The story was pitched by photographers that a lost tribe of previously undiscovered natives had been found and photographed from high above the Brazilian rain forest. Actually, researchers have known about the tribe for nearly a century.
The natives were first found in 1910, but the photographer and agency that released the pictures said they made it seem like it was a lost tribe to dramatize the dangers of the logging industry on the group.
While the term "uncontacted" is often used to describe these Amazonian tribes, multiple experts say that these groups are fully aware of the outside world, but choose to opt out of it.
"The uncontacted people who still remain in the world today are people who have at some point in the past made the conscious decision to avoid direct relationships with the outside world," Conklin said. "It's very common that part of [a] group will decide to flee deeper in the forest to avoid the disease and violence that comes with contacts from outsiders."
Since Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World, indigenous people have experienced death by either violence or disease that the group had never been exposed to before, anthropologists said.
