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1. This History Thread is about the #indigenous people of India’s #Andaman Islands known as #Sentinelese because they live on North Sentinel Island. Their names for themselves, their island are unknown to the outside world.
2. India’s Andaman Islands are an extension of a Burma/Myanmar mountain range in the Bay of Bengal separated from the mainland when sea levels rose post Ice Age. North Sentinel is to the west of the chain.
3. DNA analysis shows current indigenous peoples inhabited the Andaman Islands for about 18,000 years. Their DNA relates to mainland India’s Pauri Bhuiya and Munda peoples. Languages mostly unique to islands, some links to India mainland and Malaysia. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0007447
4. Other indigenous peoples of Andaman Islands: Onge, Jarawa, Great Andamanese. All devastated by genocidal disease exposure and mistreatment, mainly during British Colonial period. Just a few hundred survive now.
5. The Sentinelese don’t appear to have contact with the nearest indigenous group, Jarawas (Ya-Eng-Na.) They may descend from a group or groups which broke away from Jarawas of larger South and Middle Andaman islands.
6. The #Sentinelese are not “uncontacted” people. Have had multiple contacts with clear result of defensive (not “aggressive”) rejection. They may have been preyed on by slave traders from the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and elsewhere. Ships have crashed on their reef.
7. 1870s-90s British administrators investigated and raided North Sentinel island. Most inhabitants hid from them (“painfully timid”) but a few Sentinelese were captured; 2 died of disease, some children were later returned to the island.
8. Indian govt approved “contact missions” visited N. Sentinel between 1967-91. Gifts were offered. Sentinelese unimpressed. I wrote in “The Wind in the Bamboo”: "Sometimes the Sentinelese arrows flew, and some hit their targets in the flesh of interlopers, 'contact' for sure.”
9. 1991 Indian salvage crews (w. firearms) ignored by Sentinelese as they dismantled shipwrecks on island. Contact missions to North Sentinel completely stopped in 21st Century. India enforces 5 km (2.7 nautical mile) no-go limit around North Sentinel.
10. Poaching on indigenous territory is an ongoing problem in Andamans. Fishermen (Burmese and others) violate N. Sentinel restriction and some poachers even hunt pigs on the island. Sentinelese killed a pair of Indian fishermen who intruded in 2006. https://theecologist.org/2014/nov/20/illegal-fishermen-endanger-worlds-most-isolated-tribe
11. After 2004 Tsunami, Indian govt sent helicopter to check on N. Sentinel resulting in iconic photo of islander aiming arrow at surveillance. Sentinelese survived Tsunami well and population estimates remain at up to 150. N. Sentinel ideal forest/shore/reef for forager bands.
12. “The #Sentinelese were taking very good care of their Manhattan-sized island, particularly the forest,” I wrote, “Perhaps they were the ‘control group’ functioning sustainably millennium after millennium while the rest of humanity destroyed everything it touched.”
13. Not "savages." #Sentinelese are modern humans. Not “stone age” (they use salvaged metal, plastic.) Not "primitive." They should not be bait for adventurers, proselytizers, other intruders. Rightly wary of outsiders. Their sovereignty must be respected. http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/12031
14/14. I wrote about #Sentinelese in “The Wind in the Bamboo: Journeys in Search of Asia’s ‘Negrito’ Indigenous People” (no illegal contact w. Andaman Islanders while researching the book.) I’m available for further comment. My previous History Threads at http://www.projectmaje.org
