal family

in by gone days of an empire larger than that of Rome.

Even now Kallawaya men journey throughout the Andes healing people with magic and medicinal plants.

Julio Mamani will follow the tradition of its people.

It saddens me there was no plant,or magic that could save my mother when she got sick.

Whisper in pukina,the secret language of the Incas.

Mysteries of the healing arts are past generation to generation.

I've made a vow to go to the tropical forest below our mountain home

and return with plants that will increase our power

to cure illness and prolong life.

Akomani the god mountain of our people

watches over the kayawaya

and has done so since our earliest beginnings.

It is said that water trickling from the glaciers of Akomani will be a great river.

Sipping the melt of ancient ice brings rejuvenation

When I reach the tropical forest perhaps I can trade the glacier water for an unknown elixir

that will prolong life.

Incas once moved the highlands where source rivers of the Amazon

gouged-out some of the deepest canyons on Earth.

Machu Pichu,the lost city of the incas

lies on the 200 miles as the condor flies from Mamani's home land.

Below the citadel the Urubamba river cuts its canyon ever deeper

on its rush to join the Amazon.

In a few short miles from mountain peaks to tropical forests

the traveler passes through as many ecological zones as on a trip from the north pole to equator.

Below the mountains the trees become an endless sea of green.

Dr. Mark Plotkin is also a medicine-man.

Like Mamani he's in search of plants

that will heal humanity ills.

He is an ethno-botanist.

His hope : to find cures to diseases which western medicine has not conquered.

There's a remarkable connection between the plants and the people of the forests.

Virtually every useful medicinal or agricultural plant has come to us from the rainforests

Where's first learn from indigenal people.

Dr. Plotkin is driven by a dread that some species may disappear

before their life saving attributes are discovered.

In our search for new treatments for the diseases that plague us

The Amazon represents one of the most promising places to look.

At the LaCueva de las Sechusas

I can reach the edge of the legendary forest.

It seems to me a mystical gateway to the forest beyond.

Mamani has reached the flatland of Amazonia

a region almost large enough to cover the face of the moon.

The Amazon basin is home to the planet greatest celebration of diversity.

For millions of years

environmental conditions have been favorable to a profusion of life.

The canopy is largely unexplored.

Its upper tip where most of the life goes on has barely been visited.

It averages 50 feet

and amounts to 20.000 cubic miles of wood,water,air and green leafs.

Antonio is a shaman of the kokana people.

He,s my friend and my teacher.

He's knowledge of the healing properties of the Amazon forest is extraordinary.

No one knows how many species of living things exist in 2 million square miles of forest canopy.

The Amazon houses a gigantic ecological machine of global importance

It is a world's resource at risk.

The biodiversity of the Amazon is unique.

The only place of its kind in the world.

In the light and worm and water

are millions of different species

and many more perhaps unknown.

The Sloth called perezoso or lazy-one in Spanish

swims as well as most quadrupeds.

A jaguar often jumps in to cross a water way.

At 500 pounds the tapir is the largest land animal native to South America.

In mid-year, Amazon rises to maximum flood

As much as 45 feet above its November minimum.

With the deluge,aquatic life invades the once dry forest floor

The Pirarucu is one of the main food fish of the Amazon.

It can exceed 6 feet in length and 200 pounds in weight

The Pipato is almost invisible until it eats.

Electric eels guile death with 500 volts shock.

The Piranha has the sharpest teeth of all the predatory fish.

Of all the creatures of the Amazon,the pink dolphin is the most celebrated.

The thousands of miles of waterways remain the primary means of travel in the Amazon.

The people of the river are known as Kabokos

part Indian, part Portuguese.

Sometimes the blood of Africans

Many are as skillful as the Kallawaya with herbal remedies

We have much to learn from one another.

In our village, we used Kebowei to stop bleeding.

Here I have been shown how to dress a wound with leafs that will coagulate blood.

Most remedies and medicinal cures used by the kobokos come from the Indians

We know that fungus provided the world with Penicillin and other antibiotics

But the potential of tropical phungae remains largely unknown

For millions of years the Amazon was unhabitated by humans.

