In the morning the hunting party was gone. We never did get to the village and I still do not know for sure whether or not there are genuine first contacts to be made in West Papua. Watching one of our porters splashing about in a river one day, however, it struck me that if a naked hunter-gatherer were to emerge from the forest and dress himself in shorts and a T-shirt, he would look exactly like one of our porters; would he still be a traditional hunter-gatherer? And would he be less interesting purely because he was carrying an old steel machete rather than a bow and arrow?
Mark Anstice is the author of First Contact (Eye Books). He has made two documentaries, First Contact, on BBC TV in January, and a six-part series for Discovery, to be shown later next year (2007).
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