SYSK Selects: Are there undiscovered people?

In this classic episode, Josh and Chuck discuss whether there are any truly "undiscovered" groups of people left on the planet, the definition of undiscovered -- and why groups might want to avoid modern civilization.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Stuff you Should Know, Nation, Stuff you Should Know,
Army and even casual listeners. Welcome to this week's Saturday
Stuff you Should Know Select episode. This one's from January
two thousand and ten. Are There Undiscovered People? And this
was a great one. Um. I just remember thinking at
the time, Wow, is it possible that there could be

(00:24):
people out there in the world that we don't know
about in this day and age, even in two thousand ten,
not even two thousand eighteen. So it was pretty interesting.
And it's sort of an older one at this point. Uh,
And it's just a super interesting one. Learn all about
everything we know about whether or not there could be
undiscovered people in the world. So enjoy. Are There Undiscovered People?

(00:46):
Right now? Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. Bryant.

(01:09):
I'm always there for you, Josh, as always, I'm contractually
obligated to do. I know, I know, I know. So Chuck,
you doing are yeah, dude, how are you doing? Pretty good?
It's Thursday, it's not Friday, but it's a little gray
out for my taste. Yeah, it's sprinkling, by the way,
I thought it was like pouring rain. Is it sprinkling.

(01:30):
It's sprinkling. That's good. So, um, chuck, do you remember
can we go back a year or so, A two, eight?
How many years after Ghostbusters? Let's see Holen four? And yes,
we do know that there is a twenty four years
sequel coming by the way, Yes, Ghostbusters three. That's gonna

(01:51):
be awesome. Should be the entire original cast, believe except
for Sigourney Weaver, which that's okay. Um, yeah, ghost by
coming out right? So where are we? So we're we're
twenty four years after Ghostbusters two? And um, the news
cycle had this kind of strange occurrence where a bunch

(02:14):
of undiscovered human beings were splashed across the front pages
of newspapers everywhere. Yeah, sort of. Yeah, so there's this photo.
There are several photos of these people living in um
primitive huts actually primitive longhouses is what it looks like. Uh.
And they are the it's an aerial photo taken from

(02:35):
a low flying helicopter, and they are piste. They have
their like aiming their bows and arrows at the at
the camera. Like see the picture is pretty cool. Yeah,
like get out of here. Um and uh so yeah,
like this this whole thing made the made the news
cycle and Chuck, I imagine I take from what you
said before we started recording that you have a tad

(02:56):
bit of disdain for the let's see journalism that was
implied to this. Yeah, well, first of all, should we
go ahead and refute it? Why not? Because they were not,
in fact under undiscovered people. No, and there's actually a huge,
huge distinction between undiscovered people and uncontacted or isolated people,

(03:16):
right right, But you would not know that by reading
The Independent from London, which I'm disappointed because I like
that paper. No, I'm sorry, I could care less about
the Independence, the Guardian. Yeah, you like the Guardian, not
the Daily manil the Independent. Uh. Here's here's how the
article opens up. Beneath the picture of the you know,
clearly savage and everything, with the arrow pointing at the helicopter,

(03:40):
three near naked figures are visible in the forest clearing.
Two of them are in their bodies daubed with a
red dye, and they are aiming their bows at the sky.
A third figure appears to be a woman, her body
black end and only her pale hands and face, betraying
her natural color. This remarkable photograph is the first proof
of existing of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes.

(04:03):
So they do say uncontacted. That's good, but not everybody
did though, sure it's a little overblown. That was a
fine dramatic reading their chuck. I think the funniest thing
that would have happened is if he would have shot
that arrow and it would have somehow disrupted the propeller
of the helicopter and it would have you know, landed
safely on the beach for them to be eaten. That
would have been a nice ending. There are tons of

(04:25):
rumors of cannibalism about undiscovered people, right um. In this
specific case, there was a guy named Carlos dos race Moreles.
My Spanish is a little rusty, but I think that's
about right. Um. And uh he is an Indian expert.
I just made air quotes and these photos were taken
in Brazil, right um. This guy lad the search for

(04:49):
this tribe, right and um as the as I guess
he kind of watched with horror, hopefully as they were
described as undiscovered and knowing it or found them before
He's he came out and was like, wait, wait, now
I've been following these people for the last twenty years,
so they're not undiscovered. See I thought he that was
part of the ploy for him. That was he taken

