Word: tasaday
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...ARTS Tokyo Pop: Takashi Murakami Books: The Tasaday story...
DIED. MANUEL ELIZALDE, 60, unfairly maligned Philippine official or rogue amateur anthropologist, depending upon whether his "discovery" of a primitive tribe in Mindanao is to be believed; of undisclosed causes; in Manila. No savage seemed nobler--or more unreal--than the bare-bodied Tasaday, whom Elizalde introduced to the public in 1971. When journalists found in 1986 that these simple, food-gathering folk had traded in their leafy loincloths for jeans, T shirts and baseball caps, skeptics charged foul play...
...Lindbergh wandered the earth for Pan Am, trying out its planes, advising on air routes. But his spirit had changed. He felt far closer to nature than to machines. He wanted not so much his old exhilarations of flight as peace for the blue whales and the primitive Tasaday of the Philippines...
With the help of Blit interpreters, whose language is distantly akin to Tasaday, communication slowly began. The primitives had no weapons, no agriculture, no art, no religion, no words for bad, enemy, war or kill. For good and beautiful they used the same term, mafeon. They loved the jungle; open country was "where the eye sees too far." Happiness flooded their lives. They laughed and hugged and nuzzled by the hour...
After several meetings, Elizalde and Nance flew into the secret valley of the Tasaday. High on a cliff, in a cave about 50 ft. wide and 30 ft. deep, small groups sat talking by several fires. Children climbed a smooth rock and laughed as they slid down. One boy flew a pet butterfly on a string, like a kite. The floor of the cavern was regularly swept with branches, but no improvements had been made...