What Does tribe Mean
From the Latin tribes , a tribe is a social group whose members share the same origin, as well as certain customs and traditions . The concept allows to name the groupings 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 boss or patriarch, who is usually an older person and respected by the rest of the members.
The first tribes appeared in the Neolithic period . When different tribes began to establish alliances and merge, the first civilizations developed.
Among the members of the tribe a symbolic interactionism is established that allows the socialization and the permanence of values in 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 penalties are established for those who violate the values of the group.
The Sentinelese
Far from the accelerated pace of life that most human beings must endure today, there is an ancient tribe in one of the Andaman Islands that has known how to take care of itself and overcome catastrophes such as the tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004: the Sentinelese. . These are people who have lived for 60 thousand years totally detached from the world that surrounds them, with the exception of 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, adding to the mystery and mysticism that surround 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 around 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 nil.
The modern world has not missed the opportunity to label them backward and savage , in part because of their hostility towards outsiders; However, given that their environment has brought them little 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 old men and several children were kidnapped and transferred to Port Blair, the most important city on the island. As expected, contact with diseases that they had not known until now 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 act, so lacking in sensitivity, was a colonial official; in his statements he did not show any remorse, and did not miss the opportunity to question the intellectual powers of his victims.
In the 1990s, an expedition was carried to the island to study the Sentinelese, and could be seen carrying a life very healthy and well organized, which has allowed them to survive without help from outside. It is worth mentioning that the island peoples who have accepted the benefits offered by modern civilizations have declined and have become unable to support 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 are related based on different affinities. The notion of urban tribe usually refers to groups of young people that can be seen in the streets of cities and that 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 . "