It appears this is about contact with a different people, the Jarawa, I don't see anything indicating contact with the Sentinelese except the caption to the photo, is there any documented evidence? It appears the author has incorrectly labeled any tribe on the Andaman Islands as "Sentinelese."
The article is formatted oddly, but the middle section starting at "On January 4, 1991, MV Tarmugli," talks about the actual encounter with the Sentinelese.
See my edited comment – they have a photo of contact with a tribal people, there are many tribes on the Andaman Islands, not just the Sentinelese, and there is no documented contact between the Sentinelese and outsiders since 1880, which was just an abduction, not really contact.
The photos here appear to show contact with a Jawara tribe, and are incorrectly labeled as Sentinelese.
Right, and I am arguing that these are incorrectly labeled because there's no authentic source showing such contact, so something has been lost in translation wherein Andaman Islanders are being called Sentinelese.
Do you have any source for those particular photos and videos being from the other Andaman islands? I've seen the video before and it was labelled then as being of the Sentinelese. I feel that if it were of a different tribe, then you'd be able to find the original context and the actual tribe it was.
There are lots of photos of the other tribes, honestly, the garb they wear is pretty similar, so I don't think that would refute anything. All I want is some more official documentation of this interaction.
If the Indian government just sent people over to throw coconuts onto an island and didn't have any official documentation of the trip, or research that the trip resulted in, a story about it more than 20 years later doesn't hold a lot of weight for me.
As you can see, this is just me being a bit pedantic, so if others want to take this as a source of truth, they are welcome to do so, I'd just like to know why they think this is authoritative.
It appears you didn't closely read the article because it documents two separate events:
1. The author's meeting with the Sentinelese.
2. The author's meeting with the Jarawa.
You are correct that most of the photos are from the meeting with the Jarawa and that much of the article describes the author's time with the Jarawa but there is a segment which explicitly describes the meeting with the Sentinelese, separate from the Jarawa meetings.
I am saying that the author is using Sentinelese interchangeably with Jarawa/Andaman incorrectly.
The only reference I can find for such contact is a blog post and a 1993 news article that appears anecdotal. I'd like to see the journal article written about this contact by the Anthropological Survey of India which funded the contact with the Andaman Islanders, but I can't find a source, leading me to believe it didn't happen as described.
According to Wikipedia, Sentinelese is apparently (based on other encounters) ,not mutually intelligible with Onge, which does seem to be an inconsistency in the idea that she heard them asking for coconuts in Onge.
I don't know how one would go about researching Indian anthropological expeditions to find the officially-documented connection to reality, but presumably that's where you'd start, if you wanted to verify the story.
> I don't see anything indicating contact with the Sentinelese except the caption to the photo, is there any documented evidence?
While in theory a similar looking beach could be anywhere, and the native people could be of any tribe, in the first photo the visitors are standing in water, offering coconuts. The other tribes live in the mainland of Andaman island, so when meeting them you would more probably arrive on foot on land.
This is some, perhaps indirect, indication that the visitors arrived on a boat, and the photo really is from where the caption says it is.
Any significant contact would wipe the Sentinelese out. Even a common cold infection would be the end of them. The anthropologists know this, but seem willing to risk this for their own ego.
If we wanted to learn anything about the Sentinelese, then perhaps we could use well-camouflaged camera traps, and other electronic eavesdropping devices. The moral considerations are difficult - it's a privacy breach, but the information would also be valuable not only to their descendants (should contact be made), but also to science generally.
I know, but the NSA could argue they aren't trying to root out wrongdoers either.
What would they do if their camera recorded a violent act between tribe members, or against a child? They might feel obligated to act, or not act, either of which could have dangerous consequences.
The question doesn't work because I'm leaving a footprint a mile wide already. Anyone who uses Facebook in a serious way has already said "yes" to your question.
It has often occurred to me that my own children could be reading through my comments years from now. Probably not. There's a lot of them. Of course if they can search, well, who knows.
Good point, however, Facebook doesn't really contain private moments/thoughts, which is what a bunch of hidden cameras would capture. Facebook allows you to write your story and omit details you choose. Also, younger people have flocked to more ephemeral forms of communication (or so I've heard, I don't claim to back that up with numbers).
