Uncontacted tribe in Amazon
This photo released yesterday depicts members of a tribe in the Amazon rain forest firing arrows at an airplane. Apparently, the tribe has never had any contact with humans outside of their own group. And there are likely many other "uncontacted" tribes in the region too. From National Geographic:
"We are very confident the photos are genuine," said Miriam Ross, a spokesperson for Survival International, which estimates that half of the hundred or so uncontacted tribes in the world live in the rain forests of Brazil and Peru.Link
Some experts say few, if any, tribes have had no outside contact. It's more likely is that previous generations had negative encounters, prompting social taboos that continue to drive clans deeper into isolation.
Due to their vulnerable immune systems, these groups are highly susceptible to diseases borne by outsiders such as missionaries, loggers, or oil workers.
So cool.
Let them be.
Study their habits via remote sensing.
I would presume they know of human existence, from what the article states about ancestors' prior experience being bad.
I think it's quite interesting that there are still such primitive beings living among us. And it shows what a long way we've come.
Get those people some whiskey and cigarettes.
possibly a fraud like previous, possible a tribe ready to kill the devil bird's children (see annoying missionaries with photographs) There's a good chance they have had contact with outsiders. We should take up a collection to send them rocket launchers. I recommend reading Wade Davis' "One River".
More photos at BBC
I would presume they know of human existence
Well, they experience it personally, being human, eh?
Yes, leave them alone, please.
Of course, we won't, we never do.
(I am reminded of a friend who would berate me for believing Bigfoot existed, with the logic "we've been everywhere and seen everything on Earth, we would've found them by now if they were real." BUT, what if they didn't want to be found?)
Online shopping taken to extremes.
Just wait till we figure out there's oil under their land; we'll surely "contact" them, same as the others...
It's obvious from the aerial photograph that they've developed weapons of mass destruction and we need to invade immediately.
Googlemaps FTW!
get those people a coke bottle!
The additional photos on at the BBC imply that the plane flying over is a startling occurrence to them. My question is that they have had to see a plane fly over before, right? I know the article says they probably have had "bad" human contact, but do they shoot arrows at every plane they see? You'd think they'd be familiar enough with their weapons to know that they can't shoot a mile with them, much less almost straight up. That doesn't sit right with me.
Does is bother anybody else that groups like this are always referred to as 'tribes'? The word 'tribe' is weighted will all kinds of colonialist, western-triumphalist baggage. Also, it's extremely imprecise. Define: tribe.
From the photos, this looks like an extended-family group to me. Probably no more than 20 people living in a couple of longhouses.
Also, why should we 'leave them alone'? Aside from the strong possibility of infecting them with our various diseases. They are people just like us. They should have the choice of participating in modern society and adopting modern technology if they want to. It's hard to put yourself in that position but I like to think that if I was one of those people I might be frightened at first, but later pretty glad to have been introduced to the entire world of possibilities outside my little rain forest territory.
sometimes i wish i could be these guys i'm sure they dont feel the energy crisis, no mortgage, no kids screaming and yelling for things they cant afford and no Bush in their lives, looks like a paradise .
I think they're really pumpkins. Angry pumpkins.
They must have thought George Bush was in the plane, coming to bring them democracy.
Cool! Wal-Mart, McDonalds and Coke need more customers.
Pht nhncd...
http://mg225.mgshck.s/mg225/2623/trb2cw6.jpg
Certainly I wonder how long it will take for us to screw up their lives.
that pic link was funny lol and why are they orange for like pumpkins??
they would prob kill each other if they got a coke bottle like the other tribe who went bananas when they got theirs
i just submitted this today! darn it.
I suggested this link too :(
yay arkizzle! (my private BB)
I'm gonna have to stop suggesting links, the emotional investment is just too high.
There's a big snake in the plane, Jock.
"New extended-family group discovered!"
Not exactly a catchy headline, sorry.
Or how about gang?
or hunter-gatherer collective?
or autonomous anarchist commune?
