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Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

uncontactedtribes.org

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Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#31

Post by fingerprinter »

farlington wrote: post #22
vietor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect that it would do what every other unexplainable but repeated phenomena did in pre-scientific cultures, become part of the mythology. See: Weather. But my only anthropology was a few GE classes in undergrad, so maybe someone with actual knowledge can chime in? Hopefully future history books (or niche Ph.D. theses more likely ...) won't include a section about the bloody war between the plane-ists and th…

from their faq ( http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions-and... ): "uncontacted tribes will have seen aeroplanes on numerous occasions. The idea that this damages their self-image and/or spiritual beliefs belongs in the realm of fiction, and is based on the false supposition that their cultures are fragile. Experience shows that such peoples are in fact robust and well able to adapt to outside goods…

I have to call BS on this.

It may not "hurt" them, but it does influence/effect them. It has to. Going way back to my anthro classes, all primitive cultures crafted religious beliefs as survival mechanisms, to pass down stories and things that would benefit future generations etc etc. It was also a way to explain what they couldn't explain but still experienced (weather, natural disasters...) and this would fall into that category.

What the FAQ did was use inflammatory language (damage, fragile) rather than talk about how this might shape and craft their thoughts and beliefs. If we haven't contacted them, we simply cannot know if IT DID impact them.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#32

Post by Groxx »

raganwald wrote: post #9

You know that Golden Rule?" Not the one that VCs quote, but the one that goes "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you?" We should think about that when we choose how to deal with uncontacted tribes. It may be that one day another intelligence will need to decide how to deal with us, and on that day I hope we can say, "Yes, we used to have a habit of massacring technologically inferior peoples we encounte…

>... we grew up a little and we don't do that any more either.

The only 3rd alternative being "Now we wall them in, pretend they don't exist, and tell people not to tap on the glass"? And those really are the only options, unless you know of an approach that isn't fundamentally the same as one of "kill them", "bring them into our culture", or "prevent our culture from getting into theirs".

I'll take door number 2, thanks. And I hope anyone/thing that sees this will proceed to destroy my culture and identity to bring me closer to seeing the rest of the universe as it really is.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#33

Post by RK »

fingerprinter wrote: post #28
RK wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly this is due to intertribal trade, rather than direct contact with the larger outside communities.

Is there some number of links that would make this tribe 'contacted' then? I would have assumed 'uncontacted' meant 'no knowledge of outside world at all' but it seems not. Having this tribe get a machete and pot and see a plane makes it feel pretty 'contacted'. Not that I want to quibble over some definition...

I would make a Facebook joke here, but...

I think that they mean that these people have not been in direct contact with non-tribal people. It sounds like most of them are very isolated. Even the other tribes that have contact with the mainstream society seem to have little to no contact with these "uncontacted" tribes.

This is mostly info I read on that website and related links, i.e. I'm not an expert.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#35

Post by d3x »

xenophanes wrote: post #27
raganwald wrote: post #9

You know that Golden Rule?" Not the one that VCs quote, but the one that goes "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you?" We should think about that when we choose how to deal with uncontacted tribes. It may be that one day another intelligence will need to decide how to deal with us, and on that day I hope we can say, "Yes, we used to have a habit of massacring technologically inferior peoples we encounte…

We should give them access to technology and to our way of life. Our way of life is better. Preserving their backwards culture so they can continue lives of misery and suffering is just as disgusting as the Prime Directive. Help is exactly what I would want from advanced alien visitors. I don't want them to respect my culture just because it is mine; I want something better for myself, not cultural relativism. There…

I really hope you are kidding. If not this is so typical of the american way of thinking. Yes, we are so superior lets convert them all to our [insert culture, religion etc...]. What is so bad about leaving them alone? I would bet they are much happer than the majority of the FB and Twitter obsessed narcissist that I run into every day.

While we are at it lets make sure they all become good christians too because anyone that has not accepted christ in their life just does not know what they are missing.

