INCREDIBLE PHOTOS: Uncontacted Tribe Sighted in Amazon

[EugLoven]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 6:25pm

THIS JUST BAFFLES MY MIND! I can't believe people like this still exist! They're out there, tucked away in the most remote pockets of this world... undiscovered, disconnected from the rest of Earth. It's mind-boggling and kind of creepy.



CNN: UNCONTACTED TRIBE SIGHTED IN AMAZON
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/05/30/brazil.tribes/index.html

Researchers have produced aerial photos of jungle dwellers who they say are among the few remaining peoples on Earth who have had no contact with the outside world. Taken from a small airplane, the photos show men outside thatched communal huts, necks craned upward, pointing bows toward the air in a remote corner of the Amazonian rainforest. The National Indian Foundation, a government agency in Brazil, published the photos Thursday...

An uncontacted Indian tribe looks to the sky along the Envira River in the western Amazon rainforest of Brazil in May 2008. Photographer: Gleison Miranda/FUNAI

THE PHOTOS ARE INCREDIBLE! A group of people, naked or lightly-clothed, with skins covered in exotic paint, pointing their arrows and spears to the sky. Thatched houses in a small clearing in the deepest realms of a quickly-shrinking jungle. These people are born, raised and die within this small secluded family tribe.

It's just all so surreal...


Updated On: 5/30/08 at 06:25 PM

[CapnHook]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 6:47pm

It would be quite interesting to learn about their culture!

[Tag]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 6:53pm

And by doing so, we would ruin it.

This is truly fascinating.

[TomMonster]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 6:57pm

Wow...soon to have a Starbucks, I imagine.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 7:31pm

by flying over and taking the pix we probably have already ruined them.....Can you imagine in say 1000 AD if a helicopter appeared over Rome and started taking pix?

[Liverpool]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 7:51pm

they'd think it was Jupiter.

[DG]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 7:53pm

"undiscovered, disconnected from the rest of Earth. It's mind-boggling and kind of creepy."

Kind of creepy? Why?

I think it sounds perfectly glorious.

Unfortunately, they've already been altered. Hopefully, the intrusion won't last, and for now they can hold on to the life they know. I think we've seen enough of what happens when people interfer with other communities.

The last thing they need is to have others try and 'advance' them.

[Namaste]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 8:10pm

Here's a valid question, and I'm not trying to be facetious:

What if we found out this tribe oppressed, mutilated, or harmed the women? What if their culture were based on taking young teenage girls and marrying them off to tribe elders? Should we or would we interfere then?

[DG]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 8:18pm

"What if we found out this tribe oppressed, mutilated, or harmed the women? What if their culture were based on taking young teenage girls and marrying them off to tribe elders?"

That is an interesting question, Nam - what's our current policy concerning Saudi Arabia?

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 8:32pm

saudi arabia, sh*t. what's our policy on the polygamy cult in freakin' texas?

[skb2010]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 8:50pm

"What if we found out this tribe oppressed, mutilated, or harmed the women? What if their culture were based on taking young teenage girls and marrying them off to tribe elders? Should we or would we interfere then?"

I'd say it's not in America, they have obviously been doing it for a long time, and to leave them alone. In their minds, they aren't harming anyone because it's just how it is there. And we'd be hurting them because they would probably change their entire lives and the lives of their children.

[Jane2]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 10:16pm

Wow, are those pictures interesting. I wish they could have gotten closer.

When I studied the Asmat tribe of Papua New Guinea, they were still headhunters at the time. I thought they were the most interesting people I had heard of!

[Unknown User]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 10:37pm

I dunno. I heard that when the plane flew over, one of the natives was heard to yell "So does Samatha really die in the Sex & the City Movie???"

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 5/30/08 at 11:07pm

Lionel Shriver's fantastic novel The Female of the Species is in part about a tribe untouched by the rest of the world becomes corrupted when an Englishman crashes his plane on their land and they think he's a god.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 5/31/08 at 12:16am

"I dunno. I heard that when the plane flew over, one of the natives was heard to yell "So does Samatha really die in the Sex & the City Movie???"


I am really, REALLY hoping you didn't just spoil that movie for me and a lot of other people.....since most of us knew nothing about the movie.....

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 5/31/08 at 12:36am

Elphaba, he didn't spoil a thing. That rumor's been going around since about February. Trust me. It's fine!

[DG]

Posted: 5/31/08 at 12:37am

"Trust me. It's fine!"

Except for the tribe in question, they're F*CKed.

But anyway . . .

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 5/31/08 at 3:30am

Are they really untouched? Like, they haven't even come in contact with spreadable viruses? I can't imagine there are still parts of the world we haven't even at least photographed yet with satellites? That's crazy. I think we should leave them alone. If they wanted to know more of what was out there then they would have come looking for us.

[StageManager2]

Posted: 5/31/08 at 3:48am

I can't help but think of the Tasaday, this group of so-called "uncontacted peoples" supposedly still stuck in the Stone Age in the rainforests of the Philippines. They were "discovered" in the late '60s (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC even filmed a documentary on them), but it was all found to be a hoax in the mid-1980s.

[skb2010]

Posted: 5/31/08 at 1:10pm

They tried to shoot down the helicopter or plane with bows and arrows. I HIGHLY doubt that it is a hoax.

[Tag]

Posted: 5/31/08 at 1:51pm

This picture is amazing.

[KrissySim]

Posted: 5/31/08 at 2:05pm

These are some of the actors who didn't get a part in South Pacific. It's just a publicity stunt.

No, if it's not a hoax, this photo series is amazing.

[LePetiteFromage]

Posted: 5/31/08 at 4:59pm

Updated On: 1/23/09 at 04:59 PM

[Taryn]

Posted: 5/31/08 at 8:07pm

"What if we found out this tribe oppressed, mutilated, or harmed the women? What if their culture were based on taking young teenage girls and marrying them off to tribe elders? Should we or would we interfere then?"

It's a complicated question. I totally understand the sentiments about how such interference has a bad historical track record, that it's their culture. But how bad would such a tradition need to be until interference would seem less of a bad idea? Genital mutilation? It's an extreme example to jump to, but if such an untouched culture engaged in actions of that extreme, would we all be as sure that they should remain untouched? I don't think it's as simple as that, sadly.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 5/31/08 at 8:30pm

I wonder how the researchers know this tribe has had no contact with the outside world. It's not that I'm doubting them, I just wonder how they reach that conclusion.