Tribes it is, then.
you never know, they could have some pretty nice technology we never knew about that arrow may even bring down the plane just watch and wait
@Enochrewt
The article on the BBC says there was a previous flyover which is probably why they got out their weapons and body paint (red for the men, black for the woman) as an act of defense/agression
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7427417.stm
Also this article is intresting/heartbraking: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7318021.stm
The real story I heard in connection to that article is a reality TV show ignored the standards for precautions such as bringing professional medical teams along to supervise.
#13 As to your question about seeing planes previously. Brazil is pretty huge, as well is Peru. Depending on where they have been living, they might not be in an areas which is a common flight path. It easily could be very rare for them to see planes. Or they just might want the plane to F-off and go away so they can be left alone, who knows.
Check out the movie at http://www.survival-international.org/
They have some interesting information about an Indonesian tribe who was able to keep the Indonesian govt. away from their island, the have lived on their island for 60,000 years and don't have any intention of leaving, it's quite fascinating.
Nice "low-impact" study, peeps! From the slide-show:
"The first flight had an obvious impact on the tribe. By the time the plane returned, most of the women and children had fled and those who remained had painted their bodies."
the article almost references them as it would a zoo installment. The writer/philosopher in me looks at this on a humanizing scale. They're certainly "the other" and there's really no way we can handle this without structuring their existence in some way.
It's simply amazing to me that this world simultaneously contains peoples living at the Hunter/Gatherer end of existence and people like me living in an apartment half the size of that hut, tens of thousands of dollars in debt, stuck in a dead end job...
Wow, I wonder if they'd teach me how to hunt and thatch a roof.
Probably actors from that last Mel Gibson movie Apocalypto.
On the arrows are notes that read:
"Help, I have a screen test on the 15th."
and
"Please send some Evian, at room temperature with a twist of lime."
N, bt thy mght t y nd shrnk yr hd.
M, 'd snd 'm sm blnkts ldd wth smllpx.
I call shennanigans.
The guy on the right looks like he's wearing Nikes.
One of my favorite images of the year... beautiful, disturbing, poetic and richly mysterious.
But now they *have* had contact, what with the plane buzzing over their homes, why aren't they now called "Contacted"?
Maurik said:
"I think it's quite interesting that there are still such primitive beings living among us. And it shows what a long way we've come."
The word "primitive" means "at an early stage of development" but since their development is contemporary with own, there's no objective way to determine this. The assumption that aboriginal cultures are less developed or less advanced than our own simply because they're isolated from the so-called "developed" nations and they don't have what we call industry is incredibly ethnocentric. They also don't have toxic waste, and aren't poisoning their air and water. We do know their culture is different than ours, but whether or not ours is superior is an arbitrary value judgement with no objective measure.
Suboptimal said:
"They are people just like us. They should have the choice of participating in modern society and adopting modern technology if they want to."
Culturally they are most definitely not like us, and I don't know that they would consider modern technology and globalization some great gift. Most aboriginal cultures have most definitely not benefited by being colonized by our technology and culture.
@#12 So, did anyone else get the Gods Must be Crazy reference? (I'm guessing not many...)
The OP reads like missionaries, etc. are plagues.
Which is funny because it's true.
I doubt it!
I call viral marketing on this one.
The intense part of this story that no one is saying anything about is that the reason these pictures were taken by the government was to encourage awareness (and perhaps action?) about illegal logging. The debate isn't whether taking these pictures is wrong - it's what do you do about these people not having land in a few years.
#38, I'd say most got it.
@Suboptimal. Tribe is a fine word. I can't be the only one who has a "people I would like to have in my tribe" list.
In the next frame, Indiana Jones leads the russians through their village, and they are unceremoniously wiped out.
In the middle of the massacre, there is a moment of silence, and fans demanded their money back.
The end.
larpers
This story got me a bit nervous and vaguely scared, specially the war body paint part. I blame it on years of bad 70's italian cannibal movies.
#46 haha!
Jed (37), I see what you're saying and agree to an extent. But there are certain objective measures, like disease and life span that would (to me) say that a more industrialized lifestyle like the US leads is better for the human. To clarify, I mean better for the individual, worse for the planet.
If your current life expectancy is 35, and you're told you could live to 70+ living another way, most beings with self preservation would choose the latter lifestyle.
Throwing shit at helicopters is an age-old instinct. No reason to believe these folks have never seen one before. You could get a similar photo flying over LA.