If I trusted the NSA to actually do that, I'd have no problem with it.
The problem is, I don't have the choice of being surveilled by the NSA, and I don't trust them. Just as the Senigalese would have no choice in redsummer's proposal, and many reasons not to trust outsiders.
The inhabitants are extremely unique. There may be no other society like theirs on the face of the planet.
If an unintrusive privacy breach of that small group was likely to allow us to learn something that would improve the lives of 7 billion others, it ought to be made. Just do the math.
I don't think there's likely to be that much we can learn which would actually be useful, but that ought to be the test.
Out of curiosity, what could we learn that would change people's lives?
My understanding is that the only thing we'd learn is more about how early tribal systems might have been, which is of academic interest to Anthropologists, not of general value to every day people.
I am known to misunderstand though, which is why I'm asking if there is something we think we can learn from studying them that would apply to all people.
One of the things the article said was that they survived the tsunami with their observation of the nature.. don't you think that this lost/gained knowledge can be an insight on how we understand nature now?
Well, I guess I answer my own question here, but we don't know that they survived because of their observation of the nature. We don't know enough about them to say that. They survived, how or why, we don't know. Knowing how or why may be of interest to Anthropologists, but there's nothing indicating that it would be generally useful for all humans.
If this really was the first successful contact, I don't quite understand how the language of these people is the same as/similar to other Andaman island/Indian languages. Context: "Nariyali Jaba Jaba".
The Sentinelese and the people on Andaman Island must have been once been a single group living in the same place within the last few hundred years. The language would change somewhat after they split up, but it is still mutually intelligible apparently.
It was really interesting to read in James C. Scott's work that many uncontacted tribes are not only not primordially isolated from other human beings, but may be descended from people who deliberately separated from other civilizations because they didn't like them. (Edit: for example, they might have been slaves or conscript soldiers, or people who were defeated in a war.) Some of these people may then have significant, but maybe increasingly vague, awareness of outsiders, and a dislike of them.
Scott suggests that we might tend to think that isolated people have been there for millennia and have no idea that there are other human beings, but that very often they just wanted to be alone, or not part of a particular society. (And for those who deliberately left, they may have left behind things like governments, agriculture, and metalworking technology.)
It does seem like we have a tendency to say "ooh! unchanging primordial antiquity!" and not remember that human migration is one of the greatest constants of human history, and everyone has a story about how they got where they are.
They obviously didn't evolve there independently from other humans. They and the other tribes have common ancestry, and a common root language. I doubt anyone knows about inter-tribal contact through those 60,000 years that could have kept the languages from diverging too much.
According to the current Wikipedia article on the Sentinelese language [1], it is not mutually intelligible with Onge. This is more like what I would have expected from a strictly xenophobic and (presumably non-literate) tribe, but it doesn't square with the account in the article...
How about major religions telling us big dude in the sky is always watching? And they always claim the moral highground in everything, if not outright claiming to be the source of all morals.
Is it known how similar they are besides for culture, i.e. would an infant from there raised among humans or an infant from us raised by them be able to learn the culture? Has anything similar been tried with other isolated tribes?
The question is whether anything relevant has changed in 60,000 years of separation.
Given that humans only evolved around then, it's reasonable to ask about tribes that split off.
"modern humans evolved in Africa possibly from Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis or Homo antecessor and migrated out of the continent some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago"
>Perhaps no people on earth remain more genuinely isolated than the Sentinelese, one of the few un-contacted people in the world, who have lived in the North Sentinel Islands of the Andamans for last estimated 60,000 years shunning any contact with the outside world.
I took this to mean they've been isolated at least in terms of not having genes cross over.
That's an ambiguous/misleading "and" in that sentence. Modern humans date back to around 200,000 years ago. And it's thought that there was a great migration from Africa roughly 50,000 years ago. Presumably the Sentinelese ancestors were part of that migration, since they are quite far from Africa. Though I agree that it's worth asking how much the population has diverged after 50,000+ years.
> The tribes might be primitive in their technological achievements but socially they are far ahead of us”.