(05:11):
aback by that, you think, I thought, maybe that's how
we got the funding to get the research team, by
saying that either way we'll find out. Well, let's talk
about it. Is it even possible to be undiscovered? Well,
that's what this podcast is about, buddy. And you know what,
it's kind of impossible these days. Yeah. We have things
like GPS, we have things like heat sensors that can

(05:32):
be attached to airplanes which you know, body heat sensors.
Um there is almost complete and total encroachment and harnessment
of any square parcel of land on the planet. Yeah,
most everywhere, most, But that doesn't mean that there aren't
people who are who live outside I guess the French,

(05:54):
who live primitively and remain in a I guess primitive state.
These are the uncontacted people. Yeah, isolation that basically they
first they called them undiscovered, then they say uncontacted, and
then they finally settle on isolated, which means more than anything,
is they don't want any part of us. Yeah, and
that we don't want a part of them because we're

(06:14):
always interested, we are, and usually with um murderous results. Right. Yeah,
these people have learned the hard way. Um. And some
of these uncontacted tribes also, we should say, I don't
even we have no idea what they call themselves. Right,
So there's this, there's a group actually called Survival International,
and they are dedicated to preserving indigenous ways of lives

(06:39):
these tribes, for these for uncontacted tribes who have rejected modernization.
Right indeed, because that's the thing you think about it
when it's undiscovered or they're uncontacted. You you kind of
pointed out, we just tend to think like, oh, they
don't know about civilization or you know, these poor fools
they don't know about you know, television or running with

(07:01):
theft auto six. And it would clearly be better off
if we gave them TV or made them Christians or
or did whatever you know, made them slaves, Yeah, which
we have a fine, fine tradition of doing. And um
in this Uh, who's this kid who wrote this? Patrick Kaiger? Yeah,
never heard of him. I hadn't either, but he's pretty good. Yeah,

(07:21):
he does say that it goes back to Columbus, it
goes well back before that. Um. The Portuguese in particular
love to enslave Africans, and actually African tribes used to
enslave one another. They had a completely different method in
system of slavery. Uh. Slaves were treated much better among

(07:42):
African tribes, especially West African tribes um so where they
would eat at the same table as the people that
own them. And of course the Romans used slaves. The
jew spent a good portion of their history as slaves
to the Egyptians. So I mean whenever we come upon
new people or subjugate them, we we have a history

(08:02):
of enslaving them. Like yeah, we tend to conquer. Like
Chris Columbus met the very friendly Arowack people and instead
of saying, well we can learn from them, he thought
they would make really good servants rights, how hard working
they are and they don't even speak English, so who cares? Right? Exactly? Well,
they were also looked upon as savages are less than human,
which definitely aided the subjugation of their their I don't know, blood, right,

(08:27):
do you know why? Why? Because back before everything was
discovered and there was still a lot of undiscovered land
and they were making maps. The map makers would often
chart these undiscovered lands as being filled with you know,
mutant human beings and scary beasts for some reason, like
here there be monsters because we haven't gotten around the
mapping this area yet. Just assume that there's some sort

(08:49):
of water serpent that's going to eat your boat. Yeah,
I guess I don't know why they tended to strike
fear into people and two explorers instead of saying there
might be very friendly people, maybe caution fear of the
unknown things. So but Josh, these days, virtually every corner
of the Earth has been explored, except for obviously parts
of Antarctica. And a map which I had never heard of,

(09:13):
where's in Brazil? And they said that this territory in
northern Brazil is still unexplored forest. Right, so it's possible
there are undiscovered people out there. Maybe, right, If there
are undiscovered people out there, they are in big trouble
because if the uncontacted or isolated people are any indication
in their plight, um, then yeah, any undiscovered people are

(09:37):
really kind of screwed. Um. You know, we talked about

(10:11):
Chris Columbus and subjugating people. And actually, uh, Columbus is
quite the little genocidal maniac he was. We covered that
in one of the other podcasts we did. We did
um because not only did he enslave them, he killed them,
had them killed like the entire groups of people are
assumed to have been wiped out by European colonization, and
not just through brute force, but this, uh, this type

