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> the mariners who found themselves on the island did not make a very good first impression as representatives of the larger outside world and that this contrib

> the mariners who found themselves on the island did not make a very good first impression as representatives of the larger outside world and that this contributed to the hostility towards outsiders that the Sentinelese exhibit. The bad reputation that us outsiders have probably traces all the way back to the British intrusion into the island back in the XIXth century: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/north-sentinel-island-tribes-maurice-vidal-portman/675563/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/north-sent...

doodlebugging 2y ago
Thanks for that link. It doesn't reflect well on the British. A lot of colonial powers had similar interactions with people they encountered leaving large parts of many cultures destroyed by the changes they were forced to make.
- crossroadsguy 2y ago
  Well unlike some invaders like Mughals to Indian subcontinent, the Brits never intended to settle overseas, definitely not in India. They went everywhere to loot, destroy, and leave when there was nothing more to loot or it was too tough to maintain control. > doesn't reflect well on the British Shocking!
  - oa335 2y ago
    > Brits never intended to settle overseas What about Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand, and several Caribbean Islands?
    - OJFord 2y ago
      I think GP's definition of 'settle' that excludes 89 years of British Raj^ must certainly also exclude Australia, penal colony. ^which comprised many atrocities yes, but also expat rulers/officials, and building/development.
    - dyauspitr 2y ago
      It probably means never intended to settle overseas where they couldn’t exterminate the natives first.
gosub100 2y ago
The fact that their level of innovation is on par with (ours - 2k years) reflects poorly on them, doesn't it? What is the end game, keep living like neanderthals until sea levels rise and they all swim or paddle away?
- doodlebugging 2y ago
  There is no requirement that every culture evolve at the same pace and reach the same level of sophistication. Many cultures have reached a quiet, local equilibrium with their environment, having gained an understanding of everything around them and how best to utilize it for the success of the group. Unfortunately some are extinct now because of the idea that they are somehow less advanced than they should be considering the environment that their culture occupied upon first contact with their more technologically advanced human relatives. OT: Gosub100, that's pretty BASIC and gave me a chuckle. It's been a long time since I thought about BASIC. The days where you would buy a computer and pick the programming language and OS that you want to use with it passed a long time ago. Maybe it's what we really need today though.
  - wruza 2y ago
    On one hand this, on the other, being born there is a live sentence. The thought that somewhere exists a kid just like I was, but his fate is to pick roots and other local equilibrium things, all his life… bitter. He’ll never learn about gosub or for-next. If I were among the people who send aid, the first thing I’d send was ‘80s-style OS tablets with infographic manuals how to make games and bulky batteries with solar panels to run these. Because parents have taken me on an “island” in the summer and there was nothing to do except to socialize with clearly criminal peers and the internet was not a thing.
    - doodlebugging 2y ago
      Still OT but a nice segue that jogs my memories of the first PCs that I had available. A friend's Dad bought him a Compaq Deskpro that looked a lot like a portable sewing machine with QuickBASIC and my parents bought me a 128k Mac and QuickBASIC for the Mac. We jointly developed software using QuickBASIC that ran under Apple's System5? OS and various DOSes in PC land (DRDOS, OS/2, DOS2-5, Windows 286 and 3.1, etc). I think that if you initiated your plan to send those tablets, etc that you should consider sending late 90's model tablets (there weren't many tablet style computers until the 90's I think) with period correct software since a lot of the personal computers, OSes and programming languages available for the 80's rigs required use of multiple disks due to memory and hard drive space constraints. Far too many times I would be in the middle of an operation and be met with a prompt to load a specific disk from the set of disks for the software that I was using so that the software could perform some operation that wouldn't fit in memory on the disks that had already been read. If you passed them around to kids today they might quickly lose interest in the process. You could of course use those old school PCs to help teach them something of computer architecture and operations so that they can more easily grasp the functionality than if they were handed modern rigs with huge hard drives and zero disk space issues so that things run so quickly there is no time to teach about Disk I/O, clock speeds, etc. Anyway, thanks for this.

doodlebugging 2y ago

Thanks for that link. It doesn't reflect well on the British. A lot of colonial powers had similar interactions with people they encountered leaving large parts of many cultures destroyed by the changes they were forced to make.

crossroadsguy 2y ago
Well unlike some invaders like Mughals to Indian subcontinent, the Brits never intended to settle overseas, definitely not in India. They went everywhere to loot, destroy, and leave when there was nothing more to loot or it was too tough to maintain control. > doesn't reflect well on the British Shocking!
- oa335 2y ago
  > Brits never intended to settle overseas What about Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand, and several Caribbean Islands?
  - OJFord 2y ago
    I think GP's definition of 'settle' that excludes 89 years of British Raj^ must certainly also exclude Australia, penal colony. ^which comprised many atrocities yes, but also expat rulers/officials, and building/development.
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    It probably means never intended to settle overseas where they couldn’t exterminate the natives first.

gosub100 2y ago

The fact that their level of innovation is on par with (ours - 2k years) reflects poorly on them, doesn't it? What is the end game, keep living like neanderthals until sea levels rise and they all swim or paddle away?

doodlebugging 2y ago
There is no requirement that every culture evolve at the same pace and reach the same level of sophistication. Many cultures have reached a quiet, local equilibrium with their environment, having gained an understanding of everything around them and how best to utilize it for the success of the group. Unfortunately some are extinct now because of the idea that they are somehow less advanced than they should be considering the environment that their culture occupied upon first contact with their more technologically advanced human relatives. OT: Gosub100, that's pretty BASIC and gave me a chuckle. It's been a long time since I thought about BASIC. The days where you would buy a computer and pick the programming language and OS that you want to use with it passed a long time ago. Maybe it's what we really need today though.
- wruza 2y ago
  On one hand this, on the other, being born there is a live sentence. The thought that somewhere exists a kid just like I was, but his fate is to pick roots and other local equilibrium things, all his life… bitter. He’ll never learn about gosub or for-next. If I were among the people who send aid, the first thing I’d send was ‘80s-style OS tablets with infographic manuals how to make games and bulky batteries with solar panels to run these. Because parents have taken me on an “island” in the summer and there was nothing to do except to socialize with clearly criminal peers and the internet was not a thing.
  - doodlebugging 2y ago
    Still OT but a nice segue that jogs my memories of the first PCs that I had available. A friend's Dad bought him a Compaq Deskpro that looked a lot like a portable sewing machine with QuickBASIC and my parents bought me a 128k Mac and QuickBASIC for the Mac. We jointly developed software using QuickBASIC that ran under Apple's System5? OS and various DOSes in PC land (DRDOS, OS/2, DOS2-5, Windows 286 and 3.1, etc). I think that if you initiated your plan to send those tablets, etc that you should consider sending late 90's model tablets (there weren't many tablet style computers until the 90's I think) with period correct software since a lot of the personal computers, OSes and programming languages available for the 80's rigs required use of multiple disks due to memory and hard drive space constraints. Far too many times I would be in the middle of an operation and be met with a prompt to load a specific disk from the set of disks for the software that I was using so that the software could perform some operation that wouldn't fit in memory on the disks that had already been read. If you passed them around to kids today they might quickly lose interest in the process. You could of course use those old school PCs to help teach them something of computer architecture and operations so that they can more easily grasp the functionality than if they were handed modern rigs with huge hard drives and zero disk space issues so that things run so quickly there is no time to teach about Disk I/O, clock speeds, etc. Anyway, thanks for this.