This blows my mind that there are still tribes like this completely cut off from the rest of world living straight out of Apocolypto. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ction-Pictures-life-depths-Amazon-jungle.html) You can see their minds completely blown by the plane flying overhead. How would you explain the things we take for granted like electricity or automobiles to them? Focus: Which do you imagine to be more difficult: them joining the world as we know it or you having to go live in theirs? Alt-Focus How do tribes like this stay that totally isolated? As crazy as it sounds with how accessible everything is to us, I don't think they could survive in ours. Could you imagine the jump from not even having a light bulb to space travel?
As to the ALT FOCUS, I think the answer is that they keep to themselves and some of these 'lost tribes' actively try to kill anybody who comes by without so much as a handshake. Honestly I think they'd have a hard time assimilating in our society because the strength there is in a bunch of individual skills (hunting, hut-building, etc.) that you can't really use in our society (unless you buy the land first and get permits and stuff), but also in the support network that is the community. If you brought a whole community of them here, I think they'd do better than just onsie-twosies. I, however, can tell you that it would be bad to try to transplant me into their society. The first words I would learn in Ubuntuese or whatever would be something like "Are you fucking kidding me?" and then that's all I'd say all the time. "Hey, whitey, dig a hole to crap in." "Hey, whitey, eat the eyes, they're the best part." "Hey, whitey, how about we cut big holes in your earlobe so you look oh so hott." All of which would garner the same response.
Take a closer look at that picture and look at the toes on their feet. Looks like a fair bit of inbreeding in that tribe.
Sad thing is, I've read that that is how a healthy foot should look like. It's shoes that warp our feet.
I'm guessing there's a little bit of Column A and a little bit of Column B. Truthfully, I think they'd manage fine in our world. Given some of the barely literate, barely coherent, barely sentient mouthbreathers who still manage to function in our world, I'm sure a group of people running predominantly on their survival instinct could find a niche somewhere even if it's just washing dishes somewhere. But could we survive in theirs? I dunno. Excluding our military/ex-military folks here, has anyone ever had to use a weapon in self defense? Has anyone ever acquired food for survival in a manner that doesn't involve using a plastic card or banknotes with pictures of dead folks on them? Stick me in a world that doesn't have readily available access to porn and YouTube and I doubt I'd last an hour.
The kid in the middle appears to be holding a metal blade. That sort of technology looks out of place in a supposedly isolated tribe. Could be that they found it, or...you know, "found" it. But, it seems like maybe they aren't totally isolated. You could have intermittent contact with nearby villages without becoming integrated with the outside society.
I'm not so sure about that. I remember reading an article in NYT about people from North Korea sneaking across the border into South Korea and struggling to integrate into a modern society. South Korea had non-profit organizations that offered classes such as "how to use a crosswalk" for them because something like that was foreign and, for someone who had never been in a big city, probably terrifying. I think we take for granted our society and underestimate the sheer differences between a society like the one in that picture and one of ours.
If you've ever read infidel by ayaan hirsi Ali, she describes the culture shock that comes from street signs on roads and buses that run to the minute, police officers that dont ask for bribes, and a world where neither genders are circumcised. Even worse is dealing with money: if you've never handled it in your life, it's suddenly a magical thing that is to be spent as quickly as possible. 'savings' and other sensibilities were unheard of. Going the other way round, we'd be able to survive in their world by being part of a group and building up skills slowly. Getting into shape might take a few months. But he over way round? They're on their own in our world and I doubt they're literate. We would at least have a group to keep us alive if we were transplanted to theirs.
So, in addition to the modern sword or whatever there is, there's also a bowl that looks somewhat modern. Could have just been scavenged or found from people who drop junk in the jungle. But, my money is still on them being less isolated than we think. Edit: Started looking at UncontactedTribes.org, which confirms those are a machete and a metal pan.
