Story
PAUL RAFFAELE: I went there 10 years ago and, because it was so dangerous, I only got to the edge of the territory. This time, I want to go deep into Korowai territory.
BEN FORDHAM: Paul Raffaele is a man with a passion for lost tribes and black magic.
PAUL RAFFAELE: And here's a spear that went...
BEN FORDHAM: He's a writer for the respected Smithsonian Museum.
PAUL RAFFAELE: I'm looking for physical evidence of the cannibalism. I want to try and find the bones, the evidence that they actually do eat people.
BEN FORDHAM: West Papua just a few hundred kilometres north of Australia. But it could be a different planet. Snow-capped mountain ranges rich in gold and copper and, for its Indonesian rulers, the greatest prize of all timber. Down there is the largest expanse of rainforest outside the Amazon and that's where we're going. We've arrived at the edge of Korowai territory, the start of a 10-day round trip into the jungle. We've hired 15 Korowai porters to help carry our equipment. As for the rest of our expedition, there's me, a ring-in reporter for 60 Minutes, thrown in the deep end. And 10-year-old Tony, a Korowai kid who heard we were coming and walked half a day to watch the plane land. Now he's decided he's coming along, whether we like it or not. And so begins a gruelling trek into the thickest, wettest, muddiest jungle on the planet. What are they making? A bridge? And our porters are Korowai?
PAUL RAFFAELE: And some of them are even cannibals. We have some people who've actually eaten human flesh as our porters, yes. They enjoy the taste. They say it's pretty good.
BEN FORDHAM: Are you alright? Sixty-three years old mate, you're doing alright.
PAUL RAFFAELE: I'm a jungle man, mate.
BEN FORDHAM: You're doing alright. Day two of our journey and we're already among people who have turned their back against the outside world.
PAUL RAFFAELE: Well, the girls, they wear grass skirts, very short ones but, for the men, the only thing they wear is a tiny, tiny leaf and I'll leave it to your imagination to see where that goes.
BEN FORDHAM: A living, breathing time capsule where stone is favoured over steel.
PAUL RAFFAELE: That stone axe epitomises, sums up a whole epic of humankind, millions and millions of years, when people used stone axes. Now these are one of the last people in the world who are still truly in the Stone Age.
BEN FORDHAM: This is a sago palm. There are only two things the Korowai love to eat more than the flesh of this tree. One of them is snake and I'm trying very hard not to think about the other.
For me? Is it good? Mm, good snake.
At first sight, the Korowai may seem primitive, but take a look at this for a piece of engineering. Oh, mate, have a look at this. Is that one of the most amazing houses you've ever seen?
PAUL RAFFAELE: It's the most amazing house I've ever seen, and put the Sydney Opera House in that included.
BEN FORDHAM: High in these leafy skyscrapers, Korowai families protect themselves from their enemies. Well, after two long days walking through the jungle, the track has literally come to an end and the bad news for us is it ain't over. It's a long way from it. We've got two more days worth of travelling and the locals tell us the only way to do it is by water, heading up the river.
PAUL RAFFAELE: If we try, we go far enough up river, we might even see Korowai people who have never before seen outsiders. And what a ... an amazing experience that's going to be if it happens.
BEN FORDHAM: At times, the river's so shallow, everyone has to get out and push. The journey's starting to take its toll. How you going, big fella?
PAUL RAFFAELE: Not too well, mate. I'm running a pretty high temperature. I got bitten a couple of nights ago.
BEN FORDHAM: As darkness falls, we're still on the river and our troubles are just beginning. It's an ambush. Shhhh... We've got a frightening situation right here on the water at the moment. There's a tribe that's quite angry, armed with bows and arrows. They've come down to the shoreline and they're asking us to come on to the land. Do the boys think that it could be a trap? It's another Korowai clan with a reputation for murder. They want money the equivalent of about $50 and we're happy to pay but our oarsmen are too terrified to paddle over. They think it's a trick. Finally, it's our 10-year-old hard man, Tony, who works out a deal. Okay, well, I've got the money here. And, after a tense few minutes, leaders of the angry tribe arrive by canoe to collect their ransom. We just want to be peaceful, yeah? 350. Okay? 350,000? Is that Okay? And then, they're gone.
PAUL RAFFAELE: They would have killed us.
BEN FORDHAM: Good negotiating. Huh? But the night isn't over yet. We're stranded on a stone beach. It's pouring and the river level is rising fast. Our Korowai friends build a makeshift hut, and 20 of us, TV crew and cannibals alike, huddle together till dawn. Day five and we're back in the forest. We come upon a Korowai with an axe made of steel and a heart made of stone. This man tells us how he killed one of his best friends.
