Last week we traveled vicariously to visit mostly the tropical fruits of the new world. This week let us imagine that we are in the jungles of Southeast Asia, home of monkeys and humans who have lived there for tens of thousands of years. The amazing thing about the forests of tropical Asia is that there are so many fruits and nuts that are good for human consumption that it would be difficult to go hungry. The reason is that primates including humans ate and distributed what they liked to eat. Think about it. When we are walking along a road and we find a delicious mango, we toss the seed and up comes is another mango tree! We can imagine early inhabitants finding edible fruits in the forests and dispersing the seeds by one way or another time and time again.
