Editing Tropics (section)

==Tropicality==
[[File:Juruá River in Brazil.jpg|thumb|[[Juruá River]] surrounded by the dense [[Amazon rainforest]], which is home to [[uncontacted tribes]] to this day]]

'''''Tropicality''''' refers to the image of the tropics that people from outside the tropics have of the region, ranging from critical to verging on fetishism.<ref>{{Cite web |title=TROPICALITY {{!}} Meaning & Definition for UK English {{!}} Lexico.com |url=https://www.lexico.com/definition/tropicality |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220325115446/https://www.lexico.com/definition/tropicality |url-status=dead |archive-date=March 25, 2022 |access-date=2022-03-25 |website=Lexico Dictionaries {{!}} English |language=en}}</ref> Tropicality gained renewed interest in geographical discourse when French geographer [[Pierre Gourou]] published ''Les pays tropicaux'' (''The Tropical World'' in English), in the late 1940s.<ref>Arnold, David. "Illusory Riches: Representations of the Tropical World, 1840-1950", p. 6. Journal of Tropical Geography</ref>

Tropicality encompassed two major images. One, is that the tropics represent a '[[Garden of Eden]]', a heaven on Earth, a land of rich biodiversity or a tropical paradise.<ref name="Arnold, David p. 7">Arnold, David. "Illusory Riches: Representations of the Tropical World, 1840-1950", p. 7. Journal of Tropical Geography</ref> The alternative is that the tropics consist of wild, unconquerable nature. The latter view was often discussed in old Western literature more so than the first.<ref name="Arnold, David p. 7"/> Evidence suggests over time that the view of the tropics as such in popular literature has been supplanted by more well-rounded and sophisticated interpretations.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Menadue|first=Christopher B.|date=2017-05-30|title=Trysts Tropiques: The Torrid Jungles of Science Fiction|journal=ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics|language=en|volume=16|issue=1|doi=10.25120/etropic.16.1.2017.3570|issn=1448-2940|url=https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/49178/1/Trysts_Tropiques.pdf|doi-access=free}}</ref>

Western scholars tried to theorise why tropical areas were relatively more inhospitable to human civilisations than colder regions of the Northern Hemisphere. A popular explanation focused on the differences in climate. Tropical jungles and rainforests have much more humid and hotter weather than colder and drier temperaments of the Northern Hemisphere, giving to a more diverse biosphere. This theme led some scholars to suggest that humid hot climates correlate to human populations lacking control over nature e.g. 'the wild Amazonian rainforests'.<ref>Arnold, David. "Illusory Riches: Representations of the Tropical World, 1840-1950", p. 13. ''Journal of Tropical Geography''</ref>