Uncontacted Tribes Die Instantly After We Meet Them

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

LOL...Grammy the dognapper! You're right though - MEDDLERS. I've always wondered why people are all up in each other's business when it really doesn't affect them. I don't like how you dress, your car is cheap, your children don't like sports. All reasons to get bent out of shape and try to change what's not broken or your business...

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Western culture has permeated the globe, you are correct.

However, if anything, Western culture in the past 50 years or so has steadily more and more tended towards preserving cultural identities of all kinds and massive conservation efforts of all kinds.

It is also up to the Brazilian government to protect the rights and land of the rainforests and its native peoples. Responsibility and blame needs to be lain where it should be, and "European colonization" is an attempt to deflect that.

Human beings of all races, creeds, and colors are perfectly capable of taking responsibility for themselves and their actions. Blaming European colonization or Western culture takes away the agency of those people and simultaneously demonizes anybody of European descent or Western cultural heritage.

It just seems it's all too easy to lay the blame at one culture (European) when the results of similar contacts in places like Brazil, Africa, and the Middle East have been exactly the same with completely different faces involved. Disease is initially a much larger factor as persons have said than pure 'Western Culture', disease is also inevitability.

Any culture melding with another will face serious issues. If Harold the office worker had to join a Brazilian tribe, his life expectancy would drop considerably. Vice versa, the work opportunities for tribal peoples in a modern society aren't exactly great. There is some underlying racism that when a tribal person starts wearing clothes and gets a job as a dock worker, they're suddenly no longer tribal. They are now 'extinct'.

Can you imagine one day, you buy a new computer and you are no longer Scottish or American? Scottish people are extinct. You're not a real Scottish person, you use a computer and have stopped wearing tracksuits, the native dress of your people.

Yes, corporations and people take advantage, there are all kinds of horrible things about people that contribute to uncontacted tribes struggling after day 1, but there is a lot of wearing of rose tinted glasses whilst thinking these lost peoples must have some magical edge on being civilized.

To put it in perspective the anthropology community have covered up mass bow and arrow killing sprees, down played courtship rituals that involve misogynistic violence, and have a vested academic and commercial interest in these tribes staying lost. They're not lab rats, and when they pull on a t-shirt and rent an apartment they still have a cultural identity.

I just don't think studies like these should be used to whip western civilization or pretend that Avatar was a documentary.

originally posted by: Deny Arrogance
Am I supposed to feel guilty just because I am from European descent?

Natural selection is not always pretty but let's just blame all people of European descent alive today as if they consciously had intent to wipe out indigenous people through pathogens nobody knew about at the time.

It sucks that so many died but 99.9% percent of all species that ever lived have gone extinct and we all are going to die in one way or another.

We shouldn't be judged for what our ancestors did, but when those injustices continue to today we can try to rectify the situation.

a reply to: Arktos1

I wonder how our own immune systems would hold up to the distant past or future, or even other life in the cosmos. What do you think? If we visited, or were visited by others, would this study be relevant to our world population?

As humans, our frontline epigenetic responses help us adapt to new exposures and environmental changes - but sometimes, those responses overwhelm our systems. ....Makes sense to minimize changes and exposures, so our bodies have time to adapt.

Excellent post. Excellent questions. Thank you.

S&

a reply to: JiggyPotamus

...tribes living deep within the jungles and whatnot, while they may have been impacted by deforestation or something like that, which is still doubtful, are not being killed off in the same way. We aren't going in and slaughtering them or anything.

At least not in modern times. ....

fyi - Global corporations are the single largest employer of mercenaries on our planet - and they're after rainforest resources (mining, agricultural land, etc.). But disease is the killer addressed in this study - the point made is that previously isolated tribespeople drop like flies on exposure to new diseases.

....Anthropologists ensure that their vaccinations are up to date and they are not sick before contact - corporate mercs, geologists, etc. do not take the same care.

originally posted by: chiefsmom
Goddess forbid there may be people living happily and healthy without "civilized" societies help. Let's go "help" them.

We should be ashamed, very ashamed.

And stay the HELL away from them!!!!!!

Nobody is going there to "help" them - they are there to take resources and rape the land.

What was the cause of death?

a reply to: Kromlech

It's in the OP.

Corporations and governments move into these tribes area despite knowing the likelihood of harm to the tribe but will evict a rancher to protect some turtles who are not really at risk (ala Bundy Ranch).

a reply to: soficrow

An isolated population only has immunities to what it has been exposed to. At contact, we introduce them to new germs, bacteria and viruses that they have no chance of overcoming.

The Yanomami is a good example. Within weeks of an Anthropologist coming in, majority of the tribe were wiped out.

a reply to: MonkeyFishFrog

Yes. As outlined in the OP. It is a major issue. At the same time, and in the spirit of the ATS commitment to evaluating conspiracy angles, global corporations likely make no effort to protect indigenous peoples' health and minimize exposures in their efforts to raze and "develop" virgin land.

a reply to: soficrow

I believe this is a bit misleading as individuals are not dying as in buried dead but instead choosing modern lifestyles and leaving the isolation of the tribal life.

