Uncontacted Peoples: Amazonia, Nicobar Islands, New Guinea - Anthropology, Culture, ASMR

My talk tonight is about ""uncontacted peoples"": tribes that maintain minimal or no contact at all with the rest of the world. Situations vary: in Amazonia, uncontacted peoples generally retreated to remote parts of the rainforest as a survival strategy, and we will see an example with the Nomole (also called Mashco Piro) from Peru. In other cases like the Shompen of Great Nicobar Island or the Yaifo from New Guinea, contact was established late in the 19th or 20th Century and these peoples decided to stay separated.

I will also tell you about Anthropology as a discipline: what does it actually study and what are the differences with Sociology? What is the history of this field? And finally I will tell you about exoticism, the myth of the noble savage, the definitions of culture and the difficulty to look past our own.

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 Uncontacted Peoples

2:25 Humanity in Amazonia

17:56 Nomole (Amazonia)

24:14 Shompen (Great Nicobar Island)

39:45 Anthropology, Noble Savage and Cultural Hierarchy

52:21 Yaifo (New Guinea)

1:00:00 What is Culture and Can We See Through It?