- [Narrator] Western
civilization has had its share of anguish and calamities. There's war, disease,
overpopulation, terrorism, pineapple on pizza and people who complain about pineapple on pizza. But on the whole we think the
good stuff outweighs the bad. Everyone wants a flourishing
civilization, don't they? Well, not quite everyone. Coming up are some stories
about remote tribes that will convince you
to never fly over them. (contemplative music) - Amazing. - [Narrator] Look at this
extraordinary photograph from Reddit. According to the poster
this aircraft flew low over a section of the Amazon, and was fired upon by tribal warriors. For a long time anthropologists have known of the existence of isolated tribes living in the depths of the Amazon. Many of these people have
never had any contact with the outside world. The guys who shot these arrows clearly didn't want civilization, or at the least, felt threatened by some odd alien spacecraft
descending on them from the heavens. So if you fly over the Amazon, how likely are you to be fired at by a swarm of arrows akin
to the scene from 300? Well, I'll get back to that
photo of the plane a bit later, but for now, lets talk
about the uncontacted tribes you may come across if
you fly over the Amazon and what's happened to
people who have tried before. The first such example comes from 2008, as anthropologists swept
over the Envira region, a section of rainforest on the border between Brazil and Peru. The men who were photographed
appear to be warriors, threatening the passengers in the plane with bows and arrows. They were painted in
scarlet from head to foot. The women appear to be painted in black. Forest flights like these have observed that the tribespeople build large shelters thatched with leaves. They appear to maintain gardens and the enormous bows the men use suggest they are distinguished hunters. We don't actually know a
lot about these people. Anthropologists don't make
direct contact with them for a number of reasons. "We did the overflight
to show their houses, "to show they are there,
to show they exist," says Jose Carlos, an expert on
indigenous Brazilian tribes. He says that there are people who deny that individuals like this exist and think that photos
like these are faked. So he's conducted multiple
flights to prove their existence, despite being shot in the
shoulder on previous campaigns. Deniers include members of corporations who wish to use tribal lands
for commercial purposes and religious organizations that often want to take them away from their traditional way of life. Even some conservationists
want to remove them to preserve native plants and animals. Jose Carlos and other experts are keen to prove the existence of these people, only to ensure that no one
attempts to contact them. Besides the likelihood that their environment would be destroyed, there is the probability that diseases, to which they have no resistance
due to their isolation, would decimate them. We tend to think that every
inch on land in the planet has been explored and charted. It comes as a surprise then to learn that there are still vast spaces where civilization has not penetrated. Another tribe, the Yanomami, live on the Brazilian side
of the Venezuelan border, and images captured from
2016 show them in amazement at the overhead photographer. The photos show a typical Yanomami yano, which is a large communal
house for multiple families. Different families live in each of the square sections of a yano, where they hang hammocks, maintain fires and keep food stores. Like other tribes, they
are notoriously violent, and males often die from fighting with other neighboring
communities over local resources. There are approximately
22,000 of these tribespeople living in an area the size of Scotland, with at least three of the groups never having received
contact with outsiders. In fact, it's estimated
that there are more than 100 tribal groups across the planet that have not been directly
contacted by the outside world. That doesn't mean to say they are lost or undiscovered or completely isolated. They may know about neighboring tribes. They may know about the outside world, but chose not to have
anything to do with it. Their ancestors may even
have passed on experiences of contact with past colonizers and have moved away to
avoid their descendants. Not all of them live as if they
were still in the Stone Age. They might use metal tools and guns. They might grow western crops. These people live mostly in the dense forests of South America, though there are isolated
tribes in New Guinea, India and Africa as well. Attempts to contact these
peoples often end in tragedy. From time to time foolhardy, if sometimes well-intentioned individuals, have attempted to meet with
them for various motives, either by accident, for curiosity, greed, or the desire for fame
or to preach religion. Attempts to contact
another uncontacted tribe, the Sentinelese people
