Satellites Spot Hidden Villages In Amazon

sciencehabit writes The Amazon is home to perhaps dozens of isolated tribes who make their living far off the grid from the wider society, growing crops and hunting and gathering in the forest. These reclusive peoples are threatened by drug running, illegal logging, and highway construction, even if they dwell in 'protected' reserves in Peru or Brazil; one group, apparently pushed out of its lands, made contact this summer. Now, researchers have a new way of examining their fate without disruptive and frightening flyovers by aircraft. Researchers use high-resolution WorldView or GeoEye satellite images to monitor demographic changes in isolated Amazon tribes. The scientists got location and population estimates for five isolated villages along the Brazil-Peru border from Brazilian government reports and other sources. Then they examined 50-centimeter resolution satellite images taken in 2006, 2012, and 2013 and could spot the peoples' horticultural fields and characteristic pattern of either longhouses or clusters of small houses; these villages could be clearly differentiated from the transient camps of illegal loggers or drug runners.

Comments

But

[rossdee]

Do they get free 2 day shipping with Prime?

Re: But

[An0nymous Coward]

There's always that critical of everyone comment.

How far off the grid do you have to go.

[Anonymous Coward]

If even these people can't have any privacy then we're all really screwed.

Re:How far off the grid do you have to go.

[ShanghaiBill]

If even these people can't have any privacy then we're all really screwed.

The Sentinelese People of the Andaman Islands have figured out how to keep their privacy: kill anyone who comes within the range of their arrows. Other, less belligerent, tribes in the Andaman Islands have made contact with outsiders, and suffered near extermination from introduced diseases. So the Sentinelese privacy policy seems to be working well for them.

Re:How far off the grid do you have to go.

[penguinoid]

I would really like to live underground. That would solve so many problems. You would be immune to aerial surveillance, you would not have to worry about tornadoes or storms. The temperature is a constant. You can expand just by digging more rooms. It would be a lair. However it probably wouldn't get you laid.

Close, very close. Just replace the "expand just by digging more rooms" with "have food brought to you by your mom" and you got a perfect description of the stereotypical Slashdotter.

Re:How far off the grid do you have to go.

[An0nymous Coward]

It's your mom who brings me food, smartass.

contact

[Noah Haders]

one group, apparently pushed out of its lands, made contact this summer.

did they make FIRST CONTACT???

Re:contact

[kwiqsilver]

Doesn't the Amazon Prime Directive require us to make contact within two days?

Re:Tomorrow's news

[Camembert]

Their life cannot be complete without the opportunity to whine about the U2 album that appeared on their iphones.

Perspective.

[Dutchmaan]

Imagine how we must look from their perspective. Like gods peering down on them from the heavens with magical devices that grant us powers. Can you imagine if we as a people encountered beings who were just as advanced from us as we are from those tribes. Hell even a mere 100 years of progress would seem miraculous to us to say nothing of eons. Imagine how we would look to someone from 1914.

Re:Perspective.

[unimacs]

Imagine how we would look to someone from 1914.

"You've had 100 years and still no flying cars? Lame."

Re:Perspective.

[BitterOak]

There was a really good TV show (fiction) called Amazon that ran around 2000 or so, but lasted only one season unfortunately. It dealt with some of these issues. It's available on DVD, but unfortunately it ends with a cliffhanger that was never resolved. Really awesome show though. Kind of like Lost, which came years later, only much better in my opinion.

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[jpellino]

and all the fissshes you can eat.

Perspective.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then imagine their disappointment when they find out how we use this power. :P

*ahem*

[fustakrakich]

Anybody using the satellite pix to catch and stop the loggers? Where's the infrared cams?

leave them alone

[NotQuiteReal]

OK, we found this group of people... moving on.

Chalk it up for +1 diversity, but for God's sake, don't try to visit them and sneeze in there general direction.

If they were unhappy, they would have walked in one direction long enough to "discover" others. Leave them be.

Re:leave them alone

[Neil Boekend]

But civilisation! They clearly need Iphones!

Re:leave them alone

[bill_mcgonigle]

If they were unhappy, they would have walked in one direction long enough to "discover" others. Leave them be.

if we were to find natives in the US...

Team Blue:
But are they paying "their" taxes? They were born within the geographic confines of a nation state, so they implicitly agreed to a the Social Contract.

Team Red:
Do they not benefit from the clean air and logging bans the government provides? Why should they not have to pay for those benefits? We can't have any free riders taking advantage of the system. They should be working and have ID's.

like another comment said, sometimes a quiver of arrows is the most sensible policy.

Re:Tomorrow's news

[Ol Olsoc]

Any others I've missed?

Yes - your Thorazine and Haldol

Re:Tomorrow's news

[Half-pint HAL]

Christians sending missionaries to these villages to show them the ways of Christ.

Actually, missionaries are highly unlikely to get a permit to enter regions of the Amazon populated by isolated tribes. They even used this to deny Daniel Everett the opportunity to return to study the Piraha language. (Everett originally visited the Piraha as a missionary, but was "converted" to atheism by his experiences there. His study of the language contradicted various mainstream theories of linguistics, and rather than saying "you're wrong, but feel free to look for evidence -- you won't find any," various authority figures accused him of being a charlatan and obstructed his research. He's been successfully blocked long enough that Portuguese influence has altered the Piraha language to the point where the language features he was studying could easily have been lost, and as well as stopping him proving himself right, it's now impossible to prove him wrong. Bloody academic egos.)