Pictures from automatic camera provide first look at uncontacted Amazon community
Pictures taken by an automatic camera have provided the world with the first look at an uncontacted Amazon community that is thought to be growing, despite pressure from agribusiness, miners, loggers and drug traffickers.
The pictures, taken in February, have been made public by Brazilian government agency the National Indigenous Peoples Foundation (Funai).
One picture shows a group of men from the community, referred to as the Massaco after the river that runs through the area where they live, collecting machetes and axes left behind by Funai agents.
The cameras were placed at the spot where Funai leaves metal implements as gifts, with the aim of dissuading the community from venturing into logging camps or farms to get tools, The Guardian reported.
It was thought the number of people in the Massaco community has at least doubled since the early 1990s, to an estimated 200 to 250 people.
Previous indirect observation had revealed the Massaco hunted with three-metre long bows, and to move their villages around within the forest, depending on the season.
They discouraged outsiders by planting thousands of foot and tyre-piercing wooden spikes in the ground.
Population growth among isolated communities was a trend across the Amazon, after the implementing of government policies - started by Brazil in 1987 - of not initiating contact.
Video released earlier this year showed a rare glimpse of the world's largest uncontacted tribe emerging from the Peruvian Amazon.
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