Jungle written by archaeologist Patrick Roberts brings the natural history of tropical forests and their connection to human evolution in a new light. The book presents a comprehensive history of tropical ecosystems and how they shaped human history. A natural history book with some new revelations and interpretations will draw the reader to perceive forests as a part of the interconnected continuum that is nature.

Tropical forests originated almost 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous period. They were responsible for the regulation of soil nutrient cycles, functioning of the atmosphere, and evolution of various life-forms. Roberts points out that the term “jungle” usually connotates the image of untamed wilderness in the popular imagination. Plants always hold less appeal in popular culture. For example, plant forms during the age of dinosaurs are less visible in media reports than giant reptiles. But new research in paleontology, fossil pollens, paleoclimatology, and coprolites (fossilized feces of animals) narrates a story of coevolution between dinosaurs and plants. The warm and wet forests were critical in the evolution of mammals as well. By the Eocene period primates in the tropical forests took advantage of the dense plant cover, exploited nutrient-rich fruits and seeds, and evolved useful teeth forms and body shapes.

A popular image since the Victorian age shows that humans evolved and migrated across dry savannah landscapes. But latest studies show that our bipedal ancestors evolved in tropical landscapes rather than plain grasslands. Similarly, the origin of agriculture and domestication in areas like the “Fertile Crescent” has laid the foundation for current Euro-American farming practices. However, prehistoric societies in rainforests utilized a range of plants for food production and developed mixed approaches by combining crops with indigenous plants. These indigenous practices hold solutions for our current problems of soil erosion, unstable landscapes, and ecological collapse.

I personally liked the section of the book that discusses the ancient forest cities in the book like Greater Angkor, Mayan urban centers, and Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka. Recent scholarly works have shed new light on the so-called ‘collapse’ of certain civilizations in the past. Readers of Collapse by Jared Diamond may find this worthwhile. The low-density, agrarian-based urban areas were highly resilient because of sustainable forest management, farming crops in open patches, and water management. Their methods made some of them the largest cities in the preindustrial world before the Europeans began their systematic exploitation through the tropics. Such urban practices are an inspiration for modern city planners to build ecologically mindful cities for an increasing population.

The book’s final chapters describe the European colonization and expansion and its impact on tropical cultures. The Columbian exchange introduced new plants and animals that reconfigured ecosystems leading to the extinction of several indigenous flora and fauna. Transatlantic trade brought diseases, enslavement, murder, and abuse and created transgenerational trauma in Indigenous societies. Intense plantation cultures stripped the tropics of both greenery and human dignity. The same Eurocentric expansionist view shaped our current global economic markets, politics, societal inequality, and racism, and fuelled climate change.

Jungle prompts its readers to make a positive shift in their perspective about Indigenous history and practices and the importance of forests and their products which makes life around Earth possible. Although readers looking for policies and solutions shall have to look elsewhere since Jungle is primarily a broad natural history of tropical forests with implications from anthropocentric practices. The buck stops there. It is densely packed with information and facts, especially the first few chapters dealing with paleoclimate and geology. Readers might feel these sections are a bit longer but the conclusions are very well articulated so skipping some sections won’t mar the reading experience of these particular chapters. Overall, if you are an avid natural history reader Jungle is a terrific addition to your repertoire.

⭐⭐

This oner took me forever to get through. I just didn't find this author's voice engaging and found myself setting it aside in favor of other books. There were some very interesting chapters, especially the evolution of plants and the history of civilizations living in jungles. But the heavy focus on politics ran this one off the rails. 🤷🏻‍♀️

**ARC Vias NetGalley**

The topic of this book is interesting while a little bit neglected, so I began reading it with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, while there are many worthwhile stories here, the style left me disappointed. It is rather dry and overloaded with data, my mind has been regularly drifting away during reading – and the author has a very annoying habit of constantly using unnecessary quotation marks.

So, if you are interested in the topic, you can try this book – but if you are looking for an engaging natural history book, look for something else.

Thanks to the publisher, Perseus Books, Basic Books, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

i really enjoyed reading this book, it was a beautiful book about the jungle and really makes me think about the future.

This is akin to the most wearisome and interminable lectures given by aged professors at University. Nothing about the content or style is engaging for the reader.

Intriguing Premise. Fascinating Start. Back Half Marred By Politics And Questionable Scholarship. This book had an utterly fascinating premise, one I've read a couple of other books over the last year in the same arena - the history of wood and palm oil in those prior books. And y'all, the front half of this book, mostly concerned with prehistory, was *awesome*. Roberts tracks how the development of what we now call in English "jungle" began in the earliest geological eras of plant life, through the time of the dinosaurs, and into the evolution of humanity from our earliest barely-more-than-ape forebears to modern Homo Sapien Sapien.

But then we get into the first millennium ish AD and Roberts turns his focus to the native populations of the Americas - and blaming Columbus specifically and Europe generally for every ill to come since. Even while noting cases where conquest would not have been possible except that certain elements of the native populations betrayed other elements for their own personal power. Ok. Still has some solid points about the interrelationship between humans and jungle here, but even here the politics is quite heavy handed - though admittedly typical for elitist academics and perfectly in line with that level of thought.