@ suboptimal
You stated that: "They should have the choice of participating in modern society and adopting modern technology if they want to."
This smacks heavily of imperialistic righteousness. Who said our "modern" way of life is the only right way to live? Our modern methods are sucking this planet dry of resources, too many people live in poverty and can't get either food or medical treatment despite the gross wealth accumulated by a small percentage of the population.
And that: "I like to think that if I was one of those people I might be frightened at first, but later pretty glad to have been introduced to the entire world of possibilities outside my little rain forest territory."
You think these people are unhappy simply because they can't cruise through McDonald's for a burger and soda on their way home to watch hours of television with a house full of pointless consumer goods? Why exactly shouldn't they be happy with their lives just as they are? Is it because you couldn't be happy with that, so then no else has that right either?
Oompa Loompas!
The body paint certainly works. The chicks gave me the willies!
Longevity isn't the only way that you can measure quality of life.
Tradition, familiarity, family, continuity, a complete knowledge of how to survive, feed yourself, build tools, homes, weapons clothes passed on from generation to generation--or, having every new product be mysterious and alien, being dependent on huge anonymous governments and corporations for all of the things that you used to be able to provide for yourself with your own ability and community, being constantly afraid of things you can't understand and having your fate determined by others.
Yeah, no. I'm doubting this one too.
Even (especially) primitive warriors would know better than to stand out in a clearing exposed to a potentially deadly threat, instead of shooting arrows from the cover of trees.
And the photographer on the plane only managed to get two fuzzy shots?
Stranger things, and all that, but this whole thing looks entirely too staged.
The book "1491" argues that many remote Amazon tribes are the remnants of previously civilized peoples who fled death, disease and learning Spanish during the Conquistador era. Their "prior contact" may have been 25 generations ago.
These comments make me wonder if this is what alien visitors think of us: "Hey look at this strange planet of primitives living in the outer rim. Maybe we should make contact?"
"Nah - Let 'em be - They'd try to hit our ships with their primitive fision weapons, and we might kill them with our exotic diseases. Better to observe from afar - suck 'em up and probe 'em"
Clearly they've had contact, otherwise how could they get jobs in Willy Wonka's Chocolate factory?
As two of the definitions of "advanced" taken from Princeton.edu's wordnet are:
-"At a higher level in training or knowledge"
and
-"Highly developed especially in technology or industry"
I don't know that there is a valid argument that thier society is more advanced than western society. That's not to say that our society is necessarily superior to thiers (We can argue about this all day), but more advanced, yes.
I, for one, welcome our new primitive overlords.
Nice viral ad for a new Wii bow & arrow controller.
#51: I see a lot of knee-jerk "Oh my god its anthrocentric!" reactions here, but I don't think it is justified based on what suboptimal said. I am pretty happy in my culture/life, but if there are highly advanced aliens living one dimension over, I'd surely like to find out about them, learn about their society, and have the option of adopting the parts of it I like.
No one has claimed these people are unhappy or that they should adopt western society, but I think its a basic human right to know about the world you live in, and have the option to choose how you will live. We, of course, have the option of going to live in primitive ways in the forest if we wish (more or less) but we have that option because we know about the existence of primitive-forest-living, and we have access to the information that would help us decide if it is right for us. Isolated cultures do not have the reciprocal option, and it could be argued that they should.
And since when is McDonalds and TV the sum total of industrial civilization, is that really all we have to offer anyone? You have twisted suboptimal's words, and held him/her accountable for your possibly very wrong assumptions about what he/she meant. It's a pet peeve of mine.
Zombie, not all of Western civilization is mindless crap. We have a lot of good stuff, too. Like antibiotics and eyeglasses and bicycles and yelling at strangers on the Internet.
#14 - For someone worried about "The word 'tribe' is weighted will all kinds of colonialist, western-triumphalist baggage..." I am amazed that you would take such an ethnocentric view.
I mean, of COURSE our way of life must be better right? So we must expose them to it.
No. We don't. Just leave them in peace to develop their own lives. Thinking that our way MUST be the better way is the height of..well... colonialist, western-triumphalist baggage
@62 I would argue their stance and weapons makes it clear they are electing to defend their basic human right to be left the fuck alone.
