| caption: |
rapid disappearance of tribes and brief period for their study |
| text: |
The time when research among isolated primitive groups is still possible rapidly draws to its close, and it is a sobering thought that in the entire history of the world there are at the most fifty years when the existence of primitive populations more or less unchanged by contacts with technologically advanced civilizations coincides with the availability of apparatus capable of recording with accuracy the style of life of archaic man. Until a few decades ago anthropologists did not have the mechanical means to produce visual and auditory records of a permanent nature, and within some twenty or thirty years when the machine age will have penetrated to the last corners of the world, the objects of such documentation will no longer be in existence. No exertions on the part of future anthropologists will be able to make up for lost opportunities. To them the present preliterate societies will appear as remote and inaccessible as the society of paleolithic man is to us. For this reason I feel justified in presenting here the results of fieldwork among an Indian tribe undertaken more than thirty years ago. |
