Review of JUNGLE
Jungles, not savanna, at the center of hominin evolution
I’ve been on a real earth science kick lately. I’ve been reading about the nature of the future to the geology of the deep past, from the distinct role of icy glaciers to (now) the humid tropics. It’s been a fun intellectual adventure the past couple months. Each of these books (see the interesting reads section at the end of this newsletter) have provided new ways in which to view our planet and evolution, each providing unique insights.
Jungle: How Tropical Forests Shaped the World – And Us by Patrick Roberts is no exception. In addition to telling a deep history of plant evolution with a keen eye on the tropics and their role in the broader evolution of animal life, Roberts’ perspectives on human evolution were my favorite chapters of Jungle. This isn’t surprising considering that Roberts works at the Max Planck Institute where nearly everyone does fantastically interesting things.
The standard story of human evolution is that after our hominins split with chimpanzee ancestors around 7 million years ago the earth’s climate began to change. Eastern Africa became increasingly dry and transitioned into savanna. Human ancestors came out of the jungle and thrived bipedally in the savanna environment, eventually spreading out of Africa to dominate the rest of earth.
This isn’t necessarily wrong, just not fully accurate. Evolution, especially human evolution, is much more complicated and nuanced.
Roberts draws on the most recent evidence in human evolution to construct a timeline in which jungles and tropical environments play a more central role in human evolution. As many know, apes (chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons) live in tropical environments. They climb trees and are not bipedal. Evolutionary evidence of our hominin ancestors post-chimpanzee split indicate that we became bipedal while still living primarily in tropical forested environments – not because of the savanna.
Early hominin ancestors also maintained the ability to climb for some time before becoming completely bipedal. The savanna environments began playing a clearer role in our evolution only 2 – 4 million years ago, Roberts explains. Therefore, our early ancestors remained in forested habitats for quite some time. Even after modern humans’ expansion out of Africa, Roberts shows that jungles still played a prominent role in human evolution, culture, and civilization.
Jungle was a really interesting book, and it covers far more than only human evolution as I’ve mentioned above. The final chapter of the book advocates for saving the planet, as most earth science books do today, but he uses the ‘let me scare you into caring’ approach for conservation that I personally don’t care for. Overall, though, a great book to read.
Published: September 2021
Format: Hardcover
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
Meltdown: The Earth Without Glaciers by Jorge Daniel Taillant (2021)
How the Mountains Grew: A New Geological History of North America by John Dvorak (2021)
A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species by Rob Dunn (2021)
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