(10:35):
of genocide, and especially if you look at a genocide
as the the by its definition that it's the systematic
wiping out of a group, right, like a people or
a population, then it's still continues today as recently as
the uh the eighties, the nineties in Brazil. Are you
talking about the microbes or are you talking about outright

(10:57):
violence violence specifically against the kun Zoo, Yes, Josh, the
akun Zoo, who seemed like a friendly tribe that grew
corn and hunted and remote Brazil for thousands of years
until they were discovered and it was discovered that their
land could be used for soy cultivation and cattle, right
so uh and logging actually right, so the companies put

(11:21):
in logging roads and into these this virgin territory where
the kun Zoo lived and they actually came upon them.
And it's part of Brazil's constitution that, um, the moment
you meet an uncontacted tribes person or an undiscovered person,
all work stops. So with the logging companies and the

(11:42):
soybean farming concerns and the cattle ranchers did was higher
assassins like death squads when they did meet the accun
suit uh and sent them in and actually massacred them
with guns. These people used bows and arrows, and these
guys came in with machine guns and killed all but

(12:03):
seven of the entire tribe. Yeah, then they fled, sadly
they fled and and to just last year a newspaper
reported that there were only five living a koon zoo
in the world and that was that wasn't you know,
very shameful. Yeah, but they're not, Josh, the most isolated

(12:24):
tribe according to Survival International, aren't they know? That would
be the Sentinelies. Have you ever heard of these guys? Now?
I hadn't, and I saw that video you sent me.
There's a clip on you tube. Yeah, I think what
did you just search the Centinnalise and came up there
was a couple of eclips. I think nat g I
went down there and they did the same thing. They
came out of the jungle onto the beach, and what

(12:45):
it looked like in the video, or that is their interpretation,
was they were making friendly gestures. UM. I did see
another one where they had the bow and arrow out
and um I was laughing that. When I was watching
it earlier, part of me expected like hippie Rob to
come out as their leader. Yeah, he's like the god,
He's like Brando and Apocalypse now exactly. Um and the

(13:05):
sentinels Josh where they They are believed to be descended
from the very first humans in Africa, and technically we
all are, but these people are directly descended from the
first group that migrated out about sixty thousand years ago. Right.
They live on the and Aman Islands the Indian Ocean.
And did you notice how clear that water was and

(13:27):
how white those beaches were. I wouldn't leave either, dude.
It was gorgeous and it's TV and Xbox when you've
got that, you know, right, So these people will come
out of the jungle if you throw coconuts into the
water at the beach. That's what they were doing, right,
what was it. Yeah, these this group of people were
sitting there throwing coconuts into the water and the UH
sentinelales came out and we're like, thanks for the coconuts. Well,

(13:49):
they probably thought it's raining coconuts from the giant monster. Yeah,
but they are actually not primitive Stone age folks from
what they say. Survival International says they're actually do make
tools and weapons from recovered metal from shipwrecks. Right, pretty cool.
They are actually not threatened. They're very isolated and relatively uncontacted. Um,

(14:11):
but they're not threatened. They live on an island that
no one really has any interest in, right, Yeah, exactly.
But as we saw with the Akunzo though, um, if
there is money to be made off of the indigenous land,
you're you're in trouble. Soy oil, yeah, cattle. Survival International
actually named all of those oil um farming, cattle and

(14:34):
logging uh as the the dominant threat to uncontacted tribes.
So sad there's supposedly an estimated hundred uncontacted tribes in
the world. Yeah, I was kind of surprised. That's a lot,
and it's sad that these people are around for sixty
thou years doing their thing, doing their thing long before us,

(14:54):
and um, we just come in and say, hey, this
would make a great soy farm, so I'm going to massacre.
Yeah they heard, they heard about the bail out and
they're like, we're staying here for us now. So, um,
there's five regions that are under the greatest threat right
now and they're in Brazil, Paraguay, and Peru. And actually

(15:15):
there's tons of evidence there's groups dedicated like Survival International
UM and other n g o s. And then there's
actually government ministries set up in Brazil and in Peru
and I think Paraguay UM that are in charge of
keeping track of these uncontacted tribes, which is really difficult

(15:37):
to do. Uh. And a lot of times these uncontacted
tribes are slivers offshoots of other tribes that have had
their land disturbed by logging or um mining, oil companies.
So they would join up with another tribe and you know,
they just take off into the forest and no one
would know how many there were. That kind of thing,
but yeah, they would be living primitively, but they're getting

(15:59):
pushed for and further out or being massacred, or they're
coming into contact with disease. Right, Yeah, that's what I'm
talking about with the microbes. Violence is obviously a big threat,
but they say that a bigger threat are uh these people,
that these tribes that lack communities to these awful diseases
that that twentieth century man has twenty one century man.

