A previously unknown indigenous group living in isolation has been found deep in Peru's Amazon jungle, a team of ecologists has said. The ecologists spotted the 21 Indians near the Brazilian border as they flew overhead looking for illegal loggers. Contact with outsiders can be fatal for isolated tribes people who have no immunity to many diseases. Some groups have fled deep into the jungle to avoid contact with loggers and oil and gas prospectors. Nomadic group: The group was photographed and filmed from the air on the banks of the Las Piedras River in Peru's south-eastern Amazon region. A government official who was on the flight said there were three palm huts on the river bank. "We've found five other sites with this kind of shelter along the same river," Ricardo Hon told Associated Press news agency. "This group is nomadic." He said the government had no plans to try to find the tribe again. The steady advance of logging has forced the isolated groups, among them the Mashco-Piro and Yora tribes, deeper into Peru's jungle frontier with Brazil and Bolivia.

Indigenous leaders say tribes have suffered many deaths from diseases contracted from outsiders. A pan-American human rights group criticised Peru's government this year for doing little to protect the groups from illegal loggers who are chopping down the mahogany-rich forests in which they live.

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Shows that we don't know it all yet! I hope they are just left alone to do their own thing. An interesting read all the same

Oooh ooooh ooooh!! I simultaneously want to learn everything there is to know about them and also leave them the hell alone and in isolation. It sucks that modern civilization always seems to totally devastate most of these kinds of tribes.

i've said this repearedly. that's what kills me about space exploration. we know soo little about what & who is right here on our own planet, but we spend billions of $$$ exploring outer space.

I feel the same.... I'm an incredibly curious person, but I feel much more strongly that putting people like this under a microscope will do much more harm than good... I say acknowledge their existence by stopping all the logging, and leave it at that. Let them keep living in peace.