Ever wished you had a superpower of some sort? There are entire tribes of people who have seemingly superhuman abilities that we can only dream of. Sometimes, these people do not even realize that they are exceptional until it is pointed out to them.

These tribes got their superpowers due to various factors, including their foods, climates, and lifestyles. In several instances, the sources of these abilities are explainable. Nevertheless, these superpowers give them an edge over other humans in sports and other ways.

10 The Kalenjin Of Kenya Are The World’s Best Long-Distance Runners

Everyone knows that Kenya has the world’s best marathon runners. What most people do not know is that the majority of these runners are from the same tribe. Enter the Kalenjin, the world’s best long-distance runners.

Several scientists, researchers, and sports analysts have tried to explain why the tribe dominates long-distance running. Although their starch-rich diet, the location of their homeland, and coincidental social and economic factors have been fingered as possible reasons, no one has come to a definite conclusion. However, it is suspected to have something to do with genetics.

The Kalenjin have small ankles and calves and a slim stature, which is just perfect for marathon running. Body size is important in determining who will win a marathon because people with smaller ankles and calves use less energy than others. It is even said that one can guess the winner of a marathon by checking which of the contestants has the smallest ankles and calves.^[1]

9 Bajau People Of Indonesia Can Hold Their Breath Underwater For An Unusually Long Time

The Bajau people of Indonesia are called sea nomads or sea gypsies because of their ability to remain underwater for several minutes without any equipment. The most experienced divers can remain underwater for 13 minutes before returning to the surface to breathe. Researchers from Cambridge University discovered that the Bajau people can do this because their bodies adapted to diving, causing their spleens to increase by 50 percent.

Before the discovery, researchers had always suspected the size of our spleens had something to do with our ability to remain underwater. A larger spleen compresses underwater, releasing oxygen-rich blood into the body. This reduces oxygen use and allows us to stay underwater for longer. In the case of the Bajau people, they have a unique gene that increases secretion of the thyroid hormone T4, which causes larger spleens.^[2]

8 Moken People Of Indonesia Can See Underwater

What is cooler than being able to hold your breath underwater? Seeing underwater.

This ability is limited to the children of the Moken people of western Thailand. Like the Bajau people of Indonesia, the Moken live by the seaside and are also called water nomads. Unlike other kids, however, the Moken children have excellent eyesight underwater.

In 1999, Anna Gislen, a researcher with the University of Lund, traveled to Thailand to live with the Moken people and study their superpower. She realized that the eyesight of their children was two times better underwater than that of European children. Interestingly, she also observed that adult Moken cannot see as well underwater.

Gislen initially suspected that the eyes of the children had evolved. But that was not the case because it would have affected their eyesight outside the water. On careful observation, she realized that the children could constrict their pupils and change the shape of the lenses of their eyes—two factors necessary for underwater eyesight. In fact, this is how seals and dolphins see underwater.

To confirm her theory, Gislen trained some European children in Thailand and Swedish children in Sweden to control their pupils and lenses underwater. A month later, they could see as well underwater as the Moken children. The European children did not find it easy, though. Unlike the Moken children, their eyes always turned red because of the salty seawater. But they would have adapted to that, too, if the training continued.

Moken adults cannot see that well underwater because their lenses are already rigid, just like that of adults elsewhere. From all indications, it is unlikely that Moken children will maintain their superpower for long. The entire tribe was moved far inland after an earthquake-induced tsunami destroyed their seaside village in 2004. They no longer have such easy access to the sea.^[3]

7 The Sherpas Are Expert Mountain Climbers

Climbing Everest or any other mountain would be a daunting task for the average person. But not for the Sherpas. They are expert mountain climbers with the ability to seek out previously unknown routes. Today, people climbing Mount Everest always go with Sherpa guides.

