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A jungle is land covered with dense
A jungle is land covered with dense forest
A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...
and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century.
Etymology
The word ''jungle'' originates from theSanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
word ''jaṅgala'' (), meaning rough and arid. It came into the English language via Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
in the 18th century.
''Jāṅgala'' has also been variously transcribed in English as ''jangal'', ''jangla'', ''jungal'', and ''juṅgala''.
Although the Sanskrit word refers to dry land, it has been suggested that an Anglo-Indian interpretation led to its connotation as a dense "tangled thicket", while others have argued that a cognate word in Urdu
Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Persian, جنگل (Jangal), did refer to forests. The term is prevalent in many languages of the
The jungle is the richest habitat on Earth. Over the intervals of time, different parts of tropical areas have provided a variety of flora and fauna, together with newer species discovered annually. Tropical jungles have been the home to
One of the most common meanings of ''jungle'' is land overgrown with tangled vegetation at ground level, especially in the
Nygren, A. 2006 Representations of Tropical Forests and Tropical Forest-Dwellers in Travel Accounts of ‘National Geographic', Environmental Values 15 This definition draws a distinction between rainforest and jungle, since the understorey of rainforests is typically open of vegetation due to a lack of sunlight, and hence relatively easy to traverse. Jungles may exist within, or at the borders of, tropical forests in areas where the woodland has been opened through natural disturbance such as hurricanes, or through human activity such as logging. The successional vegetation that springs up following such disturbance, is dense and tangled and is a "typical" jungle. Jungle also typically forms along rainforest margins such as stream banks, once again due to the greater available light at ground level. Monsoon forests and mangroves are commonly referred to as jungles of this type. Having a more open canopy than rainforests, monsoon forests typically have dense understoreys with numerous lianas and shrubs making movement difficult, while the prop roots and low canopies of mangroves produce similar difficulties.
Because European explorers initially travelled through tropical forests largely by river, the dense tangled vegetation lining the stream banks gave a misleading impression that such jungle conditions existed throughout the entire forest. As a result, it was wrongly assumed that the entire forest was impenetrable jungle. This in turn appears to have given rise to the second popular usage of jungle as virtually any humid tropical forest.Purser, B. 2003. Jungle bugs: masters of camouflage and mimicry. Firefly Books, Toronto. Jungle in this context is particularly associated with tropical rain forest, but may extend to cloud forest, temperate rainforest, and mangroves with no reference to the vegetation structure or the ease of travel.
The terms "tropical forest" and "rainforest" have largely replaced "jungle" as the descriptor of humid tropical forests, a linguistic transition that has occurred since the 1970s. "Rainforest" itself did not appear in English dictionaries prior to the 1970s.Rogers, C. 2012 ''Jungle Fever: Exploring Madness and Medicine in Twentieth-Century Tropical Narratives''. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. . The word "jungle" accounted for over 80% of the terms used to refer to tropical forests in print media prior to the 1970s; since then it has been steadily replaced by "rainforest",Slater, C (2003). In Search of the Rain Forest. Duke University Press although "jungle" still remains in common use when referring to tropical rainforests.
As a metaphor, ''jungle'' often refers to situations that are unruly or lawless, or where the only law is perceived to be "survival of the fittest". This reflects the view of "city people" that forests are such places. Upton Sinclair gave the title '' The Jungle'' (1906) to his famous book about the life of workers at the Chicago Stockyards, portraying the workers as being mercilessly exploited with no legal or other lawful recourse.
The term "
/ref>
BBC - Science and Nature: Jungle
by Dennis Paulson {{Authority control Forests Metaphors
'' Persian, جنگل (Jangal), did refer to forests. The term is prevalent in many languages of the
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent is a physiographical region in Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, In ...
, and the Iranian Plateau, where it is commonly used to refer to the plant growth replacing primeval forest or to the unkempt tropical vegetation that takes over abandoned areas.
History
The jungle is the richest habitat on Earth. Over the intervals of time, different parts of tropical areas have provided a variety of flora and fauna, together with newer species discovered annually. Tropical jungles have been the home to indigenous people
Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
s, who have shaped traditional cultures and civilization
A civilization (or civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of a state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system).
...
s based on the environment.
Wildlife
Because jungles occur on all inhabited landmasses and may incorporate numerous vegetation and land types in differentclimatic zone
Climate classifications are systems that categorize the world's climates. A climate classification may correlate closely with a biome classification, as climate is a major influence on life in a region. One of the most used is the Köppen climat ...
s, the wildlife of jungles cannot be straightforwardly defined.
Varying usage
As dense and tangled vegetation
One of the most common meanings of ''jungle'' is land overgrown with tangled vegetation at ground level, especially in the tropics
The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in
the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also refer ...
