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As horrific as it may sound, I hope his rotting body won't make the islanders sick. Human contact in the past had wiped out some of the Andaman tribes due to th
by option_greek 8y ago
As horrific as it may sound, I hope his rotting body won't make the islanders sick. Human contact in the past had wiped out some of the Andaman tribes due to the lack of resistance to many diseases.
- whatshisface 8y agoAt least one of them deserves to get sick, they did kill someone after all. You could argue that it's not wrong to kill if you don't have any treaties between your respective states but then it wouldn't be wrong to spread disease either.
- quicklime 8y agoThe few contacts that the North Sentinelese have had with the outside world have often resulted in kidnappings, death and disease being bought into the island. Given the few data points they have, it seems reasonable for them to want to avoid any further foreign contact.
- whatshisface 8y agoThey were armed combatants and the person they killed was a civilian. I can think of loads of people that I could shoot with a bow to protect my interests, and the fact that I have not signed any treaties to not do it doesn't mean I can.
- Steko 8y agoPerhaps they felt threatened and have a primitive belief that allows them to kill people whenever this happens. Like in Florida.
- ThrowawayR2 8y agoIt seems rather improbable that a pre-civilization tribe even has the concepts of "armed combatant" or "civilian" in the modern day sense of those words.
- oh_sigh 8y agoMaybe if they killed a person they invited onto their island would it be just for the killer to be punished. But he wasn't invited onto the island, he thought he could just waltz in with a soccer ball and some fishing gear. This is essentially just castle doctrine. He apparently also swam back to the fishermans boat with arrow wounds, but went back to the island anyway.
- whatshisface 8y agoIf any country on Earth killed a citizen of another country at the border there would be a gigantic outrage.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> If any country on Earth killed a citizen of another country at the border there would be a gigantic outrage. The US kills people at the Mexican border periodically; there is rarely gigantic outrage.
- em3rgent0rdr 8y ago"According to health professionals, the fear of spread of disease by bodies killed by trauma rather than disease is not justified. Among others, Steven Rottman, director of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters, said that no scientific evidence exists that bodies of disaster victims increase the risk of epidemics, adding that cadavers posed less risk of contagion than living people." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_risks_from_dead_bodies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_risks_from_dead_bodies
- option_greek 8y agoInteresting.. I'm sure its probably not true and definitely far fetched but I wonder if this is why the tribe has adopted the practice of converting their living visitors to dead cadavers.
- qiqing 8y agoIn this case, a living person would also pose a risk. These islanders don't have the same immune system that the population the health professionals are looking after have, just like Native Americans didn't have the same immune system as Europeans.
- jessaustin 8y agoIt's not comparable to the "New World" situation. These islands are close to the continent and had regular (if dangerous) visits from modern people throughout the twentieth century. We have no reason to think that Chau carried a deadly disease.
- huckyaus 8y agoThanks. I'll happily trust someone called Rottman when it comes to decomposing bodies.