Research revealed that Sherpas are excellent mountain climbers because their bodies manage oxygen better at higher altitudes than the average person. This should not be a surprise. The Sherpas have been living on the Himalayas for over 6,000 years, which is more than enough time for their bodies to adapt to the extremely cold temperatures and low oxygen levels. The Sherpas are also immune to the nasty side effects and sometimes fatal ailments that affect other climbers.

Oxygen decreases as we go higher up Mount Everest. In response, the body produces more red blood cells to feed the muscles with the required oxygen. At the same time, these excess blood cells make the blood thicker, stressing the heart.

The Sherpas also experience the same thing but at a much lower rate. This is not all. Their bodies are also able to produce more energy in the absence of oxygen.^[4]

6 Some Native Ecuadorean Sufferers Of Laron Syndrome Are Immune To Cancer And Diabetes

Laron syndrome is an ailment that causes mutation in the human growth hormone receptor, leading to dwarfism. It is common among members of a tribe in a remote village in Ecuador. No one thought much of the syndrome until Dr. Jaime Guevara-Aguirre, who had been working with the tribe, realized that tribesmen with the syndrome were almost immune to diabetes and cancer.

In contrast, tribesmen without the syndrome were highly susceptible to cancer and diabetes. To confirm his suspicion, Guevara-Aguirre partnered with Dr. Valter D. Longo of the University of Southern California to run lab tests with serum made from genes of the Laron patients.^[5]

The researchers added the serum to human cells that had been deliberately damaged. They discovered that the serum stopped these cells from experiencing more genetic damage. At the same time, these cells destroyed themselves instead of turning cancerous.

5 Some Of The Fore People Of Papua New Guinea Are Immune To Kuru And Mad Cow Disease

Kuru is the name of a deadly brain disease that broke out among members of the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea in the 20th century. It was the result of tribesmen eating the brains of their dead as part of their burial rites.

Some of the consumed brains were infected with prion disease, which caused kuru. The majority of the deaths occurred in the 1950s, forcing the tribesmen to abandon the tradition. At that time, 2 percent of the tribesmen died every year.

Today, several tribesmen are immune to kuru and will not get it even if they eat the infected brain of a dead person. They are also immune to similar diseases, including mad cow disease. This protection has been traced to the unique V127 genetic mutation present in the bodies of kuru survivors. Descendants of tribesmen who never had kuru do not have the mutation or the immunity to kuru and mad cow disease.

To test their theory, researchers used genetic engineering to develop some mice with the mutation before injecting the animals with the different brain diseases. They found that the mice were immune to kuru, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, depending on whether the animals had one or two copies of the V127 mutation.^[6]

As to the Fore people, researchers believe that all of them would have become immune to kuru and similar brain diseases if they had continued to eat the brains of their dead.

4 Tsimane People Of Bolivia Are Almost Immune To Heart Disease

The Tsimane people of Bolivia have the lowest risk of heart disease in the world. Between 2004 and 2015, researchers tested hundreds of tribesmen and discovered that 90 percent had clear arteries, which is directly linked to a lower possibility of contracting heart disease. At the same time, they have lower blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar.^[7]

Researchers attributed this uniqueness to the diet and lifestyle of the Tsimane people. They eat unprocessed carbohydrates along with little fat and protein. They get their protein from the animals they hunt and the fish they catch. They are also very active and work long hours.

3 The Hmong People Of China Can Communicate By Whistling

Whistling is not exclusive to the Hmong people of China. Several tribes around the world independently learned to communicate via whistling. However, they are usually located in mountainous regions where people live far apart. The Hmong live at the foot of the Himalayas.

The Hmong farmers whistle to chat on farms, while hunting in the jungle, and to send love messages at night. Everyone understands what the lovers are saying. But they do not recognize the people because a whistle is not individually identifiable like a voice. This allows the lovers to remain anonymous while passing messages. Some even add nonsense whistles to confuse the listeners.

A tribe on one of the Canary Islands also communicates via whistling. Their whistling language is called Silbo Gomero and sounds so similar to birdsong that some birds are imitating it.

