In 1967, an anthropological team officially designated by the Indian government attempted to make contact with the islanders. 1967: anthropological team gets attacked with arrows In 1896, a British convict serving time on a penal colony on Great Andaman Island escaped on a homemade raft and had the misfortune of winding up on North Sentinel beach, where he was later found with slit throat and several arrow piercings. 1896: Escaped British convict gets murdered with arrows, has throat slit Embarrassed and ashamed, Portman returned the children to the island along with a few token gifts. Although sickened by their exposure to the outside world, the children did not die. The adults died almost immediately-most likely from exposure to common human germs and/or viruses against which they’d developed almost no immunity due to their sixty millennia of isolation from the outside world.
( Wikimedia Commons) 1880: British colonial administrator kidnaps Sentinelese adults, who die immediatelyīritish naval officer Maurice Vidal Portman, in an attempt to bring “civilization” to the islanders, kidnapped two Sentinelese adults and four children, transporting them to Port Blair. British naval officer Maurice Vidal Portman with Andamanese chiefs. According to reports, they were able to repel the attackers with sticks and stones. They alighted on the island safely, but on the third day they were suddenly attacked by naked islanders who were painted red and flinging arrows at them. Historical Encounters With The Sentinelese 1200s: Marco Polo describes them as violent cannibalsįamed Italian merchant Marco Polo, in his eastward trips sometime late in the 1200s, described the Sentinelese thusly: “They are a most violent and cruel generation who seem to eat everybody they catch.” 1563: Master Caesar Frederick, an Italian sailor, predicts doom for anyone who visits North Sentinel IslandĪccording to Frederick: “If any ship, by ill fortune, stop at these islands, no one comes back alive.”ġ867: Members of Indian merchant vessel make contact with islanders, get attacked with arrowsĭuring the late summer monsoon of 1867, the Indian merchant ship Nineveh found itself marooned on a coral reef off North Sentinel Island. Observers say they almost all appear to be under forty years in age with a somewhat even distribution of males, females, and children. They are also small in numberĪlthough estimates range wildly from around 15 to 500, the more reliable estimates say there are only about 50 to 200 Sentinelese in existence. Later observations have determined that the average adult Sentinelese tribesman is around 5’3” tall. Original Arab and Chinese explorers from a thousand years ago who chanced upon Sentinel Island described the inhabitants as three feet tall and having bird beaks. ( Wikimedia Commons) Although fierce, they are small in stature Andaman tribesmen and women in costume, circa 1903. But many anthropologists believe that their fierce and violent defensiveness of their domain is evolutionarily wise, seeing as how contact with the outside world would threaten to almost immediately render them extinct due to a lack of immunity toward modern human ailments-even trifles such as the common cold. In fact, not a word of their language is understood by outsiders. It is not known what they call themselves. They frolic around the island almost entirely naked. They live in family groups of three or four under small, leaf-covered huts.
For weapons they use bows and arrows, often augmented with arrowheads made of iron or bone.
They feed themselves by hunting wild boar, turtles, fish, crab, honey, and various indigenous roots. The Sentinelese are not known to engage in any kind of agriculture. In an 1899 speech, Richard Carnac Temple, who was acting as an administrator of the Andaman Islands at a time when the British ruled India, described the Sentinelese asĪ tribe which slays every stranger, however inoffensive, on sight, whether a forgotten member of itself, of another Andamanese tribe, or a complete foreigner. Based on DNA tests taken from the Jarawa, it is thought that all these tribes migrated from Africa around 60,000 years ago and have lived uninterrupted by civilization for nearly all of that time-however, the only tribe that remains actively hostile to the outside world is the Sentinelese. The tribes of the Andaman Islands include the Great Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa, and the Sentinelese. Early 1800s vs 2004 distributions of Andamanese indigenous peoples. It is an ocean paradise with clear blue water, coral reefs, a thick mangrove jungle, and a pristine white beach that features only about fifty yards of shoreline. Although located closer to Thailand than mainland India, is officially part of India.
North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. Smithsonian Institution Who Are The Sentinelese?
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