The most anomalous tribes on Earth and their culture

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Ethnic diversity on Earth is striking in its abundance. People living in different parts of the planet are at the same time similar to each other, but at the same time they are very different in their way of life, customs, language. In this article, we'll talk about some of the unusual tribes that you might be interested in learning about.

Piraha Indians - a wild tribe inhabiting the Amazon jungle

The Piraha Indian tribe lives in the rainforest of the Amazon, mainly on the banks of the Maici River, in the state of Amazonas, Brazil.

This people of South America is known for their language, Pirahan. In fact, Pirahan is one of the rarest languages among the 6,000 spoken languages around the world. The number of native speakers ranges from 250 to 380 people. The language is amazing in that:

- has no numbers, for them there are only two concepts "several" (from 1 to 4 pieces) and "many" (more than 5 pieces), - verbs do not change either by numbers or by persons, - there are no names for flowers, - consists of 8 consonants and 3 vowels! Isn't that amazing?

According to linguistic scholars, the men of the Piraha tribe understand basic Portuguese and even speak very limited topics. True, not all males can express their thoughts. Women, on the other hand, have little understanding of the Portuguese language and do not use it at all for communication. However, in the Pirahan language there are several borrowed words from other languages, mainly from Portuguese, for example "cup" and "business".

Speaking of business, the Piraha Indians sell Brazil nuts and provide sexual services to buy supplies and tools, such as machetes, powdered milk, sugar, whiskey. Their chastity is not a cultural value.

There are several more interesting points associated with this nationality:

- Pirah has no compulsion. They don't tell other people what to do. It seems that there is no social hierarchy at all, no formal leader.

- this Indian tribe has no idea of deities and god. However, they believe in spirits, which sometimes take the form of jaguars, trees, people.

- a feeling that the Piraha tribe are people who do not sleep. They can take a nap for 15 minutes or at most two hours throughout the day and night. They rarely sleep all night.

Wadoma tribe - African tribe of people with two toes

The Wadoma tribe lives in the Zambezi River Valley in northern Zimbabwe. They are known for the fact that some members of the tribe suffer from ectrodactyly, they have three middle toes missing on their feet, and the outer two are turned inward. As a result, the members of the tribe are called "two-fingered" and "ostrich-footed". Their huge legs with two toes are the result of a single mutation on chromosome seven. However, in the tribe, such people are not considered inferior. The reason for the common ectrodactyly in the Wadoma tribe is isolation and the ban on marriage outside the tribe.

Life and life of the Korowai tribe in Indonesia

The Korowai tribe, also called the Kolufo, lives in the southeast of the autonomous Indonesian province of Papua and has approximately 3,000 inhabitants. Perhaps, until 1970, they did not know about the existence of other people besides themselves.

Most of the clans of the Korowai tribe live in their isolated territory in tree houses, which are located at an altitude of 35-40 meters. Thus, they protect themselves from floods, predators and arson from rival clans, which are taking people into slavery, especially women and children. In 1980, some of the Korowai people moved to villages in open areas.

Korowai have excellent hunting and fishing skills, gardening and gathering. They practice slash-and-burn agriculture, when the forest is first burned, and then cultivated plants are planted on this place.

As for religion, the Korowai universe is filled with spirits. The most honorable place is given to the spirits of ancestors. In difficult times, they sacrifice domestic pigs to them.

Masai tribe

These natural-born pastoralists are the largest and most warlike tribe in Africa. They live only by cattle breeding, not neglecting the theft of livestock from other, "lower", as they believe, tribes, because, in their opinion, their supreme god gave them all the animals on the planet. It is in their photo with the drawn-out earlobes and discs the size of a good tea saucer inserted into the lower lip that you come across on the Internet.

Maintaining a good fighting spirit, considering only all those who killed a lion with a spear as a man, the Massai fought back both European colonizers and invaders from other tribes, owning the original territories of the famous Serengeti Valley and the Ngorongoro volcano. However, under the influence of the 20th century, the number of people in the tribe is declining.

Polygamy, which used to be considered honorable, has now become simply necessary, as men are dwindling. Children graze cattle from almost 3 years old, and the rest of the household is on the women, while the men doze with a spear in their hand inside the hut in peacetime or, with guttural sounds, run on military campaigns to neighboring tribes.

Sentinel tribe

Such a tribe lives off the coast of India on one of the Andaman Islands - the North Sentinel Island. They were called that - the Sentinelese. They violently resist all possible external contact.

The first evidence of a tribe inhabiting the North Sentinel Island of the Andaman archipelago dates back to the 18th century: navigators, being nearby, left records of strange "primitive" people who did not allow to descend to their land. With the development of maritime and aviation, the ability to observe the islanders has increased, but all information known to date has been collected remotely.

However, interest in this isolated culture is not diminishing: researchers are constantly looking for opportunities to contact and study the Sentinelese. At various times, they were planted with coconuts, dishes, pigs and much more, which could improve their living conditions on the small island. It is known that they liked the coconuts, but the representatives of the tribe did not realize that they could be planted, but simply ate all the fruits. The islanders buried the pigs, having done it with honors and without touching their meat.

An experiment with kitchen utensils turned out to be interesting. The Sentinelese accepted metal dishes favorably, and the plastic ones were divided according to colors: they threw away the green buckets, and the red ones came up to them. There are no explanations for this, just as there are no answers to many other questions. Their language is one of the most unique and completely incomprehensible to anyone on the planet. They lead the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers, hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants for themselves, while over the millennia of their existence, they have not mastered agricultural activities.

It is believed that they do not even know how to make a fire: using accidental fires, they then carefully store smoldering logs and coals. Even the exact size of the tribe remains unknown: the numbers vary from 40 to 500 people; such a spread is also explained by observations only from the side and assumptions that some of the islanders at this moment may be hiding in the thicket.

Despite the fact that the Sentinelese do not care about the rest of the world, they have defenders on the mainland. Tribal rights organizations call the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island "the most vulnerable society on the planet" and remind them that they are not immune to any of the world's most common infections. For this reason, their policy of chasing outsiders can be seen as self-defense against certain death.