If you ever heard of the Tassadai tribe, the supposedly uncontacted primitive tribe discovered

in the Philippines in 1971, you've probably also heard that they were eventually revealed

to have been a hoax.

A side show attraction, cooked up for the National Geographic cameras.

But it turns out that wasn't quite true either.

Because with so many things, the truth turned out to be much more nuanced and complex.

Deconstructing the Tassadai tribe is coming up next on Skeptoid.

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Deconstructing the Tassadai tribe.

Defall was a semi-nomadic trapper in the southern part of the Philippine island of Mindenau.

Throughout the 1960s, he had sporadic contact with a group of some two dozen people living

in stone age conditions, who knew Defall as the only other person in the world.

He brought them steel knives and taught them better hunting techniques.

Eventually, Defall alerted the Philippine government who sent their special representative

in charge of national minority groups, Manuel El Azalei Jr.

The people El Azalei found amazed him.

...