Some Amazonian tribes also use whistling to communicate while hunting in the jungle. This is safer than speech because whistling will not startle game. The Inuit communities of the Bering Strait also use whistling to communicate when whale hunting.

Whistling has even been used in warfare. The Berbers of North Africa used it to pass secret messages during their resistance against France. During World War II, Australia hired Wam speakers from Papua New Guinea to transmit and decode whistled messages to prevent the interception of radio messages by the Japanese.^[8]

2 Some Aboriginal Australians Have Superb Vision

Looking for humans with the best eyesight? Check with the aboriginal people of Australia. Some have eyesight four times better than the average person. This allows them to see things that are four times smaller than what the average person can see. Other aboriginal Australians do not have such superb eyesight, although they can see two or three times better than the average person.

Some aboriginal people work as spotters for the Australian army because they can perceive enemies at extremely long distances. They are also used to spot illegal immigrants’ boats and illegal fishing boats in Australian waters.

This superior vision is believed to be the result of the hunter-gatherer nature of ancient aboriginal people who needed superb eyesight to survive in the wild. Unfortunately, today’s aboriginal Australians do not always have their remarkable eyesight into old age. Due to several factors, including poor hygiene and diabetes, aboriginal people above 40 are six times likelier to go blind than other Australians.^[9]

1 The Okinawans Of Japan Live The Longest

Looking for the oldest people alive? Look no further than the native people of Okinawa, Japan. They are likelier to reach age 100 than the members of any other tribe in the world.

Okinawa boasts of having the largest concentration of centenarians in the world. Longevity among Okinawans has been traced to their healthy diet. They eat lots of whole grains, soy, tofu, vegetables, sweet potatoes, fish, squid, and octopus.

Despite their large centenarian population, the Okinawans have been suffering a steady decline in health within the past few years. This has been traced to increased consumption of fast food from outlets that followed the opening of a US base in the area.^[10]

In ancient times, the term barbarian referred to any group or tribe that wasn’t part of the great European civilizations, namely the Greeks and Romans. Later, unchristianized people generally fell into this category. When we think about barbarians that terrorized Europe throughout the ages, the Huns, Mongols, and Vikings almost always come to mind. 

Either by sea or by land, “civilized” Europe seemed, at times, unable to get a reprieve from these incessant marauders. Here’s a list of 10 other such barbarian tribes that terrorized Europeans throughout history…

10. The Chatti

As the Romans were steadily expanding out of the Italian Peninsula, they came in contact with many other barbarians they had not previously encountered. Among the fiercest of these tribes were the Germanic peoples. It was not until Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars during the 1st century BC that the Romans made a clear distinction between them and the Celts. Fast forward roughly 100 years and the Chatti, a Germanic tribe, were among Rome’s most powerful enemies of the 1st century AD. 

In his literary work entitled Germania, the famous Roman historian and politician Tacitus provides some truly insightful glimpses into just how menacing the Chatti truly were. He describes the people as having “hardy bodies, well-knit limbs, fierce countenances, and unusual mental vigor.” 

He goes on to talk about a certain custom of the Chatti; a sort of ferocious initiation ritual. “As soon as they reach manhood they let their hair and beard grow as they will. This fashion of covering the face is assumed in accordance with a vow pledging them to the service of Valour; and only when they have slain an enemy do they lay it aside. Standing over the bloody corpse they have despoiled, they reveal their faces to the world once more… The coward who will not fight must stay unshorn.” 

Tacitus also describes the older Chatti warriors as always being the first to start the battle and making up the first ranks of their military formations. Even in peacetime, these veterans maintained a ferocious look on their faces and would fight “until old age leaves them without enough blood in their veins for such stern heroism.” It’s believed that around the 3rd century AD, the Chatti became part of the coalition of the Franks.

