Non-contact peoples

Non-contact peoples are peoples that do not maintain contact with the outside world and modern civilization. Currently, there are very few such peoples left, information about them comes mainly from the stories of neighboring peoples or, for example, from aerial photographs.

In the scientific community, there are different opinions regarding the future fate of non-contact peoples: some scientists believe that it is nevertheless necessary to establish contact with them, while others adhere to the point of view that they should remain in isolation. As one of the arguments against establishing their contacts with civilization, the fear is expressed that after contact such peoples may die from diseases that their representatives did not previously suffer from (and, accordingly, do not have immunity to them) or become addicted to tobacco and alcohol.

Due to the lack of full-fledged contacts with isolated peoples, there is very little information about them, often even their self-names are unknown. How many non-contact peoples remain in the modern world is unknown. However, according to some estimates, today there are at least 100 of them. These include, in particular:

the Sentinelians living on the North Sentinel Island of the Andaman Islands archipelago in the Bay of Bengal of the Indian Ocean (formally part of India);
the Chứt tribe in the Vietnamese province of Quang Binh, accidentally discovered by the Americans during the Vietnam War;
about 44 groups inhabiting the territory of New Guinea;
some tribal groups of the Indian people of Paraguay Ayoreo ;
Tagaeri and Taromenan, tribes belonging to the Waorani Indian people in Ecuador (live in Yasuni National Park);
Colombian tribe Carabayo;
the Pirahan tribe in the western Amazon;
some groups of Amazonian Indian tribes Ava and Guaya;
Yururei Indian people from Brazil;
the Kawahiva nomadic tribe in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso;
the Toromon Bolivian Indian people;
the Kirineri and Nante peoples who live in the Naua Kugapakori nature reserve in Peru.
There are also many peoples and tribes that were previously isolated, but later began to contact civilization. For example, the Jarawa people living in the Andaman Islands, which became a kind of tourist attraction in the late 1990s. The connection with civilization led, among other things, to negative consequences - the spread of previously unknown diseases and drug addiction, because of which most of the people died. Another example is the Nine Pintupis, who were probably the last representatives of the Australian Aborigines to lead a completely traditional way of life [6], and then also decided to move on to contacts with civilization and settled life. It happens that the territory of the peoples who made contact is then transformed into a kind of ethnic reserve to protect their unique culture. This was the case, in particular, with the Waorani Indians, some of whose groups continue to live in complete isolation.