
Anthropology: The sad truth about uncontacted tribes - Libertatea
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes
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mturmon
This fascinating story has been making its way through the science community
for a few weeks. Here's a report from July 11:

[http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/07/uncontacted-t...](http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/07/uncontacted-
tribe-brazil-emerges-isolation)

(Abstract only, main report is behind a paywall.) And the recent update:

[http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/07/did-brazils-
uncont...](http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/07/did-brazils-uncontacted-
tribe-receive-proper-medical-care)

The last paragraph reveals how serious the lack of medical attention can be:

"In the mid-1980s, a group of Yora tribespeople who made contact with loggers
in their region in the Peruvian Amazon were first infected by influenza and
later came down with pneumonia and other secondary infections. Without
antibiotics, “the old people died and all the young kids died,” Hill says. A
subsequent study by medical anthropologist Glenn Shepard of the Paraense
Emilio Goeldi Museum in Belém, Brazil, revealed that some 300 people died,
between 50% and 60% of the population."

It's a tragic illustration of one of the points of Jared Diamond's book _Guns,
Germs, and Steel_.

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dbbolton
Wikipedia has a pretty interesting article on the subject:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_people)

The Sentinelese (mentioned in the OP) are somewhat special in that they
actually attack any other humans that come near the island.

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jpatokal
The Sentinelese also have the unique(?) advantage of living on a _very_
isolated island with no significant exploitable resources of interest to
others: [https://goo.gl/maps/0xTek](https://goo.gl/maps/0xTek)

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otoburb
Well, that's one misconception I harboured that's now been corrected. It makes
sense upon reflection that uncontacted tribes knew far more about outsiders
than the other way around, but I never thought that most of their fear was due
to prior killings or disease through both uncaring and caring encounters.

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colefichter
> I never thought that most of their fear was due to prior killings or disease
> through both uncaring and caring encounters.

It's even worse than that. I recently read Jared Diamond's book The World
Until Yesterday. In it he describes just how violent inter-group affairs can
be among pre-industrial societies. Globally, the default is typically to kill
anyone from another group before they have a chance to do the same to you.

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drpgq
One thing I found interesting about the book 1491 New Revelations of the
Americas Before Columbus were claims that there were some tribes more advanced
around the Amazon than many would commonly think. Of course after first
contact, who knows what exactly happened to the people in the area. It has
never been exactly well developed even today.

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ejk314
'Pururambo' is a documentary available on Netflix about visiting uncontacted
tribes like this, if anyone is interested.

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allworknoplay
Oh, BBC. Did anyone else notice their persistent use of "Indians"? Kind of
hilarious.

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thatswrong0
You'll even find extremely knowledgable American history professors who use
the term to describe Native Americans. Their graduate students, however, will
tell you separately that they want and expect you to use more politically
correct terms instead. Just has to do with the times.

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RK
In theory the rule is that you're supposed to refer to people by what name
they prefer (e.g. "Little people").

Here's what Wikipedia says:

* The terms used to refer to Native Americans have been controversial. According to a 1995 U.S. Census Bureau set of home interviews, most of the respondents with an expressed preference refer to themselves as "American Indians" or simply "Indians"; this term has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups _

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_delirium
A late-'90s Russell Means polemic against "Native American" (along with the
fact that it got quite a bit of agreement) has been somewhat influential in
that respect:
[http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/wai.shtml](http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/wai.shtml)

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xenadu02
tl;dr:

It seems inevitable that any group of humans too long cut off from the
majority of humanity is destined for destruction once contact is re-
established due to cultural shock, unscrupulous or illegal activity, but
chiefly by diseases against which they have no natural immunity.

Second: a bunch of formerly uncontacted people have been interviewed after
contact was made and _none_ of them indicated a desire to abstain from the
evil outside world or to preserve their way of life... They were merely afraid
and/or lacked appropriate opportunity for contact.

Further, none of them were wholly unaware of life outside their small isolated
villages/reserves; people gossip and even the most isolated peoples have some
knowledge of the rest of humanity.

Best we can tell this process is inevitable. The article has some suggestions
for minimizing the damage but by and large there is little anyone can do
despite the best intentions unless we were to forcibly isolate these people
and prohibit them from making contact.

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jchrisa
At least in the mean time we can try as best as possible to learn from them,
before their cultures are forgotten. So much of what we assume is standard
operating procedure is deeply made-up. Seeing how other folks do things is a
way to learn.

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jonah
This and ideally leave them with the space and privacy to maintain (or not)
contact with other groups on their own terms.

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aaron695
TL;DR; We still have human zoos.

Contrary to popular belief, living in these societies would not be a fun
experience. Well if you're a strong man happy to live to 50 they might be ok.
To bad if you're a women.

But we allow them to continue by actively prohibiting people from helping them
purely for our rich persons entertainment.

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lambdaphage
Paleolithic culture is a genuinely mixed bag. Not as bad as almost everyone
thinks, but worse than the rest think. I would put 1850 as my over-under for
the year that neolithic culture provided an improvement in average quality of
life. The problem with being a foraging people is that farming peoples can
push you off the nicer land, as the article corroborates. Over millenia,
foraging probably got to be a worse deal.

It is far from clear, though, that living as a hunter gatherer isn't fun.
Reports from the 18th and 19th centuries mention the scandal that when white
farmers were captured by indigenous tribes, they hardly ever wanted to go
back. Foraging beat farming in terms of qalys, it seemed.

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beloch
Studies of the ǃKung San, who were recently hunter-gatherers living in a
rather marginal environment, showed that they could get by doing _far_ less
work than farmers. The work they did do was strenuous. For example, they
practiced persistence hunting. However, on average they had a lot more leisure
time. Being a hunter-gatherer was probably an even sweeter deal before farmers
and ranchers gobbled up all the prime real estate.

Interestingly enough, the recent history of the !Kung shows that settling down
and joining the rest of civilization does not always benefit the fairer sex.
!Kung society was much less sexist before contact than it is now, as the
surrounding peoples they are now in contact with are not exactly the most
egalitarian. Most archaeologists consider egalitarian social structure to be
typical of hunter-gatherer societies, with rigid hierarchical structure being
an innovation resulting from settlement. Consider the concept of being "rich"
for example. In a nomadic pastoral culture, wealth might be owning a big herd.
In a sedentary culture, wealth might take the form of housing or accumulated
items. A hunter-gatherer does not own animals and has to carry everything
he/she owns around. A hunter-gather's abilities are his/her wealth.

There are plenty of "civilized" places on Earth today where being poor is
basically hell. There's ceaseless toil, no power or freedom, pollution,
violence, poor nutrition, and no real access to the wonders of modern medicine
that most of us are aghast at the thought of doing without. I'd far rather be
among today's last few hunter-gatherer tribes than an immigrant worker in UAE
or Qatar.

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pjc50
This basically tells us that land ownership and control is the critical
ingredient against egalitarianism. The structure of the society is built
around preserving land ownership; suddenly because family membership and
inheritance grants you access to land it becomes a point of contention, and
control is imposed on women to maintain that boundary.

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billpg
We used to live like this. Eating organic food, getting lots of exercise,
dying in our 20s...

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Raphmedia
Those people don't all die in their 20s. It's harder to get past 20, but once
you did, you could live up to 70 if not more. There wouldn't be elders
otherwise.

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RevRal
God I hate how much that can be perceived as an animal welfare issue. Not "Oh
fuck, there are groups of people on Earth in danger of going extinct."

