Stuff You Should Know - Are there undiscovered people?

Episode Date: January 28, 2010

In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss whether there are any truly "undiscovered" groups of people left on the planet, the definition of undiscovered -- and why groups might want to avoid modern civilization. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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actual interest charges on your account. Estimates are based on your posted account balance at the time of the estimate and do not include pending transactions or any other purchases you make before the end of the billing period. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark. With me is always is Charles W. Bryant. I'm always there for you Josh. As always, I'm contractually obligated to do so. So Chuck, you doing alright?

Yeah dude, how are you? I'm doing pretty good. It's Thursday, it's not Friday, but it's a little gray out for my taste. Yeah. It's sprinkling by the way. I thought it was like pouring rain, is it sprinkling? It's sprinkling. Yeah, it's good.

So Chuck, do you remember, can we go back a year or so, May 2008? How many years after Ghostbusters? Let's see, hold on, was it 84 or 86? 84 and yes, we do know that there is a... It's 24 years. A sequel coming by the way. Yes, Ghostbusters 3. That's going to be awesome.

It should be. The entire original cast. I believe so. Except for Sigourney Weaver, which that's okay. Yeah, Ghostbusters 3 coming out. Right. So where are we? So we're 24 years after Ghostbusters, May 2008.

And the news cycle had this kind of strange occurrence where a bunch of undiscovered human beings were splashed across the front pages of newspapers everywhere. Yeah. Sort of. Yeah. So there's this photo. There's several photos of these people living in primitive huts, actually primitive longhouses is what it looks like.

And it's an aerial photo taken from a low-flying helicopter and they are pissed. They're aiming their bows and arrows at the camera. Did you see the picture? It's pretty cool. Yeah. It's awesome. Get out of here. Right.

So yeah, this whole thing made the news cycle. And Chuck, I imagine I take from what you said before we started recording that you have a tad bit of disdain for the journalism that was applied to this. Yeah. First of all, should we go ahead and refute it? Why not? Because they were not, in fact, undiscovered people. No.

And there's actually a huge, huge distinction between undiscovered people and uncontacted or isolated people, right? Right. But you would not know that by reading The Independent from London. Which I'm disappointed because I like that paper. No, I'm sorry. I could care less about the independence of the Guardian, I like it. Yeah, you like the Guardian.

Yeah. Not the Daily Mail, the Independent. Right. So here's how the article opens up, beneath the picture of the, you know, clearly savage woman. Long claws and everything. With the arrow pointing at the helicopter. Right.

Three near-naked figures are visible in the forest clearing. Two of them are men. Their bodies dabbed with a red dye, and they are aiming their bows at the sky. A third figure appears to be a woman. Her body blackened, and only her pale hands and face betraying her natural color. This remarkable photograph is the first proof of existence of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes. Yeah.

So they do say uncontacted. That's good. But not everybody did though. Sure. It's a little overblown. That was a fine, dramatic reading there, Chuck. I think the funniest thing that would have happened is if he would have shot that arrow, and it would have somehow disrupted the propeller of the helicopter, and it would have landed

safely on the beach for them to be eaten. Yeah. That would have been a nice ending. There are tons of rumors of cannibalism about undiscovered people, right? In this specific case, there is a guy named Carlos Dos Reis Moreles. My Spanish is a little rusty, but I think that's about right. Not bad. And he is an Indian expert.

I just made air quotes, and these photos were taken in Brazil, right? This guy led the search for this tribe, and I guess he kind of watched with horror, hopefully, as they were described as undiscovered, and no one had ever found them before. He came out and was like, wait, wait, no, I've been following these people for the last 20 years. Right. So they're not undiscovered. See, I thought that was part of the ploy for him.

