Where do the world's last uncontacted tribes live? Wild and semi-wild tribes in the modern world (49 photos).

  • 05.05.2019

Despite the fact that today almost every person has the opportunity to use the money they earn to purchase the attributes of modern life, such as mobile phone, there are still places on our planet where people live in levels of development close to primitive ones.

Africa is the place on Earth where today in impenetrable jungles or deserts you can find creatures that are very reminiscent of us in the distant past. Scientists agree that it was from the African continent that Homo sapiens originated.

Africa is unique in itself. Not only common animal species are concentrated here, but also endangered species. Due to its direct location on the equator, the continent has a very hot climate, which is why the nature there is the most diverse. That is why there were conditions for preserving life in the form in which wild tribes remained

A striking example of such a tribe is wild tribe Himba. They live in Namibia. Everything that civilization has achieved has passed the Himba by. There is no hint of modern life. The tribe is engaged in cattle breeding. All the huts where the tribe members live are located around the pasture.

The beauty of tribal women is determined by the presence large number jewelry and the amount of clay applied to the skin. But the presence of clay is not only a ritual, but also serves a hygienic purpose. The scorching sun and constant lack of water are just a few of the difficulties. The presence of clay allows the skin not to be subjected to thermal burns and the skin gives off less water.

Women in the tribe are involved in all household activities. They care for livestock, build huts, raise children and make jewelry. This is the main entertainment in the tribe.

Men in the tribe are assigned the role of husbands. Polygamy is accepted in the tribe if the husband is able to feed the family. Marriage is an expensive business. The cost of a wife reaches 45 cows. A wife's fidelity is not obligatory. A child born from another father will remain in the family.

Tourist guides often contact the tribe to conduct excursions. For this, the savages receive souvenirs and money, which they then exchange for things.

In the north-west of Mexico lives another tribe that has been bypassed by civilization. It is called Tarahyumara. They are also called “beer people.” The name stuck to them due to their ritual of drinking maize beer. Beating the drums, they drink beer, which is mixed with narcotic herbs. True, there is another translation option: “running soles” or “those with light feet.” And it is also well deserved, but more on that later.

They paint their bodies bright colors. You can imagine what it looks like when you realize that the tribe numbers 60 thousand people.

Since the 17th century, savages learned to cultivate the land and began to grow cereals. Before this, the tribe ate roots and herbs.

Video: The Tarahumara - A Hidden Tribe of Superathletes Born to Run. The Indians of this tribe are considered the best runners, but not in speed, but in endurance. They can run 170 km without any problems. do not stop. There is a recorded case of an Indian running a distance of about 600 miles in five days.

In the Philippine archipelago there is the island of Palawan. The Taut Batu tribe lives there in the mountains. These are the people of mountain caves. They live in caves and grottoes. The tribe has existed since the 11th century and human achievements are unknown to them. By the way, the Puerto Princesa underground river is also located here.

When the monsoon rains don't come, which can happen for six months, the tribe grows potatoes and rice. This is the only time when members of the tribe get out of the caves. When the rains begin to fall again, the entire tribe climbs into their grottoes and simply sleeps, waking up only to eat.

Video: Philippines, Palawan, Tau't Batu or "people of the rocks."

The list of tribes goes on and on. But that doesn't matter anymore. You just have to remember that somewhere on Earth there are places where life has frozen in its development, allowing others to develop further. Looking at wild tribes, at their customs, dances, rituals, you understand that they don’t want to change anything. They lived like this for thousands of years before they were discovered and, apparently, plan to exist for just as long.

Films, a small selection.

Hunting for survival (Kill to survive) / Kill To Survive. (From the series: In Search of the Hunter Tribes)

There are also series: Keepers of Traditions; Sharp-Toothed Nomads; Hunting in the Kalahari;

An even more interesting series about people’s lives in harmony with nature is Human Planet.

Also, there is one interesting program like the Magic of Adventure. Presenter: Sergey Yastrzhembsky.

For example, one of the series. Adventure Magic: The Man in the Tree.

The ethnic diversity on Earth is amazing in its abundance. People living in different parts of the planet are at the same time similar to each other, but at the same time very different in their way of life, customs, and language. In this article we will talk about some unusual tribes that you might be interested to know about.

Piraha Indians - a wild tribe inhabiting the Amazon jungle

The Pirahã Indian tribe lives among the Amazon rain forest, mainly along the banks of the Maici River, in the state of Amazonas, Brazil.

