An indigenous Amazon tribe can swap messages over 20 kilometres or more, simply by beating out rhythms on pairs of drums. It turns out the rhythms of the drumming mimic the entirety of their spoken language.

The Bora people live in parts of Peru and Colombia. They use drums called manguaré .

A pair of drums, each a cylinder about two metres long, sits on a wooden support . The drummer stands between the drums and beats each with a rubber-covered mallet in …