. Typically such vegetation is sufficiently dense to hinder movement by humans, requiring that travellers cut their way through.Tropical ForestsNygren, A. 2006 Representations of Tropical Forests and Tropical Forest-Dwellers in Travel Accounts of ‘National Geographic', Environmental Values 15 This definition draws a distinction between rainforest and jungle, since the understorey of rainforests is typically open of vegetation due to a lack of sunlight, and hence relatively easy to traverse. Jungles may exist within, or at the borders of, tropical forests in areas where the woodland has been opened through natural disturbance such as hurricanes, or through human activity such as logging. The successional vegetation that springs up following such disturbance, is dense and tangled and is a "typical" jungle. Jungle also typically forms along rainforest margins such as stream banks, once again due to the greater available light at ground level. Monsoon forests and mangroves are commonly referred to as jungles of this type. Having a more open canopy than rainforests, monsoon forests typically have dense understoreys with numerous lianas and shrubs making movement difficult, while the prop roots and low canopies of mangroves produce similar difficulties.
As moist forest
Because European explorers initially travelled through tropical forests largely by river, the dense tangled vegetation lining the stream banks gave a misleading impression that such jungle conditions existed throughout the entire forest. As a result, it was wrongly assumed that the entire forest was impenetrable jungle. This in turn appears to have given rise to the second popular usage of jungle as virtually any humid tropical forest.Purser, B. 2003. Jungle bugs: masters of camouflage and mimicry. Firefly Books, Toronto. Jungle in this context is particularly associated with tropical rain forest, but may extend to cloud forest, temperate rainforest, and mangroves with no reference to the vegetation structure or the ease of travel.
The terms "tropical forest" and "rainforest" have largely replaced "jungle" as the descriptor of humid tropical forests, a linguistic transition that has occurred since the 1970s. "Rainforest" itself did not appear in English dictionaries prior to the 1970s.Rogers, C. 2012 ''Jungle Fever: Exploring Madness and Medicine in Twentieth-Century Tropical Narratives''. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville. . The word "jungle" accounted for over 80% of the terms used to refer to tropical forests in print media prior to the 1970s; since then it has been steadily replaced by "rainforest",Slater, C (2003). In Search of the Rain Forest. Duke University Press although "jungle" still remains in common use when referring to tropical rainforests.
As metaphor
As a metaphor, ''jungle'' often refers to situations that are unruly or lawless, or where the only law is perceived to be "survival of the fittest". This reflects the view of "city people" that forests are such places. Upton Sinclair gave the title '' The Jungle'' (1906) to his famous book about the life of workers at the Chicago Stockyards, portraying the workers as being mercilessly exploited with no legal or other lawful recourse.
The term "The Law of the Jungle
"The law of the jungle" (also called jungle law) is an expression that has come to describe a scenario where "anything goes". The '' Oxford English Dictionary'' defines the Law of the Jungle as "''the code of survival in jungle life'', now usua ...
" is also used in a similar context, drawn from Rudyard Kipling's '' The Jungle Book'' (1894)—though in the society of jungle animals portrayed in that book and obviously meant as a metaphor for human society, that phrase referred to an intricate code of laws which Kipling describes in detail, and not at all to a lawless chaos.
The word "jungle" carries connotations of untamed and uncontrollable nature and isolation from civilisation, along with the emotions that evokes: threat, confusion, powerlessness, disorientation and immobilisation. The change from "jungle" to "rainforest" as the preferred term for describing tropical forests has been a response to an increasing perception of these forests as fragile and spiritual places, a viewpoint not in keeping with the darker connotations of "jungle".
Cultural scholars, especially post-colonial critics, often analyse the jungle within the concept of hierarchical domination and the demand western cultures often places on other cultures to conform to their standards of civilisation. For example: Edward Said notes that the Tarzan
Tarzan (John Clayton II, Viscount Greystoke) is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adv ...
depicted by Johnny Weissmuller was a resident of the jungle representing the savage, untamed and wild, yet still a white master of it; and in his essay "An Image of Africa "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's ''Heart of Darkness''" is the published and amended version of the second Chancellor's Lecture given by Chinua Achebe at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in February 1975. The essay was included in his ...
" about '' Heart of Darkness'' Nigerian novelist and theorist Chinua Achebe notes how the jungle and Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
become the source of temptation for white European characters like Marlowe and Kurtz.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak compared Israel to "a villa in the jungle", a comparison which had been often quoted in Israeli political debates. Barak's critics on the left side of Israeli politics strongly criticised the comparison. For example, Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery ( he, אורי אבנרי, also transliterated Uri Avneri; 10 September 1923 – 20 August 2018) was an Israeli writer, politician, and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. A member of the Irgun as a teenager, Avnery sat for t ...
charged that comparing "civilised" Israel with "a villa" and Israel's Arab neighbors with the "wild beasts" of the "jungle" tends to throw the blame for the absence of peace on the "wild" Arab and Palestinian side, and absolve Israel of responsibility.Larry Derfner, "Ehud Barak to step down: On his de-evolution, and Israel's", +972 Magazine, November 26, 201/ref>
See also
* Tropical seasonal forest, Monsoon forest * Arid Forest Research Institute (AFRI) * Rainforest * Wilderness * Grove (nature) * Amazon rainforestReferences
External links
BBC - Science and Nature: Jungle
by Dennis Paulson {{Authority control Forests Metaphors