This nation South America known for its language, Pirahã. In fact, Pirahã is one of the rarest languages ​​among the 6,000 spoken languages worldwide. The number of native speakers ranges from 250 to 380 people. The language is amazing because:

- does not have numbers, for them there are only two concepts “several” (from 1 to 4 pieces) and “many” (more than 5 pieces),

- verbs do not change either by numbers or by persons,

- there are no names for colors,

- consists of 8 consonants and 3 vowels! Isn't this amazing?

According to linguistic scientists, the men of the Pirahã tribe understand rudimentary Portuguese and even speak very limited topics. True, not all male representatives can express their thoughts. Women, on the other hand, have little understanding of the Portuguese language and do not use it at all to communicate. However, the Pirahã language has several loanwords from other languages, mainly Portuguese, such as "cup" and "business".




Speaking of business, the Piraha Indians trade Brazil nuts and provide sexual services in order to buy consumables and tools, for example, machetes, milk powder, sugar, whiskey. Chastity is not a cultural value for them.

There are several more interesting moments associated with this nation:

- Pirahã have no compulsion. They don't tell other people what to do. It seems there is no social hierarchy, there is no formal leader.

- this one Indian tribe there is no concept of deities or God. However, they believe in spirits, which sometimes take the form of jaguars, trees, or people.

— it feels like the Pirahã tribe are people who don’t sleep. They can take a nap of 15 minutes or at most two hours throughout the day and night. They rarely sleep through the night.






The Wadoma tribe is an African tribe of people with two toes.

The Vadoma tribe lives in the Zambezi River valley in northern Zimbabwe. They are known for the fact that some members of the tribe suffer from ectrodactyly, three middle toes are missing from their feet, and the outer two are turned inward. As a result, members of the tribe are called “two-fingered” and “ostrich-footed”. Their huge two-toed feet are the result of a single mutation on chromosome number seven. However, in the tribe such people are not considered inferior. The reason for the common occurrence of ectrodactyly in the Vadoma tribe is isolation and the prohibition of marriage outside the tribe.




Life and life of the Korowai tribe in Indonesia

The Korowai tribe, also called the Kolufo, live in the southeast of the autonomous Indonesian province of Papua and consist of approximately 3,000 people. Perhaps before 1970 they did not know about the existence of other people besides themselves.












Most Korowai clans live in their isolated territory in tree houses, which are located at an altitude of 35-40 meters. In this way, they protect themselves from floods, predators, and arson by rival clans who take people, especially women and children, into slavery. In 1980, some of the Korowai moved to settlements in open areas.






Korowai have excellent hunting and fishing skills, and are engaged in gardening and gathering. They practice slash-and-burn agriculture, when the forest is first burned and then crops are planted in this place.






As far as religion is concerned, the Korowai universe is filled with spirits. The most honorable place is given to the spirits of ancestors. IN hard times they sacrifice domestic pigs to them.


In our age high technology, various gadgets and broadband Internet, there are still people who have not seen all this. Time seems to have stood still for them; they don’t really make contact with outside world, and their way of life has not changed for thousands of years.

In the forgotten and undeveloped corners of our planet live such uncivilized tribes that you are simply amazed that time has not touched them with its modernizing hand. Living, like their ancestors, among palm trees and feeding on hunting and pasture, these guys feel great and do not rush to the “concrete jungle” of big cities.

OfficePlankton decided to highlight the wildest tribes of our time that actually exist.

1 Sentinelese

Having chosen the island of North Sentinel, between India and Thailand, the Sentinelese have occupied almost the entire coast and greet with arrows anyone who tries to establish contact with them. By hunting, gathering and fishing, and intermarrying, the tribe maintains a population of approximately 300 people.

An attempt to contact these people ended in shelling by the National Geographic group, but only after they had left gifts on the shore, among which red buckets were especially popular. They shot the abandoned pigs from afar and buried them, without even thinking about eating them; everything else was thrown into the ocean in a heap.

An interesting fact is that they predict natural disasters and hide en masse deeper into the jungle when storms approach. The tribe survived both the 2004 Indian earthquake and numerous devastating tsunamis.

