North Sentinel Island

[Cyaneyed]

Not recent news by any means, but I was randomly researching this today and since I find the island quite intriguing and in many ways uplifting, I thought anyone who hasn't heard of it might be interested.


Very little is known about the North Sentinelese. No single word of their language has been recorded. Like the Onge, the Jarawa, and the Andamanese, the North Sentinelese are classified as negrito and look much more like Africans than Asians. They are believed to be some of the earliest peoples to have migrated across Asia. Virtually nothing is known or understood about their culture.

Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island)

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[Bryn ap Gwilym]

Shwmae.
Interesting video & thank you for refreshing my memory. I have found a little artical that may be of interest?

The Sentineli on North Sentinel island and the Jarawa have survived

by SURESH SESHADRI
Published by Reuters

"There have been several media reports talking about a threat to the aborigines, indigenous people and tribals of the islands," Vice Admiral Arun Kumar Singh, director-general of the Coast Guard, which is involved in rescue operations, told reporters.

"I have personally verified the extent of this claim and let me tell you that it is absolutely rubbish."

Singh said the Nicobarese, the largest tribal group that lives on Car Nicobar and adjoining islands, bore the brunt of the waves, but the exact death toll was not known.

Coast Guard surveys showed the rest of the tribes such as the Shompen, the Jarawa and the Sentinelese had escaped either because they lived in the jungles far from the coast or because their islands were barely touched by the waves.

"In the Middle Andaman the Jarawa tribes are there and there has not been a single report of casualty. The Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island, which some reports say have been completely wiped out, are all very much there," Singh said.
The number of the Onge, one of the most primitive tribes, has fallen in past decades to about 100. There are about 200 Sentinelese, probably one of the world's only surviving palaeolithic people, who are generally hostile to outsiders.

http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc142/monktonman/andamanorg.jpg

"Our helicopter pilot who flew over the island told me that he has seen several groups of Sentinelese on the beach and that when he dropped food packets they threw stones at the helicopter."

Editor's note:

Is the intrepid vice-admiral who here labels fears about the survival of the Andamanese "absolute rubbish" by any chance related to an official of similar name and rank who is rumoured to have refused to waste helicopters on the tribals "because they are all dead anyway"? Even if the vice admiral hasn't said that, why should those fears be "rubbish" in an event that has killed 300,000 or more people?

I am VERY happy to hear that the fears for the safety of the tribals were unfounded and that these "primitive" people knew exactly how to save themselves. How unlike the highly civilized but badly served Indian settlers whose administration never warned them of anything!

The closest shot anyone has ever gotten of a Sentinelese - and lived to tell about it
http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc142/monktonman/Senti-woman.jpg