Ancient Medicinal Practices Research Paper

 

In my Honors Seminar Class titled Maya, Aztecs and Incas, I learned a lot about ancient cultures. At the end of the course, we completed a final project in which we were tasked in picking a topic to research pertaining to our major. With my major being nursing, I chose to research and learn more about medicinal practices within the ancient Aztec, Maya and Inca populations (Original Research Level 1). For this paper we were required to use Chicago format when organizing the information and sources which was a challenge for me as I had never used it, but it also helped me to make sure my sources were credible by making sure the information came from scholarly journals (Information Literacy Level 2). I posed the argument that “social stature, religion, artisanry, trade and war were among the most important aspects of these pre-Colombian cultures” and that these aspects affected medicinal practices and healing among those populations. This was demonstrated through my thesis statement. In order to create the thesis statement, I had to review the information I had learned and gathered relating to ancient medicinal practices. I then had to decide what I thought was most important and relevant in order to create a thesis that incorporated the topics from different sources that I wanted to discuss in my paper (Information Synthesis Level 3).

​

To be honest, this course was a struggle for me as I have never been super interested in learning about history of the ancient world. When given this open-ended final project I was scared, but when I was able to pick a topic that is about something I am fascinated by, such as medicine, I was intrigued and eager to research more. Through this project my goal was to dive deeper and learn more about the medicinal practices within these pre-Colombian cultures as we only learned basic information about this during class. I feel as though I gained a much better understanding of these practices and was able to compare them in my head with those in the United States as they are much different. I was able to demonstrate that I accomplished this research goal through the extensive information provided in my paper (Information Literacy Level 4). Since a new type of formatting was used as well as being challenged with a longer paper about a topic in ancient cultures that we were able to choose individually, I think that I was able to gain new knowledge and better understand how to use credible sources to guide my research. Since multiple sources were needed for this assignment, I used search engines such as MavScholar to help me find credible sources. When I retrieved sources that were accurate and helpful in deepening my knowledge on this topic, I would write down some of the key information the article gave me with where in the article I found it. I did this to make it easier to refer back to and cite when including it in my paper. Once I had found my sources, read and evaluated them I was able to integrate the information into my paper in order to provide support for my thesis statement which the paper is based on (Information Synthesis Level 4). Information discovered through the research helps to decide the population of focus and assists in creating a thesis statement. These aspects will be part of the research process when I begin to conduct original research here at the university. Understanding these basic concepts learned through this research paper is important to ensure a concrete argument and synthesis of information is created in future work.