Your everyday hub for everything under the sun
The Sentinelese (alternately spelled Sentineli, Senteneli, Sentenelese, or referred to as the North Sentinel Islanders) form one of the indigenous Andamanese populations and rank among the most isolated communities of the Andaman archipelago, situated within Indian territory in the Bay of Bengal. They make their home on North Sentinel Island, which sits to the west of the southernmost point of the main Andaman chain. This group is renowned for its fierce opposition toward any outside contact. Their way of life centers on hunting, fishing, and gathering wild vegetation in a classic hunter-gatherer setup; researchers have found no signs of farming or of fire-making techniques. The speech they use has not been placed within any known linguistic family.
Nobody has pinned down the Sentinelese headcount with any real precision. Projections span from under 40, hover around a middle figure of roughly 250, and stretch upward to as many as 500. Back in 2001, India's census workers logged 39 people (21 men and 18 women); yet this tally had to be carried out from afar and almost certainly falls short of the true number of inhabitants spread across the 72 km² (17,800 acres) island. What the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and the tsunami it triggered might have done to the population over weeks, months, or years is still a mystery, aside from confirmation that the islanders pulled through the initial disaster.
Earlier visits routinely turned up bands of somewhere between 20 and 40 members. On two separate occasions, settlements housing 40 to 60 people were spotted. Since some inhabitants are undoubtedly concealed from view, pinning down band size with greater accuracy proves impossible. That would imply the island hosts roughly 2 to 6 separate groups. A general density benchmark of 1.5 km² (370 acres) per person for similar hunter-gatherer cultures suggests a single group could sustain itself on the land without external resources. A sizeable share of their nourishment comes from the surrounding waters. It looks as though the groups spotted during any given encounter could only have emerged from a limited portion of the island. Males appear to slightly outnumber females. At any moment, roughly half of the pairs either had young dependents or the women were expecting.
North Sentinel Island
The Sentinelese, alongside other native Andamanese groups, are often labeled negritos — a designation used for assorted far-flung populations across Southeast Asia, including the Semang of the Malay archipelago and the Aeta of the Philippines, as well as for communities as distant as Australia (especially the now-vanished population of Tasmania). Hallmark traits of these so-called negrito peoples (who do not form a single unified lineage) tend to be a relatively small build, deep skin tone, and tightly coiled "peppercorn" hair — features that also appear widely across Africa. While no sustained relationships have been built, writer Heinrich Harrer recorded one individual as standing 1.6 m (5′ 4″) and showing a clear left-hand preference.
Indigenous Negrito Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands
Beginning in 1967, the Indian administration in Port Blair launched a modest effort to engage with the Sentinelese, overseen by the Director of Tribal Welfare and anthropologist T. N. Pandit. These so-called "Contact Expeditions" involved a string of carefully staged visits intended to gradually deposit "offerings" like coconuts along the coastline, hoping to soften the islanders' hostile stance toward strangers. For a stretch, the approach appeared to yield modest results; nevertheless, the initiative was halted in the late 1990s after a run of violent clashes that left multiple people dead.
In 2006, Sentinelese bowmen fatally shot two fishermen who had been casting their nets illegally near the island. The archers subsequently drove off the helicopter dispatched to recover the remains with a volley of arrows. To this day, the bodies have not been retrieved, though the rotor wash from the helicopter at the time uncovered the two fishermen's remains, which the Sentinelese had interred in shallow graves.
On 2 August 1981, the vessel Primrose ran aground on the North Sentinel Island reef. A few days afterward, crew members aboard the stranded ship spotted small, dark-skinned men brandishing spears and arrows and constructing vessels on the shore. The Primrose's master radioed an urgent plea for firearms to be air-dropped so the crew could protect themselves, but none arrived. Rough surf prevented the islanders from reaching the ship. After a week, the crew were evacuated by a helicopter operating on contract for the Indian Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC).
The Sentinelese appear to have weathered the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and its aftermath, including the tsunami and the island's geological uplift. Three days after the event, an Indian government helicopter spotted several of them, who loosed arrows and hurled stones at the hovering aircraft, seemingly trying to drive it away. Even though the tsunami disrupted their fishing areas, they seem to have adjusted to the transformed state of the island.
It's astonishing that as late as 2013, a community still exists that has barely had any dealings with the wider world. To fend off outsiders with such watchful determination. It calls to mind the Mutiny on the Bounty scene featuring Anthony Hopkins.
soulask.com
