Seen from the outside, the Amazon forest resembles an agglomerate of condemsed bublles, a vertical agglomerate of green swellings; it could be said that a pathology had attacked the fluvial landscape in a uniform manner. But, when disrupting this membrane and moving toward its interior, everything changes: seen from inside, this confusing mass becomes a monumental universe. The forest ceased being a terrestrial disorder; we could take it as a new planetary world as rich as ours; a world that would have replaced ours.

Levi-Strauss, Tristes Trópicos, p.325