(16:21):
Excuse me, sure it's the future. Yeah, uh yeah, there's
actually uh that favorite book of mine, Charles C. Man
talks about how there's an estimated hundred million people living
on in the America's uh in four and then I
think nine were wiped out by smallpox, thank you, like

(16:43):
within a few decades. And Josh, it didn't just happen
way back then, like you said. In the eighties, the
some Christian missionaries made contact with the Zoe tribe in
Brazil and in pretty short form, forty five members of
that tribe die from the flu, malaria, and respiratory diseases.

(17:03):
Just like that. And uh more recently, in nine six,
half of the Maroon whoa ma maroona whoa tribe I
think in Brazil. Uh, they were contacted by illegal loggers
and half of the tribe was wiped out um from
respiratory illnesses I think awful. So it's not like to

(17:23):
bring up one of our favorite movies. Again, it's not
like bringing orange soda to the Waponi Woo. Joe Versus
the Volcano. Oh yeah, it's not like that in real life.
I thought you were talking about, um, the gods must
be crazy. No, another good one though, But it's not
like the Joe Versus Volcano. It's not all happy, go lucky.
They usually make contact with them. And even in the

(17:43):
case of the Christian missionaries who were trying to do
good I guess, and ended up killing a lot of them,
and the Brazilian government stepped in and actually kicked them out,
the religious group and said, now you gotta get out
of here. Yeah. And apparently even when the thing is
when contact is made as safely as possible and there's
a medic old contingency plan in place, uh, it's expected
that a lot of the tribes people will die. But

(18:07):
if there's if it's if they're made through illegal loggers
or a Christian missionary group that doesn't know what they're doing,
then uh, yeah, a lot of people die, if not
the entire group, right, That tribe did recover, though we
should know, yeah, which is good news to get out
of here Christian missionary so we can live peacefully and helpfully.

(18:51):
So Chuck, is a good to even contact these people? Well,
it can be good and bad because obviously if you
make contact and you know a little bit about their way,
why if you can protect them. But it's also like
this newspaper article, it also opens them up to uh
being invaded or watched or in this case, what was
the the tourism trip? Tell him about that? That's awful

(19:14):
savage tourism. Yeah. Actually the guy who Um was responsible
for leading the expedition that produced those photographs that made
the paper in two thousand and eight was apparently approached
by travel agents who wanted him to set up a
savage tourism trip. Which can't you just see a bunch
of like fat white Germans and Americans like who I

(19:34):
want to touch you right now? Your whole tribes wiped
out And now let's get back on the cruise ship
and look at the ice sculpture. Like like I said, Um,
the Brazil has it in has mentions uncontacted and undiscovered
people in its constitution, in large part because that unexplored
forests in that just that one territory they have a

(19:56):
real You don't have that in America, Like, we don't
have to worry about, you know, how to treat undiscovered tribes.
We figured out how to treat the ones we're familiar
with badly enough, right. Um. But so Brazil apparently recognizes that, like, hey,
this is your land, right and you legally own it.
If you're an uncontacted or isolated tribe, nobody can touch it,

(20:18):
but then has a really terrible history of following through
on stopping people from going in logging in oil. Peru's
history is even worse. They have some uncontacted tribes and
threatened uncontacted tribes, and Peru's president is like, I'm not
even sure they exist. And by the way, the French
oil company that's working in this area where they supposedly exist,

(20:41):
I've now just decreed that their work is a national necessity.
So when you when you're an uncontacted tribe in your
butting heads with an oil company, you're gonna lose. But
I will say Paraguay, hats off to Paraguay, because they
actually the environmental nice chucked just took his head off
to the environmental ministry provoked the license of a ranching concern.

