"Lost" Amazon Tribe Not So Lost After All ...

Alex

Remember the "lost" Amazon tribe that got everyone excited? Well, it turns out that the existence of this "undiscovered tribe" had been known for nearly a century, and that the mission to photograph them from the air was poltically motivated:

Survival International, the organisation that released the pictures along with Funai, conceded yesterday that Funai had known about this nomadic tribe for around two decades. It defended the disturbance of the tribe saying that, since the images had been released, it had forced neighbouring Peru to re-examine its logging policy in the border area where the tribe lives, as a result of the international media attention. Activist and former Funai president Sydney Possuelo agreed that – amid threats to their environment and doubt over the existence of such tribes – it was necessary to publish them.

But the revelation that the existence of the tribe was already established will provoke awkward questions over why a decision was made to try to photograph them – a form of contact in itself – in order to make a political point.

Link - Thanks geekazoid and Moshe!


Comments (11)

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I know, it's anal, but I just wanted to point out that 20 years is not nearly a century... But stuff like that can really blow things out of proportion.
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I'm brazillian and the journals here noticed that there are many other tribes with no contact. There have been many disputes over land by tribes and farmers. So there are many political reasons to get media attention by this way... anyway I don't think they worth any kind of contact like the photographs.
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So Survival International has known about these people for a long time and has made themselves god/protector over them. Interesting.

How many people who are all gung ho about keeping this tribe in isolation would want the same for us if we were visited by extra-terrestrials who possessed advanced technology and were willing to share it with us?
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I'm actually currently writing a book on the primitive and pervasive nature of pentatonic scales. They are truly mysterious.

This, however, is a better example of neural programming. While it is interesting that everybody got the third note "correct", it's because of sensation triggers in the visual field. The ratio of the dance steps are proportional to one another. Thus, the expectation at even a subconcious level, is to follow the same musical distance, which we call an interval. In this case, it is a called a "major second", or "whole step" (think skipped notes on a piano).

The other parts of mimicry, such as when the crowd gets the high and low notes merely by his movements, are directly related to the fact that they hear him singing these pitches earlier in the piece. In music, subtle neural programming goes on during repetition of simple material and listening to melody. The brain has this amazing ability to construct and compare, analyze and order. That's what's so cool about music. It's like fun exercise for your brain. NEAT!!!
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theturbolemming,
It is still really in its infantile state so far, and I'm a pretty busy guy. But I'm plotting and documenting, researching and picking up pieces here and there. I visit here often. I'll be pitching my book at neatorama anyway, so who knows?
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