Incredible pictures of one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes firing bows and arrows
By MICHAEL HANLON
Last updated at 4:43 PM on 30th May 2008
Skin painted bright red, heads partially shaved, arrows drawn back
in the longbows and aimed square at the aircraft buzzing overhead. The
gesture is unmistakable: Stay Away.
Behind the two men stands
another figure, possibly a woman, her stance also seemingly defiant.
Her skin painted dark, nearly black.
The apparent aggression
shown by these people is quite understandable. For they are members of
one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes, who live in the Envira region
in the thick rainforest along the Brazilian-Peruvian frontier.
Thought
never to have had any contact with the outside world, everything about
these people is, and hopefully will remain, a mystery.
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Painted: In a thick rainforest along the
Brazilian-Peruvian border, these tribespeople are thought never to have
had any contact with the outside world
Their extraordinary body
paint, precisely what they eat (the anthropologists saw evidence of
gardens from the air), how they construct their tent-like camp, their
language, how their society operates - the life of these Amerindians
remains a mystery.
'We did the overflight to show their houses,
to show they are there, to show they exist,' said Brazilian uncontacted
tribes expert José Carlos dos Reis Meirelles Junior. 'This is very
important because there are some who doubt their existence.'
Meirelles,
who despite once being shot in the shoulder by an arrow fired by
another tribe campaigns to protect these peoples, believes this group's
numbers are increasing, and pointed out how strong and healthy the
people seemed.
But other uncontacted groups in the region,
whose homes have been photographed from the air, are in severe danger
from illegal logging in Peru and populations are being decimated.
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Mystery: The tribespeople are likely to think the plane that took this photograph is a spirit or large bird
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