Based on my understanding of "reality", I would assume this would tend to be the case. From what I understand, rapid technological advancement tends to wreak havoc on social structures.
These people are wise to attack outsiders, especially given their early contact with westerners in 1880. There are all kinds of ways outside contact is likely to bring despair to their community.
It also sounds like they have a matriarchal society which is (of course debatably) a more stable, more advanced social structure.
Does she use "us" to refer to Indian society, or humanity in general (minus other primitive tribes, presumably)? What parameters do you base "advancement" in this case, e.g. is the Sentilenese socially "far ahead of" US society in general? How about, say, Ethiopian or Navajo societies?
Once we start thinking about the diversity of human experience I think we can see such statements as examples of the Noble Savage sentiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage)
Perhaps too much emphasis is being put on technological and cultural advancement when thinking about these things. It may be that a tight knit, homogenous society has fewer problems in general and thrives as long as outside influence doesn't overwhelm it.
I think that maybe not enough emphasis is put on technological advancement. Cultures tend to look pretty similar to each other on any given technological level. There's a case to be made that it's technology that drives social structure, not the other way around.
> I think we can see such statements as examples of the Noble Savage sentiment
I think considering all primitive societies to be "noble" is probably not accurate. Probably most of them had serious issues.
My impression (which is just from reading various material over the years) of these small tribe-size communities is that some of them evolve very advanced social structures - where there is low violence and high compassion. The emotional side of me "likes" this. But also my intellect suggests that more harmonious/supportive communities are probably stronger and more productive.
Other communities diverge into states that I consider to be "sick" perversions of what communities "should" be like. Things like honor killings and it being ok to sell your nieces and nephews into the slave trade are things I would personally consider sick and I hope they are sub optimal from a survival perspective.
If I had to guess, I'd say a big reason she considered them socially advanced was the matriarchal component. I speculate that its hard to develop a matriarchal society because men tend to be more aggressive and physically stronger. However, my impression is that matriarchal societies tend to be less violent and more harmonious. It could be argued that less violence and more harmony are components of a more optimal social structure.
I disagree. You can't meaningfully separate technological progress from societal sophistication. Developments in one drive the other forward.
For instance, the concept of private property promotes the invention of productivity-enhancing capital, at the expense of tribal cooperation. Computerized automation drives the proliferation of unnecessary jobs.
64 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 67.2 ms ] threadI don't think this is contact with the Sentinelese, but with the Jarawa, another tribe on the same chain of islands.
The photos here appear to show contact with a Jawara tribe, and are incorrectly labeled as Sentinelese.
If the Indian government just sent people over to throw coconuts onto an island and didn't have any official documentation of the trip, or research that the trip resulted in, a story about it more than 20 years later doesn't hold a lot of weight for me.
As you can see, this is just me being a bit pedantic, so if others want to take this as a source of truth, they are welcome to do so, I'd just like to know why they think this is authoritative.
1. The author's meeting with the Sentinelese.
2. The author's meeting with the Jarawa.
You are correct that most of the photos are from the meeting with the Jarawa and that much of the article describes the author's time with the Jarawa but there is a segment which explicitly describes the meeting with the Sentinelese, separate from the Jarawa meetings.
The only reference I can find for such contact is a blog post and a 1993 news article that appears anecdotal. I'd like to see the journal article written about this contact by the Anthropological Survey of India which funded the contact with the Andaman Islanders, but I can't find a source, leading me to believe it didn't happen as described.
The best I can find is this book: https://books.google.com/books?id=-4PDCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA140&lpg=...
This text claims to have made friendly contact in 1986, and says 1994 had contact on the eastern coast.
These dates don't line up with the story, and I can't find any official source information about the contact, so the inconsistency is a red flag.
I don't know how one would go about researching Indian anthropological expeditions to find the officially-documented connection to reality, but presumably that's where you'd start, if you wanted to verify the story.
While in theory a similar looking beach could be anywhere, and the native people could be of any tribe, in the first photo the visitors are standing in water, offering coconuts. The other tribes live in the mainland of Andaman island, so when meeting them you would more probably arrive on foot on land.
