Completely Isolated: 67 Groups

“Their lives do not include televisions, microwave ovens or cars.” No kidding. They forgot to mention iPods, iPhones, iMacs, and YouTube!

Story Highlights• More Indian groups than previously thought are surviving in Brazil
• Study: 67 Indian groups live in complete isolation
• Tribes risk extermination by encroaching loggers and miners, experts say
• Anthropologists: Most uncontacted tribes choose to remain hidden

Considering the news out of Asia of a feral and forest people, this recent story from Brasilia, Brazil, may be of interest. Here are some extracts:

Far more Indian groups than previously thought are surviving in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest isolated from the outside world but they risk extermination at the hands of encroaching loggers and miners…A study by Funai, the government’s National Indian Foundation, and seen by Reuters estimates that around 67 Indian groups live in complete isolation, up from previous estimates of around 40.

Funai reviewed old and new discoveries of footprints, abandoned huts, and other signs of human life in the thicket of the world’s largest rain forest.

“There are still vast unexplored areas and new indications of [Indian groups],” Marcelo dos Santos, head of Funai’s department of isolated Indians, told Reuters.

Brazil is likely to have the largest number of uncontacted tribes in the world, Watson said.

With a few exceptions, most of the uncontacted tribes, generally live like they would have when Portugal’s Pedro Cabral became the first European explorer to land in Brazil in 1500. Most hunt with blow guns or bows and arrows, dos Santos said.

Anthropologists say most of the uncontacted Indians are likely to know of white men or even have had accidental meetings with them but choose to remain hidden.

After a policy that sought to actively integrate Indians into Brazilian mainstream culture during the military dictatorship of 1964-85, the government adopted a policy of avoiding contact with isolated Indians unless they are in extreme danger.

Funai envoys for years tried to contact an individual in Rondonia, a state in the southwestern Amazon forest, because he is believed to be the last survivor of his tribe.

They tried to introduce him to an Indian woman to procreate. But the “Hole Indian” as he is nicknamed because he lives on branches over a hole, shot arrows at them, sending the potential bride running.

We missed this one earlier this week. Thanks to Mark A. Hall for pointing this out to us.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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