Ajungle island covered with denseforest and tangled vegetation, usually intropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past century. Because jungles occur on all inhabited landmasses and may incorporate numerous vegetation and land types in differentclimatic zones, thewildlife of jungles cannot be straightforwardly defined.
Etymology
The wordjungle originates from theSanskrit wordjaṅgala (जङ्गल), meaning rough and arid. It came into the English language in the 18th century via theHindustani word for forest (Hindi/Urdu:जंगल/جنگل) (Jangal).[1][2]Jāṅgala has also been variously transcribed in English asjangal,jangla,jungal, andjuṅgala.[citation needed]It has been suggested that anAnglo-Indian interpretation led to its connotation as a dense "tangled thicket".[3][4] The term is prevalent in many languages of theIndian subcontinent, and theIranian Plateau, where it is commonly used to refer to the plant growth replacingprimeval forest or to the unkempttropical vegetation that takes over abandoned areas.[5]
One of the most common meanings ofjungle is land overgrown with tangled vegetation at ground level, especially in thetropics. Typically such vegetation is sufficiently dense to hinder movement by humans, requiring that travellers cut their way through.[6][7][8] This definition draws a distinction between arainforest and ajungle, since the understorey of rainforests is typically open of vegetation due to a lack of sunlight, and hence relatively easy to traverse.[9][10] 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.[6][11][12] Thesuccessional 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.[9]
Monsoon forests andmangroves are commonly referred to as jungles of this type. Having a more open canopy than rainforests, monsoon forests typically have dense understoreys with numerouslianas and shrubs making movement difficult,[6][13][14] while theprop roots and low canopies of mangroves produce similar difficulties.[15][16]
As moist forest
Jungle lining a river bank in rainforest, Cameroon
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.[17][18] This in turn appears to have given rise to the second popular usage of jungle as virtually any humidtropical forest.[19] Jungle in this context is particularly associated withtropical rain forest,[8][20] but may extend tocloud forest, temperate rainforest, and mangroves[19][21] 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.[22] 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",[23] although "jungle" still remains in common use when referring to tropical rainforests.[22]
As metaphor
Use of the termjungle to represent savageness and ferocity in popular culture
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 titleThe 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.[24]
The term "The Law of the Jungle" is also used in a similar context, drawn fromRudyard Kipling'sThe 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.[23][25][26] 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".[23][27][28]
Cultural scholars, especiallypost-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 theTarzan depicted byJohnny Weissmuller was a resident of the jungle representing the savage, untamed and wild, yet still a white master of it;[29] and in his essay "An Image of Africa" aboutHeart of Darkness Nigerian novelist and theoristChinua Achebe notes how the jungle andAfrica become the source of temptation for white European characters like Marlowe and Kurtz.[30]
FormerIsraeli Prime MinisterEhud 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.[31][32][33]
^"Meaning of jungle in English".Lexico. Oxford University Press/Dictionary.com. 2020. Archived fromthe original on June 11, 2020. Retrieved11 June 2020.Origin: Late 18th century from Sanskrit jāṅgala 'rough and arid (terrain)'.
^Francis Zimmermann (1999).The jungle and the aroma of meats: an ecological theme in Hindu medicine. Volume 4. Motilal Banarsidass.ISBN81-208-1618-8.
^Dove, Michael R. (1992). "The Dialectical History of 'Jungle' in Pakistan: An Examination of the Relationship between Nature and Culture".Journal of Anthropological Research.48 (3):231–253.doi:10.1086/jar.48.3.3630636.S2CID141730178.
^abNygren, A. 2006 Representations of Tropical Forests and Tropical Forest-Dwellers in Travel Accounts of ‘National Geographic', Environmental Values 15
^Kricher JC. 1997. A neotropical companion: an introduction to the animals, plants, and ecosystems of the New World tropics, 2nd edn. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
^"Terrestrial Biomes"(PDF). Wku.edu (Western Kentucky University, Department of Geography and Geology). Archived fromthe original(PDF) on May 27, 2013. RetrievedNovember 29, 2012.
^Holguin, G. Guzman, M.A. &Bashan, Y. 1992 Two new nitrogen-fixing bacteria from the rhizosphere of mangrove trees: Their isolation, identification and in vitro interaction with rhizosphere Staphylococcus sp. FEMS Microbiology Ecology 101
^Namdar, A. & Nusrath, A. 2010 Tsunami numerical modeling and mitigation. Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale 12
^Sterling, T. (1983).The Amazon: The World's Wild Places. Time-Life Books. New York
^abPurser, B. 2003. Jungle bugs: masters of camouflage and mimicry. Firefly Books, Toronto.
^Birtles, T. G. 1997: "First contact: colonial European preconceptions of tropical Queensland rainforest and its people".Journal of Historical Geography 23, 393–417.
^M\Iyengar, M. O. T. 1930 Jungle in Relation to Malaria in Bengal. Indian Journal of Medical Research 18:1
^abRogers, C. 2012Jungle Fever: Exploring Madness and Medicine in Twentieth-Century Tropical Narratives. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville.ISBN9780826518316.
^abcSlater, C (2003). In Search of the Rain Forest. Duke University Press
^Miller, David Cameron (1989).Dark Eden: the swamp in nineteenth-century American culture. Volume 43 of Cambridge studies in American literature and culture Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press.ISBN0-521-37553-3.
^Fearing, F. (1963) "The problem of metaphor" Southern Journal of Communication
^Jones, J. (1962) "The Thin Red Line". Dell Publishing New York
^Slater, C (2004). Marketing the ‘rain forest’: Raw Vanilla fragrance and the ongoing transformation of the jungle. Cultural Geographies 11:4
^Gustavson, E. 2007 "Rhetoric: How Politicians Manipulate Language and the Media to Shape Public Thought" Hinckley Journal of Politics 8