This is some, perhaps indirect, indication that the visitors arrived on a boat, and the photo really is from where the caption says it is.
If we wanted to learn anything about the Sentinelese, then perhaps we could use well-camouflaged camera traps, and other electronic eavesdropping devices. The moral considerations are difficult - it's a privacy breach, but the information would also be valuable not only to their descendants (should contact be made), but also to science generally.
Would you accept NSA surveillance if they said it was so that your descendants could understand you, and "For Science"?
What would they do if their camera recorded a violent act between tribe members, or against a child? They might feel obligated to act, or not act, either of which could have dangerous consequences.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive
It has often occurred to me that my own children could be reading through my comments years from now. Probably not. There's a lot of them. Of course if they can search, well, who knows.
All the same, I think you make a good point.
If I trusted the NSA to actually do that, I'd have no problem with it.
The problem is, I don't have the choice of being surveilled by the NSA, and I don't trust them. Just as the Senigalese would have no choice in redsummer's proposal, and many reasons not to trust outsiders.
If an unintrusive privacy breach of that small group was likely to allow us to learn something that would improve the lives of 7 billion others, it ought to be made. Just do the math.
I don't think there's likely to be that much we can learn which would actually be useful, but that ought to be the test.
My understanding is that the only thing we'd learn is more about how early tribal systems might have been, which is of academic interest to Anthropologists, not of general value to every day people.
I am known to misunderstand though, which is why I'm asking if there is something we think we can learn from studying them that would apply to all people.
Well, I guess I answer my own question here, but we don't know that they survived because of their observation of the nature. We don't know enough about them to say that. They survived, how or why, we don't know. Knowing how or why may be of interest to Anthropologists, but there's nothing indicating that it would be generally useful for all humans.
Scott suggests that we might tend to think that isolated people have been there for millennia and have no idea that there are other human beings, but that very often they just wanted to be alone, or not part of a particular society. (And for those who deliberately left, they may have left behind things like governments, agriculture, and metalworking technology.)
It does seem like we have a tendency to say "ooh! unchanging primordial antiquity!" and not remember that human migration is one of the greatest constants of human history, and everyone has a story about how they got where they are.
[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11714407 and marked it off-topic.
Given that humans only evolved around then, it's reasonable to ask about tribes that split off.
"modern humans evolved in Africa possibly from Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis or Homo antecessor and migrated out of the continent some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution
I suppose this could be mostly answered with a DNA test, on further thought.
I took this to mean they've been isolated at least in terms of not having genes cross over.
Based on my understanding of "reality", I would assume this would tend to be the case. From what I understand, rapid technological advancement tends to wreak havoc on social structures.
These people are wise to attack outsiders, especially given their early contact with westerners in 1880. There are all kinds of ways outside contact is likely to bring despair to their community.
It also sounds like they have a matriarchal society which is (of course debatably) a more stable, more advanced social structure.
By absolutely no one with a critical minds metrics.
Once we start thinking about the diversity of human experience I think we can see such statements as examples of the Noble Savage sentiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage)
I think considering all primitive societies to be "noble" is probably not accurate. Probably most of them had serious issues.
My impression (which is just from reading various material over the years) of these small tribe-size communities is that some of them evolve very advanced social structures - where there is low violence and high compassion. The emotional side of me "likes" this. But also my intellect suggests that more harmonious/supportive communities are probably stronger and more productive.
Other communities diverge into states that I consider to be "sick" perversions of what communities "should" be like. Things like honor killings and it being ok to sell your nieces and nephews into the slave trade are things I would personally consider sick and I hope they are sub optimal from a survival perspective.
If I had to guess, I'd say a big reason she considered them socially advanced was the matriarchal component. I speculate that its hard to develop a matriarchal society because men tend to be more aggressive and physically stronger. However, my impression is that matriarchal societies tend to be less violent and more harmonious. It could be argued that less violence and more harmony are components of a more optimal social structure.
For instance, the concept of private property promotes the invention of productivity-enhancing capital, at the expense of tribal cooperation. Computerized automation drives the proliferation of unnecessary jobs.
But this tribe might have friendliness and hostility reversed :)
Reason ? They haven't yet invented oars.