http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7426794.stm

Short summary for the link-shy: Aerial pictures have been taken for the first time of a native tribe in the Brazilian rainforest that has no contact with the outside world so far.
The photos serve as proof that the tribe exists and to strengthen the demands of those who want the tribes' lands protected.

This might make an interesting precedent for a "prime directive" if such a thing should ever be made...

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[Foot mouth in put]
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

Yes, but the problem now is that they have seen the aircraft and even aimed their weapons at it!

CJSF

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Two years ago moved from my town
I was looking up past the city lights
But the city lights got in my way

See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines

-from "See The Constellation"
by They Might Be Giants

Yeah, it's not about being completely unseen it seems. More about protecting the rights of other people even before attempting to make contact.
I guess that contact will be made, eventually, by researchers, with great care not to disturb their own culture (not before we have gotten data on it, anyway... )

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[Foot mouth in put]
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

I saw some of the pictures this morning; truly amazing. I wonder what was going thru the minds of those people? If they thought the plane came from the Gods; they certainly weren't taking any chances, as those red painted guys looked ready to fight. I bet that tribe had a rather interesting meeting after the flyover. Perhaps, they decided that the plane was indeed sent from the "good" Gods and somehow incorporated the experience into their tribal belief system.

I do hope that this tribe is left alone. I watch a lot of programs on animals, and many Amazon tribes are often featured. It's a shame to see most of the tribes there, are now wearing blue jeans and t-shirts.

Just because they are completely removed from our civilization doesn't mean that they have no contact with other tribes in the surrounding area. I would think that it was highly likely that word of world outside of theirs has reached them, along with whatever exaggerated fears go along with that.

I would imagine that we're seen not so much as gods, but more as devils.

2¢

Hey hey, slow down. Take this story with a grain of salt [Most indian tribes deemed pristine have already a word for 'airplane']. It surfaces just when there is a comotion down here about indian land demarcation. They are very few, and their future as a primitive society is sealed. Ensconced in academies and urban centers anthropologists and radical ecologists fail to see the horrors of such a life and insist in brewing a public sentiment against giving them the benefits of technological civilization, and keep making up stories of indian pristine purity. I´ll tell you, there´s a whole lot of politics involved in this matter.

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i'm pretty sure they've seen airplanes flying overhead before, so seeing one up close wouldn't be as shocking as, say, looking at grainy footage shot in infrared of an alien poking it's head over a window sill is to us...

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Why is the term Krippendorf's Tribe flying though my head?

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And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Was that the Tasadays from the Phillipines?

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It´s interesting that upon the first contacts with the Txucaramae (a major primitive tribe of Amazon), people found out that their word for 'airplane' was Buru-buru, an onomatopaic word from the sound of airplanes they´d seen [and heard] before.

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

They'll be dead in a few years. Brazillian lumber companies are efficient murderers.

Could we assume that they are a very sucessful society having maintained their lifestyle for a long time. As such could we just leave them alone.

Is it essential that we bring them into our world or rescue them?

Though I'm sympathetic to the idea of providing some form of protection, I think that for better or worse, they are already in our world. If rivers get polluted, it will affect them like everybody else, and as global warming takes place, it will affect them as well.

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As above, so below

Japanese ones, I´d say.

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

Fair 'nuff. I'll take a more informed viewpoint over mine. However, is it the owners who are Japanese, or are they air dropping Ramen and sake at the work sites?

I read this sci-fi book where these people all signed up to live like it was the 1800's, and they had to raise their kids, telling them that it was the 1800's, and then this one person got sick, and the bosses wouldn't let modern medicine in, so this kid had to sneak out and get some, and... it sort of reminded me of this. People living as in the past, not knowing of a modern world beyond.

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"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

Which book is that? Your description sounds a lot like the M. Night Shyamalan movie The Village. I wonder which came first?

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" We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..." - John F. Kennedy
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i sense a twist coming on..

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

Good one. In fact, Japanese lumber companies are very active in the Amazon, and particularly good at deforestating. That´s free trade for you.

To stay on topic, I´d say the 'prime directive' is a rather selfish stand point. Conserving the 'purity' of those peoples equates to conserving their mortality rates of 150:1000, infanticide, and life expectancy of 45. Why do you think they are so few, pale face?

Sometimes the 'zoo hypothesis' is raised to explain the Fermi paradox. I´m sure we are all upset to be left at the margin of a galactic community. Why then to apply the 'prime directive' on them? why to keep them apart from a technologic civilization? Because they want so? But how can we be sure they want it? As far as I know, even these primitive tribes have some degree of technology, in the form of stone and wooden tools, and fire. Why shouldn´t them want to go further? Looking back to the journey of man on Earth, it looks like the struggle for technology is a distinctive charater of the human race.

Denying them the benefits of technology seems more like a moral stance, as if we were ashamed of our technology; as if technology was a corruptor of souls; as if it meant only cell phones and cable TV.

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

I have a different perspective on the "Prime Directive" issue, I think. It's a moot point based on false assumptions.

Stone Age tribes in the Amazon are not like aliens in another planet. The other planet is isolated from the rest of the universe. These tribes, as others have already pointed out, are not truly isolated. They may have no face to face contact with São Paulo urbanites, but they do most likely interact with other tribes who interact with other tribes who interact with other tribes... in a chain of connections that soon does lead to that São Paulo urbanite. Knowledge gets around.

Should the isolation of such tribes be p