Ours is still a wild planet.

[gridlore]

We're a few days from 2011. I'm communicating with y'all through a global network of computers that even most science-fiction writers failed to predict. I've had several organs removed and am thriving. You me, and the guy down the street are the results of 6,000 years of culture starting with the realization that one could plant seeds and get food on a regular basis. We stride across the globe and are reaching for the stars.

Yet on a tiny island in the Andaman Islands east of India, none of that happened. The people of North Sentinel Island have lived in isolation for an estimated 60,000 years. They are incredibly xenophobic, attacking just about anyone who comes close. Large groups they hide from. Clothing, beyond broad belts and decorations, is unknown. They seem to like the color red. They decorate their shelters with painted pig skulls.

That's all we know about them. Their language, social organization, religion.. everything else is a mystery.

The Andamans used to have several such tribes. Most were assimilated (and destroyed, culturally) by the British, but one, the Jarawa people, fought off all attempts at contact. After 200 years of intermittent contact we understand less an a dozen words of their language, and the authorities in the islands have no clue if the next time the Jarawa come out of their mountain redoubts they'll be coming for handouts or to kill anyone they can find.

Read this fascinating article. Then watch this video. Remember, these are people who have been isolated for ten times longer than humans have had writing. What's amazing is how they make use of found iron and steel. Their tools are wood and bone, but flotsam washes up all the time (additionally, there's at least one shipwreck on the island's reef). You can see in the video that a couple of the people are carrying modern knives. They also hammer small bits of iron to form barbs for arrow and spear tips.

While reading about these amazing relics, I came across a blood-chilling story. The Indian government has place North Sentinel Island off-limits for good reason. Two fishermen decided to poach in the waters. The Sentinelli caught them. The fishermen managed a distress call. When the Indian Army sent a helicopter to rescue the poachers, it was driven off by massed arrow fire from the beach... but not before exposing the shallow graves of the fishermen. The bodies had been savaged.

Why they will kill and mutilate some while allowing others to approach close enough to accept gifts of coconuts (as seen in the video) is just one of the many mysteries.

If you want to see the island for yourself, you can. It takes about a week of flying and boat travel, plus bribing a fisherman to take you out there and bribing the authorities to look the other way. But it's that last part, where you go back into our own past that's the tricky one.

Comments

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

It made me think of "Bordered in Black".

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Wow - just lots of wow. The article is long, but I read it all and wanted to read more

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

Tangential, but in relation to levels of violence in pre-industrial cultures, you might find this (http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html) interesting.

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

There are something like 150 uncontacted tribes out there, mostly in Brazil and New Guinea. The Brazilians have a hands-off policy, but the New Guineans are protected by a combination of fierceness and the incredible ruggedness of the island.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

[claidheamhmor]

Fascinating. I think many of the more "primitive" tribes - especially in New Guinea and other fairly untouched areas - can be quite aggressive toward outsiders, because they're never socialised with others through contact and trade.

[caerbannogbunny.livejournal.com]

I just finished a college course on Hunter-Gatherers taught by an anthropologist who's conducted several first contacts. One thing many people don't realize is that most of these small tribes--the Andamanese being a possible exception--are parts of social networks of other tribes and usually have had indirect interaction with "outsiders" long before they actually come face-to-face.

In the Ache--the population the instructor was most familiar with--and the Hadze--another population he had also lived a number of months/years with--the populations had been in indirect conflict with outsiders in the form of mineral exploration teams and even missionaries who would send "westernized" natives in with gifts and the like to encourage them to come out.

Beyond the direct percieved threat due to having abilities they know they lacked (like boats, in the fisherman example above or planes/helicopters), most of these populations had been losing social neighbors--other local tribes--for many years and had seen or experienced epidemic disease that almost always accompanies western contact.

The results of "socialization" are often a combination of offering them goodies and by (unintentionally) crushing them through disrupting their social networks via epidemic disease. When over 50% of your people--often the elders first--die almost immediately on contact...

...you tend to take what help is offered.

Some other reading about the issues of first contact:

http://en.mercopress.com/2010/11/19/museum-suspends-expedition-to-meet-uncontacted-tribes-in-the-paraguayan-chaco
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101112/full/news.2010.610.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/15/natural-history-museum-chaco-expedition-halted
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/15/natural-history-museum-chaco-expedition-halted

[caerbannogbunny.livejournal.com]

Oh...

...also, many hunter-gatherer populations have extensive (geographically and in variety) trade networks and social interactions that run the gamut from friendly exchange to out-right warfare. In some cases, they have a level of social complexity that approaches or surpasses agriculturalists in the same region. (Primarily South East Asian region in modern times, much of California, the US Pacific Coast, and Southern Florida in historic times).

The primary "socialization" differences--in most cases--isn't an inability to deal with other groups, it's a lower necessity to do so because of greater self-reliance.

[claidheamhmor]

Thanks, that was interesting!

[caerbannogbunny.livejournal.com]

That class was very interesting and learned that a lot of the preconceptions about hunter-gatherers were really geographically specific. If anything, the biggest lesson was the variability in how humans can survive, do survive, and do succeed.