22 Bolivia* has a far greater variety of languages than all the countries of Europe combined,
but they are increasingly threatened by dominant languages such as Spanish. In Bolivia,
Harrison met with people who have used certain plants as medicine since the time of the Inca
Empire*. Besides a common local language, they also maintain a secret language to name
thousands of plants used as medicines, some unknown to science.
3 (When a language is lost, centuries of human thinking about such things as animals and
plants may be lost with it. Eighty percent of existing species have not yet been discovered