TRANSLATION: It's just normal. I don't feel sad or anything like that.
BEN FORDHAM: And this is what Korowai cannibalism is all about when a member of the tribe dies, the Korowai believes that person is a victim of black magic, struck down by some sort of evil spirit known as the Kakua. What follows is a frightening witch-hunt. Someone must be the Kakua and once the clan decides who it is, he will be killed and eaten.
PAUL RAFFAELE: Remember these are a Stone Age people. They don't understand about microbes and germs and so on. So if someone dies mysteriously, it must have been the source the Kakua. And so that person's relatives go out and grab that person and pretty gruesomely kill him.
BEN FORDHAM: This man you killed? Did you know him before you killed him?
TRANSLATION: Yes. He was my friend and he was part of my family.
BEN FORDHAM: That night, he arrives at our camp. He's carrying a black bag.
PAUL RAFFAELE: Oh, God.
BEN FORDHAM: What do you think of that?
PAUL RAFFAELE: This is a man who was eaten by other humans, in fact, by the man who's sitting next to us.
BEN FORDHAM: Take a look at that. He has come good on his promise he's come to his village and shown us his greatest trophy, the skull of a human being. Twelve months ago, his cousin died but just before he died, he told him of this man, a sorcerer, a witchman, so he saw it as his duty to track him down and kill him, to kill the Kakua.
TRANSLATION: First, we cut off the head and then we start to slice open the stomach. We take out the intestines and then cut the ribs out of the side. Then we cut off arms and legs.
PAUL RAFFAELE: They eat everything except the teeth, the hair and the nails everything.
BEN FORDHAM: It's now day seven. We're in completely unknown territory. We stumble upon a hunting party of Korowai men who insist we come to their village.
PAUL RAFFAELE: We can go up?
MAN: Yeah, yeah.
PAUL RAFFAELE: They look friendly, yeah?
BEN FORDHAM: Looking around, these astonished faces, it's clear they've never seen anything like us.
PAUL RAFFAELE: Have you ever seen white people before? Like us? With white skin?
TRANSLATION: No. I've never seen white people before. When we heard you were coming, I was thinking you were a ghost. The people were afraid. But when I met you, you are a human.
PAUL RAFFAELE: It's the quest of a lifetime and I've finally done it. I've finally made that first contact with ... first contact with a clan that hasn't changed for 10,000 years. You know, we could be in a time machine, you though those science fiction movies you get in the machine, you press 10,000 years, you press a button, zap! You know, one moment later, you open the door, and here we are in a cannibal tribe in remote New Guinea 10,000 years ago. Imagine the enormity of that, huh? That's this moment we've got now and that's why I've got tears in my eyes. I'm sorry. I must look like a wimp. Don't pull me pants down! Hey, hey, hey!
BEN FORDHAM: This was an unforgettable encounter. For us, a taste of what life was like at the dawn of humankind.
PAUL RAFFAELE: That's a pig, right? This one's for pig. This is for birds and guess what that's for? Humans to kill humans.
BEN FORDHAM: He's holding on for dear life. For them a visit from the future. They're as fascinated by us as we are by them. It's, it's so hard to comprehend because these people are so generous, so open, so childlike in their innocence. Yet they can turn so suddenly on their uncle, their brother, their father, anyone who they believe is evil, is a Kakua and, in a split second, they can kill them and then eat them. And then, for me, the most chilling moment of our journey. We find a little boy looking scared and confused. At six years of age, he has been condemned to death. All because his mum and dad died suddenly. And the people in his village think that he is a sorcerer, he's evil.
BOY'S UNCLE: Yeah, they're suspicious, starting suspicious, that this kid's become as a sorcerer. His uncle has brought him to this village to try to save him from the Kakua-killers.
PAUL RAFFAELE: Oh, they've got their eye on him and that kid, any time in the next 10 years, he's got to be really careful, because they could get him and then they will kill him and they'll eat him.
BEN FORDHAM: This is a pretty tough place. What are the chances that he'll survive?
PAUL RAFFAELE: I would say pretty small.
BEN FORDHAM: The boy probably has just one chance that civilisation catches up with the Korowai in time to save him. But, in doing so, civilisation will destroy these last survivors of the Stone Age.
PAUL RAFFAELE: This is the toughest question I've ever faced and I've been thinking about it for many years. I mean, what do we do? Okay, we don't understand that they kill and eat each other but to them that's very important, at the very soul of their being. So my feeling, my desperate feeling, is just let them be as they are because, within 20 or 30 years, it'll be all over anyway.
