FOR201H1 Lecture 2: Lecture 2 - Physical Geography and Tropical Forestry Types
Document Summary
Lecture 2a: big sweep of history of science to do with tropical forests. For europeans + north asians forests were exotic: many erroneous ideas, people thought they were really chaotic. People thought would get attacked by apes. What does the word jungle actually mean: word is derived from hindi word jangal which means desert. Uncultivated: word connected w/ wild areas, doesn"t have a formal scientific meaning. So for this course don"t use word jungle . Later on in european history were initial explorations in areas of tropics: coast of africa, islands. People brought back coconuts and other species to european: bananas, jack fruit, structures from red mangroves, sea almonds. Always brought same things back from the tropics: idea emerged that plants in the tropics were all the same. Were basically just going to the beach. If they did go inland, just went in a bit: met local people that had agricultural areas. But didn"t go back into forested areas.
