Previously Uncontacted Amazon Tribe Photographed

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.

Re:xo

[Vectronic]

Indeed, its an interesting thought though... I mean, everytime a chopper flies over, you could be redefining their entire religion or something.

"Thats the Whirly, God of birds!"

Re:To be a fly on a hut wall

[tsa]

I guess many evangelists can't wait to go there to ruin their culture by 'making them see the light'.

Re:The unknown...

[somersault]

Actually, that's probably how it would work for people you do know too, if they didn't already live in a post industrial era. Even now if somoene with Star-Trek levels of tech came to earth, some people could mistake them for gods (beaming themselves down to the planet, using the technology to magically make food appear with replicators, etc.. kind of like Jesus did now that I come to think of it!). "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

Re:The unknown...

[somersault]

If these guys are really 'uncontacted' and living in mud huts, then they probably have noooo clue what science is. They wouldn't see it as man made because they have no idea that man can make such things! Anything that is regarded as true magic even to our society would be seen to be caused by some deity-like power or demonic force. It's just that for the last few hundred years we've regarded everything as explainable by investigation via scientific methods. Even if societies with as advanced tech as the ancient egyptians, who had some pretty clever tech and maths/building skills, saw a helicopter fly overhead, they would be in awe. They're not going to say "Oh that must be those crazy Israelites again - always building large chunks of metal that can float in the sky!"

Arrogance

[Anonymous Coward]

I heartily agree. We should keep these tribes entirely ignorant of the outside world until such a time as gold prospectors and loggers come to kill them. Afterwards we should bemoan the fact that they were helpless and unprotected from disease and exploitation.

The amount of sheer arrogance in the article is amazing. Who are we to decide to permanently isolate these people and leave them so vulnerable? These are creatures at a zoo living their primitive lives for our amusement and study.. they are people who deserve the right to decide their own fate and be offered the tools to surivive once civilization inevitably arrives.

Re:Arrogance.

[jonhainer]

"Uncontacted tribes" is a poor choice of phrasing. "Self-isolated tribes" may be better. These people are not stupid, and they know that other people exist. If anyone in that tribe wanted to contact the outside world, they'd just walk over to a logging camp or a park headquarters.

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.

Re:Arrogance.

[somersault]

Well, for the older generation, they have no chance of integrating into normal society, and for their kids, they are just going to end up like any other kids.. well apart from the fact that their parents may end up messed up on drugs and alcohol (as seems to happen to people like in inuit tribes up in the north of Canada etc). Life before technology wasn't necessarily dull. It could be quite brutal yes, but at least they probably have strong family units and a good sense of belonging in their tribe. In today's modern world, we all live in tightly packed areas, but hardly know anyone around us. It can end up being a very lonely existence. (yeah, boohoo for me eh :p ).

If these people got to experience our own culture and then were given a choice, I'm sure at least some of them - especially the older generation - would prefer to go back to the way things were.

Reality Check

[mpapet]

The way these things generally work is the term "uncontacted" is used to generate readership rather than reflect reality.

The more accurate phrase is minmal contact. Please remember, they share a forest with other tribes. There's interaction of all kinds.

In this case, geography minimized contact with the industrialized world. Those "uncontacted" tribes probably have at least one person that's gone all the way to the big city wherever it is thought to be.

Also note they are being pushed out by deforestation efforts, so you bet they've been on the wrong side of weapons and dealt with the industrialized world.

Re:Expert Loses Job

[danilo.moret]

Actually lots of those uncontacted tribes are known and are photographed from time to time. However they exact location and the pictures is not disclosed often, because even though the jungle is huge someone would certainly try to reach them, and it would be difficult to prevent it from happening. The expert did this as a media stunt to draw attention to the protection of the areas these tribes live.

Some quotes of what the expert said to Brazilian's newspaper O Globo http://oglobo.globo.com/pais/mat/2008/05/29/grupo_de_indios_fotografado_pela_1_vez_no_acre-546561413.asp [globo.com]: "There are notices of their existence since 1910."

"I know nothing about them, and the idea is to keep it this way."

"While they receive us with spears, they'll be fine. But when they become nice, they're done."

Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans?

[gstoddart]

I just don't see a bunch of natives hanging around in the forest all painted up with no where to go.

Why, exactly?

The Amazon basin is immense and large parts of it are almost as remote as you can get on the planet.

It's not like there isn't a long history of remote tribes who haven't really had much or any contact with "modern" people in that area.

Even a lot of the tribes which have had contact are still so isolated from the modern world that there have been only minor changes in their lives.

Short of a little outright disbelief in anything you hear, on what basis would you conclude there can't be any remote tribes that haven't been contacted before?

Cheers

Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans?

[ProppaT]

It would be fun to show them the real world.

I find that statement ironic, seeing that they live in nature and you're surrounded by concrete.

Re:Arrogance.

[AbRASiON]

If there's one thing I'm learning about life as I get older - and maybe just maybe I'm turning a little hippie but the one beautiful and pure thing in nature is innocence.

When we watch a movie and a child or an animal dies, most of us get upset, we cry, we're sad - it's wrong.
You have an adult die and it's a whole different thing, the key thing is the innocence, it's a beautiful and pure thing.

Nature in itself is innocent, beautiful and natural; sorry but I don't care how we could help these people, we've got enough mess as it is now, let them enjoy themselves, they are living life how they want to and frankly good on them.

Arrogance? My ass

[SamP2]

Yes your child could have been saved with just a few pills but we didn't want to contaminate you.

