Here’s a look at tribes largely isolated from the outside world
They say ‘It’s a small world’. But in reality, it is a vast expanse of dense nature and terrain that houses fundamentally different species and cultures. Hence, it comes as no surprise that there are more than 100 remote tribes in the world who have barely ever been contacted by us. These tribes inhabit some of the most isolated parts of the world where the modern man has not yet been able to reach. And hence, we haven’t colonized them yet. It is a shame that despite many government initiatives, there are people who try and contact these tribes out of sheer curiosity or personal gain.
Regardless, here are some tribes who, though remote, have seldom been contacted by humans like you and me:
The Sentinelese
The Sentinelese are the last survivors of a 60,000-year-old tribe whose members are direct descendants of Africa’s first humans. They live on North Sentinel Island in the vast Bengal Bay, where they have always lived. The tribe’s last significant encounter occurred in the late 1800s. A British Royal Navy explorer abducted members, exposed them to strange sexual experiments, and introduced diseases that wiped out the tribe’s population.
Nothing is known about them, and interaction with the tribe, which is still ferociously hostile to outsiders, is prohibited.
Toromona
An indigenous Bolivian tribe, the Toromana lives in inhabitable parts of the Madidi National Park. This tribe has never been approached by non-natives. During the Spanish colonization of the Amazon, Spaniards struggled hard to settle in the area. Here their key objective was to locate Paititi, a rumoured hiding place of the Incas’ greatest riches that the Incas kept hidden from the Spaniards. There are historical accounts that show the Incas used ceremonial rituals to seal tunnels. Father Miguel Cavello Balboa wrote about a gold settlement, Paititi, which he identified as a place guarded by warrior women; he also listed the Toromona tribe, noting that it killed without mercy.
Lars Hafskjold, a Norwegian biologist, spent years searching for the Toromona and is believed to have eventually discovered it, before mysteriously disappearing in the Madidi.
Kawahiva
The Kawahiva, earlier known as the Rio Pardo Indians, are an uncontacted indigenous group of people who live near Colniza, Mato Grosso, near the Rio Pardo in the north of the state. They are always on the move and rarely ever interact with strangers. As a result, they are often identified from the physical signs they left behind, such as bows, baskets, hammocks, and shared dwellings.
The Kawahiva has been known since 1999, although it is likely that the group dates back to the 1700s. Deforestation, illegal mining, and efforts to kill or enslave them have all posed a danger to their life. The Brazilian government opened an investigation into the possibility of genocide in 2005, even though no one was convicted.
Awá
The Awá are Brazilian tribal people who live in the Amazonian rain forest. There are approximately 350 participants, with 100 of them having no outside touch. Because of disputes with logging interests in their territories, they are considered critically endangered.
Guajá is a Tupi–Guarani language that they use. Originally based in villages, they moved to a nomadic lifestyle around 1800 to avoid European incursions. They were increasingly attacked by settlers in the area during the 19th century, who cleared much of the trees from their territory.
Mashco-Piro
The Mashco-Piro or Mascho Piro are also called the Cujareo people or Nomole. They are a nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe who live in the Amazon rainforest’s isolated regions. They reside in Peru’s Madre de Dios Area, in Man National Park. In the past, they deliberately denied making contact with non-native cultures.
The Mashco-Piro tribe was massacred by Carlos Fitzcarrald’s private army in the upper Man River district in 1894 and the refugees took refuge in the wooded areas.
The Mashco-Piro tribe’s sightings rose in the twenty-first century. The increased sightings of the Mashco-Piro tribe may be attributed to illicit mining in the region and low-flying aircraft involved with oil and gas production. This information was discovered by anthropologist Glenn Shepard, who had an encounter with the tribe in 1999.
Bayaka
The Bayaka are also known as the ‘Aka’. The Aka, who live by the spirit of the jungle, the ‘Jengi,’ have a vast knowledge of herbal medicine but speak their language and have their hunting customs. They are one of a host of tribes that make up a population of half a million in this isolated part of the Central African Republic.
Mbuti pygmies of eastern Congo just speak the languages of the tribes with whom they are allied. But the Aka speak their language as well as the languages of the roughly 15 Bantu peoples.
The Ayoreo
Ayoreo people have long lived in the untouched wilderness of the Paraguayan Chaco region. They are now seeing the world’s highest rate of deforestation. Since the first Mennonite farmers founded colonies there in the 1940s and 1950s. Many Ayoreo-n have been contacted, but some remain isolated.
Their hiding spots, on the other hand, are shrinking and dwindling as global ranching corporations purchase their land and clear the forest to create vast cattle pastures.
With an unconfirmed number of undiscovered and uncontacted tribes around the world, there are hundreds that have been discovered in Brazil and Peru. Some of these tribes have been contacted, while others have been discovered from an aerial view that oversaw makeshifts homes and boats.