I for one am not twisting Sub's words, just throwing them right back. To make claims about "colonialist, western-triumphalist baggage" while spouting more of the same is pretty silly.
If YOU want to meet the highly advanced aliens? That's fine. It isn't up to YOU to choose for everyone.
There's an uncontacted tribe near Australia that is off-limits because they kill people who get too close to their island. Should we force contact on them too?
@Weeblewobble: LOL. too true.
For all of the comments about imperialism and the sanctity of their way of life no one seems to bring up the fact that small isolated pockets of human life are probably good for the species as a whole. If a plague came through and wiped most of us out these folks have a chance of never being touched.
"The word "primitive" means "at an early stage of development" but since their development is contemporary with own, there's no objective way to determine this. The assumption that aboriginal cultures are less developed or less advanced than our own simply because they're isolated from the so-called "developed" nations and they don't have what we call industry is incredibly ethnocentric. They also don't have toxic waste, and aren't poisoning their air and water. We do know their culture is different than ours, but whether or not ours is superior is an arbitrary value judgement with no objective measure."
Not really.
We know that, say, Germans didn't used to be able to travel 1000s of miles in a few hours, look up something someone wrote exactly as they wrote it 100 years ago, or smelt metal tools which last longer than stone tools, and can do more things.
distance, time, ability. All objective.
Now germans can do such things, and germans have built on what they learned to do themselves or copied others doing, and have done more things to shrink distance and extend time and increase abilities to accomplish tasks.
This group hasn't done the things other tribes learned to do. There may be all kinds of reasons for it, but it doesn't do any good to tell them they are as advanced when germans can clean a wound and prevent infection and perhaps they can't at all.
For God's sake, Jim, what about the Prime Directive.
God, I'm a nerd.
Also, I think this is a classic example of the "every response will be problematic" - to "leave them alone" is to arbitrarily decide to shelter these individuals from certain political and economic forces, while to "contact them" is to arbitrarily decide Western culture is right - even if you just want to give them the choice, well, you're being very Western if that is your perspective. A genuine conundrum.
Some really interesting comments in this thread, I had kind of pondered a lot of what is being said (on both sides) already, for it is an old problem. But some of the comments are really quantifying the notions for me.
I think we (as lofty civilized society) like the idea of their being 'primitive' parts of the world, untouched by progress, and that it represents something for us, romantically. Kind of sacred, like nature (ideally).
But, is our symbol of 'innocence' a reason to deny someone else the choice of a whole different world? Is letting someone know that there is a world beyond their realm, that will possibly 'corrupt' what it means to be who they are and dilute their purity-of-society, in any way different to us finding out that there is intelligent life in the universe, with powers vastly beyond our ken?
Would we not want to know that, and let be whatever changes to our understanding of ourselves occurred, however much more like the other 'higher' society we became, thus diluting our 'innocence'.
I certainly think I would, but that's possibly related to some sci-fi ideal of a populated galaxy. Maybe our projections of what kinds of society might be prevalent in a galaxy like ours, are so based on our own human perspective, that we would be horrified to find out what really goes on in the universe.
Anyway, I have no answers to propose, only more questions.
Unusual Suspect,
What part of my link to more photos did you find hard to understand?
I can't see this being staged at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasaday
FYI,
I work for the Tribe, live across the street from the Tribal cemetery, wave hello to the Tribal police and pay land lease fees (via rent) for living on Tribal land. It's just an Etruscan word for a division of people. The local tribe certainly has no problem with using it.
These natives are becoming the next consumerists. They want freedom, don't they?!
interesting that their roofs look similar in style to "civilized" folks.
They could have once been "contacted" but over several generations of no contact have lost memories of "modern" folks... s'possible.
Either way, very interesting stuff.
A number of "new" tribes have been discovered over the last decades. Anthropology certainly is full of tales of the cultural ruin that seems to follow first contact.
Werner Herzog's 10,000 years older, a documentary film about the aftermath of first contact, seems to plot out the future of so-called primitive societies: link
cheers
Hmm, the youtube link doesn't seem to have worked. Sorry about that.
