Tribes who don’t know the Rest of the World Exists

Imagine our ancestors living in contact with nature and surviving weather catastrophes without the help of technology or solid houses.

Imagine back in the days, thousands of years ago, when people would live off what they could find in the nearest forest, river or seaside. All those movies we have watched showing how life used to be when civilization was not yet developed, don’t only portray a lifestyle that was followed by humans in the past, but they actually show how some tribal groups still live nowadays.

No electricity, running water, or Internet… and even more strange, no idea that the rest of the world exists.

On this planet there are, indeed, few ethnic groups who have only recently found out that they are not the only human beings on the Earth!

How did they manage no to have any kind of contact with the rest of the world until only the past few decades? How is it possible that they never left their villages to go discover new territories? How did they manage to keep their cultural habits, and ethnic identity hidden and preserved until now?

The Sentinelese

The Sentinelese tribe is positioned in North Sentinel Island in India, and it is called this way – after Sentinel Island – because no one really knows how these people actually call themselves. All the information about this tribal group is very limited, as they do not have any kind of direct contact with the rest of the world. Indeed, every time a helicopter would try to land on Sentinel Island, the Sentinelese would start shooting arrows at it. According to Marco Polo’s writings, this tribe is “a most violent and cruel generation who seem to eat everybody they catch.” As a result, no one as ever approached them, and so they lived – and still do – completely isolated from civilization; they know it exists, but they just simply don’t want to be part of it.

The Korowai

The Korowai tribe lives in Papua, Indonesia. The first time they found out about the existence of rest of the world was in 1970 when a group of archaeologists bumped into the tribe during one of their missions. However, even thou the Korowai know about the existence of other humans, they prefer to live in peace and not disturbing the other ‘ethnic groups’, in return for not being disturbed. Besides, the Korowai believe that the world would be destroyed if they changed their customs.

The Old Believers

The Old Believers is a group of people who lives in the most isolated region of Siberia. They belong to a Russian religious sect called ‘The Old Believers’, which in the 17^th century split from the main Russian church to create a better religious community – as they believed that the church was highly corrupted and useless. Since then, this ethnic group has lived isolated from any form of civilization, practicing religious rites everyday for centuries. They still don’t have any kind of contact with other human beings, a part from members of their own ‘tribe’ and they live off natural edible things. They don’t have access to electricity, hot water and more importantly, heating system, since they live in north Siberia, where it’s not exactly warm…

The Mashco-Piro

It was only recently that the Mashco-Piro tribe started to appear along a river in Peru. Even if they have been living in the jungle for centuries, they only decided to approach civilization in the past few years. It is still not clear why they suddenly decided to show the world they existed, but until now they have only appeared for few minutes along the banks of a river, and then vanished again in the deep green of the forest. The Peruvian government has establish a law that forbids any kind of contact with the tribe, so that they are not forced to approach civilization, but when and if they feel like doing so, they can be the ones to make the first move.