The Taron are a small ethnic group in the Himalayan foothills of northern Burma (Myanmar) whose population is declining to the point where they are in danger of disappearing entirely. They have been referred to as the "Asian pygmies".
Like the pygmies of Central Africa and the Negritos of Southeast Asia, the Tarons are very small, averaging less than 4 feet and 3 inches (139.5 cm).
The Tarons have received their name from their original habitat; The headwaters of the Taron River. Leaving their original homeland around 200 years ago, the Tarons moved into Burma territory through the Thalalarkha mountain pass.
They settled in Kachin State, in the lower Adunlaung River valley in the Naung Mun Township of Putao District. The landscape is dense forests and difficult terrain, with torrential streams and snow-clad mountains that are home to rare wild animals such as the blue sheep and the leaf deer.
In the 1960's, a Burmese research expedition found over 50 pure-blood pygmies, and although cases of cretinism, mental retardation, goiter, and other physical and mental ailments were noted, they felt as though the community would sustain itself.
A 1997 field trip commissioned by the Kachin State Peace and Development Council revealed that only eight individuals of pure Taron stock remained. It makes the Taron one of the most highly endangered human populations in the world today.
Dr. Alan Rabinowitz visited their village to learn about the Taron pygmies in the early twenty-first century, and discovered the fate of the tribe. Dawi, age 39, the youngest remaining Taron pure-blood, explained that Taron babies were being born with increasingly severe birth defects, without any known cause. The Taron elders decided that rather than risk any more misshapen children, their race would go extinct. As a child, his father explained that Dawi would have no wife, sire no children. Soon, he will be the last Taron pygmy alive.
In 2003, Dr. P. Christiaan Klieger from the California Academy of Sciences visited the Taron village. He talked with Dawi, his sisters, and his aunt. Dawi who told Klieger that many more Taron lived across the border in China. He wished to visit and perhaps find a wife. He was not the last Taron, by any means.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||