on North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal, near India, have notoriously ended in disaster. In 2006, two Indian fishermen who had been illegally fishing for crabs drifted into the shallows of the island. They ignored the warnings
of passing fishermen and were set upon by Sentinelese
warriors and axed to death. Their bodies were
strapped to bamboo stakes, facing out to sea as a warning to others. Then In November of 2018, a
young Christian missionary by the name of John Chau entered the island's waters illegally. He managed to land and
gave the natives gifts. The Sentinelese appeared bewildered, and a boy shot a metal tipped arrow into the Bible Chau was holding. On that occasion Chau fled back to sea. But when he went back
he told the fishermen who were helping him to leave without him. Later the same fishermen saw Chau's body being dragged along the beach. These stories prove that
visitors should certainly be wary when visiting indigenous people with little or no contact
with civilization, especially if they have no
knowledge of the culture. In 1956 five evangelical
Christians from the United States journeyed into the depths
of the Amazon rainforest to bring Christianity
to the Huaorani people. These tribespeople, located somewhere within the Ecuadorian
Yasunà National Park, had never been contacted before. In September 1955, the
missionaries began dropping gifts from planes for the Huaorani,
and they gave gifts back. The five men, Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, Ed McCully, Ned Saint and Roger Yourian, set up camp a few kilometers
from a Huaorani settlement. The Huaorani attacked them
and speared them all to death. A search party found the
dead bodies of the men on the banks of a river. The Huaorani are fiercely territorial and ward off anyone who
attempts to enter their lands, including other Huaorani. As with many tribes, they maintain a strong
in-group out-group distinction between relatives of the tribe and other people unrelated to them. So you should never trespass, as they've been known to kill
rubber plantation workers and explorers who come too close. But not all of the uncontacted tribes in the world are so violent. Another visitor, Benedict
Allen, an explorer, literally dropped in on
a tribe of head-hunters called the Yaifo. He was air-dropped into
the Central Highlands of Papua New Guinea in 2017. He met them for the first time 30 years before when he was 26, whilst taking on a daring
independent journey. At that time he was the first
person from the outside world to ever make contact with the Yaifo. They accepted him after putting him through a pretty brutal initiation. Allen says it involved
being beaten, force-fed, thrashed with bamboo leaves
and losing two pints of blood. Upon trying to revisit them
in 2017, Allen went missing, which wasn't helped by the fact that he went without
a cell phone or a GPS. But luckily he was found five days after being reported missing, appearing by a remote airstrip
in central Papua New Guinea after contracting
malaria and dengue fever, and being blocked on his route back by tribal infighting between rival groups. It just goes to show that even
though the tribes themselves are dangerous, nature
is just as treacherous. And though it may seem
like indigenous tribes always attack intruders, often
it's the other way around. In 2017, miners prospecting for gold in the Amazon rainforest in
Brazil came upon a tribe. According to federal
prosecutors in Brazil, 10 members of the tribe were
massacred by the prospectors as they were gathering eggs on the river. After the alleged killings
the men relaxed in a bar, where they boasted about the crime, brandishing a paddle carved by the tribe. Prosecutors said it was not
the first such allegation. It is estimated that 50 Amazon
tribespeople were killed in 2017 and 60 the year before. However, investigations are difficult, given the geography of
alleged crime sites, the dangers in contacting tribal witnesses and the power of commercial interests. The miners said they committed the murders as they were fearful they'd be killed by the tribesmen if they didn't. And it's not difficult to understand why the tribespeople don't like miners, since they bring diseases like malaria and pollute the tribes' food
and water sources with mercury, which they use to refine their gold, leading to serious health issues. It seems to support the idea that threats to endangered
indigenous groups are on the rise in the country. Sadly, because of the small sizes of these uncontacted tribes, this latest incident may have wiped out a significant percentage
of a remote ethnic group. All things considered, it isn't hard to understand the reluctance
of the Sentinelese, Huaoroni and other tribespeople to
welcome the outside world, especially when we consider the experience of native peoples in the past. When the British colonized Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries, thousands of the indigenous
aboriginals were killed. Hundreds of thousands
