Uncontacted Peoples

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 chose to remain separate. I will also tell you about Anthropology: what does it actually study? What is the history of this field? Finally, I will discuss the definitions of culture and the difficulty of looking past our own.