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Previously Uncontacted Amazon Tribe Photographed
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri May 30, 2008 09:47 AM
from the bring-down-big-metal-bird dept.
from the bring-down-big-metal-bird dept.
ManicMechanic and other readers sent in news of a tribe of aboriginal people from the border of Peru and Brazil that has been photographed by helicopter for the first time. The images show huts in a village and people in red body paint shooting arrows at the helicopter. The outfit that released the photos, Survival International, works to end illegal logging in the rainforest in order to protect the uncontacted tribes living there. They estimate that 100 uncontacted groups exist worldwide, about half of them in the Amazon basin.
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We know who wins this one (Score:5, Funny)
The f#*&ing spearmen.
Re:We know who wins this one (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:We know who wins this one (Score:5, Funny)
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xo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:xo (Score:5, Insightful)
"Thats the Whirly, God of birds!"
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Re:xo (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:xo (Score:5, Funny)
God help them if one chopper of geeks drop's XO's with EMACS and another chopper of geeks drops XO's on the neighboring tribe with VI.
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Re:xo (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft and Intel will drop classmate PCs to get them hooked onto Vista Basic before the XO reaches them. They'll have to sell a lot of pelts and furs to raise money for antivirus updates.
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To be a fly on a hut wall (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:To be a fly on a hut wall (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:To be a fly on a hut wall (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:To be a fly on a hut wall (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:To be a fly on a hut wall (Score:5, Interesting)
Not necessarily. Actually, if you RTFA, you'll see that this particular tribe is actually growing in numbers, but that other tribes in the area are being driven away by loggers. They don't make a claim that the other tribes are "uncontacted."
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Re:To be a fly on a hut wall (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:To be a fly on a hut wall (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:To be a fly on a hut wall (Score:5, Funny)
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Cameras (Score:5, Funny)
Someone setup a jungle expedition. Those tribesmen need tinfoil hats!
The unknown... (Score:5, Funny)
It does work like that sometimes, though (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it does work like that sometimes.
E.g., "cargo cults." In the whole island-hopping in the Pacific, ground troops in the jungle were sometimes resupplied by airplanes paradropping crates of food and equipment. Well, some airplanes dropped their cargo wrong (remember, it was before GPS), some ran into the enemy and had to eject their cargo to escape, etc. At any rate, some of that cargo fell near some local tribes.
And the funny thing is, some of those actually started worshipping the big birds who dropped all that good stuff. And prayed that they'd return and bring them more gifts. And when that failed to happen, they built wooden airplanes and sometimes (those who were close enough to an airstrip to notice that those winged gods landed there and unloaded stuff) built whole wooden mock-ups of airstrips including the barracks and buildings around them. Some went to such effort as to even build mock-ups of the other stuff they saw there, such as "radios" with "headphones" made out of coconuts. Some stood guard or conducted drills with sticks instead of weapons, because they assumed it was some ritual to make the big winged gods come land there.
It wasn't the first time. The first well documented cargo cult, and undisputedly a cargo cult, was from 1919 from Papua. Those guys believed in the coming of a great ghost steamer to bring them tinned goods, tools, and stuff like that. That was their "messiah", so to speak. Furthermore, that they can communicate with the ghostly ancestors by raising and lowering a flag, on the flagpole a mocked-up office. Essentially they had looked at the stuff the Europeans did in ports, and how they communicated with their ships, and built a whole cult and ceremony around it.
But we have documented instances of such stuff from the 19'th century too. E.g., the Tuka Movement in the Fiji islands. On the whole it was openly hostile to the Europeans, and preaching the extinction or enslavement of Europeans by the natives, and using such visual metaphors as fattening a white pig representing the Europeans to slaughter it when the ancients return. But funnily enough, it also incorporated a lot of stuff which was mocking what the Europeans did. E.g., military parades, blessing water for their religious ceremonies, etc.
So, well, I don't care whether you find that outlook disgusting or not, but we have plenty of documented cases where it worked literally like the GP post said. If historical perspective offends you, so be it.
