Jungle: How Tropical Forests Shaped The World β And Us By Patrick Roberts β Review
A comprehensive but flawed examination of the importance of tropical forests to the evolution of life throughout the millennia and of manβs relationship with tropical forests
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Tropical forests have lived on Earth for longer than 400 million years, making them some of the oldest terrestrial environments on the planet. Throughout their long history, forests have survived variations in climate as well as huge tectonic movements of the land theyβve been rooted in. In turn, tropical forests have shaped the planetβs atmosphere, its water cycle and its soils, and even influenced the evolution of life, from the appearance of the first flowering plants and the first four-legged terrestrial animals to the evolution of the dinosaurs as well as the appearance of many of the mammalian lineages and their survival to modern times.
As you might expect, tropical forests have also strongly influenced the evolution of humans and our closest relatives, welcoming us into a lush jungle home before we went on to invade most of the planetβs landmasses between 300,000 and 12,000 years ago. Contrary to popularβ¦
