Q & A

Yet according to Werner Herzog, perhaps the world's most famous documentary filmmaker, this is a life to be envied. "They are truly free," runs his voiceover in a documentary launched in New York last week: "No rules, no taxes, no phones, no radio, equipped only with their own individual values and conduct."

The footage was originally part of a four-hour long Russian documentary entitled A Year in the Taiga. But the words are Herzog's own: fascinated by the bare, severe lifestyle of the Siberian trappers, the director has reworked the film with his own philosophical musings attached. Herzog's new title, Happy People, reflects his conclusions.

Can such a sparse way of life really be described as "happy"? Not everybody would say so. But as pre-modernModernity (literally 'like in recent times') is a word used to describe the cultural, social and intellectual world formed by capitalism, rationalism and the scientific method. Pre-modern societies are those where attitudes and lifestyles persist which are thought to be typical of a previous age. cultures become rarer, many observers from the modern world have come to admire the values and ways of life they see in them.

One institution that believes in protecting traditional lifestyles is the Indian Supreme Court: this week, in a landmark ruling, Indian judges banned the controversial "human safaris" that had become a mainstay of tourism on the tropical Andaman IslandsThough they are located off the coast of Burma, this cluster of tropical islands is a territory of India. They have been inhabited for over 2,000 years, but until the rise of modern tourism the only settlements were a few small naval bases. This means that both the nature and the local culture of the islands is remarkably well-preserved..

The Andamans are home to a small tribe called the Jarawa, who have lived for millennia in total isolation. Their most sophisticated technology is the bow and arrow, they rarely stray from one small patch of forest and they are not known to have any religion.

Recently, a major new road has brought the Jarawa into contact with outsiders for the first time. The foreigners offer medicine and technology; but when other tribes have been brought into sudden contact with modern civilisations, their cultures have often been shattered and their people have been forced onto the fringes of society, destitute and vulnerable.

Preservation or 'progress'?

A person's culture is the most important thing they have, say tribal rights groups: trappers in Siberia or tribespeople in the Andaman Islands have cultures as rich and values as valid as our own. We must do everything we can to ensure that the destructive tide of modernity does not consume the identity and the dignity of such threatened lifestyles - from whom, indeed, we may have much to learn.

That is just a patronising fantasy, say modernists. What gives us the right to deny anyone technology and learning that could transform their lives for the better? A pre-modern life means a short life, stripped of opportunity and packed with hardship - the real crime against these people would be to condemn them to ignorance and isolation.

How could we possibly have anything to learn from savages and primitives?: First of all, you should be extremely careful about using words like "primitive" and "savage". They imply that traditional societies are simply less developed versions of modern ones, rather than unique cultures which deserve to be studied and taken seriously in their own right.

But do they? Geographer and scientist Jared Diamond, who lived for years among Papua New Guinean tribes, recently released a book in which he argued that Western cultures could learn much from pre-modern traditions. For instance: "in many traditional societies elderly people are of value and spend their lives next to their children and friends," he says, whereas "the way we treat our elderly is horrible".