more were dispossessed and forced to live on reserves while hundreds of thousands
more died of European diseases. The indigenous peoples of
the Americas and Africa suffered a similar fate when
their lands were invaded by the so-called civilized races. On September 13, 2007, the
United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous People in response to continuing violence against the indigenous
people around the world. Nevertheless indigenous peoples
still encounter political and commercial opposition to their right of self-determination. Hopefully we can all respect their rights and leave them alone. Now back to the image of
the plane at the beginning. Did the aircraft really get
shot at by one of these tribes? Let's look at it carefully. Could arrows really pierce the underside of a plane like this? They are quite long, and experts say some Amazonian
tribes do use longbows with arrows about six feet long. These arrows certainly do look as if they could be six feet long. Steel-tipped arrows did pierce metal armor in medieval battles. Now most planes are made of aluminum, and aluminum is softer than steel, and some tribes use steel-tipped arrows. So an arrow shot by a tribal warrior could theoretically pierce a plane. But could such an arrow
reach a flying aircraft? Light aircraft generally
fly no lower than 152 meters or 500 feet above the
ground for safety reasons, especially when there
are tall trees about, as in the Amazon. That's just under the
maximum height of an arrow fired by longbows like the
ones used by these tribes. So, while they could just
about reach the plane, they likely wouldn't have enough power to penetrate the aircraft. Then again, the plane may
have been flying lower than it's safe to fly, to
get as detailed a picture of the tribespeople as possible, so maybe an arrow could penetrate
the plane on a lucky day. Even so, I guess you might want to ask how the plane is peppered
with so many arrows. It would mean that roughly
200 or more warriors, going by the number of arrows, just happened to fire at the exact time in the split second the
plane flew over them, and most of them hit their mark. That's some pretty good shooting. Also, there are no shattered arrow shafts. You'd expect a few to at
least to break on impact. Still others would surely have snapped off when the aircraft landed on the runway. On the whole, the
scenario doesn't look good as far as authenticity is concerned. As it happens, this
plane, a Piper Comanche, is part of an art
exhibition in Buenos Aires. The piece was made by an artist collective called Los Carpinteros
and is called Aviao. According to the artists it
is a symbol of modernization. It certainly got a lot of people talking about indigenous issues, and
that's got to be a good thing. International organizations like Survival, a volunteer advocacy group
based in the United Kingdom, would hope that images like this would encourage more discussion about the rights of tribal peoples. Survival works to prevent violence to them and to respect their rights to determine their own destinies. Still, the image has been doing the rounds with misleading information, claiming to be a real artifact after an attack from one of these tribes. The best thing you can do if you see the image online somewhere with misleading
information is to point out that it is in fact just a piece of art, and isn't the aftermath
of an actual attack. If more people get the impression that all tribes are incredibly violent, then they may end up
committing terrible crimes similar to the miners if
they even stumble upon one, and the cycle of violence
will needlessly continue. Some people ask Survival shouldn't we be civilizing these people so they can share in the benefits civilization has to offer? Well, first of all, not everyone thinks some of the products of
civilization are too great, like smog, traffic jam and noise, even if you can tolerate
pineapple on pizza. But Survival would answer the question by saying they can have civilization if that's what they want. But it's up to them to decide, not others. The take-home message
from all this seems to be if you want adventure don't
be bothering these people. There are many other more respectful and less dangerous ways to
explore our wonderful world. It belongs to all of us and
we should all have the right to live the way we want. These tribes want to be left alone to live as they want, and that's cool. Another message might be don't be shooting at low-flying planes with bows and arrows to
see if you can hit it. The Aviation Authority tends to frown upon that sort of thing. So, do you agree that we
should leave them alone? Or are you convinced
it would be beneficial for us to introduce
them to modern society? Let me know in the comments
section down below. And also, if you enjoyed this video, you'll like the one I made
about another uncontacted tribe, the North Sentinelese. To watch that video, click
on it, on screen now. And thanks for watching.
