Amazing footage is emerging from Brazil that shows an 'uncontacted' tribe in the Amazon.
Uncontacted people - or lost tribes - are communities who live completely untouched by modern civilization.
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The rare video, which was shot using a drone, was shot in the Javari Valley, close to Brazil's border with Peru, and seems to show 16 individuals walking around a clearing in the dense Amazonian rainforest.
In the video, one of the tribe members appears to be carrying a bow and arrow. You can also spot a rustic wooden building, known as a 'maloca', and a crude farm for the cultivation of manioc, a typical Amazonian vegetable.
As reported by Metro.co.uk, the film was released by the Brazilian National Indian Foundation, known as FUNAI, a government agency responsible for protecting indigenous people, including uncontacted peoples.
The tribe has never been contacted by the outside world, let alone filmed, so next to nothing is known about their language, ethnicity or culture. Any uncontrolled contact could be fatal, as they are unlikely to have immunity to many diseases that are rife in the modern world.
"These images have the power to make society and the government reflect on the importance of protecting these groups," said Wallace Bastos, the president of FUNAI.
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The footage was shot in 2017 as part of an ongoing study, but was kept under wraps to protect the research.
It took the researchers who shot the footage three weeks to trek into the jungle, hiking 250 kilometres into the Javari Valley reservation.
They undertook the expedition after hearing reports that illegal hunters were threatening the existence of the tribes in the region, several of whom are uncontacted.
"The more we know about isolated communities' way of living, the more equipped we are to protect them," said Bruno Pereira, FUNAI's Isolated Indigenous Peoples coordinator.
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"The use of drones provided safety both for the indigenous people and for the FUNAI team.
"The idea is to share these scenes in order to confirm the existence of these Indians and the importance of protecting them. We need to strengthen our work in the region.
"We respect their isolation. Their isolation will remain until the day they decide against it, or until an extreme situation requires the State to make contact."
FUNAI estimate that there are up to 3,000 people living in the Amazon who are yet to be contacted, split into 113 tribes.
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Only 27 of these have been sighted, meaning that the majority remain unknown to the Brazilian government and the wider world.
There are also thought to be around 15 more in the jungles of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia.
The advance of mining companies into their traditional homelands has threatened uncontacted peoples with having contact foisted upon them.
Topics: World News, News, Amazon, Brazil