Ancient Folklore Upends Dangerous Savanna Myths

Explore

Kānhopātrā, a 15th-century poet saint who lived in what is now western India, is believed to have died while trying to escape a forced marriage to a king. She was buried at the Vithṭhala temple at the precise location where, according to a text from 1762, a sacred place tarati a tree with bright yellow flowers emerged later.

This and other centuries-old stories have shed light on the diversity of wild flora found in the tropical savannah ecosystems of western India, which have long been neglected and considered human-made wastelands. And these literary revelations could strengthen future conservation efforts.

Scientists previously viewed tropical savannahs as the remnants of forests destroyed by human activities, such as timber extraction by British settlers in India in the 19th and 20th centuries. Similar explanations have been applied to the savannahs of countries in Africa and South America, notably Madagascar and Brazil. This line of thinking still influences politicians and the public. Today, a diverse mosaic of traditional West Indian literature adds to the growing evidence against this narrative, according to a new paper published in People and nature.

To reconstruct the ecological history of the tropical savannahs of western India, an international team of researchers studied a collection of texts written in Sanskrit and Marathi, a language spoken by millions of people in western and central India. This literature, written between the 13th and 20th centuries, includes folk songs, myths and poems. Researchers encountered records of 44 wild plant species, nearly two-thirds of which are associated with savannahs. These include the tarati tree, or Capparis divaricataand the beloved Hivara tree, or Vachellia leucophloea.

“What I take away is how little things have changed,” Ashish Nerlekar, study co-author and grassland ecologist at Michigan State University, said in a statement. “It’s fascinating that an object hundreds of years old can so closely match what exists today and contrast so much with what people idealize the past landscape to be.”

Alongside the findings of these texts, the paper found evidence of savannahs in the region dating back around 10 million years. This included hunting records, paintings, pollen fossils and animal designs on ancient pottery. Similar discoveries in Africa, South America and South Asia also attest to the evolution of savannah ecosystems long before human-caused deforestation.

Read more: “This cloud forest shouldn’t exist”

Despite all this evidence, the myth of the forest still surrounds tropical savannahs, the authors write, “resulting in serious consequences for biodiversity and populations.” For example, tropical savannahs are the subject of tree planting projects, a tactic aimed at sequestering carbon and combating climate change. But this could harm native plant diversity, the paper notes, and these ecosystems already act as natural carbon sinks. Such projects could also impact the livelihoods of around 20 percent of the world’s population, who rely on grasslands and savannahs for income from grazing, medicinal plants and firewood, among other sources.

And, as the texts analyzed in this article show, savannahs have long been considered sacred sites. Ultimately, the authors write, “explicitly valuing traditional literature as an archive of biocultural stories could catalyze the conservation of nature and culture.”

Enjoy Nautilus? Subscribe for free to our newsletter.

Main image: Paulmathi Vinod / Wikimedia Commons

• Molly Glick

  Published on November 25, 2025

  Molly Glick is the newsletter editor of Nautilus.