Ayurveda, in my opinion, is as old as the first humans. The term means “Knowledge of Life”, and that knowledge is not limited to the appearance of a codified expression of the Ayurveda in writing. I am not a young Earth proponent, and I don’t go along with the belief that Ayurveda is 5000 years old. I now believe that Ayurveda is a part of our consciousness and that it has existed as long as we have, though we may not have named it or recognized it as the healing science we do today.
This thought occurred to me one hot August day when watching the squirrels in my yard gathering pine needles to make their winter nests. The temperature was well over 90 degrees (32 C) and there was no indicator that I could see that they should be aware of or concerned about the impending change of season. My “Aha!” moment came when I realized that they lived so closely in alignment with nature, that they knew instinctively what to do and when to do it. There was no grandmother squirrel telling them to be aware of the need for a warm nest; rather, they were in sync with the seasonal shifts and knew what to do in order to be prepared for the coming winter. If they waited until they were cold to build a nest, they would die.
Early humans would have been no different from these squirrels. They lived in close connection with the natural world. They were attuned to its shifts and variances and saw the clues to this in the plants, animals, and environmental factors. This, to me, is life knowledge~ Ayurveda! This is the knowing of the totality of life and of one’s place in relationship to that totality. This divined science is part of our DNA; it is instinctive. Ayurveda, then, is as old as time.
