John Man

This is a volume in the Time-Life Peoples of the Wild series, a bit dated (1982), as the series name indicates (of course, one could argue that it's their habitat that the term 'wild' refers to, and not the people themselves). However that may be, the book portrays, in detailed text and unique photographs, the lives of these forest-dwellers, in a remote corner of the Amazon forest in eastern Ecuador. The author and photographer have undertaken the heroic task of locating them, establishing communication, making friends, and actually living with them for weeks together, taking part in their forays into the forest, earing what they eat, trying to understand their lives and their prospects. This book presents a glimpse of what is in all probability a vanished world today, as these groups were the last of the Waorani that lived outside the Indian reserves where their compatriots had already been affected by modern civilization. The first-named author, John Man, is incidentally the writer who has produced a number of books on Mongolia and the Mongols; apparently his sojourn with the "jungle tribe in Ecuador" was a once-off experience, something he did not further pursue, but a spin-off on his editing the volume The Amazon in the Time-Life Wild Places series.… (mais)