"Lost tribe" found in Amazon forest on border of Peru and Brazil

Web Log - June, 2008

"Lost tribe" found in Amazon forest on border of Peru and Brazil

Aerial photos show them aiming bows and arrows at small plane taking the photos.

Lost Brazilian tribe preparing for battle with small airplane photographing them (Source: CNN)

A Brazilian government agency has released photographs of a "lost tribe," an indigenous tribe thought to have had no contact with the outside world.

The group releasing the photos advocates for the rights of "uncontacted people" to remain uncontacted. They released the photos in order to protect the people from intrusion.

"These pictures are further evidence that uncontacted tribes really do exist," said the group's director. "The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct."

Why were the tribe members preparing for war against the airplane?

Lost tribes have generational timelines, just like everyone else. They have crisis wars, just like everyone else.

Maybe one day, centuries ago, a few people from this tribe went off and built a camp in another valley, essentially creating a second tribe. Maybe both tribes grew larger and larger, they had to compete for resources, they had a genocidal crisis war, and one exterminated the other. That's what happened in South Africa, for example.

So what generational era is this lost tribe in? Recovery era? Awakening era? Unraveling era? Are they in the middle of a crisis war? Did they just finish such a war in the last few years?

Why are there so few people in the pictures? Are they the only survivors of a recent genocidal war with the tribe from the next valley? And by the way, where did they learn about bows and arrows?

In trying to guess where they might be on the generational timeline, it's not hard to imagine a scenario that might work in any generational era. For example, maybe their wives heard the plane flying around, and demanded that the men go out and defend their families.

My guess, based on the sparseness of the population and their readiness for warfare, is that they're the survivors of a crisis war in the last ten years, and that it substantially reduced their population.

Do we intrude on them? Why not? Why shouldn't we intrude? Since they have bows and arrows, they obviously have wars and war wounds, as well as various illnesses, and don't we as human beings have a moral obligation to them to provide them with modern medicine?

And hunting for food must be awfully dangerous, with the snakes, spiders and stuff in the Amazon rain forest. If we provided them with a McDonald's, then they could just eat there rather than having to risk their lives to feed their families.