FOR201H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Saraca, Rhizophoraceae, Diorama
Document Summary
Tropical forests and their role in the history of ideas. Early on adventurers came back from adventures and talked of fantastical forests brought back crazy stories that weren"t always accurate. Thought to be impenetrable jungles, with vicious animals. Taken from a hindi word meaning a desert waste area from sanskrit jangala. Don"t refer to jungles it"s inaccurate and non-specific. Explorers traveled to different parts of the world and saw basically the same species. Generalization came back to europe that tropical forests were all the same. However early explorers mostly went to the beaches and went to agricultural areas this painted a picture of a lack of diversity there could not have been a less-accurate depiction of tropical forests. Carl linnaeus even thought that tropical forests were incredibly sinple. This was the state of things in the 1700s. Wasn"t until the 1800s and more focused scientific inquiry that a more accurate pic began to emerge.
