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54 The moden world only recently reached the Yanomano, a native people of the Amazon basin. Sheltered by thick rainforest,the Yanomano lived a self-contained existence until gold was discovered in their jungle homeland. Miners flocked into the forests, cutting down trees and bringing disease and shot those Yanomano who would not get out of the way. In just seven years from the early 1980s, the population fell 20 per cent. Hands Around the World, a native American cultural association, says the Yanomano are believed to be the most culturally intact people in the world. They wear loin cloths, use fire sticks and decorate their bodies with dye from a red berry. They dont use the wheel and the only metal they use is what has been traded to them by outsiders. When a Yanomano dies, the body is burned and the remaining bones crushed into a powder and turned into a drink that is later consumed by mourners in memory of the dead. A Hands Around the World report says that in South America not only are the cultures and traditions in danger of disappearing, but some tribes are in danger of extinction. The Yanomano is a well-known tribe that is rapidly losing its members through the destruction of Western disease, the report says. Before illegal gold miners entered their rainforest, the Yanomano were isolated from modern sociaty. They occupy dense jungle north of the Amazon River between Venezuela and Brazil and are catalogued by anthropologists as neo-indians with cultural characteristics that date back more than 8,000 years. Each community lives in a circular communal house, some of which sleep up to 400, built around a central square. | 
