Lost Tongue, lost wisdom

I agree with some of the previous posts that dying languages is just "the way the world works," especially in the past couple centuries.  The world is rapidly growing smaller as civilization takes giant leaps of "progress," for better or for worse.  The important thing is that we document and record these dying languages before they are lost forever, and with them knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.  

The part of the article that stuck out to me most was the paragraph about the Kallawaya people who have a language used to pass along ancient knowledge of healing herbs.  An area of great interest to me, I was shocked that some of the medicinal plants were "previously unknown to science."  The formulations for most modern drugs were taken straight from nature, many from some indigenous plant in the Amazon.  Contraceptive pills, for example, were first made using progesterone extracted from Mexican yams found in the rain forests of Veracruz.  And where would we be, ladies, without this precious little pill?  Unhappy, at the very least!