A Landscape Study on Medicinal Herbs Use for the First Birth Ceremony in the Republic of Palau

Abstract

The Republic of Palau has a unique culture of medicinal herbs use. In particular, in the first birth ceremony, they care mother’s body with various kinds of herbs and celebrate the first birth with family and community. This study clarifies the kinds of medicinal herbs for the ceremony and determines important landscape elements for collecting the medicinal herbs by a behavior survey using a GPS in a village. The following points are clarified. In the ceremony, 24 kinds of herbs were used. Among those, 11 herbs were collected in the agroforestry inside of the village and 13 herbs were from the surrounding environments such as grasslands and limestone forests. Given the recent conversion of grasslands to urban settlements, it is essential to conserve various landscape elements in total as well as preserve the knowledge of herbs in order to inherit the cultural activities. The behavior survey using the GPS would be an effective method to show the places visually, which has important cultural meaning like the medicinal herbs use in the ritual.