tribos

Tribos is the plural form of the term tribo in Portuguese and Spanish, meaning tribes. In ethnography and anthropology, tribo refers to a social group that shares language, culture, territory, and ancestry, often with kin-based leadership and subsistence practices. The term has historically been used to categorize small-scale societies, particularly in colonial and indigenous contexts. In modern scholarship, the word tribe and its equivalents are sometimes criticized for implying homogeneity or antiquity, leading many researchers to prefer terms such as ethnic group, indigenous people, or nation, depending on context and self-identification.

Tribos can vary in social organization from egalitarian bands to hierarchical chiefdoms, and there is often a strong emphasis on kinship, lineage, and inherited territory. Territorial boundaries, marriage rules, religious practices, and traditional knowledge are common features described in ethnographic accounts. The concept also intersects with linguistics, where language groups may be associated with specific tribos within a region or country.

In contemporary usage within Lusophone or Hispano-speaking areas, tribos may also refer to informal social groups, clubs, or communities, where the sense of a tightly knit collective persists even when the group is not indigenous or traditional in a historical sense. See also ethnography, indigenous peoples, anthropology, kinship, social organization.