Video of an uncontacted tribe spotted in the Brazilian jungle has been released, bringing them to life in ways that photographs alone cannot.
The tribe, believed to be Panoa Indians, have been monitored from a distance by Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, a government agency charged with handling the nation’s indigenous communities. Many of the world’s 100 or so uncontacted tribes live in the Amazon.
Until 1987, it was government policy to contact such people. But contact is fraught with problems, especially disease; people who have stayed isolated from the mainstream world have stayed isolated from its pathogens, and have little immunity to our diseases. Brazilian government policy is now to watch from afar, and — at least in principle — to protect uncontacted tribes from intrusion.
Via Wired Science
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Puts things in perspective doesnt it.
I moan if my computer goes down at work or at a traffic jam. They have a threat of death from a common cold and losing their way of life.
If I was them, I wouldnt want to contact us either. Can we watch the full documentary somewhere as it looks fascinating?
On another note. I was waiting to hear Mulder’s voice pop up.
There is a good possibility that this video may be a hoax. Word has it that it is related to a story from 2008.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/04/uncontacted-amazon-tribe-video_n_818621.html
A quote from the above link
“EDITOR’S NOTE: Unfounded allegations have been made that this video is a hoax because similar photos of the same tribe that were released in 2008 were incorrectly reported in the media as being an “undiscovered” tribe, thus leading to rumors of them being fake. CLICK HERE for more info on the “hoax” rumors being debunked in 2008″
http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/3670
uhh… the signing thhing at the end doesnt work. anyway, wow! i think its ther coise wheather 2 be contacted or not.
Its so sad that people are doing this to others….
The BBC camera team were filming for ‘Human Planet’ episode 4 i think it is. The jungle episode. Amazing series.
You know that this sort of thing could never happen here in the UK. After all, here are a bunch of people who aren’t paying taxes, no way they could be left alone.
Whether it’s a hoax or not, the narrator sounds like she’s narrating Walking with Dinosaurs… They are human beings geez!
T,
Yeah, Human Planet has been a humbling experience. Apart from the moments that make you want to ‘Yay, humans!’
The fact is that if they are contacted it won’t be by people who want to help, but by people who want to enslave, exploit or exterminate.
May I suggest a thought experiment? Let’s say we find a tribe which has existed without contact for millenia, which lives in harmony with nature and which contact would destroy through viruses etc. We observe from afar with our clever technology and discover that an important part of their culture is the annual sacrifice of a child.
Not to intervene is to be complicit in the evisceration of a child. To intervene means the end of the very last truly ancient culture. And a lot of dead children through disease.
What would you do?
Don: I’d leave them to it. In cases like this, Asimov’s Laws of Robotics actually make sense. It’s worse to actively harm than ‘through inaction to allow to come to harm’ (first vs second law). Intervention would mean actively harming several people to save one child, which might still die of disease. Also, if they are anything like most cultures that practiced child sacrifice, the child will be treated extremely well until they kill it and its loved ones will believe it is with their gods, which means that there is not a lot of suffering involved (as there would be at the post-intervention stage).