9. The Harii

Located further to the East in what is now Czechia, Slovakia, Southern Poland, and Western Ukraine, the Harii were further away from civilized Europe and were, therefore, less documented. And while there’s some confusion around who the Harii people were, we have gotten some detailed descriptions about how they waged war. Unlike the Chatti, whose prowess in battle came from their stern heroism, the Harii relied on camouflage and psychological warfare. 

Tacitus says that “they [the Harii] black their shields and dye their bodies, and choose pitch dark nights for their battles. The shadowy, awe-inspiring appearance of such a ghoulish army inspires mortal panic; for no enemy can endure a sight so strange and hellish. Defeat in battle starts always with the eyes.” 

As to their identity, some scholars believe the Harii to be a somewhat small Germanic tribe part of the Lugii federation, which itself was part of the larger Suevi confederation of tribes. Others believe the Harii to be Continental Celts predating the Germanic migration to the area. 

Some scholars believe the Harii were not even a tribe, to begin with, but a specialized army of young warriors that worshiped Woden (Odin). They were inspired to replicate the Einherjar (those who fight alone), mythical ghost warriors who’ve entered Valhalla and were personally chosen by Odin to fight the last battle of the world, known as Ragnarok.

8. The Picts (Caledonians)

Known to the Romans as Caledonians, the Picts were a people of Celtic or even older origin. Initially used as a pejorative by the Romans, the name Pict literally translates to “painted one.” This was based on their custom of either painting or tattooing their bodies. Yet, by the 7th century AD, the Picts began self-identifying as such. They lived in present-day northeastern Scotland and came in direct contact with the Romans after their invasion of the island. 

Around the year 80 AD, roughly 40 years after the initial Roman invasion of Britain, Roman governor and general, Julius Agricola, started the invasion of Scotland. Although they won the Battle of Mons Graupius against the Picts, the Romans didn’t follow up and retreated instead. Modern scholars speculate that the battle didn’t go exactly as was recorded by the Romans, which is further corroborated by the fact that they made very few other attempts at conquering Pictish lands. They, instead, switched to a containment strategy by building Hadrian’s Wall in 122 AD, and the Antonine Wall further north in 142 AD. 

According to the Roman soldier and historian, Ammianus Marcellinus of the 4th century AD, the Picts were “roving at large and causing much devastation.” Their go-to military tactics were primarily hit-and-run. They feigned retreat as soon as a battle started and while the Romans were setting up camp later in the day, the Picts would pour out of the woods and attack them. They would also lure the Roman cavalry into traps by following similar tactics.

7. The Vandals

The Vandals were another Germanic tribe originally from present-day southern Poland, which began migrating West with the arrival of the Huns at the start of the 5th century AD. They invaded Gaul and moved into the Iberian Peninsula, settling there in 409 AD. By 429, however, they were driven out by the Visigoths, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar into Northern Africa. In 435, they became clients of Rome but only a few years later, they would break that treaty, capturing Carthage and establishing their own autocratic kingdom.

Over the coming years, they conquered the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Malta, Mallorca, and Ibiza; effectively taking control of the majority of Rome’s grain supply. Their pirate fleets now also had firm control over the Western Mediterranean. In fact, the Old English word for the Mediterranean was Wendelsæ (Sea of the Vandals).

In 455, they also invaded Italy and captured the city of Rome, plundering it for all its riches. Although it’s well-known that they didn’t destroy any buildings or kill the city’s inhabitants, this act was later used by the French abbot Henri Grégoire de Blois during the French Revolution of the 18th century to come up with the word “vandalism.” In 533, the Byzantines invaded their lands and in a single campaign defeated the Vandal kingdom, ending their reign.

6. The Avars

While the Huns were among the first and fiercest nomadic tribes to have originated somewhere in Central Asia and wreaked havoc on the European continent, they were certainly not the last. Not even a century after the Hunnic Empire disintegrated in the second half of the 5th century AD, another group of warmongering horse lords from the East took their place. These were the Avars and although not as notorious as their predecessors, they would carry on a similar legacy of war and destruction. It was the Avars who introduced the iron stirrup into Europe as well as the main cause for the southward migration of the Serbs and Croats. 

