The Amazon rainforest, Amazon jungle, or simply The Amazon, is a massive tropical rainforest encompassing almost 7 million square kilometers and spanning nine countries in northern South America. It is the world’s largest tropical rainforest and contains an enormously rich diversity of flora and fauna.
The Amazon is home to thousands of rivers, tens of thousands of plant and animal species, and is the world’s largest forest of any kind, with an estimated 300 billion trees in the forest, thus sometimes being referred to as the lungs of the world. The Amazon rainforest is still to the present date largely unexplored in terms of its plant and animal life, with a new species of plant of animal being discovered every three days on average. Approximately ten percent of the world’s biodiversity is found in the Amazon alone, making it by far the largest and richest collection of plants and animals in the world. It is also home to more than 350 different indigenous people who constitute almost 10% of the Amazon’s population, including several dozen tribes who remain uncontacted and out of regular communication with the rest of the world, and includes over 3,000 indigenous territories.
Despite some beliefs that the Amazon’s soils are poor and unfit for sustaining large populations, archeological evidence points to large civilizations thriving in pre-Columbian times. Interestingly, much of the Amazon’s fertility arrives in the form of dust blown over from the modern country of Chad in Saharan Africa, specifically in the Bodele Depression, which contains rich deposits of phosphorus, an element essential for plant growth. Almost 200 million tons of dust are blown out of the Sahara every year and approximately fifteen percent of that dust lands in the Amazon rainforest.
With approximately one tenth of the world’s species found in the Amazon, it is little wonder that many of the world’s most well-known plants are native to the region. The Amazon jungle is home to many plants which are now familiar to people around the world, either as food, decorative flowers, and even drugs created from medicinal plants:
The popular cashew nut, as well as the aptly-named Brazil nut, both native to the Amazonian tropics, are two of the most common nuts consumed in the world, the cashew in particular now a staple nut crop throughout the entire tropical world from the Americas to Africa to Asia. The very popular acai berry, in high demand for its antioxidant potential, is also native to Amazonia.
The beautiful flowers and tasty fruit of the passionflower vine, as well as the stunning foliage of the bougainvillea, both now cultivated prolifically worldwide, are native to the Amazonian tropics.
One of the world’s most important drugs, quinine, originally sourced from the Amazon, has been responsible for saving the lives of hundreds of millions of people from the deadly effects of malaria. And the powerful stimulant coca, known for its use in the production of the recreational drug cocaine, and from which Coca-Cola’s name originally derives, is found native in the tropics of the South American forest.
Ayahuasca, traditionally made from the plants b. caapi and p. viridis, is another drug native to the Amazon. The ayahuasca brew has been used in traditional Amazonian medicine for hundreds of years and has more recently gained popularity outside of the jungle among both syncretic religions and travelers seeking a life-changing experience.
Due to its vast size – approximately twice the size of India – the Amazon is not only home to many indigenous tribes with little or no contact outside of their own civilization; it is also home to many towns and even large cities which have limited or no road access connecting them to other cities. The city of Iquitos, Peru is one such city, holding the distinction of being the largest city in the world with no direct road access, only being reachable by water or by air. Approximately a half-million people call Iquitos home.
