Amazonian Tribe
posted by yturks
People who participate in the live chat room during the show know that earlier this week, when the photos of the previously unknown Amazonian tribe were released, I immediately speculated that it was BS. We're not there yet, but at the end of this very short New York Times article, one anthropologist is cited for his doubts that this was a tribe that truly had no previous contact with any other people.
...the reports described the people as members of one of South America's few remaining indigenous tribes that had not had contact with the outside world.
But Robert L. Carneiro, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History who has made a career of studying indigenous people of the Amazon, questioned that claim after examining the photographs on Friday.
He noted that the men wore bamboo headpieces that looked like crowns, with strips of thinly cut bamboo around their waists.
He said that attire reminded him of the Amahuaca people he lived with and studied in the 1960s. Most of them live along the Amazon's headwaters, in Peru, not far from Acre, Dr. Carneiro said. "I'm not saying these people in the pictures are Amahuaca, but they could be," he said. "Or they are a closely related group."
You can quote Carneiro, or quote Dave Koller, producer of The Young Turks: "It's bullshit."
David