Was he taken aback by that, you think? I thought maybe that's how he got the funding to get the research team by saying they were undiscovered. It could go either way. We'll find out. Well, let's talk about it. Is it even possible to be undiscovered? Well, that's what this podcast is about, buddy, and you know what, it's kind of impossible

these days. Yeah. We have things like GPS. We have things like heat sensors that can be attached to airplanes, which, you know, body heat sensors. There is almost complete and total encroachment and harnessment of any square parcel of land on the planet, most everywhere, most. But that doesn't mean that there aren't people who live outside, I guess, the French who

live primitively and remain in a, I guess, primitive state. These are the uncontacted people. Yeah. Isolation, basically. First they call them undiscovered, then they say uncontacted, and then they finally settle on isolated, which means more than anything is they don't want any part of us. Yeah. That we don't want a part of them, because we're always interested.

We are. And usually with murderous results, right? Yeah. Yeah. These people have learned the hard way. And some of these uncontacted tribes also, we should say, don't even, we have no idea what they call themselves. Right.

So there's a group actually called Survival International, and they are dedicated to preserving indigenous ways of lives. Yeah. For these tribes. They're uncontacted tribes who've rejected modernization, right? Indeed. Because that's the thing you think about it when it's undiscovered or they're uncontacted. You kind of point it out.

We just tend to think like, oh, well, they don't know about civilization. Right. Or these poor fools, they don't know about television or Grand Theft Auto VI. Right. And they would clearly be better off if we gave them TV or made them Christians or did whatever, you know, made them slaves. Yeah. Which we have a fine, fine tradition of doing.

And in this, who's this kid who wrote this? Patrick Keiger? Yeah. Never heard of him. I hadn't either, but he's pretty good. Yeah. He does say that it goes back to Columbus. It goes well back for that.

Sure. The Portuguese in particular loved to enslave Africans. Yeah. And actually, African tribes used to enslave one another. They had a completely different method and system of slavery. Slaves were treated much better among African tribes, especially West African tribes, to where they would eat at the same table as the people that own them. And of course, the Romans used slaves.

Yeah. The Jews spent a good portion of their history as slaves to the Egyptians. Sure. So, I mean, whenever we come upon new people or subjugate them, we have a history of enslaving them. They would conquer, like Chris Columbus met the very friendly Arawak people. And instead of saying, well, we can learn from them, he thought they would make really good servants.

Right. Look how hard-working they are. Yeah. And they don't even speak English. So, who cares? Right. Exactly. Well, they were also looked upon as savages or less than human, which definitely aided

the subjugation of their, I don't know, blood. Right. Do you know why? Why? Because back before everything was discovered and there was still a lot of undiscovered land and they were making maps. The map makers would often chart these undiscovered lands as being filled with, you know, mutant human beings and scary beasts for some reason.

Right. Like, here there'd be monsters because we haven't gotten around to mapping this area yet. So, just assume that there's some sort of water serpent that's going to eat your boat. Yeah. I guess, I don't know why they tended to strike fear into people and to explorers instead of saying there might be very friendly people. Maybe caution.

Fear of the unknown. You think so? Sure. In these days, virtually every corner of the earth has been explored except for obviously parts of Antarctica and Amapa, which I'd never heard of. Oh, where is it? In Brazil. And they said that 70% of this territory in northern Brazil is still unexplored forest.

Right. So, it's possible there are undiscovered people out there. Maybe. Right. If there are undiscovered people out there, they are in big trouble because if the uncontacted or isolated people are any indication in their plight, then, yeah, any undiscovered people are really kind of screwed. Yeah.

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scale, no long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code STUFF. You know, we talked about Chris Columbus and subjugating people. And actually, Columbus is quite the little genocidal maniac. He was. We covered that in one of the other podcasts, too. We did.

We did. Because not only did he enslave them, he killed them, had them killed, like entire groups of people are assumed to have been wiped out by European colonization. And not just through brute force, but this type of genocide, and especially if you look at a genocide by its definition, that it's the systematic wiping out of a group, like a people or a population, then it still continues today, as recently as the 80s, the 90s in Brazil. Are you talking about the microbes or are you talking about outright violence?