Sure, people don’t go in and kill entire tribes directly, they offer indigenous people the chance to assimilate into modern culture. But, as Hamilton notes, the trappings of modern society—access to better healthcare, technology, and education—haven’t improved tribes' overall outcomes.

Not that modern life is all that and I am sure there are introductions of disease the people have not encountered before in their culture but from your article as is the above quote. And I understand the spirit of your thread, just perhaps the article is misleading to begin with but it does sorta make a correction about halfway through, It is a problem but our own quest for survival will lead to the extinction of isolated tribes but not always through death and destruction but assimilation.

“after the initial “crash”, indigenous populations are often able to recover, and some of the communities have some of the highest growth rates in the world. I’m not calling Hamilton out here—if that’s what the data shows, it’s what it shows. And it’s better that the population “rebounds” rather than dies out completely.

So it would seem that the isolated tribes are not dieing instantly but encountering a slow down in the culture when many decide to find civilization, but said tribes go forward and even thrive.

And "Uncontacted" is even a bit misleading...

Most have had a little, at least indirectly. "There's always some contact with other isolated tribes, which have contact with other indigenous people, which in turn have contact with the outside world," says Spooner.

www.newscientist.com...

And it seems those who choose modern society and survive the initial bouts with modern disease are indeed happier.

Often, there is a lot of disease because the tribespeople are exposed to novel pathogens. It is not uncommon for half the population to die of respiratory illness – unless outsiders bring sustained medical care, says Hill. Also, the newly integrated tribespeople frequently end up on the lowest rung of the society they join. Still, he says, when he interviews such people years later, "I don't find anyone, pretty much, who would want to go back to the old situation."

Now I am not an advocate for destruction of said indigenous tribes but misleading is misleading.

edit on 5/2/2014 by DJMSN because: Addition

originally posted by: DJMSN
a reply to: soficrow

I believe this is a bit misleading as individuals are not dying as in buried dead but instead choosing modern lifestyles and leaving the isolation of the tribal life.

This study found that 75% of tribes contacted went extinct, with survivors showing catastrophic population declines, the vast majority with mortality rates over 80%. Not misleading, just grim.

Uncontacted Tribes Die Instantly After We Meet Them

...Of those contacted, three quarters went extinct. Those that survived saw mortality rates up over 80 percent. This is grim stuff.

“Our analysis dramatically quantifies the devastating effects of European colonization on indigenous Amazonians. Not only did ~75 percent of indigenous societies in the Brazilian Amazon become extinct, but of the survivors, all show evidence of catastrophic population declines, the vast majority with mortality rates over 80 percent,” writes Marcus Hamilton of the University of New Mexico in a paper published in Scientific Reports.

a reply to: soficrow

I understand the spirit of your thread and not really contradicting you but the story is contradicting itself

that “despite the catastrophic mortality of indigenous Amazonians over the 500+ year contact period, the surviving populations are remarkably resilient and remain demographically viable.”

On one hand the study say extinction but goes to point out "the good news" which is that most tribes move ahead much better off than before. It is tragic that anyone dies because of our contact which is not always from usurper moving in on their lands but from misguided and well meaning missionaries or scientist that do not bring the medical expertise needed to battle some very simple problems these people face from first contact.

That does not excuse the people moving in to take what is not theirs and that are harming people or the land...just the article is a bit misleading when you read it. The definition of extinct is used loosely as in the article is counting the tribal peoples as extinct if they leave the tribal life and move to modern society...not extinct as in dead. I am aware that some of the tribal populations are dying from first contact but not to extinction.

a reply to: soficrow


Sad really. War of the worlds thing going on there.

a reply to: soficrow

Someone may have answered, but why? Are we talking introduced illness or what?

originally posted by: DJMSN
a reply to: soficrow

the story is contradicting itself

.... "the good news" which is that most tribes move ahead much better off than before. I

I think you're misreading - most tribes go extinct - the few that survive are "remarkably resilient" biologically.

...“despite the catastrophic mortality of indigenous Amazonians over the 500+ year contact period, the surviving populations are remarkably resilient and remain demographically viable.”

originally posted by: GogoVicMorrow
a reply to: soficrow

Someone may have answered, but why? Are we talking introduced illness or what?

The OP source article is about accidentally introduced illness, not the genocides that have occurred or purposeful disease introduction. Some posters have suggested purposeful infection. Others point out that anthropologists are more careful about the potential for accidental infection than corporate-paid staffers. With respect to the possibility of purposeful disease introduction, the idea is that global corporations are motivated to remove barriers to development.

Whether accidental or purposeful, the situation is grim.