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Re:The unknown... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Another link to pictures (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Another link to pictures (Score:5, Funny)
The colors differentiate the class of warrior. When they go out on dangerous missions, the ones painted red get killed, the ones painted blue return unharmed, and the ones painted gold get laid.
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Expert Loses Job (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder what they could teach us? (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe
A small Chilean tribe has given you: Skilled Warrior.
Wow!
Prime Directive (Score:5, Funny)
Neolithic is normal (Score:5, Interesting)
We need these people to be just who they are, unchanged, for our own understanding of ourselves.
The problem is the ethics of contact: do we withhold the benefits of civilization? Is modernization a fair process? It's easy to dismiss a preservationist approach as romanticizing the savage, from your abstracted armchair reality. But, live with tribal peoples for a while, and you realize that short of modern medicine and food surpluses, not only is it not so bad, it has distinct advantages as a lifestyle, and is not so different from our own.
Whatever. I expect them to be overrun, poisoned, shot, and assimilated, then held up as an example of the superiority of civilization.
What the Pictures Tell Us (Score:5, Informative)
I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
This is what every Anthropologist dreams about! (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if (Score:5, Funny)
First Alien Contact Lessons (Score:5, Interesting)
None of this kumbaiyaa stuff that lets sinister aliens into our arms before we know they'll enslave us. Throw some spears at them to see how serious they are about making contact. If they aren't sophisticated enough to anticipate our violent reaction to their sudden appearance, they won't have anything worth learning that we can't get from just capturing some of their spacecraft. If they're really that superior, they'll take it in stride and calm us down.
And if they're really evil, we'll at least have a chance to fight them off, rather than falling for some kind of "To Serve Man [wikipedia.org]" conjob.
That's exactly how this Amazon contact will play out. Why shouldn't we expect at least as much from our even more distant cousins when they arrive at our little backwater planet?
Re:First Alien Contact Lessons (Score:5, Insightful)
We know nothing of these "new" people we just found in the Amazon, so I of course can't be sure about their particular beliefs. But unless they're perfectly unique among all peoples we've ever known, they also will have stories of strangers from "outside" coming, who they don't really consider human (because their tribe is the only humans, just like every tribe always believes until contacted).
Your basic reaction that we're somehow different from these tribespeople is exactly the reason that we're not, because they too think they understand the rest of the universe, even though they don't. Just like we thing, but are wrong. And since the universe is practically entirely misunderstood, when you compare our glimmer of understanding to the perhaps infinite vastness to understand, our degree of misunderstanding is almost indistinguishable from theirs, in proportion.
We should be certain only that we are certain of nearly as little as these Amazonians are. And take some more lessons from a people who have managed to keep their ways intact, as we hope to do when contacted by aliens ourselves. At the very least it's the best bargaining position from which to start the rest of our lives after contact.
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Re:Prioritize, people! (Score:5, Funny)
I am going to stop loggin into Amazon too. Why let them have my cc# on file ? Each time I am going to type it in!! Be green!!
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Re:Prioritize, people! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Prioritize, people! (Score:5, Funny)
Wait... What?
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Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans? (Score:5, Funny)
It would be fun to show them the real world. Either that or let them shoot some arrows, then fire back a couple hellfire missles, just to let them know who's boss.
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Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans? (Score:5, Informative)
PS. by "our government" I mean FUNAI, the government agency that takes care of the indians.
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Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans? (Score:5, Interesting)
The most widely known period of cargo cult activity, however, was in the years during and after World War II. First the Japanese arrived with a great deal of unknown equipment and later Allied forces also used the islands in the same way. The vast amounts of war matériel that were airdropped onto these islands during the Pacific campaign against the Empire of Japan necessarily meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of the islanders, many of whom had never seen Westerners or Japanese before. Manufactured clothing, medicine, canned food, tents, weapons, and other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers. Some of it was shared with the islanders who were their guides and hosts. With the end of the war the airbases were abandoned, and "cargo" was no longer being dropped.
