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First Friendly Contact with the Sentinelese
- codezero 10y agoIt 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."
- ianhawes 10y agoThe article is formatted oddly, but the middle section starting at "On January 4, 1991, MV Tarmugli," talks about the actual encounter with the Sentinelese.
- codezero 10y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11714639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11714639 I don't think this is contact with the Sentinelese, but with the Jarawa, another tribe on the same chain of islands.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- takee 10y agoThe article gives both description and photographic proof of the contact with the sentinelese people.
- codezero 10y agoSee 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.
- ealexhudson 10y agoOnly two of the photos are captioned as being Sentinelese, the rest are captioned as being Jawara?
- codezero 10y agoRight, 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.
- astine 10y agoDo 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.
- codezero 10y agoThere 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.
- skepicurean 10y agoIt 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.
- codezero 10y agoI 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.
- x1798DE 10y agoAccording 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.
- stevecalifornia 10y agoYou didn't read the article. She landed on North Sentinel island and interacted with the Sentinelese. Then, later in the article it focuses on Jarawa.
- sampo 10y ago> 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.
- codezero 10y agoJust let me know where the source of the information is.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- redsummer 10y agoAny 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.
- codezero 10y agoI don't think the moral considerations are that difficult. Would you accept NSA surveillance if they said it was so that your descendants could understand you, and "For Science"?
- donutz 10y agoNot the best analogy. The anthropologists aren't trying to root out wrongdoers in this tribe by surveilling the whole lot of them.
- codezero 10y agoI 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.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoThat's why such hypothetical NSA should adopt the Prime Directive[0]. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive
- Kristine1975 10y agoNo?
- takee 10y agoIf 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".
- 88e282102ae2e5b 10y agoThe 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.
- schoen 10y agoIt 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.
- DougWebb 10y agoThey 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.
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- fighting 10y agoHow 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.
- dang 10y agoReligious flamewars are not allowed on HN. Please don't post comments like this. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11714407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11714407 and marked it off-topic.
- ikeboy 10y agoIs 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?
- jwise0 10y agoThese people are humans.
- ikeboy 10y agoThe 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" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution I suppose this could be mostly answered with a DNA test, on further thought.
- camel_Snake 10y agoWhat makes you think they've been fully isolated for 60,000 years?
- ikeboy 10y 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.
- mcbits 10y agoThat'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.
- ChrisDutrow 10y ago> 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.
- actionwords 10y ago>matriarchy is more advanced By absolutely no one with a critical minds metrics.
- Jun8 10y agoDoes 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage)
- goda90 10y agoPerhaps 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.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI 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.
- devishard 10y agoSigh. We'll see how many Sentinelese are alive after the plagues we've just released on them.
- T2_t2 10y ago1993.
- amelius 10y ago> First Friendly Contact But this tribe might have friendliness and hostility reversed :)
- udkl 10y agoSomewhere I read a while ago: These people do not cross the ocean to get to the mainland or to other far away islands on their boats. Reason ? They haven't yet invented oars.