I really don't like to talk about this, but I had a similar situation happen to me and some friends. I was headed overseas on a choir trip, when the engine stalled and we had to make a crash landing on an island in the Atlantic. Since there wasn't a cell phone tower in that part of the world yet, we were basically screwed until somebody in the Navy managed to find us. Things started out well enough. As you might expect we enacted rudimentary parliamentary procedures, and because the island was rich in fruit and leafage, nobody really went hungry. To expedite our salvation, we took to building signal fires that passing ships might notice, taking it in turn to keep the flames stoked. Eventually, to balance our diet, it was decided that we should at least attempt to hunt and eat some of the wild game on the island. It fell upon me, as chapter chorister, to organize that party. Looking back, it seems funny that my role in the chorus should have anything to do with my role as a hunter, but it was a role I relished; man wasn't built to live on fruit alone. Eventually, we got the hang of hunting, and began to do it more and more. At the same time, the chances of being "saved" grew dim; with each passing day, the likelihood that anybody would expect us to still be alive dropped precipitously. I decided to try to make the life on the island as rich and fulfilling as possible -- we created a rudimentary culture, even staging nightly recreations of our favorite Night Court episodes. We even eventually began creating spinoffs, though by the time Bernie got his own show, it was agreed that we'd taken it as far as it could go and we'd need new material. At this time, a dangerous loner and a heretofore useless fat kid with asthma were clinging to hopes of being saved. Rather than try to make the best of our situation, they continued to hang on the the delusional hopes that a small signal fire was more important than food. I tried reason, but eventually things got out of hand. They got violent. It was nobody's fault really; the birthing pangs of democracy are sharp indeed. I just wanted to let you all know that it's no joking matter, being stranded.
Actually I did this very thing back in August. I went to a small plot of wooded land about 40 acres in size with a small pond in the middle with nothing but a knife, a machete, and a few other small items in my pack (a small aluminum cooking pan, a steel drinking cup, medical kit, etc) and stayed there for two or three days with the intent of eating nothing but what I had caught. In that time I caught around 50 fish, 1 turtle, found one armadillo carapace, found fresh water clams/muscles, saw tracks for raccoons and saw ducks and geese. Guess what? It isn't hard. People are just lazy and don't care to know how to get their own food. It's reasons like that if things ever get bad I pride myself in knowing I'm going to be among the living. Here was my breakfast, lunch and dinner for those few days (the fish not the armadillo). Focus: Them joining us would be more difficult. Ignoring most of them would die to diseases, they would have a hard time adjusting to our world.
Um...No college football, no Xbox Live, no 3 dollar pitcher nights, no Her First Anal.com!!! The hell you say! I know for a fact that I could not make it in that society, I would put a machete through my brain pan asap, just to avoid the boredom. It makes me shudder to even think of the shit these people swill just to get a buzz. I will take our modern methods of distillery any day. Plus I can not imagine that society producing much in the way of female talent. So I would even be able to hump my problems away. Furthermore, primitive societies seem to have an unnatural problem with premarital sex. No thank you kind sir! This does not sound like fun at all.
Oh, but it is! Unless your referring to one of those cultures where an adolescent boy must have sex with a man of the village to become a man himself. They see sperm as some magical puberty-enhancing-gift. That shit's just weird.
How about those tribes where they train young men in the art of pleasing women from the age of 12? That doesn't sound so bad. I mean, ideally they'd train the young girls in the art of pleasing men, but you should really take your victories where you can get them.
I think that they would have a lot more of a problem integrating into our society. For us, the challenges are physical. I need food, but I don't have it. I need shelter, but I don't have it. Etc. We've been dealing with those challenges all our lives, just with much easier tools. Once you get the skills down, surviving in the jungle wouldn't be that hard. Sure, it would suck ass. But it wouldn't be that hard. After all, these guys have been doing it for the last 3000 years. And they're probably pretty good at both doing it and teaching others how to do it. For them, the challenges would be far more difficult simply because they have no way to conceive of them. Example - these guys have no idea what money is. They subsist completely off of barter. How would you explain to them that you exchange your services for something that you can then give to other people for their services? I'm not even talking about credit cards, insurance, banks, and everything else - just the concept of buying and selling. There's a tribe in the Amazon that's very similar to this one called the Pirahã. Their language is interesting in that they have no concept of numbers. Objects are singular or plural. They have no concept of counting; all they have is "one" and "many." All those concepts that we take for granted, they have no way to comprehend. These people would either end up invalids or slaves to some guy who could manipulate them. They wouldn't have a chance in our society.