2 Maasai

These born pastoralists are the largest and most warlike tribe in Africa. They live only by cattle breeding, not neglecting to steal cattle from other, “lower”, as they consider, tribes, because, in their opinion, their supreme god gave them all the animals on the planet. It is the photograph of them with their earlobes pulled back and discs the size of a good tea saucer inserted into their lower lip that you come across on the Internet.

Maintaining a good fighting spirit, considering as men only all those who killed a lion with a spear, the Massai fought back against European colonialists and invaders from other tribes, owning the ancestral territories of the famous Serengeti Valley and the Ngorongoro volcano. However, under the influence of the 20th century, the number of people in the tribe is declining.

Polygamy, which was once considered honorable, has now become simply necessary as there are fewer and fewer men. Children herd cattle almost from the age of 3, and women do the rest of the household, while men doze with a spear in their hand inside a hut in peacetime or run with guttural sounds on military campaigns against neighboring tribes.

3 Nicobar and Andaman tribes


An aggressive company of cannibal tribes lives, as you might guess, by raiding and eating each other. The Korubo tribe holds the lead among all these savages. The men, disdainful of hunting and gathering, are very skilled in making poison darts, catching snakes with their bare hands to do this, and stone axes, grinding the edge of the stone all day long to such an extent that blowing off their head becomes a very doable task.

Constantly fighting among themselves, the tribes, however, do not raid endlessly, since they understand that the supply of “people” is very slowly renewed. Some tribes generally reserve only special holidays for this - the holidays of the goddess of Death. Women of the Nicobar and Andaman tribes also do not hesitate to eat their children or old people in case of unsuccessful raids on neighboring tribes.

4 Piraha

A rather small tribe also lives in the Brazilian jungle - about two hundred people. They are notable for having the most primitive language on the planet and the absence of at least some kind of number system. Holding primacy among the most undeveloped tribes, if this can be called primacy, of course, the Pirahã have no mythology, no history of the creation of the world and no gods.

They are forbidden to talk about what they have not learned from their own experience, to adopt the words of other people and to introduce new designations into their language. There are also no shades of colors, weather symbols, animals or plants. They live mainly in huts made of branches, refusing to accept gifts of all kinds of objects of civilization. Piraha, however, are quite often called as guides into the jungle, and, despite their inadaptability and lack of development, have not yet been noticed in aggression.

5 Loaves


The most brutal tribe lives in the forests Papua New Guinea, between two chains of mountains, they were discovered very late, only in the 90s of the last century. There is a tribe with a funny Russian-sounding name that sounds like something from the Stone Age. Dwellings - children's huts made of twigs on trees, which we built in childhood - protection from sorcerers, they will find them on the ground.

Stone axes and knives made from animal bones, noses and ears are pierced with the teeth of killed predators. The loaves hold wild pigs in high esteem, which they do not eat, but tame, especially those weaned from their mother at a young age, and use as riding ponies. Only when the pig gets old and can no longer carry the load and the little monkey-like people that loaves are, the pig can be slaughtered and eaten.
The entire tribe is extremely warlike and hardy, the cult of the warrior flourishes there, the tribe can sit on larvae and worms for weeks, and despite the fact that all the women of the tribe are “common”, the festival of love occurs only once a year, the rest of the time men should not pester to women.

Do you dream of visiting national parks Africa, see wild animals in their natural environment habitats and enjoy the last untouched corners of our planet? Safari in Tanzania is an unforgettable journey through the African savannah!

The bulk of the peoples of Africa include groups consisting of several thousand and sometimes hundreds of people, but at the same time they do not exceed 10% of the total population of this continent. As a rule, such small ethnic groups are the most savage tribes.

The Mursi tribe, for example, belongs to this group.

The Ethiopian Mursi tribe is the most aggressive ethnic group

Ethiopia is the oldest country in the world. It is Ethiopia that is considered the ancestor of humanity; it was here that the remains of our ancestor, modestly named Lucy, were found.
More than 80 ethnic groups live in the country.

Living in southwestern Ethiopia, on the border with Kenya and Sudan, settled in Mago Park, the Mursi tribe is distinguished by unusually strict customs. They can rightfully be nominated for the title of the most aggressive ethnic group.

Prone to frequent alcohol consumption and uncontrolled use of weapons. IN Everyday life The main weapon of the tribe's men is the Kalashnikov assault rifle, which they buy in Sudan.

In fights, they can often beat each other almost to death, trying to prove their dominance in the tribe.

