A Blank on the Map Documentary

The documentary “A Blank on the Map” is interesting because it shows what happens when two worlds meet. The British explorers in the expedition into New Guinea to meet with the various peoples and groups there, while searching for the group of peple suspected of never having met Europeans before. The explorers brought medicine and sought to identify the groups living in the jungles. They hired locals in the neighboring regions of the “blank on the map” to help guide them, even having one porter call to the seemingly invisible people after more than three walks of going through the “blank” and finding nothing of the group.
The interest in the area began when a map maker was trying to make sense of the rivers and hills by studying aerial photographs. The photographs revealed the existence of tribes, and so David Attenborough and his fellow travelers went into the jungle to make contact. The films show them meeting with various natives and the struggle that it is just to communicate with them and find the new peoples they are interested in meeting for the first time. The purpose of the expedition was to meet this new group, and yet the group is not really new in any sense, since it is native to the region.
The application of the methods of natural science to the study of people here is very precise. The travelers take note of landmarks, the rocks in the riverbeds, the width and depth of the streams, the animals that live in the area (noting which ones are dangerous, such as the bird that can rip open a man’s chest with one kick—though it usually only does so when feeling that its nest is threatened—and the harmless emerald green tree viper that the explorer points out while explaining how difficult it actually is to find any snakes in the region, as they all generally slither away). The explorers have a very deep and immense knowledge of natural science that helps to keep them alive in this foreign territory, where no Europeans have ever traveled. That is part of the novelty of the experience: they are the first to enter into this region. In an age where satellites fly across the sky, to think that there is still some part of the earth that has not been explored is interesting and exciting to people—and that is really the main reason for the expedition: to take the viewer into a world that has never been shown before, and to bring a set of people who have never been found before to the surface.
The natural science applications of the expedition are put to good purposes: they are used to help the travelers keep track of their whereabouts as well as to provide medicines to the groups who recognize that the explorers are friends who are there to help. The sciences assist them in negotiating with the peoples, using elements of the earth such as salt to trade and make new friends so that they might better reach the objective that they are seeking. These are all pluses of the application of the natural sciences.
The minuses of the application of the natural sciences are that it cannot bridge the gap between Attenborough and his team and the people they seek. There is still a divide between them, that is instinctual and human and mysterious. On one level it is linguistic and on another level it is primal. Human beings have such an ancient and mysterious history about them, such a deep and rich and varied culture, that it carries with them wherever they go and hangs about in the air like a cloud that can be felt or sensed. Perhaps this is why the nomadic tribe being sought keeps moving: it does not want to be known, does not want to be found, does not want to be part of the outside, wider world, or be anyone’s entertainment. There is little in natural science that can bridge such a gap as that.