(21:06):
That was just decimating And I don't mean in the
literal like removing tem per cent term, right, I mean
like decimating all Latin speakers out there the um the
this land that technically belongs to the indigenous uncontacted tribes there.
So so they booted them out or they just took
away their permits. They took away their permits, which is

(21:27):
pretty much tantamount to booting them out. Awesome. Yeah, it's
just so sad that when you know, such a modernist
point of view to see these undiscovered or uncontacted people
and think that their savages and that their way of
life is is savage and primitive. It's just they were
here first. Well, I mean we were were We were
all here first, we were all here at the same time.

(21:49):
But it's just a complete lack of recognition of other
people's choices. Yeah, and in respect for other other cultures
and ways of life. And because again didn't fly around here.
There's no theft auto in the jungle. No, there's not.
There's no auto. If you want to learn more about
people undiscovered or otherwise, you should try typing in people
in the Andy serge bart how stuff works dot com.

(22:11):
It brings up a hidden sub channel. Really yes, uh
and uh, I guess since I said hidden sub channel,
that means it's time for what Chuck Listener mail, Yes, Josh,
it is. And before we do that, we want to
send a thank you to Dan of the pottery Dan
Dan Made, Dan Made. He has a little uh etsy website,

(22:33):
Dan Made dot et s y dot com and he
makes pottery. And he sent us some really awesome coffee mugs. Yes,
Dan made, very cool muggs. And actually it's my my
work mug. Now that's what he use. I noticed cool detail.
You've got an octopus on yours with a pipe smoking
a pipe. I can't tell what mine is some little dude,
but it's just got cool details, got swirls in the bottom,

(22:55):
little intentions, and only some parts of it are glazed
and others raw. It's really Dan Made knows what he's doing.
So thanks Dan, and you know what you wanted to
bring up people who have been sending us little gifts.
And it's just really nice to come into work and
have someone you know, uh what was her name that
sent us the twinkie, the homemade Twinkie the Kid shirts.
I don't remember. Her name was like Kaya or something

(23:15):
like Kyla. I believe she should write in because I
told her that I would mention her little website too. Okay, yeah, yeah,
we got Twinkie the Kid t shirts because remember we
talked about how badly we wanted something. So with that
listener mail, all right, I'm gonna call this, uh, organ
donation details from someone who knows. Uh. Hi, Josh and

(23:37):
Chuckers and Jerry. I'm an anesthesiologist who specializes an organ transplantation,
specifically livers and kidneys. In fact, we performed a liver
transplant just last night and I'm home resting after what
is always an exhausting procedure. Ah, he thought we might
want a few more details about organ donation. So he
says this, um, they do not get to meet the

(23:58):
donor and the recipient until after a period of time,
usually a year, and only after both agreed to meet.
But we also had people that wrote in and said
they met like weeks later, so it might vary by
hospital or state. Yeah, I'm not sure, or maybe there's
just an agreement you go into. But he says they
can trade letters and get very basic, unidentifiable information about

(24:19):
each other, but it all gets censored by the organ
procurement organization. This is because of this recipient does not
live or the organ fails, the recipient or donor won't
blame the donor or in their families. Also, if the
organ works, they don't want the parties involved feeling unduly
indebted to the donor. After all, it's supposed to be
a free gift with no strings attached. After they have

(24:41):
both had time to adjust to their new lives and
agreed and prepared to meet, they can meet. That being said,
people can still find each other if they are looking
in turn to the same websites specifically designed to link
donor to recipient, although it is strongly discouraged. So maybe
that was the deal. They did it in surreptitiously, So
I thought it was somebody came up at the website
and make money off of people who want to meet

(25:03):
the people who donated a kidney to him. What a
great world we live in. I thought your listeners would
want to know this, and I hope it encourages would
be donors that they don't have to meet the recipient
if they think it would be too difficult regards Todd.
Thanks Todd the anesthesiologist. Yeah, and didn't he say that
it's like you you die very easily if you're over

(25:24):
anesthetized during a liver Yeah, he sais here. If you
want to know why an anesty caesiologist would need to
specialize in liver transplantation, ask yourself if you would like
to wake up during a procedure where patients don't tolerate
anesthetics very well, and if you would like your new
liver to have something to cleanse. That's what he says.
Very mysterious, Todd. I just asked myself that, and I

(25:47):
have no answer. I don't either. So if you bring
people to the drink of death and you want to
tell us about it, or if you make money off
of genuine human kindness, we want to hear your ploy.
Sure you can write in an email and send it
to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For

(26:12):
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check
out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com
home page