The Tribe Out of Time

The Tasaday story created an immediate sensation, first as an allegory representing our yearning for a more peaceful, simpler time and then as a symbol of our own gullibility. In 1971, as a terrible war dragged on in Southeast Asia, a Stone Age tribe was discovered living in total seclusion in the Philippine rain forest. The Tasaday were gentle folk whose language lacked even a word for war. They dressed in loincloths and skirts made of orchid leaves, slept in picturesque caves and lived off the land on a diet consisting of fruit, fish and insects. NBC Evening News broke the...