Violence, specifically against the akunzu. Yes, Josh, the akunzu who seemed like a friendly tribe that grew corn and hunted in remote Brazil for thousands of years until they were discovered, and it was discovered that their land could be used for a soy cultivation in cattle. Right. And logging, actually, right? So the companies put in logging roads into this virgin territory where the akunzu lived, and they actually came upon them.

And it's part of Brazil's constitution that the moment you meet an uncontacted tribesperson or an undiscovered person, all work stops. So what the logging companies and the soybean farming concerns and the cattle ranchers did was hire assassins, like death squads, when they did meet the akunzu, and sent them in and actually massacred them with guns. These people used bows and arrows, and these guys came in with machine guns and killed all but seven of the entire tribe. Yes, and sadly they fled, and just last year a newspaper reported that there were only

five living akunzu in the world. And that was 1990. That wasn't 1492 or 300 AD. Very shameful. Yes. But they are not, Josh, the most isolated tribe according to Survival International, are they? Right, no.

That would be the Sentinelese. Had you ever heard of these guys? No, I hadn't, and I saw that video you sent me. There's a clip on YouTube. It's pretty cool. Did you just search the Sentinelese and that's what came up? There was a couple of clips. I think Nat Geo went down there and they did the same thing.

They came out of the jungle onto the beach, and what it looked like in the video or their interpretation was they were making friendly gestures. I did see another one where they had the bow and arrow out, and I was laughing when I was watching it earlier. Part of me expected Hippie Robb to come out as their leader. Yes, he's like the god. He's like Brando and Apocalypse Now. Exactly.

The Sentinelese, Josh, where they are believed to be descended from the very first humans in Africa. Technically, we all are, but these people are directly descended from the first group that migrated out about 60,000 years ago, right? They live on the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. Did you notice how clear that water was and how white those beaches were? I wouldn't leave either, dude. It was gorgeous.

It needs TV and Xbox when you've got that. These people will come out of the jungle if you throw coconuts into the water at the beach. That's what they were doing, right? Oh, was it? Yeah. This group of people were sitting there throwing coconuts into the water, and the Sentinelese came out and were like, thanks for the coconuts.

Well, they probably thought it's raining coconuts from the giant monster. But they are actually not primitive Stone Age folks from what they say. Survival International says they actually do make tools and weapons from recovered metal from shipwrecks. Right. Pretty cool. They are actually not threatened. They're very isolated and relatively uncontacted, but they're not threatened.

They live on an island that no one really has any interest in, right? Yeah, exactly. As we saw with the Akunzu, though, if there is money to be made off the indigenous land, you're in trouble. Soy, oil, cattle. Survival International actually named all of those oil, farming, cattle, and logging as the dominant threat to uncontacted tribes. So sad.

There's supposedly an estimated 100 uncontacted tribes in the world. Yeah, I was kind of surprised. That's a lot. And it's sad that these people are around for 60,000 years doing their thing, doing their thing, long before us, and we just come in and say, hey, this would make a great soy farm, so I'm going to massacre you. Yeah. They heard about the bailout, and they're like, we're staying here, not for us.

So there's five regions that are under the greatest threat right now, and they're in Brazil, Paraguay, and Peru. And actually, there's tons of evidence. There's groups dedicated like Survival International and other NGOs, and then there's actually government ministries set up in Brazil, and in Peru, and I think Paraguay, that are in charge of keeping track of these uncontacted tribes, which is really difficult to do. And a lot of times, these uncontacted tribes are slivers, offshoots, of other tribes that have had their land disturbed by logging or mining or oil companies.

They would join up with another tribe. No, they'd just take off into the forest. Oh, and start a new tribe. No one would know how many there were, that kind of thing. But yeah, they would be living primitively, but they're getting pushed further and further out or being massacred, or they're coming into contact with disease, right? Yeah, that's what I was talking about with the microbes. Violence is obviously a big threat, but they say that a bigger threat are these people,

these tribes that lack immunities to these awful diseases that 20th century man has. Right. That's what I'm talking about with the 20th century man, excuse me. Sure. It's the future, remember? I'm living in the past. Yeah. There's actually that favorite book of mine, 1491, a Charles C. Mann.

