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The first prolonged contact on record of the Ikpeng with Brazilians dates from 1964. The ethnologist Eduardo Galvão, present at this encounter, recorded a dozen words which enabled him to establish the affinity of the language of these people with the Apiaká (of the Tocantins) language and the Yaruma language of the ancient enemies of the Kalapalo and the Suyá (Galvão and Simões, 1965:24). Moreover, there are immense lexical similarities between their language and the different groups called Arara, from the region of the lower Xingu - which leads us to believe in the existence of an Arara language group in the Karib family. This language, nevertheless, seems to us to be closer to the Karib groups of northern Amazonia (Apalai, Wayana, Trio etc.) than to the Kalapalo or Kuikuro (both karib) of the upper Xingu.

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Among what we understand as Arara groups - Ikpeng, Yaruma, Apiaká and Arara - there are not only linguistic similarities but also a series of similar cultural aspects, leading us to believe that their diaspora was due to separations and different migrations of groups that had once been together.

There is scant information about these groups, thus it is only possible to elaborate a summary picture of their principal cultural characteristics, such as the centrality of war to their worldview, their great mobility, the extreme fragmentation of social units and the absence of social segments beyond the extended family (strictly speaking, given the lack of data on other Arara groups, this feature only applies to the Ikpeng). The origin of the Arara group is probably northern Amazonia and their way of life is more oriented to the land than to the rivers, their agriculture is diversified, they have a refined technology and complex artwork (primordially weaving in cotton).

The term Arara has been applied to Indigenous Amazonian groups from at least the beginning of the 20^th Century, and the references to societies designated as Arara that inhabit the Lower and Middle Xingu are very numerous from 1850 on (Cf. Ehrenreich, 1895; Nimuendajú, 1931 and 1948). It is possible that the origin of the name (Arara = macaw) refers to the dark blue facial tattoo from the temples to the corner of the lips, the three parallel lines of which recall the bristly cutaneous folds of the black feathers around the macaw's eyes.