In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. The cult members thought that the foreigners had some special connection to the deities and ancestors of the natives, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches.
In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw and created new military-style landing strips, hoping to attract more airplanes. Ultimately, although these practices did not bring about the return of the airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war, they did have the effect of eradicating most of the religious practices that had existed prior to the war.
Over the last seventy-five years most cargo cults have disappeared. Yet, the John Frum cult is still active on the island of Tanna, Vanuatu.
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Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans? (Score:5, Funny)
That would be cool. It would also be funny if you just hovered there and let their arrows bounce off until they got tired of shooting them. Then just start flashing a bunch of colored lights in geometric patterns. Once you have done that, leave the immediate area for a bit.
Then come back at night, abduct one of their tribesmen and put him in a bright room. Once he is in the room, we come in with dark sunglasses with big lenses and snazzy white coveralls to go with the shades. We should ignore him/her if they try to speak to us (we likely won't understand their language anyways). At this point we should shove probes up their asses and then take blood and other bodily fluid samples. If the abductee is female, she should be impregnated (artificial insemination is best, but if you are desperate just find a human with similar skin color and don't have him where the coveralls and glasses combo).
In the event that you do get a female and impregnate her, come back in 3 or 4 months (time isn't important, just be sure to get there before the end of the second trimester so that the baby has very little chance of surviving outside of the womb). When you come back, put the coveralls and glasses back on and abduct the woman again. Once you have her, remove the fetus and have your dark skinned pal make some hand gestures to indicate that the baby would live "up there" (point up to the sky etc). Then place a tiny piece of a meteorite under her skin (I recommend administering a good narcotic dose here, not enough to put her to sleep but enough to make her groggy and unaware). You can either keep the fetus or throw it away at this point, you won't need it again for our purposes (though I recommend keeping it as you can sell it to stem cell researchers or you can dissect it yourself if you like embryology and you just never no when an aborted fetus might come in handy - it's best to store them in a deep freeze or similar device).
Finally, every few years, come back and abduct her again. Each time you do it come back with the same weird looking kid (note that he must be both wierd looking in some fashion and of similar skin color and body type to the abductee). Have her play with the kid and give her food and drink that would appear strange to her (you could just bring something from burger king just make sure to present it in an odd fashion). If she seems upset to leave the kid behind, have the kid indicate that he can't survive outside in the air (he could just take deep breaths and then pretend to gag while pointing outside).
This is a wonderful hobby, but be warned that it's easy to get carried away with it.
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Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Arrogance. (Score:5, Insightful)
You say that these people should have a choice, and they do. They have specifically decided not to come to meet us, and in fact, they go out of their way to avoid us. We should respect that choice and leave them be.
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Re:Arrogance. (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe it's kind of arrogant to think they don't have the choice already. They can go exploring other places if they want to.
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Arrogance? My ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, as opposed to million of African children who die of malaria every year despite the fact that the aforementioned few pills could have easily saved them?
Yes you could see what some of the lights in the sky really do look like.
Yes, as opposed to the 95% percent of world population that will never see anything except the dirt they are digging or the nike shoes going past them in the assembly line? Forget about luxuries like university education, even things like books and the fucking internet is out of reach for most of the world's people.
You could meet people from far across the sea and you two could fly through the air.
Yes, as opposed to the millions of refugees who can't leave their war-striken country because nobody will give them a visa? Forget the plane or ship, they can't even leave on foot!
But we don't want to contaminate you.
I see your point, but by suggesting that we have some enlightened duty to help those "stone age" people, you are in fact using the same preferential treatment you are accusing others to have against them. There are hundreds of millions of poor, illiterate, disease-striken people in the world, who would GLADLY accept our help. Hell, there are many poor, illiterate, disease-striken people in our own fucking country. Help THEM out before you boldly take your morals to where no man has gone before.
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Re:Arrogance. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Indians? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Nice small picture (Score:5, Funny)
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