Part I of the Herzog short is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80kOGZMFtQs
Kennric (#62): Thanks. I was going to write a long reply to some of the comments on my comment. However, your post is much better than what I would have written.
#for all the ones calling fake: very unlikely. Those photos were published by FUNAI the official brazilian gov body for indian policies. For #74 i recommend you googling for north sentinele people, for an example of true uncontacted tribes
#for the discussion on either they should remain uncontacted, it seems you are all romanticizing the story, not thinking about the whole facts.
This is NOT a california man movie, where those people have a choice between living an idyllic prehistoric life or applying for a job in New York. During the history of civilization growing upon the wilderness, many tribes have took the choice of going to live in civilization or to seek isolation. Those are probably the ancestors of those people chose the latter, and have been able to live their lifes that way. This is NOT like being visited by aliens species that are out of our own reach. They could reach civilization if they walked the direction the plane went for a few days, and they probably did some point in their past as a tribe.
Some tribes, like the yanomami, have been able to reach a middle term compromise, where they are able to gain access to modern medicine and electronic voting machines but kept some traditions alive. Those are the famous indians wearing boxers you can see in other articles. Others, have reach a ill fate, vanishing as a group by diseases, alcohol and assimilation. Remember how hard it was growing up and seeing all the little things you valued in your childhood (your parents, your toys, your home) being slowly taken away by maturity? Imagine this happened upon everything you ever knew? So you need an analyst to talk about when mommy took your candy?
The main point is: those indians live in complete isolation because of their own (or their ancestor's) choice. While we still have great extents of protected rain forests, they will be able to thrive, therefore protecting them is also protecting the rain forests our own world needs, and that's what funai plans to do.
They have a choice of walking down to a city in acre (a state so isolated that brazilians itself joke if it even exists) and finding about great things like TV, alcohol, cigarretes, cars and maybe - if they are walk a lot - some internet bar with a pc running windows 98.
But it's not like they could simply press a button and say: "beam me up scotty, i'm tired of this stuff. Take me to the 5th avenue apple store cause I crave this new 2nd gen iPhone.
#65 - Here here! We don't have to rescue them from themselves. If we stop overlaying our own values on their lives we'd know to just leave them the hell alone in the first place.
The way the word "advanced" is used when it is used most broadly has little to do with technology and more to do with hierarchy. The standard by which you establish that hierarchy can be based on any measurement that you like. It's a subjective concept. If that measurement is pea counting and I can count more peas than you, than I'm advanced, and you're primitive.
How fast and how far I can travel, how well I can treat a wound, how many products I can manufacture--these are all subjective criteria.
"Advanced" and "primitive" are inadequate words to measure the true value of a culture, and what that culture has to offer.
The development of German culture as described by Pduggie was mostly concurrent with and parallel to the development of European culture in general.
Once industrialized nations were established, they had--as Jared Diamond describes--the guns germs and steel that would aid them in dominating cultures that didn't have the guns, the steel, or the resistance to germs that they did. Every culture that industrialized nations have come into contact with that haven't had guns, steel, or a resistance to modern germs have been at a huge disadvantage. We're not talking benevolent aliens with gifts of wonderful technology, we're talking genocide.
All precedents would suggest that most of the cultures we have invaded were better off before we got there.
It's true that less industrialized cultures spend more of their waking hours providing for their basic needs for survival. It's true that they don't live as long, are more vulnerable to disease, and have poor orthodonture. But each culture has it's own history, language and traditions. Not all of those traditions are ideal, beneficial, or, by our culture's standards, humane, but they do uniquely belong to that culture. They are advanced in the practice of those traditions and their own world view. We are primitive in our understanding of that world view.
I don't know that we have a responsibility to preserve that culture, but the idea that they are going to benefit by our introducing them to cable TV, Mcdonalds and strip logging is ill-concieved. All precedents would tend to point elsewhere.
As far as the interests of extraterestrials or any other kind of non-human life, most of our speculations about how they might think, whether ETs or mollusks, are hopelessly anthropomorphic. It's the only way we know HOW to think. Benevolent extraterestrials with gifts of advanced technology is an idealistic fantasy and doesn't have any place in a practical discussion about anthropological issues.
@#68---Good point.
