June 1
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - An Indian tribe that has had very limited contact with the outside world has been located in a remote Amazon region.

The Metyktire tribe, with about 87 members, was found last week in an area that is difficult to reach because of thick jungle and a lack of nearby rivers some 1,200 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro.

The tribe is a subgroup of the Kayapo tribe, and lives on its 12.1 million-acre Menkregnoti Indian reservation.

The Kayapo had no significant contact with the Metyktire until two tribe members inexplicably appeared at a Kayapo village last week.

Uncontacted tribes are usually discovered when loggers and ranchers encroach on their territories.

The tribe speaks an archaic version of the Kayapo language and goes naked. Like many less-assimilated members of the Kayapo, the men wear sheaths and several have plates in their lower lips, he said. The women shave the tops of their heads.

The Kayapo believe it is was formed by a group of families who fled deeper into the forest when the pioneering Indian defender Orlando Villas Boas appeared in the area in the 1950s.

A Kayapo Indian and Funai representative in the region met with the newly found group in Kremoro village and banned all but a medical team from entering or leaving, fearing the tribe could be more vulnerable to diseases than the Kayapo.

A campaigner with the indigenous rights group Survival International, estimates there are more than 100 uncontacted tribes across the world.

About 700,000 Indians live in Brazil, mostly in the Amazon region. Some 400,000 live on reservations where they try to maintain their traditional culture, language and lifestyle.

go

Lucky them. They don't have to deal with all the pressures and pains of living with technology.

Yeah, but they can die from an infection when they scratch their finger; they can't contact anyone far away if they're alone and hurt.
Technology isn't all bad.

--Jaylemurph

No.. but they know the medicinal herbs and roots and such that will disinfect the cut, and anything else they could need.

You sure? You sure they'd work?

--Jaylemurph

Yes. They know thier environment. And also, unless it is a foreign bacterium, then most likely the person is already immune to the disease. Humans are remarkably tough. We don't always need soo much technology.

I think it's amazing that this is still possible.

Many modern drugs are synthesized from such plants. My grandmother was a herbalist and my grandfather a Mete'u (witch doctor) and I don't take any modern drugs. The simpler and more natural your lifestyle the heathier you are. It is only this "fast food" and "prepared food" generation that is sickly.


Lapiche

And the more drugs we take the more immune our system becomes to them.

Humans have been living of the land including using plants and herbs as medicine as long as we have been on earth. of course they work.