04 July 2010

New tribe found in Indonesia

Last week Discovery Online reported that a tribe of hunter gatherers had been discovered in the remote forests of Indonesia's easternmost Papua region.

The nomadic tribe, called Koroway, numbers about 3,000 people speaking their own language and living off animals and plants in the forest, census officials found during the country's 2010 census survey.

"Their houses are in trees, their life is stone age," said Suntono, head of Indonesia's statistics agency for the Papua region, adding the tribe built ladders to huts in tall trees.

After receiving reports from missionaries, census officials needed to walk for up to two weeks to find the tribe, after travelling by boat from the nearest permanent villages, but still only reached the fringes of their territory.

Suntono said the tribe, naked except for banana leaves to cover their private parts, protected their area from outsiders as they said they depended on it for food, such as deer, wild boar, sago and bananas.

THis is fascinating stuff but sadly also disturbing Sadly a lot of tribes do not adjust well to exposure to modern life.

3 comments:

James Higham said...

Their houses are in trees, their life is stone age ...

Half their luck.

beakerkin said...

Just wait till George Galloway gets there. He needs a new district to represent.This will give him a chance to repeat his cliche material
to the only audience that has never heard it.

jams o donnell said...

I wonder.... James

I daresay even they would find his rhetoric cliched Beak