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Isolated Tribes Die Shortly After We Meet Them
Daniel_Stuckey writes: "It's a story we all know — Christopher Columbus discovers America, his European buddies follow him, they meet the indigenous people living there, they indigenous people die from smallpox and guns and other unknown diseases, and the Europeans get gold, land, and so on. It's still happening today in Brazil, where 238 indigenous tribes have been contacted in the last several decades, and where between 23 and 70 uncontacted tribes are still living. A just-published report that takes a look at what happens after the modern world comes into contact with indigenous peoples isn't pretty: Of those contacted, three quarters went extinct. Those that survived saw mortality rates up over 80 percent. This is grim stuff."
Are you new here? I'm surprised he isn't citing a petrified Natalie Portman covered in grits and vetted by the GNAA. "Netcraft confirms X" is an old, old, late 90s slashdot comment "joke." Granted, it's as funny as those forwarded email I get from my aunt; but it's the thought that counts, right?
fnord.
Awesome, but you forgot to include the post hoc fallacy possibility as well. I didn't see any estimates of the death rates of actually-uncontacted "uncontacted" tribes. If an uncontacted-uncontacted tribe dies off in the forest, and no anthropologist is there to record the data...?
Out of curiosity, and as long as we're all horribly off-topic anyway, why are your comments all in a hideous fixed-width font?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Interestingly, the English word "nor" is more like a NAND.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...