Their first appearance in Europe was during Emperor Justinian I’s rule of the Byzantine Empire (527 to 565 AD) who hired them as mercenaries against other troublesome tribes. After Justinian’s death, the Avars began looking for a place to settle and they found it in the Pannonian Plain (present-day Hungary); exactly where the Huns centered their empire previously. Under the leadership of Bayan I, the Avars expelled the Gepids from the area and began expanding their newly found Khaganate in all directions. Some sources say that Bayan killed the Gepid King, Cunimund, and even turned his skull into a wine cup.   

Over the following two centuries, the Avars would conduct many raids against their neighbors, displacing or subjugating tribes to use as “cannon fodder” in their wars or extort those they couldn’t defeat outright. Their main focus of attack was the Balkan Peninsula, deep inside the Byzantine Empire, even laying siege to Constantinople in 626 AD. Their end came with Charlemagne of the Franks. He was able to defeat them once and for all, conquer their capital known simply as “The Ring,” and take their huge treasure hoard back to Paris. By 796 AD, the Avar Khaganate was no more.

5. The Drevlians

The Drevlians – roughly translated to forest dwellers – were an East Slavic people living in present-day Ukraine and Belarus, northwest of Kiev, during the 6th and 10th centuries AD. One thing that seems to have set them apart from most of their neighbors is that, together with the Polyanians (field dwellers), they were the only tribes to have a monarchical rule. Moreover, the Drevlians seem to have “thought in common with their prince,” which hints towards some direct democracy. But this is not what appalled Christian Europe about the Drevlians, nor was it their prowess in battle. It was actually their pagan customs surrounding marriage. 

If the Medieval Slavic ecclesiastical writers had only praise for the Polyanians, saying, among other things, that they were respectful towards their wives, parents, siblings, and parents-in-law, the Drevlians were the complete opposite. In The Rus’ Primary Chronicle from the early 12th century, the Drevlians are said to have “existed in bestial fashion and lived like cattle. They killed one another, ate every impure thing, and there was no marriage among them, but instead, they seized upon maidens by capture.”

They would meet a brutal end, however, at the hands of Olga of Kiev. After they assassinated her husband, Grand Prince Igor of the Kievan Rus, Olga wanted vengeance. She started by burying the Drevlian ambassadors alive and luring the Drevlian nobles into her bathhouse which was burnt down with them still inside. She then organized a feast in the Drevlian capital of Iskorosten to commemorate her husband, but after everyone got drunk, Olga ordered the people massacred, set the city ablaze, and enslaved the survivors.

4. The Pechenegs

The Pechenegs were a semi-nomadic Turkic people that terrorized much of Eastern and Southeastern Europe throughout the 8th and 12th centuries. During the 9th century, the Pechenegs occupied a large territory between the Ural and Volga Rivers, constantly fighting with their eastern neighbors, the Khazars and the Oghuz. At the instigation of the Byzantine Empire, the Pechenegs began expanding westwards, attacking the Kievan Rus and forcing the Magyars across the Dnieper River and into the Carpathian Basin.

Throughout much of the 10th century, they would fight many battles with the Rus, even killing Prince Svyatoslav I in 972 and turning his skull into a chalice, as was apparently customary with many steppe nomads. It’s believed that during this time, many Slavic people living between the Danube and Carpathian Mountains began migrating north of the Dniester River to escape them. However, the tables would begin to turn by the end of the century, and the beginning of the 11th with the Pechenegs being systematically expelled from the Pontic Steppes, most notably by the Cumans. 

It was at that time that they began intensifying their raids into Byzantine territory across the Danube River, even laying siege to Constantinople in 1090. They were, however, defeated by Emperor Alexius I with the help of the Cumans (more on them in a bit), and again at the Battle of Beroia in 1122, effectively putting an end to the Pechenegs as an independent people.

