Jaguar people who created their own encyclopedia of medicinal plants (6 photos)

Curious information about the amazing and wise Matses people who inhabit the jungles of South America.





When talking about tribes and relatively “savage” peoples, we most often hear stories about how far they lag behind us in development, and what a difficult life they live. Often such tribes are far from science and at least some knowledge: they live by the instincts and testaments of their ancestors, without even trying to rationally approach everything that happens around them.

However, this does not apply to the amazing Matses people, who continue to amaze scientists around the world. So, living deep in the jungles of South America, these people not only try to conduct trade, but also engage in scientific activities. To the best of my ability, of course.

Who are the Matses?

And here a completely logical question arises: what kind of people are they? Where did he come from and how did he manage to retain both the title of “wild” and the regalia of “enlightened”? It's simple: Matses are incredibly rational. And although they came into constant contact with humans only in 1969, they have already achieved a lot.

However, most of the world knows them as the jaguar people from the Amazon, because the faces of their women are decorated with peculiar “whiskers” - piercings in the form of sticks made of palm fibers, which makes the faces of local residents a little feline. It looks strange and a little scary, but what’s even more interesting is why women do this to their noses.



Initially, scientists suggested that such piercing is a tribute to totheism: so, if a tribe worships a jaguar, then its reflection should be in everything. Only the Matses turned out to be agnostics, having neither their own faith nor willing to succumb to the persuasion of the missionaries. Sticks in the nose are not decoration, but, on the contrary, an attempt to spoil one’s appearance, making Matses women as recognizable as possible.

The thing is that in the forests of the Amazon live a huge number of tribes and peoples of very different degrees of friendliness. Many of them are not averse to stealing a beauty from a neighboring village. Only such a peculiar piercing not only makes a woman unattractive to neighboring men, but also serves as an identification mark, so it will not be possible to steal a woman of this people unnoticed.

What do Matses do?

Despite the rather active interaction of the Matses with the outside world, this people still managed to maintain their relative autonomy and even freedom. So, they received a part of the forest for their use, which became a protected area. Here they conduct their usual household, where each member of the community is busy with his own business.

However, talking about the Matses as a community is not entirely correct. These are several settlements where, in total, about 3,200 people live. Each settlement is governed by its own chief, and each has its own healers, hunters and gatherers.





Thus, most of the people are busy hunting wild animals, collecting caterpillars, roots and fruits, as well as medicinal herbs. All this constitutes the main diet of the local people.

Some Matses are also involved in the extraction and processing of palm oil. Not the kind that is added to chocolate and other products, but the other kind – cosmetic. Having a large number of necessary plants on their territory, the Indians have no problem extracting it and then selling it or exchanging it for the resources they need.



The Brazilian authorities even believe that over time the Indians may take over the entire industry for the production of murumuru (that same oil). They are also helped to sell their bracelets and necklaces in nearby cities.

Took life into your own hands

However, the Matses themselves do not sit idle. They actively began to use the benefits of civilization, but only for their own purposes. So a group of Matses created their own encyclopedia of medicinal plants of the Amazon. To do this, the elder of one of the settlements gathered his healers and sent them into the forest, along with a photographer. He helped the Indians photograph the plants growing on their territory.

For each plant, healers gave a detailed description of its properties and diseases that it can help cure. Quite a serious approach for a people who became known to the world only about 50 years ago.



However, not everything is so simple. The Matses wrote the encyclopedia in their own language, leaving all rights to their work to themselves. Moreover, they forbade it to be translated or quoted anywhere, and at the very end of the book they added a phrase stating that only representatives of the Matses people can read the encyclopedia.

And this is not their only contribution to science. They also took on the task of creating a detailed map of the Amazon with the division of land between different peoples. It turned out that the territory of different tribes and villages differed significantly from how anthropologists imagined it.



Unfortunately, deforestation and poaching have put the Matses people in an unenviable position. The plants they need to survive are cut down, and they themselves slowly begin to be pushed deeper and deeper into the forest. The animals they need to survive have also come under the attention of poachers, so surviving on subsistence farming is becoming more and more difficult every year. Therefore, the time is not far distant when the people of the Amazon will have to give up and forget about their autonomy, accepting help from outside.