Scientists attribute this tribe to a mutated Negroid race, with distinctive features in the form of short stature, wide bones and crooked legs, low and tightly compressed foreheads, flattened noses and inflated short necks.

Mursi women's bodies often look flabby and sickly, with sagging bellies and breasts, and hunched backs. There is practically no hair, which was often hidden under intricate headdresses of a very fancy type, using as material everything that could be picked up or caught nearby: rough skins, branches, dried fruits, swamp shellfish, someone's tails, dead insects and even incomprehensible stinking carrion.

Most famous feature The Mursi tribe has a tradition of inserting plates into the lips of girls.

The more public Mursi who come into contact with civilization may not always have all these characteristic attributes, but the exotic appearance of their lower lip is business card tribe.

Plates are made different sizes made of wood or clay, the shape can be round or trapezoidal, sometimes with a hole in the middle. For beauty, the plates are covered with a pattern.

The lower lip is cut in childhood, and pieces of wood are inserted there, gradually increasing their diameter.

Mursi girls begin wearing plates at the age of 20, six months before marriage. The lower lip is pierced and a small disc is inserted into it; after the lip is stretched, the disc is replaced with a larger one, and so on until the desired diameter is reached (up to 30 centimeters!!).

The size of the plate matters: the larger the diameter, the more the girl is valued and the more cattle the groom will pay for her. Girls must wear these plates at all times except when sleeping and eating, and they can also take them out if there are no males of the tribe nearby.

When the plate is pulled out, the lip hangs down in a long round rope. Almost all Mursi have no front teeth, and their tongue is cracked and bleeding.

The second strange and terrifying decoration of Mursi women is the monista, which is made from human phalanges of fingers (nek). One person has only 28 of these bones in his hands. Each necklace usually consists of phalanges of five or six tassels; for some lovers of “costume jewelry,” the monista is wrapped around the neck in several rows

It glistens greasyly and emits a sweetish rotting smell of melted human fat; every bone is rubbed daily. The source for beads never runs low: the priestess of the tribe is ready to deprive the hands of a man who has broken the laws for almost every offense.

It is customary for this tribe to do scarification (scarring).

Men can afford scarring only after the first murder of one of their enemies or ill-wishers. If they kill a man, they decorate right hand, if a woman, then the left one.

Their religion, animism, deserves a longer and more shocking story.
Short: women are priestesses of death, so they give their husbands drugs and poisons every day.

The High Priestess distributes antidotes, but sometimes salvation does not come to everyone. In such cases, a white cross is drawn on the widow's plate, and she becomes a very respected member of the tribe, who is not eaten after death, but is buried in the trunks of special ritual trees. Honor is due to such priestesses due to the fulfillment of the main mission - the will of the God of Death Yamda, which they were able to fulfill by destroying the physical body and freeing the highest spiritual Essence from their man.

The rest of the dead will be collectively eaten by the entire tribe. Soft tissues are boiled in a cauldron, bones are used for amulets and thrown in swamps to mark dangerous places.

What seems very wild for a European is commonplace and tradition for the Mursi.

Bushmen tribe

African Bushmen are the most ancient representatives human race. And this is not speculation at all, but a scientifically proven fact. Who are these ancient people?

Bushmen are a group of hunting tribes South Africa. Now these are the remains of a large ancient African population. Bushmen are distinguished by their short stature, wide cheekbones, narrow eyes and much swollen eyelids. It is difficult to determine the real color of their skin, because in the Kalahari they are not allowed to waste water on washing. But you can notice that they are much lighter than their neighbors. Their skin tone is slightly yellowish, which is more common among South Asians.

Young Bushmen are considered the most beautiful among the female population of Africa.

But once they reach puberty and become mothers, these beauties are simply unrecognizable. Bushmen women have overdeveloped hips and buttocks, and their stomachs are constantly swollen. This is a consequence of poor nutrition.

To distinguish a pregnant Bushwoman from other women of the tribe, she is coated with ash or ocher, since appearance this is very difficult to do. By the age of 35, Bushman men begin to look like octogenarians, due to the fact that their skin sagging and their bodies become covered with deep wrinkles.

Life in Kalahari is very harsh, but even here there are laws and rules. The most important resource in the desert is water. There are old people in the tribe who know how to find water. At the place that they indicate, the representatives of the tribe either dig wells or drain water using plant stems.