I'm reading Iain M. Bank's 'Culture' series now, and I love the fact that they are called 'uncontacted'. I'm sure Contact will think of something to deal with them.
Someone said "We do know their culture is different than ours, but whether or not ours is superior is an arbitrary value judgement with no objective measure."
I respectfully disagree. Culture, like all inventions, can be judged by how well they serve those that use them. Does their culture provide them with ideas, concepts, attitudes etc. that help them lead happy, healthy lives?
As an extreme example, is a culture that prohibits blood transfusions for sick children as good as a culture that allows it?
My question, besides where they got that hot body paint, is how many cultures have benefited from interventions by alien cultures. The answer, as far as I can see, is not very many.
Happiness is the most subjective concept of all.
And whether a culture is "good" or "bad" is as relevant as whether you think chocolate ice cream is good and vanilla is bad. If I think my culture is better than yours my opinion is as good as yours if "good" and "bad" are the criteria.
How well a culture serves a given population can't be objectively measured anymore than happiness can be, because there's no objective criteria for service. Or quality for that matter.
"interesting that their roofs look similar in style to "civilized" folks."
Rob, where do you think the "civilized" folks got their roofs from? Do you think we invented them anytime recently?
George Dvorsky at Sentient Developments did a post about this an asked some very good questions. Quoting...
"Happiness is the most subjective concept of all."
Life, death, health, and disease are not subjective concepts.
Just to give an example of failed cultural intervention that doesn't involve Geordi and the away team...
The divide between Islam and the West is probably the biggest socio-political phenomenon of our era. Since Europeans started making serious inroads into the Islamic world around the beginning of the nineteenth century, Islam has changed enormously. Women's rights have decayed. Enforced veiling was not the historical norm, but is a reaction to the perceived excesses of Western culture. Until the twentieth century, Jews were far more welcome in Muslim countries than in Christian or crypto-Christian ones.
Interpretations of Shari'a have been getting harsher for the last couple centuries with a big spike in the last couple of decades. Most of what Westerners see as fanatical about Islam is a reaction to Western cultural intervention. Yes, jihad is in the Qur'an, but it wasn't any more relevant than the Crusades until recently.
Obviously some of this is related to straight-out political intervention such as destabilizing regimes to keep the oil flowing. But a big part of it comes from our Western notion that our culture is superior and that Muslims need to be liberated from their own cultural values. It's backfired stupendously. Cultures evolve in their own way and at their own pace.
Contacting the Orange People and conferring on them benefits which they have no frame of reference to understand or contextualize is unlikely to make them happy. At best, they would become a tourist attraction.
@49:
Dinesh D'Souza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinesh_D'Souza) has argued extensively that things like colonization and slavey, while awful for the generation that was colonizaed/enslaved, yields far more good for the future, non-oppressed, generations. He is from India and uses the example of his grandfather hating the British, whereas D'Souza tended to view them as a net positive because he managed to gain education, health, etc that he would not have gotten otherwise and did not have to deal with their oppression first-hand. Even more controversially, D'Souza argued that while slavery was inhuman for the Africans who were kidnapped from Africa and their descendants who were slaves in America, their currently free descendants are doing far better in nearly every measure than Africans in Africa.
Of course, one of the reasons Africa's as screwed up as it is is because of colonization, so this whole argument is a bit questionable...
My conservative European History professor made us read him in high school as a counterpoint to living in the People's Republic of Cambridge (MA). Don't really agree with him, and he seems to use a lot of the typical conservative intellectual talking points, but the colonization stuff is interesting to consider.
@70: The Prime Directive was the first thing I thought of too!
The Emerald Forest is a useful fable
I would paint my body with stuff too if I lived in the Jungle with an unbelievable onslaught of bugs every day.
*blech*
We could send in robots, because they're culturally neutral.
A hypo-allergenic robot. Filmed for BoingBoing TV. Never mind Star Trek.
"Glass beads or gtfo!"
"culturally neutral" (thanks to previous poster on olympics)
I give you: "Roboto Kanibaru"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54VEzgkMMsQ
#14 - Actually, "tribe" is a precisely defined word among anthropological types. I'm not saying that I know what the definition is (waaaay outside my area), merely that it has one. So regardless of the imperialist overtones that we uneducated folks might attach to it, I'm willing to bet that the spokeswoman for Survival International used it correctly.