PAUL RAFFAELE: I went there 10 years ago and, because it was so dangerous, I only got to the edge of the territory. This time, I want to go deep into Korowai territory.
BEN FORDHAM: Paul Raffaele is a man with a passion for lost tribes and black magic.
PAUL RAFFAELE: And here's a spear that went...
BEN FORDHAM: He's a writer for the respected Smithsonian Museum.
PAUL RAFFAELE: I'm looking for physical evidence of the cannibalism. I want to try and find the bones, the evidence that they actually do eat people.
BEN FORDHAM: West Papua just a few hundred kilometres north of Australia. But it could be a different planet. Snow-capped mountain ranges rich in gold and copper and, for its Indonesian rulers, the greatest prize of all timber. Down there is the largest expanse of rainforest outside the Amazon and that's where we're going. We've arrived at the edge of Korowai territory, the start of a 10-day round trip into the jungle. We've hired 15 Korowai porters to help carry our equipment. As for the rest of our expedition, there's me, a ring-in reporter for 60 Minutes, thrown in the deep end. And 10-year-old Tony, a Korowai kid who heard we were coming and walked half a day to watch the plane land. Now he's decided he's coming along, whether we like it or not. And so begins a gruelling trek into the thickest, wettest, muddiest jungle on the planet. What are they making? A bridge? And our porters are Korowai?
PAUL RAFFAELE: And some of them are even cannibals. We have some people who've actually eaten human flesh as our porters, yes. They enjoy the taste. They say it's pretty good.
BEN FORDHAM: Are you alright? Sixty-three years old mate, you're doing alright.
PAUL RAFFAELE: I'm a jungle man, mate.
BEN FORDHAM: You're doing alright. Day two of our journey and we're already among people who have turned their back against the outside world.
PAUL RAFFAELE: Well, the girls, they wear grass skirts, very short ones but, for the men, the only thing they wear is a tiny, tiny leaf and I'll leave it to your imagination to see where that goes.
BEN FORDHAM: A living, breathing time capsule where stone is favoured over steel.
PAUL RAFFAELE: That stone axe epitomises, sums up a whole epic of humankind, millions and millions of years, when people used stone axes. Now these are one of the last people in the world who are still truly in the Stone Age.
BEN FORDHAM: This is a sago palm. There are only two things the Korowai love to eat more than the flesh of this tree. One of them is snake and I'm trying very hard not to think about the other.
For me? Is it good? Mm, good snake.
At first sight, the Korowai may seem primitive, but take a look at this for a piece of engineering. Oh, mate, have a look at this. Is that one of the most amazing houses you've ever seen?
PAUL RAFFAELE: It's the most amazing house I've ever seen, and put the Sydney Opera House in that included.
BEN FORDHAM: High in these leafy skyscrapers, Korowai families protect themselves from their enemies. Well, after two long days walking through the jungle, the track has literally come to an end and the bad news for us is it ain't over. It's a long way from it. We've got two more days worth of travelling and the locals tell us the only way to do it is by water, heading up the river.
PAUL RAFFAELE: If we try, we go far enough up river, we might even see Korowai people who have never before seen outsiders. And what a ... an amazing experience that's going to be if it happens.
BEN FORDHAM: At times, the river's so shallow, everyone has to get out and push. The journey's starting to take its toll. How you going, big fella?
PAUL RAFFAELE: Not too well, mate. I'm running a pretty high temperature. I got bitten a couple of nights ago.
BEN FORDHAM: As darkness falls, we're still on the river and our troubles are just beginning. It's an ambush. Shhhh... We've got a frightening situation right here on the water at the moment. There's a tribe that's quite angry, armed with bows and arrows. They've come down to the shoreline and they're asking us to come on to the land. Do the boys think that it could be a trap? It's another Korowai clan with a reputation for murder. They want money the equivalent of about $50 and we're happy to pay but our oarsmen are too terrified to paddle over. They think it's a trick. Finally, it's our 10-year-old hard man, Tony, who works out a deal. Okay, well, I've got the money here. And, after a tense few minutes, leaders of the angry tribe arrive by canoe to collect their ransom. We just want to be peaceful, yeah? 350. Okay? 350,000? Is that Okay? And then, they're gone.
PAUL RAFFAELE: They would have killed us.
BEN FORDHAM: Good negotiating. Huh? But the night isn't over yet. We're stranded on a stone beach. It's pouring and the river level is rising fast. Our Korowai friends build a makeshift hut, and 20 of us, TV crew and cannibals alike, huddle together till dawn. Day five and we're back in the forest. We come upon a Korowai with an axe made of steel and a heart made of stone. This man tells us how he killed one of his best friends.