Each Bushman tribe has a secret well, which is carefully blocked with stones or covered with sand. During the dry season, the Bushmen dig a hole at the bottom of a dry well, take a plant stem, suck water through it, take it into their mouths, and then spit it into the shell of an ostrich egg.

South African tribe Bushmen - the only people on Earth, whose men have a constant erection, This phenomenon does not cause any discomfort or inconvenience, excluding the fact that when hunting on foot, men have to attach their penis to their belt so as not to catch it on branches.

Bushmen do not know what private property is. All animals and plants growing in their territory are considered common. Therefore, they hunt both wild animals and farm cows. For this they were very often punished and destroyed by entire tribes. Nobody wants neighbors like this.

Shamanism is very popular among the Bushmen tribes. They do not have leaders, but there are elders and healers who not only treat diseases, but also communicate with spirits. Bushmen are very afraid of the dead, and firmly believe in an afterlife. They pray to the sun, moon, stars. But they are not asking for health or happiness, but for success in hunting.

The Bushman tribes speak Khoisan languages, which are very difficult for Europeans to pronounce. A characteristic feature of these languages ​​is clicking consonants. Representatives of the tribe speak very quietly among themselves. This is a long-standing habit of hunters - so as not to spook the game.

There is confirmed evidence that a hundred years ago they were engaged in drawing. They are still found in caves cave drawings, depicting people and various animals: buffaloes, gazelles, birds, ostriches, antelopes, crocodiles.

Their drawings also contain unusual fairy tale characters: monkey people, eared snakes, crocodile-faced people. In the desert there is a whole gallery under open air, which presents these amazing drawings by unknown artists.

But now the Bushmen do not paint; they are excellent in dance, music, pantomime and stories.

VIDEO: Shamanic ritual healing ritual of the Bushmen tribe. Part 1

Shamanic ritual healing rite of the Bushmen tribe. Part 2

Photos from open sources

There are still untouched places on the planet where the way of life is the same as it was a couple of thousand years ago.

Today there are about a hundred tribes that are hostile to modern society and do not want to let civilization into their lives.

Off the coast of India, on one of the Andaman Islands - North Sentinel Island - such a tribe lives.

That’s what they were called – the Sentinelese. They fiercely resist all possible outside contacts.

The first evidence of a tribe inhabiting North Sentinel Island in the Andaman archipelago dates back to XVIII century: the sailors, once nearby, left notes about strange “primitive” people who do not allow them to come to their land.

With the development of navigation and aviation, the ability to monitor the islanders has increased, but all the information known to date has been collected remotely.

Until now, not a single outsider has managed to find himself in the circle of the Sentinelese tribe without losing his life. This uncontacted tribe allows a stranger no closer than a bow shot. They even throw stones at helicopters that fly too low. The last daredevils to try to get to the island were fishermen-poachers in 2006. Their families are still unable to claim the bodies: the Sentinelese killed the intruders, burying them in shallow graves.

However, interest in this isolated culture does not decrease: researchers are constantly looking for opportunities to contact and study the Sentinelese. IN different time They were given coconuts, dishes, pigs and much more that could improve their living conditions on a small island. It is known that they liked the coconuts, but the representatives of the tribe did not realize that they could be planted, but simply ate all the fruits. The islanders buried the pigs, doing it with honor and without touching their meat.

The experiment with kitchen utensils turned out to be interesting. The Sentinelese accepted metal utensils favorably, but separated plastic ones by color: they threw away the green buckets, but the red ones suited them. There are no explanations for this, just as there are no answers to many other questions. Their language is one of the most unique and completely incomprehensible to anyone on the planet. They lead a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, obtaining their food by hunting. fishing and collecting wild plants, while over the millennia of their existence they have never mastered agricultural activities.

It is believed that they do not even know how to start a fire: taking advantage of accidental fires, they then carefully store smoldering logs and coals. Even the exact size of the tribe remains unknown: figures vary from 40 to 500 people; such a scatter is also explained by observations only from the outside and assumptions that some of the islanders at this moment may be hiding in the thicket.

Despite the fact that the Sentinelese do not care about the rest of the world, they have defenders on the mainland. Organizations advocating the rights of tribal peoples call the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island “the most vulnerable society on the planet” and remind that they have no immunity to any common infection in the world. For this reason, their policy of driving away strangers can be seen as self-defense against certain death.