It talks about how there's an estimated 100 million people living in the Americas in 1491. And then I think 90% were wiped out by smallpox. Thank you. Like within a few decades. And Josh, it didn't just happen way back then. No. In the 80s, some Christian missionaries made contact with the Zoe tribe in Brazil and in pretty short form, 45 members of that tribe died from the flu, malaria, and respiratory

diseases. Yeah. Just like that. And more recently in 1996, half of the Maruna Hua tribe, I think in Brazil, they were contacted by illegal loggers and half of the tribe was wiped out from respiratory illnesses, I think. Awful. So it's not like to bring up one of our favorite movies again. It's not like bringing orange soda to the Waponi Woo.

Joe versus the volcano. Oh yeah. It's not like that in real life. I thought you were talking about the gods must be crazy. No, another good one though. But it's not like the Joe versus the volcano. It's not all happy, go lucky. They usually make contact with them.

And even in the case of the Christian missionaries, they were trying to do good, I guess, and ended up killing a lot of them and the Brazilian government stepped in and actually kicked them out the religious group and said, now you got to get out of here. Yeah. And apparently, even when the thing is, when contact is made as safely as possible and there's a medical contingency plan in place, it's expected that a lot of the tribespeople will die. But if they're made through illegal loggers or a Christian missionary group that doesn't

know what they're doing, then yeah, a lot of people die, if not the entire group. Right. That tribe did recover though. We should know. Yeah. Which is good news. Get out of here, Christian missionaries, so we can live peacefully and healthfully. Stock up on everything you need to conquer cold and flu season at your local Jewel Oscoe.

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Just go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code STUFF. So Chuck, is it good to even contact these people? Well, it can be good and bad because obviously if you make contact and you know a little bit about their way of life, you can protect them. But it's also like this newspaper article. It also opens them up to being invaded or watched or in this case, what was the tourism trip?

Tell them about that. It's awful. Savage tourism? Yeah. It was responsible for leading the expedition that produced those photographs that made the paper in 2008 was apparently approached by travel agents who wanted him to set up a savage tourism trip. It's awful.

Which can't you just see a bunch of like fat white Germans and Americans like, oh, I want to touch you. Right. Now your whole tribe's wiped out. And now let's get back on the cruise ship and look at the ice sculpture. Like I said, Brazil mentions uncontacted and undiscovered people in its constitution in large part because of that 70% of unexplored forests in just that one territory. They have a real, you don't have that in America.

Like we don't have to worry about how to treat undiscovered tribes. We figured out how to treat the ones we're familiar with badly enough. Right, so Brazil apparently recognizes that like, hey, this is your land, right, and you legally own it. Yeah. If you're an uncontacted or isolated tribe, nobody can touch it, but then has a really terrible history of following through on stopping people from going in and logging in oil. Peru's history is even worse.

They have some uncontacted tribes and threaten uncontacted tribes. And Peru's president is like, I'm not even sure they exist. And by the way, the French oil company that's working in this area where they supposedly exist, I've now just decreed that their work is a national necessity. So when you're an uncontacted tribe and you're butting heads with an oil company, you're going to lose. Yeah, I would say so. But I will say, Paraguay, hats off to Paraguay because they actually, the environmental,

nice Chuck just took his hat off too, the environmental ministry revoked the license of a ranching concern that was just decimating. And I don't mean in the literal like removing 10% term, I mean like decimating all you Latin speakers out there, the land that technically belongs to the indigenous uncontacted tribes there. So they booted them out or they just took away their permits? They took away their permits, which is pretty much tantamount to booting them out. Awesome.