TRANSLATION: It's just normal. I don't feel sad or anything like that.
BEN FORDHAM: And this is what Korowai cannibalism is all about when a member of the tribe dies, the Korowai believes that person is a victim of black magic, struck down by some sort of evil spirit known as the Kakua. What follows is a frightening witch-hunt. Someone must be the Kakua and once the clan decides who it is, he will be killed and eaten.
PAUL RAFFAELE: Remember these are a Stone Age people. They don't understand about microbes and germs and so on. So if someone dies mysteriously, it must have been the source the Kakua. And so that person's relatives go out and grab that person and pretty gruesomely kill him.
BEN FORDHAM: This man you killed? Did you know him before you killed him?
TRANSLATION: Yes. He was my friend and he was part of my family.
BEN FORDHAM: That night, he arrives at our camp. He's carrying a black bag.
PAUL RAFFAELE: Oh, God.
BEN FORDHAM: What do you think of that?
PAUL RAFFAELE: This is a man who was eaten by other humans, in fact, by the man who's sitting next to us.
BEN FORDHAM: Take a look at that. He has come good on his promise he's come to his village and shown us his greatest trophy, the skull of a human being. Twelve months ago, his cousin died but just before he died, he told him of this man, a sorcerer, a witchman, so he saw it as his duty to track him down and kill him, to kill the Kakua.
TRANSLATION: First, we cut off the head and then we start to slice open the stomach. We take out the intestines and then cut the ribs out of the side. Then we cut off arms and legs.
PAUL RAFFAELE: They eat everything except the teeth, the hair and the nails everything.
BEN FORDHAM: It's now day seven. We're in completely unknown territory. We stumble upon a hunting party of Korowai men who insist we come to their village.
PAUL RAFFAELE: We can go up?
MAN: Yeah, yeah.
PAUL RAFFAELE: They look friendly, yeah?
BEN FORDHAM: Looking around, these astonished faces, it's clear they've never seen anything like us.
PAUL RAFFAELE: Have you ever seen white people before? Like us? With white skin?
TRANSLATION: No. I've never seen white people before. When we heard you were coming, I was thinking you were a ghost. The people were afraid. But when I met you, you are a human.
PAUL RAFFAELE: It's the quest of a lifetime and I've finally done it. I've finally made that first contact with ... first contact with a clan that hasn't changed for 10,000 years. You know, we could be in a time machine, you though those science fiction movies you get in the machine, you press 10,000 years, you press a button, zap! You know, one moment later, you open the door, and here we are in a cannibal tribe in remote New Guinea 10,000 years ago. Imagine the enormity of that, huh? That's this moment we've got now and that's why I've got tears in my eyes. I'm sorry. I must look like a wimp. Don't pull me pants down! Hey, hey, hey!
BEN FORDHAM: This was an unforgettable encounter. For us, a taste of what life was like at the dawn of humankind.
PAUL RAFFAELE: That's a pig, right? This one's for pig. This is for birds and guess what that's for? Humans to kill humans.
BEN FORDHAM: He's holding on for dear life. For them a visit from the future. They're as fascinated by us as we are by them. It's, it's so hard to comprehend because these people are so generous, so open, so childlike in their innocence. Yet they can turn so suddenly on their uncle, their brother, their father, anyone who they believe is evil, is a Kakua and, in a split second, they can kill them and then eat them. And then, for me, the most chilling moment of our journey. We find a little boy looking scared and confused. At six years of age, he has been condemned to death. All because his mum and dad died suddenly. And the people in his village think that he is a sorcerer, he's evil.
BOY'S UNCLE: Yeah, they're suspicious, starting suspicious, that this kid's become as a sorcerer. His uncle has brought him to this village to try to save him from the Kakua-killers.
PAUL RAFFAELE: Oh, they've got their eye on him and that kid, any time in the next 10 years, he's got to be really careful, because they could get him and then they will kill him and they'll eat him.
BEN FORDHAM: This is a pretty tough place. What are the chances that he'll survive?
PAUL RAFFAELE: I would say pretty small.
BEN FORDHAM: The boy probably has just one chance that civilisation catches up with the Korowai in time to save him. But, in doing so, civilisation will destroy these last survivors of the Stone Age.
PAUL RAFFAELE: This is the toughest question I've ever faced and I've been thinking about it for many years. I mean, what do we do? Okay, we don't understand that they kill and eat each other but to them that's very important, at the very soul of their being. So my feeling, my desperate feeling, is just let them be as they are because, within 20 or 30 years, it'll be all over anyway.