The Maasai tribe is distributed in regions of Kenya and Tanzania.
From the Latin tribus , a tribe is a social group whose members share the same origin, as well as certain customs and traditions . The concept allows us to name the groups formed by some ancient or primitive peoples .
The tribe, in the traditional sense, arises from the association of several families that inhabit a certain territory . The social group is under the leadership of a chief or patriarch, who is usually an older person and respected by the rest of the members.
Rise of the tribes
The first tribes appeared in the Neolithic period . When different tribes began to establish alliances and merge, the first civilizations developed.
A symbolic interactionism is established among the members of the tribe that allows socialization and the durability of values over time through intergenerational transmission.
The tribe, in short, is a form of social organization . There are hierarchies (with a boss who dictates the rules of coexistence ) and punishments are established for those who violate the group's values.
The Sentinelese
Far from the accelerated pace of life that most human beings must endure today, there exists in one of the Andaman Islands an ancient tribe that has known how to take care of itself and overcome catastrophes such as the tsunami that hit Indonesia in 2004: the Sentinelese. . These are people who have lived for 60 thousand years completely detached from the world around them, except for their reuse of the remains of ships that run aground on the reefs of their island .
The Sentinelese are often considered to belong to the Stone Age, which adds to the mystery and mysticism that surrounds them. Their isolation reaches such a point that their language differs substantially from those spoken in the rest of the archipelago. The studies carried out on this fascinating tribe indicate that they are direct descendants of the first human populations from the African continent and that the contact they have had with other peoples is almost zero.
Tribes are born through the association of different families that live together in a certain territory.
A tribe far from the modern world
The modern world has not missed the opportunity to brand them as backward and savage , in part because of the hostility they show towards outsiders; However, since their environment has not offered them much more than contempt and violent attacks, it is not surprising that the Sentinelese prefer to step aside.
At the end of the 19th century, for example, two elderly people and several children were kidnapped and taken to Port Blair, the most important city on the island. As expected, contact with diseases that they had not known until then overcame their defenses and the two oldest died shortly after. The little ones were returned home with a large number of gifts. The person responsible for this insensitive act was a colonial official; In his statements he showed no remorse, and did not miss the opportunity to question the intellectual faculties of his victims.
Between autonomy and dependence
In the 1990s, an expedition was carried out to the island to study the Sentinelese, and it was observed that they lead a very healthy and well-organized life , which has allowed them to survive without help from outside.
It is worth mentioning that the peoples of the islands who have accepted the benefits offered by modern civilizations have declined and have become incapable of supporting themselves.
urban tribe
In a more modern sense of the term, a tribe is any group of people who share a series of interests and whose members relate based on different affinities.
The notion of urban tribe usually refers to groups of young people who can be seen on the streets of cities and who are distinguished from each other by clothing, musical tastes and other issues. For example: "In Argentina, Fotolog users have become an urban tribe known as flogger."