3. The Magyars

The Magyars are believed to be a mixture of Turkic and Ugric people who lived in western Siberia during the first several centuries of the first millennium AD. They would migrate to the southwest around the 5th century and by 830 AD, they crossed the Don River, north of the Black Sea. They were comprised of seven tribes and were later joined by an additional three of Turkic Khazar descent, known as Kavars.

After the Pechenegs pushed them out of the Pontic Steppe, they moved into the Pannonian Plain in Central Europe in 895. They quickly subdued the people living there, defeated the Great Moravian state in 906, and completely obliterated the East Frankian army at the Battle of Pressburg one year later. 

For the next 60-plus years, up until 970 AD, the Magyars became the scourge of Europe. They raided and pillaged across most of the continent from present-day Denmark to Spain and Portugal, and from the Balkan and Italian Peninsulas to Western France. After that point, the Magyars became Christianized and in the year 1000 AD founded the Kingdom of Hungary. 

Even today, the Hungarians still call themselves Magyars, after the largest of the original seven tribes. The name Hungary comes from On-Ogur, which was the name given to them by their neighbors while still living in the Pontic Steppes. This name translates to “ten tribes.” The letter H was added later by some scholars who believed them to be descendants of the Huns.

2. The Cumans

From the 11th to the mid-13th century, Eastern Europe between the Volga and Lower Danube rivers was dominated by three peoples. These were the Kievan Rus to the North, the Volga Bulgars to the East, and the Cumans to the South. They were a semi-nomadic Turkic group of people who were never politically centralized and lived in a confederation of loosely connected but independent tribes. Nevertheless, they posed a significant military threat to all their neighbors, with their lands extending from the banks of the Danube River in the West all the way to present-day Kazakhstan in the East. 

The Cumans first came in contact with the Kievan Rus in 1055 and a few years later began invading their lands, causing much devastation. The resulting war lasted a total of 175 years. They would go on and attack all of their neighbors, including the Kingdom of Hungary, the Volga Bulgars, the Kingdom of Poland, the Byzantine Empire, and all statal entities within the Balkans. 

They also played the role of kingmakers, helping the Bulgars and Vlachs gain independence from the Byzantines to form the Second Bulgarian Empire. They also aided the Kingdom of Georgia to halt the advance of the Seljuks and become the most powerful kingdom in the region. 

Their end came in the late 1230s and early 1240s with the Mongol invasions. Although the Cumans put up fierce resistance, they were eventually defeated. Their confederation was broken, and the individual tribes were either absorbed or sought refuge with their neighbors. Many Cumans had already settled in their neighbors’ lands in previous decades, most notably in Hungary, where they became integrated into each nation’s elite.

1. The Barbary Pirates

Named after the local Berber tribes of Northwestern Africa, the Barbary Pirates were the bane of the Mediterranean Sea from the 16th to the 19th centuries AD. Although North African piracy was far older than that, it was not until the arrival of Barbarossa, that united the small pirate states of Algeria and Tunisia under the Ottoman Empire’s protection in the 16th century. During the 17th century, the Barbary pirates also switched from galleys to sail ships, after learning their significant advantage from a Flemish renegade, Simon Danser.

Although comprised mainly of local Berbers, these pirates also recruited many Arabs and other Muslims, as well as some European Christians. Throughout the following centuries, they plundered merchant ships, raided villages, and enslaved people from the Italian coast, France, the Iberian Peninsula, England, the Netherlands, Ireland, and as far away as Iceland.

After commerce all but stopped in the Mediterranean, the United States began paying tribute to the Barbary states in 1784. This eventually led to the First Barbary War (1801–05) between the Americans and the pirate state of Tripoli, which helped stifle piracy in the region. It was not until the full-scale conquest of Algeria by France in 1830 that the Barbary pirates were fully subdued.