Coming into much more recent times - within my lifetime ish, since the 1980s - Roberts goes deeper into the politics, even openly praising Greta Thunberg (a bit ironic, given Roberts' own actual academic pedigree vs Thurnberg's lack of one). But worse than that, he actively gets a bit lax with his scholarship through this point, noting the spread of Ebola into the US during the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak... without acknowledging that it was (mostly) active - and *safe* (as safe as anything *can* be with Ebola) - efforts by the US government to bring US nationals back to within the US for treatments. Instead, the implication from the author is that this was more direct results of lackadaisical regulations and rampant environmental destruction. He also (accurately) notes the 3,000 people killed by Hurricane Maria in 2017... without noting that Hurricane Irma had come through many of the same regions as an even stronger storm just two weeks prior, causing quite a bit of damage that ultimately led to a larger loss of life than normal when a second major hurricane (Maria) came through so soon after. (Disclaimer here: I moved to northern Florida in August 2017, barely a month before Irma and barely 6 weeks before Maria. I had a planned cruise in November 2017 to San Juan and St Maarten, among others, moved to Aruba and Curacao due to the combined effects of the two storms.)

Finally, in perhaps the most glaring questionable fact in the entire text, Roberts points to COVID-19 case counts "as of the end of July 2021". Except that I'm writing this review on July 15, 2021, almost exactly halfway into the month down to the minute, and I've had this book in ARC form since May 12, 2021. (And I should note that this book appeared to be mostly completely print ready at that time, though the publisher and author may claim that there were indeed a few more edits since that point.) Even if one assumes that this particular line was placed in the book by say May 10, at the very latest stages before making it available on NetGalley (where I got it), and even if one assumes that the actual number at hand is accurate (I have no real reason to doubt it, though I personally stopped paying attention to these particular numbers over a year ago), wouldn't it have been better scholarship to note that the case count was "as of the end of May 2021"? Or was the author projecting and hoping this either wasn't noticed, that he would be proven correct prior to publication (still almost exactly two months away, as this book is currently shown to publish on September 14, 2021 at the time of writing this review), or that this particular fact could be updated prior to publication with the actual number? None of those three options point to the same level of scholarship of the beginning of the book, and indeed the fact of their existence brings into doubt all prior points and presumed merits. Thus, including that particular fact ultimately does more harm to the entire text than even the most blatant of political biases displayed earlier in the text.

Still, ultimately this was a very approachable text that even when taking into account its standard academic biases generally presents an intriguing look into the history and development of humanity, and it actually has a respectable bibliography, clocking in at around 26% of the text. Thus the book is still ultimately recommended for that alone. Just... make sure you read other competing books in the same area in addition to this one.

Post Script: While looking for the author's website for the blog version of this review, I found out that the author is indeed a seeming expert *in prehistoric jungles*, having published several articles in peer reviewed journals over the last decade. But nearly every single article listed on his website deals with the prehistoric era, which perhaps explains the difference in how excellent this particular book was when it was discussing this particular era vs the problems that began mostly when he left it. Which is leaving me, for one, *very* interested in a follow up book expanding on the first half of this one with even more details, perhaps, of the environments, fauna, and flora of these prehistoric eras the author seems to know so well.

A really nice look at interactions humans and other animals have within and around jungle and forests. A look that is not just the past fifty years but hundreds. Really good.

Review below will be posted on Goodreads two weeks before the book's release and shared on Twitter.

Jungle will change the way you think about the jungle and tropical rainforests. It presents an accessible refresher on biology and ecosystems that is enjoyable for the science and nature
enthusiasts. The author helpfully defines technical terms in the body of the text to avoid the need for reference materials. The text flows in a conversational manner that is easy to understand.

It doesn't get to the story of humans (through primates) until chapter 5. And not until chapter 6 does the author start to defend his new thesis. Practically speaking the history of humans is a history of farming. We can trace humanity's ability to survive in the jungle to the crops we can locate in the soil. Chapter 7 explores this in detail.

This is a fine companion to Four Lost Cities, exploring the rise of various jungle cities, including Angkor. The author argues that our current ideas of humans being unable to survive in the jungle comes from colonialism and the destruction that accompanies it. This is explored in detail through numerous crops and animals, the introduction of which led to changes in the environment we still deal with today.

Roberts describes how the globalization of the European methods of farming, especially cattle and related animals has lead to increased deforestation throughout the world. Spanish and European mining for gold and silver has had similar destructive impacts on the environment in South America and elsewhere.

Later chapters explore major ways our global capitalist culture is slowly destroying the environment and harming indigenous populations including the ever-destructive oil palm industry. It is a wake up call for those who recognize climate change is a threat but may not have understood just how severe a threat it poses.

This is a fascinating book that demonstrates the centrality of the jungle through the history of the Earth. It got a little technical for me at times, but the journey was worthwhile.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers, and the author for giving me the opportunity to review this book. This was such an interesting book. It made me look around and really take in all of the sights. I can’t wait until I can travel again to explore so much more.

I was expecting a different book. I liked the first chapters, especially the ones devoted to the important role of plants in the evolution of our planet. In all the books or movies about dinosaurs, for instance, their natural environment tends to be more of a background, but it influenced everything, from their diet to the eventual survival of some species over others. I also enjoyed the history lessons in the middle chapters, including the civilizations that thrived in the jungles and how humans started modifying their natural environments. My problem was the heavy political content. I was expecting to learn more about the science of nature and not about Greta Thunberg. Maybe the synopsis should have been more clear about this part so that it wouldn’t feel so much as a bait and switch.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Perseus Books, Basic Books!