Traveler Soul | Chapter 1
Planet Doc
The Yanomamis, the most isolated tribe of South America, feeding based on hunting and fishing, go naked though the jungle, and still maintain customs like cannibalism.
In the amazon rainforest live the Yanomamis, they are the most isolated tribe of South America. The Yanomami areas of Brazil and Venezuela make up the largest indigenous forest territory in the world.
They live clustered in small villages and their diet is based on hunting and fishing. This tribe has no clothes so they go naked through the jungle. It is a rare and primitive tribe who still practice cannibalism.
Today, the population of this Amazonian tribe totals about 32,000 individuals, but the thousands of gold hunters that invade its territory pass on deadly diseases like measles or the flu. For thousands of years they have lived naked in harmony with the environment in the jungles of South America.
They now face a dark future, full of difficulties.
The Yanomami have extensive botanical knowledge and use about 500 plants in cooking, for preparing medicines, for building their huts and making household utensils.
This Amazonian tribe practiced fishing in various places, using a poison, timbó, which they make by pulping up to nine different varieties of a species of vine: this is placed in a wicker basket, made on the spot.
Once the plant bait is made, it only remains to float the deathtrap on the water. The fluid it secretes extracts the oxygen from the water, and the stunned fish float to the surface: then where all group members easily kill them with arrows, knives and machetes.