Cutting In

As humanity's destruction of the rainforest proceeds, contact is being made with tribes that have lived for millennia isolated from the outside world. For the second time recently, aerial photos have been taken of a new "first-contact" tribe, this one in Brazil. It is estimated that there are about 100 uncontacted tribes left, mostly deep in the world's rainforests.

 

One interesting side note: despite the fact that these people have never had contact with mainstream civilization, they are aware of us, and they have traded with tribes who have traded with the outside. That's how they got the machete and the metal pot, two items that are beyond their technology.

 

It's sad to see this. More and more of the natural world goes away every day. Not to sound too much like WWF, I find it distressing that hundreds of acres of rainforest are destroyed every minute, around the clock.