The modem world only recently reached the Yanomamo, a native people of the Amazon basin. Sheltered by thick rainforest, the Yanomano lived a self-contained existence until gold was discovered in their jungle homeland. Miners flocked into the forests, cutting down trees and bringing in disease and shot those Yanomamo who would not get out of the way. In just seven years from the early 1980s, the population fell 20 percent.
Hands Around the World, a native American cultural association, says the Yanomamo are believed to be the most culturally intact people in the world. They wear loin cloths, use fire sticks and decorate their bodies with dye from a red berry (浆果). They don’t use the wheel and the only metal they use is what has been traded to them by outsiders. When a Yanomamo dies, the body is burned and the remaining bones crushed into a powder and turned into a drink that is later consumed by mourners in memory of the dead.
A Hands Around the World report says that in South America not only are the cultures and traditions in danger of disappearing, but some tribes are in danger of extinction. "The Yanomamo is a well-known tribe that is rapidly losing its members through the destruction of Western disease," the report says. Before illegal gold miners entered their rainforest, the Yanomamo were isolated from modern society.
They occupy dense jungle north of the Amazon River between Venezuela and Brazil and are catalogued by anthropologists (人类学家) as neo-indians with cultural characteristics that date back more than 8,000 years. Each community lives in a circular communal house, some of which sleep up to 400, built around a central square.
Though many Yanomamo men are monogamous, it is not unusual for them to have two or more wives. Anthropologists from the University of Wisconsin say polygamy is a way to increase one’s wealth because having a large family increases help with hunting and cultivating the land. These marriages result in a shortage of women for other men to marry, which has led to inter-tribal wars.
Each Yanomamo man is responsible for clearing his land for gardening, using slash-and-hum farming methods. They grow plantains, a type of banana, and hunt game animals, fish and anaconda (南美热带蟒蛇) using bows and arrows.

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