Funai, Brazil’s national Aboriginal foundation, has released photos of a native village deep in the Amazon. The residents have apparently never had contact with ‘modern’ civilization.
Two things: it’s kinda neat that in a world as populated and seemingly inter-connected as ours, there are still folks living much as they did thousands of years ago. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those back-to-the-land luddite types (I loves me some electricity), but I find this strangely reassuring.
Also, I don’t think we should be in a hurry to contact these people. For one thing, we could irreparably harm their society or wipe them out with our dread European diseases. But they also look kinda dangerous. If you look closely, you can tell that they’re actually firing arrows at the helicopter.
It would, however, be interesting to find out how they get themselves so orange.
View all the photos here.
It would, however, be interesting to find out how they get themselves so orange.
Duh, they’re Oompa-Loompas.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:38 amIsn’t it a little tough to ‘not contact’ these people when you’ve flown a helicopter over their heads? Seriously, if I was a sticks and stones kind of guy and one day a giant whirling bird hovered over me, that would totally f me up for life.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:46 pmSeriously, if I was a sticks and stones kind of guy and one day a giant whirling bird hovered over me, that would totally f me up for life.
I don’t know, Forbes. Seems to me they reacted a lot like “civilized” (snicker) people might: get the women and kids under cover, gird yourselves for battle (the body paint and weapons), and try to scare the intruder off by shooting at it.
The person in black that the BBC said might be a woman might also have been a shaman or witch, casting spells.
In other words, not ‘f’ed up at all. Pretty rational, actually.
Something else occurs to me: that chopper had windows, obviously, and it’s possible the tribespeople could identify humans, or at least human-shaped things, inside the bird. So perhaps they reacted the same as they would to any purely human invader.
Cool catch, NS, by the way.
May 30th, 2008 at 5:05 pm[...] story largely hoax free So yesterday I posted that the story about about the so-called ‘lost’ Amazon tribe was a hoax. Turns out, the story is true after all, if a little more complicated than originally [...]
June 24th, 2008 at 2:46 pm