15 Biggest Hoaxes That Fooled The World

The Tasaday Tribe were supposedly a community of people that had remained isolated from the rest of the world since the Stone Age, living peacefully in jungle caves. It was said that this group had no words for conflict or violence and coexisted in harmony with one another.

Access to the tribe was tightly controlled by a man named Manuel Elizalde, Jr., who allowed many visitors, including celebrities and anthropologists, to visit the tribes in their caves, carefully guiding them around. They seem to have been used as yet more "proof" that modern culture ultimately corrupts the peaceful nature of man, playing into the popular paranoia that there is something deeply wrong with western culture.

The hoax was blown open, however, when a Swiss Journalist named Oswald Iten visited the tribes unexpectedly, only to find them chilling in huts wearing jeans and t shirts. Upon questioning via a translator, they admitted that they weren't a stone age tribe after all and that Elizalde had made them live in caves in return for cigarettes and money.

There has been backlash from those who claim that the "proof" of a hoax is in fact a hoax. The modern interpretation is that the truth lies somewhere in between. The Tasaday, were perhaps not living the pure stone age lifestyle that Elizalde claimed, but it was certainly a primitive one, perhaps in itself altered by the amount of tourism generated by the original claims in the first place.