A Bit of Anthropology

Greetings and Salutations my Dear Readers,

I would like to encourage you from the bottom of my heart, liver, and lungs, to share with me the passion that I have for understanding our various homo sapien relatives, particularly for the Mek Tribe of Papua.

The Mek people are an amazing group of humans. In some way, they remind me of our local “vagabond” that we have in our neighborhood. He appears to be an old Neanderthal, but surely he’s not. Even so, how he survives is amazing, just like the Mek Tribe people.

I would be extremely honored and very pleased to help you in understanding such peoples, including the Mek Tribe, the Kombai Tribe, and others of our less technological relatives. What will come of them, I don’t know.

However, they seem to have been completely untainted from the ways of the outside world all this time. Things are no different than they were 100 or 1000 years ago for them.

For reference, see http://www.papuatrekking.com/Korowai_Kombai.html

I apologize to them in advance, but I feel that they will never read these words.

I have been to Borneo, which is not far from Papua. Of course, there’s Papua, and then, separately, there’s Papua New Guinea. The island of New Guinea – the second largest island in the world – is immediately north of Australia. It is divided into Papua on the west side, Papua New Guinea on the right side, and West Papua west of Papua, on the far left side. Borneo – the third largest island in the world – is divided into 3 political units: Indonesian, Malaysian, and Brunei-an. The latter is a sultanate. I spent quite a bit of time on the island of Karimata, off the west coast of Borneo. Really interesting. Cannibals still reside there…. Imagine getting eaten by someone!

Anyway, the Kombai people are awesome. They build tree houses. Not the kind your dad would build for you in the back yard. But real houses, way, way up in trees. What’s with that? Stunning, I’d say.

These peoples are vanishing. Most already have. What a thrill it would be to live among them while they are who they are. Not to introduce new technology, but to experience a vanishing breed. I remember a great movie of some ten or more years ago…  “The Medicine Man,” with Sean Connery. Very similar. But if I were to live among them, I would become one of them, meaning, I wouldn’t wear goofy fishing hats or shorts or whatever. I’d wear what they were wearing – or not wearing. The Penis Gourd is a clever sartorial piece, for example.

I just can’t understand how they survive, so well, under their conditions. They don’t wear clothes, or shoes, so they have to run around without protection from the elements. And they aren’t even members of a Naturist Club. No cell phones, computers, cars, or any modern device. Not even devices that are not very modern! How they manage is quite astonishing!