#51 - Right on. I have a friend pursuing a PhD in the area of anthropology/linguistics, who has told me all sorts of horror stories of botched contacts. The way she tells it, almost all end up destroying the original culture and introducing big social problems. Asuming that our culture is a happier or better one than theirs is supremely arrogant; the fact we have shinier toys doesn't qualify us to say that our habits and worldview are any more worthwhile than theirs. Of course that raises the debate of whether destroying another group's way of life is justified if it means their children will have access to, say, medicine. Somehow I doubt we'll manage to settle that one here.
#85 "As an extreme example, is a culture that prohibits blood transfusions for sick children as good as a culture that allows it?" - A Jehova's Witness would say: "No, better".
Antinous @86
I know it may sound pedantic, but most cultures have been 'invaded' by many others in the course of their development, whether militarily or culturally.
Most cultures have some connecting factors, and threads of shared heritage. Depending on the cultures in question, it's just a case of how far back you care to look. Even with these people, noting the similarity of their weapons and houses to previously seen items, they have known others.
If the question is how many cultures took western Europe's imperial expansion throughout the last 500 years in stride, indeed, not very many. But that wasn't about sharing culture, it was about greed and snatching territory and trophies. The values of the expanding forces were different then, ignoring tribal ownership of land at every turn. Now there are groups with the power to question neo-imperial motivations. And on a positive note, western medicine and technology have played huge parts in lots of cultures.
I suppose the validity of the concern depends on the relative strengths of the cultures involved, and how easily trampled the new culture may be. For a handful of people living in the jungle vs the world, it's probably a valid concern.
__
Regarding the comparison to aliens visiting us, I think it's a valid one. The point was made that these people won't suddenly be liviing in uptown New York enjoying the high life upon leaning of it's existance. Indeed, their likely fate is that they'll end up living on the fringes of what we would probably consider the least accesible sections of our society; townships on the edges of wilderness, with little or no prospects.
Well, similarly, if aliens came to tell us we were not alone, we wouldn't all be carted off to galactic center, to be asked our opinion on the running of the pan-galactic council. We would go from being the absolute rulers of our world to the absolute bottom of the new order of civilization we found ourselves in. We would be novel scum, with nothing to offer our new found uber cultures other than titilation.
These people, over just a couple of generations, could very well go from being utter masters of their domain, to being in the very last place, in an almost infinitely vaster capital driven world.
But, it sounds like the reason for the fly-over was to get proof of their existance to implement restrictions on the use of the land surrounding them. So there may be hope yet of some sort of positive eventual outcome.
At some point, these people are going to meet civilization, it is absolutely, unquestionably inevitable. The most we can do is ensure it goes as well as possible. There are organizations involved in the interests of keeping the land in the hands of the tribes, so with support they can probably provide the best set of circumstances this type of situation will have seen in the history of humankind (read: they aren't going to get massacred).
Hopefully it will be enough, but how do we quantify that?
David Brin treats cultural relativism in his essay 'Otherness'.
In a nutshell, let's say you have a culture that contains the value judgement that judging other cultures is a Bad Thing. An example of such a culture is the culture propounded by some posters in this thread.
When that culture encounters a culture that judges other cultures, it must inevitably judge that culture as being less Good than itself.
As usual, when we encounter a paradox, it is our reasoning or our axioms that are flawed, not the nature of logic itself.
Of course, Brin's discussion of this topic is both comprehensive and brilliant, unlike what I have managed here.
Bugs, do you think the sick child would always agree? Why/why not?
Myb thy r bttr ff thn s, t lst thy hv thngs bttr t d thn whn bt l nd Bsh. crtnly dn't lk hm, bt sm f y ctlly ct lk y'r nt pwr hngry, mny sckng fl t.
"Apparently, the tribe has never had any contact with humans outside of their own group."
Oh please, give me a break. So they independently invented weapons that look exactly like bow and arrows? I guess that's encoded in our genes, eh?
Okay, so they don't have cars, gas stoves, or internet access -- yet we're expected to believe they independently developed spray-on tanning?
I call BS.