The Indians arrived during the last ice age

which ended thousands of years ago.

After the Europeans arrived 500 years ago

in quest of land,slaves and gold

indiginous people fled deeper into the wilderness

More than 400 tribes have been identified in the Amazon basin.

Others may remain undiscovered.

With no sense of time beyond tomorrow,they live in hidding,cradeled in a everlasting present

As late as 1943 the upper ridges of the Xingu river were largely unexplored

Orlando Villas Boas and his brothers left Sao Polo with an expedition called

Xingu River adventure

Some things only happen once in the history of the world

It was a moment in time that cannot be repeated.

After three years and 3000 km of a path cut with machetes

We encountered for the first time the Indian population of the upper Xingu

Very little was known about them and they know only enough of the outside world to stay hidden as in centuries past

The Villas boys won acclaim for their success in postponing the bulldozing march of civilization into the Xingu

In time the Villas boys were overcome by roadbuilders,malaria and old age

But their dream for survival of the Indians lives on

Sydney Possuelo carries on the legendary work of the brothers Villas Boas

Sydney's task is to seek out isolated tribes and promote legislation to keep Indian lands off-limits to all outsiders

North of the Amazon mainstream

Lives a tribe of Indians known as Zo

I believe the Indians should only be contacted when is necessary to protect them

It's a dilemma

Do we artificially isolate them ?

Or share the technology of our modern world ?

Sydney was among the first to make contact with the Zo�

Only recently has their presence become known

I am pleased to find no mosquitos,no malaria and no sickness

Except a woman who had a toothache that her granddaughter treated with medicinal plants

There is rumor that the Zo� encount >>>>a people living up to the north

A tribal that is unknown to us

Some of the men agree to show me where the strangers had been seen

When first encountered by jaguar hunters, the Zo� were called Poturu

For the ornamental jaw poturu wood that Zo� wear day and night

We don't know who the others might be

But if they really exist

But if they are there

The gold seekers making their way up the Cuminapanema river are on a collision course

The Zo� do not venture >>>>the forbidden north

Where they say a tribe of giants lives

And the hills of Cuminapanema touch with stars

If there are uncontacted people in the northern highlands

I would prefer to leave them alone

But it's critical that those who care about them be the first to reach them

Mamani research has brought him to the territory of the Yagua Indians.

The Yaguas have had contact with outsiders for several hundred years.

They are a large tribe,known for herbal remedies.

It is an exotic potion made from plants and called curare.

Curare is a secret mixture made of flowers and leafs in different ways by many tribes throughout the Amazon.

Dr.MarkPlotkin has been fascinated by the mysteries of curare poison for many years.

Each tribe has its own recipes for curare.

I believe that some of them will lead us to new and effective medicine

In the hands of western physicians curare has already become an life giving medication

One type is used as a muscle relaxant

Another as heart medicine

What Western scientists once dismissed as magic we are now finding to have a real therapeutic effect

Plotkin and other ethno botanists hope to press and document as many plants as possible

Before the knowledge of the shamans is lost

Learning the jealously guarded secrets of indigenous shamans requires genuine friendship

And mutual trust

Trading my medicines,music and magic for things I have needed has allowed me to move freely

With distances so great exchange of a cure for a very fast ride

Is a very good trade indeed

Herbal markets exist in cities and towns all-along Amazon and its tributaries

Plants with true curative power hung side by side with untested elixirs and curious potions

Julio Mamani and Dr.Plotkin are medicine-men from vastly different worlds

But they share a common quest

Each has come in search of healing secrets of the Amazon

Each seeks to improve the health of the human kind.

And for an instant time stand still.

And two distant worlds are one.

It is time to return.

I've traded the melted ice of the god mountain for the medicine of the great forest.

I have traded my flute for long ride home.

I will miss the beauty of the Amazon and its many creatures.

What wonderful things I have seen to tell my people.

I shall return one day

And if not I

Maybe my son will come

There is so much to learn

and yet so little time.

Neither the shaman or the scientist discovered a magic elixir to end all suffering

But each has gained new knowledge

And discovered cures that will improve the health of human kind

The Amazon quest has only begun.