Yeah. I'm just sad that when such a modernist point of view to see these undiscovered or uncontacted peoples and think that they're savages and that their way of life is savage and primitive, it's just, they were here first. Well, I mean, we were here, we were all here first. We were all here at the same time, but it's just a complete lack of recognition of other people's choices. Yeah, and a respect for other cultures and ways of life and because again, I didn't fly

around here. There's no Grand Theft Auto in the jungle. No, there's not. No. There's no auto. If you want to learn more about people, undiscovered or otherwise, you should try typing in people in the Andy Surge Bar at HowStuffWorks.com. It brings up a hidden sub channel.

Really? Yes. And I guess since I said hidden sub channel, that means it's time for what, Chuck, listener mail? Yes, Josh, it is. I want to send a thank you to Dan of the pottery, Dan. Danmade. Danmade.

He has a little Etsy website, danmade.etsy.com and he makes pottery and he sent us some really awesome coffee mugs. Yes, Danmade. Very cool mugs. And actually that's my work mug now, that's what it is. I noticed. Cool detail. You got an octopus on yours.

With a pipe. Oh, did I have a pipe? Smoking a pipe. I can't tell what mine is. It's some little dude, but it's just got cool details. It's got swirls in the bottom and little indentions. And only some parts of it are glazed and others raw and it's really, Danmade knows what he's doing.

So thanks, Dan. And you know what? You wanted to bring up people who had been sending us little gifts and it's just really nice to come into work and have someone, you know, what was her name that sent us the Twinkie, the homemade Twinkie the Kid shirts? I don't remember her name. Oh. It's like Kaya or something like that.

Kaya, I believe. Okay. She should write in because I told her that I would mention her little website too. Okay, yeah. We got Twinkie the Kid T-shirts because remember, we talked about how badly we wanted some. So with that, listen to me, all right, I'm going to call this organ donation details from someone who knows. Hi, Josh and Chuckers and Jerry.

I'm an anesthesiologist who specializes in organ transplantation, specifically livers and kidneys. In fact, we performed a liver transplant just last night and I'm home resting after what was always an exhausting procedure. He thought we might want a few more details about organ donation. So he says this, they do not get to meet the donor and the recipient until after a period of time, usually a year and only after both agree to meet. But we also had people that wrote in and said they met like weeks later.

Huh. So it might vary by hospital or state. Yeah, I'm not sure. Or maybe there's just an agreement you go into. But he says they can trade letters and get very basic, uh, unidentifiable information about each other, but it all gets censored by the organ procurement organization. This is because if this recipient does not live or the organ fails, the recipient or donor won't blame the donor or in their families.

Also if the organ works, they don't want the parties involved feeling unduly indebted to the donor. After all, it's supposed to be a free gift with no strings attached after they have both had time to adjust to their new lives and agreed and prepared to meet. They can meet. That being said, people can still find each other if they are looking and turn to the same websites specifically designed to link donor to recipient, although it is strongly discouraged.

So maybe that was the deal. They did it. Sure. So, uh, somebody came up with a website to make money off of people who want to meet the people who donated a kidney to them. What a great world we live in. Uh, I thought your listeners would want to know this and I hope it encourages would be donors that they don't have to meet the recipient if they think it would be too difficult

to regards. Todd. Thanks, Todd. The anesthesiologist. Yeah. And didn't he say that it's, uh, like you, you die very easily if you're over anesthetized during a liver? Yeah.

He has a PS here. If you want to know why an anesthesiologist would need to specialize in liver transplantation, ask yourself if you would like to wake up during a procedure where patients don't tolerate anesthetics very well and if you would like your new liver to have something to cleanse. Yeah. That's what he says. Very mysterious. Todd.

Yeah. I just asked myself that and I have no answer. I don't either. So if you bring people to the brink of death and you want to tell us about it or if you make money off of, uh, genuine human kindness, we want to hear your ploy. Sure. You can put it in an email and send it to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

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I could see beyond the black hills and the way they called for exploration. I could feel the air, the way it paints against skin and fills hungry lungs. I could hear the way the water ran for miles and the way the bison grazed. The way our boots meet the earth as we step past expected. I could imagine my time in South Dakota and I wish to go back because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.