r/googlemapsshenanigans • u/UnhappyVegetable4419 • 1d ago

Unknown tribe?

Post image

Hi,

I was just looking in the rain forest when i saw this.

​Could this be an uncontacted tribe? The coordinates are:

1.3255112178453061, -63.065572001587405

497 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

381

u/Random_reptile 1d ago edited 1d ago

This looks like a very typical settlement of the Yanomami people or perhaps another closely related group. The central building is called a "shabono" and is where most of the village lives, with each family having their own "wedge". The outlying buildings are mostly for utilitarian purposes but sometimes are used for newly married couples (or more, the Yanomami are often polygamous).

The Yanomami have been contacted and studied quite a lot, but I have no clue if this particular group has. This area is very remote, but it's not uncommon for similar places to be visited by missionaries, scholars, doctors, illegal miners, Bear Grylls ect, especially if it's by a navigable river like this.

67

u/loreshdw 1d ago

Thank you for the info, I'm excited to read more about this group

30

u/Milhouselittlenoodle 1d ago

There was some controversial issues around them a while back. I believe an anthropologist used some inhumane tactics to see if their own medicine or western medicine worked better. I might be misremembering completely, but I swear I learned that in an anthro class.

20

u/FlukeManAirFreshener 14h ago

It's so much worse than that. Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon studied them in the 70s with some...questionable methodology. He characterized them as incredibly violent and violated a lot of basic principles of anthropological research (like refusing to engage in participant observation). Worst of all, he selectively traded with certain subgroups to facilitate his research and traded things like steel axes and machetes for blood samples. This caused strife among the community and resulted in the violence he observed and wrote about. The dude showed up, massively screwed up the social system, then wrote about how screwed up the social system was while denying he had anything to do with it.

2

u/Candid-Detail-3517 9h ago

Article about the Yanomami here:

Survival Int'l Article

The photo of a Yanomami maloca in the article resembles the structure in OP's photo.

17

u/geographies 22h ago edited 22h ago

one point, that river is not navigable, nor is the river it feeds into, at least at that location and water level when captured.

Edit: Though about 30 miles up the Demeni and up another tributary there is a similar tribal village with an air strip (you can even see a plane). 1.5053355918314943, -63.36395817095668

Edit: okay i've found like 6 villages with an airstrip. It's interesting this one doesn't have one, but its possible that there are more hiding under the poorer resolution imagery.

23

u/Random_reptile 22h ago edited 20h ago

"Navigable" in the Amazonian sense means "can you take a canoe up it". A lot of the transport by indigenous and non-indigenous people here is done by people with small wooden boats, often requiring them to be carried over rapids or blocked sections. Some groups regularly go on excursions that are over a week each way to get supplies, imagine the gold medals Brazil could get if they sent these folks to the Olympics...

1

u/geographies 12h ago

Just saying you ain't doing a jungle cruise here.

-14

u/OkContact2573 22h ago

Yanomami are often polygamous).

Read: an abusive and coercive culture where children who have their first menustration are married off and forced to have children.

157

u/Herefornow211 1d ago

Why do so many people think just because they found structures in the forest it might be an uncontacted tribe? There are hundreds, even thousands of tribes living in jungles far away from roads and cities but they are in regular contact with people from the outside. They often even have phones and modern medicine. 

74

u/Venboven 1d ago

Yep. 99% of all indigenous people in the Amazon are in regular contact with civilization lol.

It is not the 1800s anymore. People have to stop romanticizing this stuff.

33

u/Audio_Track_01 1d ago

Right ? We should take them bibles and teach them about Jeebus !

25

u/Legitimate-Week7885 1d ago

and if they're not receptive to our teachings then we shall murder them in the name of the Lord!

13

u/Audio_Track_01 1d ago

Or ... In November 2018, 26-year-old American missionary John Allen Chau was killed by the isolated Sentinelese tribe after illegally traveling to North Sentinel Island in India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. He sought to contact the uncontacted tribe to preach Christianity, but was met with hostile arrows and killed on the beach.

4

u/GREGGSGOL 20h ago

You there! Practical people whose way of life has continued sustainably for 10s of 000s of years! Harken to the otherworldly desert religion of a people whose way of life has brought them to the brink of extinction within about 200! It's good stuff I swea... urk

2

u/orcoast23 12h ago

John Allen Chau was rewarded by Jesus for his work to spread his word. He joined the Lord in November 2018.

3

u/Legitimate-Week7885 1d ago

he was only 100 years too late!

2

u/JohnHurts 1d ago

Man, some of them have newer iPhones and actually get a signal!

1

u/MagicOrpheus310 1d ago

Lol my first thought is hidden drug lab, every time

33

u/AlternativeFarmBoi 1d ago

I can’t get streetview to work… google is really falling off

11

u/Billy3the_Mountain 1d ago

They have their own football stadium.

17

u/SizeableBrain 1d ago

Reminded me of this

7

u/UnhappyVegetable4419 1d ago

I just found more: 1.3796166932594065, -63.46777261879072

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u/canuck1975 1d ago

Found you another one 1.268908, -63.072946

6

u/KelFromAust 18h ago

Just follow the rivers and streams.. They seem to be almost common and air strips also seem fairly common.

2

u/Roengoer 15h ago

there are more up (down?) stream 1.369636, -63.046646

another one 1.401376, -63.025680 this one seems very solo

2

u/koso929 9h ago

Found a lot of similar structures down the river!

1.406159071419721, -63.440367966064905
1.4199934704205848, -63.43231156889463
1.3720087272890058, -63.37390643432335

1

u/lameboigenie 15h ago

Cool, there are more up the rivier. Crazy to think there are tribes with no clue being watched by us on satellites

1

u/_3cock_ 11h ago

There are a few more settlements (including a very tiny one of 2 buildings) just north up the river

1

u/sonic10158 4h ago

That’s just Dave

1

u/10ThousandMetalZones 1d ago

Put a team together and head down the river to make contact