51.
60000 Years And Still Going Strong
The Sentinelese - A Tale of Survival and A Lesson To The Civilized
The Sentinelese are one of the Andamanese indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands, located in the Bay of
Bengal. They exclusively inhabit North Sentinel Island which lies westwards off the southern tip of the Great Andaman archipelago. They are noted for vigorously maintaining their independence and sovereignty over the island, and resisting attempts of contact by outsiders.
By their long-standing separation from any other human society they are among the most isolated and unassimilated peoples on Earth, their social practices being almost entirely free of any recorded external influence.
The Sentinelese maintain an essentially hunter-gatherer society, obtaining their subsistence through hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plants.
Their dwellings are either shelter-type huts with no side walls and a floor sometimes laid out with leaves, which provide enough space for a nuclear family of 3 or 4 and their belongings, or larger communal dwellings which may be some dozen square metres and are more elaborately constructed, with raised floors and partitioned family quarters.
Sentinelese wear no clothes, but utilize leaves, fibre strings or similar material as decorations, and they fashion belts which are apparently worn to provide some protection to the groin during potentially dangerous activity such as hunting or when encountering potentially hostile strangers.
Their weaponry consists of javelins, and an excellent flatbow with high accuracy against human-sized targets up to nearly 100 metres. At least 3 varieties of arrows, apparently for fishing and hunting, and untipped ones for shooting warning shots have been documented.
Bengal. They exclusively inhabit North Sentinel Island which lies westwards off the southern tip of the Great Andaman archipelago. They are noted for vigorously maintaining their independence and sovereignty over the island, and resisting attempts of contact by outsiders.
By their long-standing separation from any other human society they are among the most isolated and unassimilated peoples on Earth, their social practices being almost entirely free of any recorded external influence.
The Sentinelese maintain an essentially hunter-gatherer society, obtaining their subsistence through hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plants.
Their dwellings are either shelter-type huts with no side walls and a floor sometimes laid out with leaves, which provide enough space for a nuclear family of 3 or 4 and their belongings, or larger communal dwellings which may be some dozen square metres and are more elaborately constructed, with raised floors and partitioned family quarters.
Sentinelese wear no clothes, but utilize leaves, fibre strings or similar material as decorations, and they fashion belts which are apparently worn to provide some protection to the groin during potentially dangerous activity such as hunting or when encountering potentially hostile strangers.
Their weaponry consists of javelins, and an excellent flatbow with high accuracy against human-sized targets up to nearly 100 metres. At least 3 varieties of arrows, apparently for fishing and hunting, and untipped ones for shooting warning shots have been documented.
Perhaps no people on Earth remain more genuinely isolated than the Sentinelese and are believed to have lived on their island home for 60,000 years.
Like so many isolated tribal people with a fearsome reputation, the Sentinelese are often inaccurately described as ‘savage’ or ‘backward’. Their hostility to outsiders, though, is easily understandable, for the outside world has brought them little but violence and contempt.
In 1879, for example, an elderly couple and some children were taken by force and brought to the islands’ main town, Port Blair. The colonial officer in charge of the kidnapping wrote that the entire group, ‘sickened rapidly, and the old man and his wife died, so the four children were sent back to their home with quantities of presents.’
Despite being responsible for the deaths of at least two people, and quite possibly starting an epidemic amongst the islanders, the same officer expressed no remorse, but merely remarked on the Sentinelese’s ‘peculiarly idiotic expression of countenance, and manner of behaving.’
The Sentinelese enjoy excellent health, unlike those Andamans tribes whose lands have been destroyed.
The islanders are clearly healthy, alert and thriving, in marked contrast to the two Andaman tribes who have ‘benefited’ from Western civilization, the Onge and the Great Andamanese. Their numbers have crashed and they are now largely dependent on state handouts just to survive.
Pressure from Survival and other organizations has led the Indian government to alter its policy towards the Sentinelese, from attempting to make contact, to recognising that similar policies have proved disastrous for other Andaman tribes, and accepting that they have the right to decide for themselves how they wish to live. Underpinning this shift is the simple acknowledgment that the people themselves are best placed to decide what is in their own interests.
Like so many isolated tribal people with a fearsome reputation, the Sentinelese are often inaccurately described as ‘savage’ or ‘backward’. Their hostility to outsiders, though, is easily understandable, for the outside world has brought them little but violence and contempt.
In 1879, for example, an elderly couple and some children were taken by force and brought to the islands’ main town, Port Blair. The colonial officer in charge of the kidnapping wrote that the entire group, ‘sickened rapidly, and the old man and his wife died, so the four children were sent back to their home with quantities of presents.’
Despite being responsible for the deaths of at least two people, and quite possibly starting an epidemic amongst the islanders, the same officer expressed no remorse, but merely remarked on the Sentinelese’s ‘peculiarly idiotic expression of countenance, and manner of behaving.’
The Sentinelese enjoy excellent health, unlike those Andamans tribes whose lands have been destroyed.
The islanders are clearly healthy, alert and thriving, in marked contrast to the two Andaman tribes who have ‘benefited’ from Western civilization, the Onge and the Great Andamanese. Their numbers have crashed and they are now largely dependent on state handouts just to survive.
Pressure from Survival and other organizations has led the Indian government to alter its policy towards the Sentinelese, from attempting to make contact, to recognising that similar policies have proved disastrous for other Andaman tribes, and accepting that they have the right to decide for themselves how they wish to live. Underpinning this shift is the simple acknowledgment that the people themselves are best placed to decide what is in their own interests.
Sentinelese Unaffected By Tsunami
In the days after the cataclysmic tsunami of 2004, as the full scale of the destruction and horror wreaked upon the islands of the Indian Ocean became apparent, the fate of the tribal peoples of the Andaman Islands remained a mystery.
It seemed inconceivable, above all, that the Sentinelese islanders could have survived, living as they did on a remote island directly in the tsunami’s path.
Yet when a helicopter flew low over the island, a Sentinelese man rushed out on to the beach, aiming his arrow at the pilot in a gesture that clearly said, ‘We don’t want you here’. Alone of the tens of millions of people affected by the disaster, the Sentinelese needed no help from anyone.
It seemed inconceivable, above all, that the Sentinelese islanders could have survived, living as they did on a remote island directly in the tsunami’s path.
Yet when a helicopter flew low over the island, a Sentinelese man rushed out on to the beach, aiming his arrow at the pilot in a gesture that clearly said, ‘We don’t want you here’. Alone of the tens of millions of people affected by the disaster, the Sentinelese needed no help from anyone.
People in general do understand that civilization means a polished way of animal life. The animals eat what is fixed up by nature as its eatable but a civilized man eats not only what is fixed up by nature for him but also many other things which are outside the purview of his eatables. In other words a civilized person mishandles the problem of eating etc. and yet he calls himself something more than the animal.
~Srila Prabhupada (Back To Godhead, Who is a ‘Sadhu’?)