Seth Barnes - The lost Amazon tribe

Did you see the following article about this tribe in the Amazon jungle that has never been touched by our modern world? It amazes me that in this age of supersonic flight, these people still exist. I guess we're not so omnipotent as we think with all our over-the-horizon satellites. It helps explain how Osama Bin Laden could duck and dive out of sight for so long.

What's interesting to me is, the place where this tribe was sighted is not too far from where our ministry works. If you saw the recent Indiana Jones movie, you fly into Iquitos and go down river from there (incidentally, it looks nothing like the movie).

These kinds of discoveries of stone-age tribes always provoke a debate over whether missionaries should blaze trails into the jungle in an effort to bring them the gospel or should they leave them alone. Nor is it a clear cut argument, even some atheists say that missionaries are needed. The pictures of the tribesmen pointing their bow and arrows at the plane would lead one to conclude that they'd rather be left alone. But the missionaries' compulsion has always been to bring hope to the lost. What are your thoughts?

'Uncontacted tribe' sighted in Amazon

Updated 4:44 a.m. EDT, Fri May 30, 2008(CNN) -- Researchers have produced aerial photos of jungle dwellers who they say are among the few remaining peoples on Earth who have had no contact with the outside world.

Indians are photographed during an overflight in May 2008, as they react to the overflight at their camp.Taken from a small airplane, the photos show men outside thatched communal huts, necks craned upward, pointing bows toward the air in a remote corner of the Amazonian rainforest.

The National Indian Foundation, a government agency in Brazil, published the photos Thursday on its Web site. It tracks "uncontacted tribes" -- indigenous groups that are thought to have had no contact with outsiders -- and seeks to protect them from encroachment.

More than 100 uncontacted tribes remain worldwide, and about half live in the remote reaches of the Amazonian rainforest in Peru or Brazil, near the recently photographed tribe, according to Survival International, a nonprofit group that advocates for the rights of indigenous people.

"All are in grave danger of being forced off their land, killed or decimated by new diseases," the organization said Thursday.

Illegal logging in Peru is threatening several uncontacted groups, pushing them over the border with Brazil and toward potential conflicts with about 500 uncontacted Indians living on the Brazilian side, Survival International said.

Its director, Stephen Cory, said the new photographs highlight the need to protect uncontacted people from intrusion by the outside world.