Im not trying to be an ass but I fundamentally disagree with everything you just said. BTW: you to know that Western medicine is not the only medicine in the world. While we are at it lets take them our aids, diabetes, obesity etc...

You are basically saying that your beliefs and way of life are so superior and better than theirs that you must convert them and that is total bullshit. They have a right just as you do to continue their way of life without someone like you coming along and deciding what is and is not ok for them.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#36

Post by riledhel »

cshenoy wrote: post #23
jbrennan wrote: post #5

I wonder what kind of disturbance just the helicopter (or whatever method was used to capture the footage) caused on the tribe. Obviously the tribe was aware of it, but if they've never been contacted, would they be able to even fathom what such a thing is? I'm genuinely curious because I'm also genuinely ignorant on how "uncontacted" tribes like that are and what their civilization is like. Could anyone enlighten me…

There's a pretty detailed article ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1022822/Incre... ) that explains what anthropologists assume they're thinking. It's basically "Stay Away" since the plane is a foreign object. In fact, you can see the tribesmen readying their weapons in case the flying object veers towards them.

Photos taken a couple of years ago showing the "stay away" attitude pretty good http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/05/uncontacted_tribe_p...

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#37

Post by Luyt »

jim_h wrote: post #13
jim_h wrote: post #10

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/01/5965571-newl... This has better photos. According to NBC report in 2008, an agency has been aware of the tribe and have been tracking (and not contacting) them since 1910.

They mostly likely have had contact with some people. In the first photo, you can make out a nice machete and a pot.

Someone of the comments even suggest that these pictures are a hoax, shot in someone's backyard, and from the ground, not in a helicopter. Others say that they could have found the machete and cooking pot in an abandoned camp. Whatever the truth, having a machete is certainly a 'contact' with modern civilisation, I think.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#38

Post by Cyranix »

goldins wrote: post #6

Did this shatter anyone else's perception of how well-connected we are, as a species?

The existence of isolated social groups isn't a mind-blowing concept to me, but not something I think about daily either. Does a new awareness of the exception to the rule really change your perception of how interconnected most of humanity is?

Maybe I'm reading too much into this comment, but something about it seems to imply that being disconnected from the global network is a bad thing. Though I myself am a highly plugged-in urbanite, I hope that people who see this remember that living in a small group (or even alone) is just as valid as assimilating with the vast network that connects the majority.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#39

Post by vietor »

farlington wrote: post #22
vietor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect that it would do what every other unexplainable but repeated phenomena did in pre-scientific cultures, become part of the mythology. See: Weather. But my only anthropology was a few GE classes in undergrad, so maybe someone with actual knowledge can chime in? Hopefully future history books (or niche Ph.D. theses more likely ...) won't include a section about the bloody war between the plane-ists and th…

from their faq ( http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions-and... ): "uncontacted tribes will have seen aeroplanes on numerous occasions. The idea that this damages their self-image and/or spiritual beliefs belongs in the realm of fiction, and is based on the false supposition that their cultures are fragile. Experience shows that such peoples are in fact robust and well able to adapt to outside goods…

I did not mean to suggest that they would deviate significantly from the norm of any other group of people presented with unexplainable phenomena throughout the remainder of human history. Given the variance in how smoothly minor points of difference in mythology have gone down in the rest of history, it was not intended to indicate any additional fragility over baseline humanity.

Suggesting that it damages anything is a significant value judgment. To suggest that notable, repeated, unexplained phenomena would have no impact at all whatsoever is sufficiently at odds with the entirety of human history, culture, and the general body of human mythology, that I'd like to see a stronger citation than the paragraph on their website if you find one.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#40

Post by goldins »

rglullis wrote: post #26

This "footage" hit the news a couple of years ago in Brazil, and a couple of days later was challenged as being fake. I could look more into details and see if there is any translation from the articles back then, but I will stand that this is NOT an "uncontacted tribe".

Interesting - can you link to any sources?
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