# Stone-Age tribes around the globe **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 7, 2005, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536 "2005-01-07T07:06:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Travelin\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f0a364/32.png) [@Travelin\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Travelin_Man)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/1 "2005-01-07T07:06:19Z")
I’ve been following news of the terrible tsunami disaster very closely, and it has prompted me to learn more about some remote places in the Indian Ocean that I did not know much about before. One of those places is the Andaman and Nicobar island chain, a group of tiny islands owned by India which suffered some of the worst damage from the tsunami. Apparently these islands are home to several small tribes that have continued to live the same way for thousands of years and have relatively little contact with the outside world. > [@](#): > > Most people in the Nicobars belong to one of six primitive tribes numbering about 200, some still nomadic hunter-gatherers with virtually no contact with the outside world. > > Contact was only established with some tribes in 1997. From here. (May require registration.) Fortunately, according to [another article](http://in.news.yahoo.com/041230/137/2ir3n.html) I read, most of the tribes seem to have survived the tsunami. Anyway, this made me think of a few questions: 1. Exactly how many similar tribes are still left around the globe? 2. Where are they? 3. Are there any tribes left in the world that outsiders have yet to communicate with? I was absolutely amazed to read the above quote that some of the tribes in Andaman and Nicobar were only contacted in 1997. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/2 "2005-01-07T08:07:54Z")
> [@Travelin' Man](#): > > From here. (May require registration.) [Fixed link.](http://www.smh.com.au/news/Asia-Tsunami/Andaman-and-Nicobar-islanders-lost-in-grief/2004/12/30/1104344930958.html?oneclick=true) Username: **doper** Password: **CecilAdams** ---
**Author:** ![Travelin\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f0a364/32.png) [@Travelin\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Travelin_Man)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/3 "2005-01-07T08:25:34Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > [Fixed link.](http://www.smh.com.au/news/Asia-Tsunami/Andaman-and-Nicobar-islanders-lost-in-grief/2004/12/30/1104344930958.html?oneclick=true) > Username: **doper** > Password: **CecilAdams** Thanks! Sorry about that. ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/4 "2005-01-07T10:05:06Z")
There was first contact made with a tribe in Papua New Guinea only about ten years ago. They were there happily worshipping a rock in the centre of their village until news of their discovery reached the West and the missionaries damn near fell over themselves getting to the airport. :mad: The villagers were curious about aircraft apparently. They had seen them passing over high overhead, and wondered what they were. I’ve also seen footage of Australian Aborigines in the 1950s who lived in a remote area and had not seen Westerners before. The footage of one of the earliest meetings was interesting. They were fascinated by the car headlights more than the car itself, because it was light without heat. One of the young men was shown a Playboy centrefold, and he was taken by the two dimensional nature of it - first photograph he’d seen. ---
**Author:** ![Travelin\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f0a364/32.png) [@Travelin\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Travelin_Man)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/5 "2005-01-07T23:52:04Z")
> [@TheLoadedDog](#): > > There was first contact made with a tribe in Papua New Guinea only about ten years ago. They were there happily worshipping a rock in the centre of their village until news of their discovery reached the West and the missionaries damn near fell over themselves getting to the airport. :mad: > > The villagers were curious about aircraft apparently. They had seen them passing over high overhead, and wondered what they were. > > I’ve also seen footage of Australian Aborigines in the 1950s who lived in a remote area and had not seen Westerners before. The footage of one of the earliest meetings was interesting. They were fascinated by the car headlights more than the car itself, because it was light without heat. One of the young men was shown a Playboy centrefold, and he was taken by the two dimensional nature of it - first photograph he’d seen. That’s fascinating. Do you happen to know the names of the tribes or have any links? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/6 "2005-01-08T00:11:03Z")
The [Tagaeri](http://www.ecuadorexplorer.com/html/body_rainforest_people_tagaeri.html) and Taromenane clans, a branch of the [Huaorani](http://www.ecuadorexplorer.com/html/body_rainforest_people_tagaeri.html) people of Ecuador’s Amazonian forest, still remain essentially uncontacted. They certainly know about outsiders, but remain unremittingly hostile, having speared to death trespassers on their land in 1987, 2000 and 2001. However, they are very few in number. ---
**Author:** ![vl\_mungo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@vl\_mungo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vl_mungo)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/7 "2005-01-08T02:50:32Z")
I have long heard that the Andaman islanders were quite hostile and xenophobic until very recently. No cite, but I recall reading stories of them killing and eating sailors unfortunate enough to be shipwrecked there (into the early 20th Century at least). ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/8 "2005-01-08T03:26:57Z")
An Andaman Islander, incidentally, figures prominently in one of the first Sherlock Holmes stories, _The Sign of the Four_. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/9 "2005-01-08T05:40:34Z")
[http://www.vuw.ac.nz/asianstudies/publications/working/hostile.html](http://www.vuw.ac.nz/asianstudies/publications/working/hostile.html) ---
**Author:** ![vl\_mungo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@vl\_mungo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vl_mungo)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/10 "2005-01-08T18:15:01Z")
[Looks as though the Jarwas probably got through the tsunami unscathed](http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=270013) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/11 "2005-01-08T18:41:03Z")
> [@TheLoadedDog](#): > > I’ve also seen footage of Australian Aborigines in the 1950s who lived in a remote area and had not seen Westerners before. The footage of one of the earliest meetings was interesting. They were fascinated by the car headlights more than the car itself, because it was light without heat. One of the young men was shown a Playboy centrefold, and he was taken by the two dimensional nature of it - first photograph he’d seen. Are you sure it’s Australia and not Papua New Guinea? Sounds unlikely to have happened in the former. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/12 "2005-01-08T18:42:45Z")
New Guinea has long been a haven for these types of people. The island is largely made up of valleys separated by very difficult to traverse mountain ridges, so each valley gradually developed its own tribe, with its own language (I believe New Guinea holds some sort of record for the number of native languages spoken), that had almost no contact with its neighboring tribes, let alone the outside world. ---
**Author:** ![Gymnopithys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/fbc32d/32.png) [@Gymnopithys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gymnopithys)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/13 "2005-01-08T19:42:03Z")
A few years ago I saw an excellent TV documentary about an isolated stone-age tribe in the Philippines. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/14 "2005-01-08T19:52:29Z")
> [@Gymnopithys](#): > > A few years ago I saw an excellent TV documentary about an isolated stone-age tribe in the Philippines. That would probabbly be the [Tasaday.](http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A726653) Their “stone-ageness” was pretty well debunked years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/15 "2005-01-09T02:56:00Z")
No one’s suggested _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ or Jared Diamond yet? For insight into this (especially Papua New Guinea), you should check out his books. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2005, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stone-age-tribes-around-the-globe/283536/16 "2005-01-09T07:41:13Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > (I believe New Guinea holds some sort of record for the number of native languages spoken) Indeed. Of the 6,000 or so languages spoken in the world, fully a thousand are Papuan.