[7] During those years living with the Ashaninca, Narby catalogued indigenous uses of rainforest resources to help combat ecological destruction.

[5] Narby and three molecular biologists feature in the documentary Night of the Liana that documents them revising the Peruvian Amazon to test hypothesis presented in Intelligence in Nature.

[9] The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge, published in 1998 documents Narby's time researching, as part of his doctoral studies in the Pichis Valley of the Peruvian Amazon, the ecology of the Asháninka, an indigenous peoples in Peru that started in 1984.

[6] The book argued that modern scientific understandings of DNA have been known to indigenous people for thousands of years and learned by shamans through ritual.

[10] Swami Gopalananda, writing in Ascent Magazine, praises the book's "spirit of personal discovery" and "unbridled enthusiasm".