[DanaC]

Medicine that can prevent death. Knowledge of how the physical world works. Gender equality (which both history and anthropology have shown us is something developed and chosen, not something indigenous to any culture).

Just because the modern world can offer life-saving medicine does not mean it is available to all who inhabit that world. It is not even available to all who inhabit Brazil and Peru. What on earth makes you think that this group of people will go from having no aspects of the modern world in their lives to having the best that the modern world can offer? That's a huge assumption to make. The risks inherent in wreaking sudden and profound change upon a society are great indeed to be taking on their behalf, based upon an assumption that could well prove false. Are we introducing life-saving medicines and a more fulfilling life, or are we introducing a new conception of poverty and unease?

Noble savage? Doesn't exist and never has. But who's to say they're savages? And for all of our progress how arrogant to say we are better. The city dwellar looks at the rural villager and thinks how strange and uncomfortable to know everybody and have everyone know your business, how strange and how small their world. The villager looks at the city dwellar and thinks how cold to be so anonymous, to have nobody looking out for you, nobody knowing you but your immediate family, no roots beyond your front door. Neither way is more or less civilised than the other and both are very different. We are looking from afar at these people, we only know our own world, how can we possibly know how it compares to theirs. Mathematical formulas of disease and morbidity cannot give us that answer. We don't know what their cultural understanding of the world is, what art they pass from generation to generation.

There is no consensus on the gender question, in the fields of history or anthropology. There are enough anomolies to throw doubt on most theses and there are enough patterns to add weight. We do not know how these people construct gender. It has been constructed differently at different times in different places and cultures have historically had a knack of constructing gender, or allowing enough flexibility in the model, to effectively respond to their needs. Again there are anomalies, most particularly when there are competing needs. If there is a social need for girl babies, but an economic need for boys, we can end up with cultures breaking the fine balance in births that allows them continue.

We don't know anything about these people. There is enough variance amongst the known patterns of development exhibited by 'primitive' cultures that we really can't make too many assumptions.