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.

Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans?

[Kelbear]

I think his skepticism of the photo stemmed more from people choosing to go about their day-to-day activities covered head-to-toe in body paint. The effort expended in maintaing this lifestyle seemed unlikely to the poster, making it look like an attempt to create an "exotic" picture by introducing a strange foreign habit.

The GP does not appear to have a problem believe that people could live in the amazon without contact. He just finds it hard to believe that people will waste that much time painting themselves for no practical benefit. However, he probably hadn't compared this to the effort that is often spent on religion in modern society.

Re:First Alien Contact Lessons

[Doc Ruby]

See, you expect it to be a "flying saucer", "landing". Because we're no different from these tribespeople: we've got our own myths and legends, and nothing else, just like them. When aliens arrive, it's more likely (out of the infinite possibilities) that their kind of arrival will scare the shit out of most of us, confirm some coincidental crazy superstition some of us have (and contradictory different ones between different groups of us), and generally just blow our minds.

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.

Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans?

[CowboyNealOption]

The thing about living the life they live is instead of spending all day commuting to work, sitting at a computer, washing dishes, filling out tax forms, and sitting in front of the boobtube, they spend a few hours gathering food and the rest of the time they can do whatever they want. Hell for all we know painting their bodies is their equivalent of American Idol.

Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans?

[CowboyNealOption]

You gotta admit, they have balls for trying to attack a helicopter...

And people wonder why aliens would think twice about making contact with us.

Re:Arrogance.

[jeremiahbell]

The whole "noble savage" and living a humble stone age life idea is obviously false. If it was more satisfying and happy to live like that great numbers of people would do it. Some do, many for religious reasons, even if they claim they are secular reasons, but most of us realize how great it is to live in the modern age. I've cut firewood, walked everywhere, occasionally used a bike, and cooked all of my food like it was the eighteenth century. I felt, and it worked for a bit, that I would be more satisfied. The amount of free time I lost to all of these activities was not worth it. The modern age gives me free time to study philosophy, history, computer programming, mathematics, and whatever else I feel like, all things very few people had time for in the past, unless they had servants to do the vast majority of the work for them. People settle on what makes them happy, and how we choose to live shows what makes us happy no matter how much we deny it.

Re:the unforgiving God thingy

[Oktober Sunset]

Well, all the kind, merciful deities have had thier followers wiped out by the followers of the vengeful, violent deities.

Re:cooking fires

[RPoet]

It would have been, not would of been.

Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans?

[thanatos_x]

If it's real, I'd be most interested in how they reacted to the helicopter as a tribe - not painting themselves and shooting arrows, but how they viewed the helicopter - was it a ship or beast of the gods, or simply humans with advanced technology. I'd be curious to know if they crossed Clarke's line of 'sufficiently advanced technology'.

Also I imagine the helicopter will have a somewhat serious impact on the tribe and their stories, at least if they were to remain uncontacted for a few more decades. Imagine if a large portion of our population saw something that they in no way could explain logically.

Re:Those pics look fake to me. Shenanigans?

[VeNoM0619]

Yea, cause when modern people see UFOs, they tend to think 'people' too...

A bit...sad reaction?

[sznupi]

First thing they do when they see something they don't understand? Attack.
Even though their survival depends solely on our good will.

Somehow I find this to be symptomatic of whole humanity. And I don't doubt even for a second that we, supposedly "civilised" people, would do the same in similar situation...

Oh, it's perfectly rational all right

[Moraelin]

Oh, it's perfectly rational all right, except don't think they actually understood what the aircraft was or what the pilots were. Almost invariably this was not some enterprising souls anchored in a skeptical view of the world, but actual _cults_. They _prayed_ to those aircraft. Even when they realized there's someone piloting it (e.g., as in the ghost steamer cult of Papua), they imagined ancestor spirits, or gods, or bird spirits, coming in them to deliver those goods.

(And if you want something even funnier, at least one Sioux tribe eventually came to believe that at the end of days, when the ancestors' spirits come back, they'll come by train.)

Now I'm still saying that it's perfectly rational, for someone whose whole life and explanation of the universe is firmly rooted in spirituality and belief in supernatural spirits. The Europeans would have probably done the same if an airplane showed up, as late as the middle ages.

But at the end of the day, yes, it is rational behaviour and _human_ behaviour. If you saw a guy making a lightsaber out of 5 leds, a lens, and 4 D bateries, you'd try to do the same even if just for curiosity sake. If you don't understand how, you experiment a bit. These guys essentially did the same. They tried to replicate something which obviously worked for the Americans and Japanese. So I'm not trying to paint them as dumb or anything. I'm sure they were perfectly intelligent humans, same as everyone else.

But at the same time I _am_ saying that their explanations _were_ indeed religious. They used the framework they already had for understanding the world, and that was one of religion, magic, supernatural forces, and mighty spirits. They fit those airplanes and airfields in that framework. Because they had no other framework available.

So I wouldn't be too surprised if these guys in the Amazon did the same. Again, I'm not painting them as dumb, nor looking down upon them. But I do expect them to do what so many other tribes did: see it as some supernatural event.

That's really all.

Re:Egotistical

[bogjobber]

Are you serious? Taking cultural relativism to a new height, eh?

They are uncontacted because they (this is really the key, so pay attention) have been not contacted by outside civilizations. There is at maximum maybe a couple thousand of them (sorry if the number is wrong), living in self-imposed isolation. There are over six billion of us, and we travel all around the world contacting each other constantly.