On the territory of the Brazilian state of Amazonas on the Maisi River, the Pirajo Indians live. This tribe is considered one of the most unusual and amazing on the planet for several reasons. First, these Indians have no social hierarchy at all. Second, they don't use numbers. Thirdly, they have no concepts of "past" and "future", "today" and "tomorrow."
According to archaeological research, the first representatives of the Pirajo tribe appeared in this region no later than ten thousand years ago. Starting from the first decades of the last century, Europeans began to visit the tribe. First, with the aim of converting them to Christianity. Then - with research missions. However, due to the fact that the Pirajo Indians have no idea about such concepts as "time", "history", missionary work among them had no success.
In addition, the Indians believe and can only talk about what they see themselves. That is, when they tried to tell them a story about Jesus Christ, they asked the narrator if he had seen it personally. Since the answer, naturally, was negative, they could not even imagine how they could just take it and believe it like that. Accordingly, Pirajo also does not have his own deities. However, as the missionary who lived with the Indians claimed, they are able to see spirits in the form of objects of the surrounding world - animals, plants and other people.
They don't even have numbers. These Indians do not understand at all why they need to count anything or anyone. They perfectly manage with just two quantitative concepts: "several" and "many". But what is “one” - they cannot understand it.
In everyday life, the Pirajo Indians manage with just a few things: a pot, a saucepan and a machete knife. Their furniture huts have only a wooden bed. The Indians do not store food and do not understand why this should be done. Men wear ready-made clothes, women sew for themselves. They trade cloth, clothing and household utensils for Brazil nuts, wood, and chewing gum. Sex with local women serves as a payback for some groceries, gunpowder, whiskey and canoes. It is believed that precisely because sex with strangers is not prohibited here, the number of Indians does not decrease.
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And these people are also confident that sleep is a small death, and when a person wakes up, he is not the same person he was before sleep. It is for this reason that the Pirajo Indians hardly sleep - only occasionally they can take a nap for half an hour. Even at night, they do something: make something, communicate, play with children and dogs, dance. If, nevertheless, someone falls asleep and, waking up, realizes that he has somehow changed - he changes his name. On average, every Indian changes his name several times in his entire life: every 6-7 years.
One of the missionaries who came to teach the Indians to believe in one God, quite unexpectedly for himself, stayed with them for seven whole years. And during this time, he not only learned their rather complicated and unknown language among the rest of the inhabitants of the planet, but also imbued with their way of life, way of thinking and the ability to be joyful and happy. He concluded that religion cannot make people better or happier. Therefore, he stayed with the Indians for so long - he realized that he should rather learn from Pirajo, and not vice versa.
