I can’t refute it either but it does ping my bullshit meter. First the leader seems way to scared. He’s armed, with a bigger group and he has no reason to think the whites are armed. When shown the matches the leader seems to already know how to hold them. And finally the strongest evidence, imo, is the mirror. An adult has never seen a reflection before? Like in the river? Surely natives could understand a reflective surface without being terrified by it. At least I doubt they would look behind it. They’re humans not kittens.
Agree. Reflections would be very common in jungle life. People need water to survive and without plumbing they would definately have holding areas and containers for water. Bowls, basins, shallow wells, etc. Being a predominately outdoors tribe with a bright sky behind them they probably see their reflection every day.
And why were they being skitish and jumpy of sounds emanating from the jungle? They were on their own turf, not in Times Square.
It’s not necessarily the reflection that’s spooked him, as the thing that’s reflecting. If the only substance you’ve ever known to cast a reflection is a pool of water, a hard, flat object that you can hold in your hand and see a perfect reflection in from any angle is going to be incredibly weird.
Anyway, the video certainly had me fooled. Very well acted.
THAT is why I remain skeptical of videos of amazing things which seem just a little too good to be true.
They usually turn out to be fakes after all, and then I don’t have to hide out for a while because I was gullible enough to believe with no real proof.
If it DOES turn out to be true, I’ve never been as embarrassed by a surplus of skepticism, and am also in the position to be pleasantly surprised that something so amazing is actually real, rather than saddened and pissed that somebody took advantage of technology and people’s good will to create a believable fraud.
Ok, so the video is fake. I’m not exactly surprised as I’ve known of these kinds of frauds. I’ve seen a “first contact” video where underneath a grass skirt you can see the waistband of a set of Joe Boxer underwear. I was simply commenting on the video at face value.
In that context, sure, the leader of the tribe is armed and in a bigger group, but maybe he’s seen his fellows drop dead after white men had leveled their “thunder sticks”. Maybe he’s heard that white men are strangely powerful and dangerous. He has no reason to think they aren’t dangerous.
Also, when he seems to know how to hold the matches, maybe there was a jump in editing.
And the mirror. Of course, he’s seen his reflection in a pond. He’s never seen it in a portable, handheld device, in perfect clarity. Big difference. And why wouldn’t he look behind it? It’s magic, after all.
Their dress didn’t strike me as questionable. I’m no anthropologist, but we’ve all seen images of amazing and complex native dress. Their dress didn’t seem unreasonable to me.
And as for white men bombing the locals with super-SARS, what else is new?
But I’ll point out that I’m in no way arguing that this video is legit. I’m only arguing hypotheticals. With the link provided it seems this video is, in fact, a fake and I tip my hat to you skeptics who were correct. Bummer. I thought it was pretty cool.
just a comment about the videos:
the link in post #5 is MUCH better than the link in the OP’s first post.
(they are both cut from the same 1970’s TV show, but the first one has silly music in the background–the link in post 5 has the real voices of the tribesmen (plus a TV narrator’s voiceover).
(and the link in post 5 provides additional links the 5 other episodes of the TV show.
Fascinating stuff.
I suspected so, too. But the yahoo link takes you to 5 other episodes of the 1976 TV documentary, and gives more context.
The OP’s thread title makes it seem like the primitive men meet modern man totally unexpectedly. But that’s not the case…it turns out that the tribesmen have heard many stories about white men, and their magic powers. In fact, the tribe is suffering from disease, and is crossing the river to actively seek to meet these mythical men, because they have heard of their powerful medicine. By the 5th episode of the show, the tribe is happily swallowing pills for malaria, which was the whole reason for the anthropologist’s trek to meet them.
It links to an article in French that I can’t read (part of it is translated but not the part with the date), but according to Google’s humorously rough translation it looks like it’s saying it was recorded in 1993.
In any case, “fake” is a strong word because it doesn’t seem to be saying that it was staged, just that it was not their first contact with white men. But they are acknowledged as being an extremely isolated tribe, so it still would have been a rare event.
Sooo what’s the consensus? Real or fake? Slightly staged maybe? I loved this video and shared it all over the place before I saw that there were big questions about the authenticity. I’d really like to know the truth.
But so what. I mean, so what if you do get sucked in. This is the exact kind of thing that it is ok to be gullible about. When you live the life of a skeptic, it can be exhausting (though very rewarding). Sometimes, you can let your guard down, because it is about something that, if it turns out to not be true, no harm no foul. If it turns out it is true, it’s awesome.
Of course, a true skeptic always keeps it in the back of his mind that any random internet video is always suspect. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy them at ‘face value’ when there is nothing really at stake. In other words, lighten up and go for the ride sometimes.
The thing is, if this was just some movie it wouldn’t really be that emotionally stirring. I literally had tears running down my cheeks at one point watching this video. I’m not really a softie either.
I guess more than anything I just feel like an idiot for reacting so strongly in the first place. Nobody likes to be tricked.