51 ms·

The Forbidden Island

597 points by VexXtreme 13y ago

damian2000 13y ago
I read about it earlier here via this wikipedia entry ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples
batbomb 13y ago
Sterilize some drones and send them on in.
- nobodyshere 13y ago
  I guess you are one of the main reasons why they really don't appreciate our appearances there.
- zwegner 13y ago
  You're being downvoted, but assuming you're talking about small non-weaponized drones, it's not necessarily a horrible idea. If you could do it without the people noticing, then you could learn a lot and not harm them. Of course, you'd heavily violate their privacy, but it's better than exposing them to diseases. I'd say I'm still against it, but given the kinds of viewpoints on privacy that are mainstream these days, it's at least worth contemplating...
snambi 13y ago
Yes, this is true. I have seen this on indian TV channels. Even indian govt doesn't go there. Somehow indian politicians are not able to bribe and corrupt the tribes. Well done tribes.
joering2 13y ago
as one of the comments from the article points out to google map: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11.593418,92.21249&spn=0.016049,0.007178&hnear=North+Sentinel+Island&gl=us&t=h&z=17 https://maps.google.com/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11.5... looking at this island (looks huge!), am I the only one who feel so sick and tired of what the US government does to its people and our land, that I want to fill up my jetski and just head that way? Only if the tank was large enough... Edit: zoom out on the island.. and think about this: somewhere under the green down there there are living people like me and you that do not know what internet is... or cell phones.. or ipads.. cable TV... anything..
- unimpressive 13y ago
  >Edit: zoom out on the island.. and think about this: somewhere under the green down there there are living people like me and you that do not know what internet is... or cell phones.. or ipads.. cable TV... anything.. Or books, for that matter. Such things probably aren't as important if everybody you will ever have the chance to meet in your life numbers 400 people.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    Isn't it just as unethical to withhold modern learning from these tribes as it would be to infect them with our modern diseases?
    - danparsonson 13y ago
      If they wanted it, certainly, but they attack any non-islanders who come near so it seems reasonable to assume they're not interested. Besides, what do they need to know that they don't already after living on the same island for 65,000 years? I'm assuming you're thinking about modern medicine but I expect they have their own ways of dealing with illness, and increasing their life expectancy might actually make things worse - the island can presumably only support a limited number of people at any one time.
      - nitrogen 13y ago
        I'm thinking more of math and science. I suppose if the island's leaders are aware of the outside world and all it can and can't do, then I'd be less concerned about the "oppressed" minds of the island's inhabitants. I feel similarly about ultra-sheltered children in cultish societies.
        danparsonson 13y ago
        I would say those are two different examples though - children in cultish societies are removed from society at large while the cult remains embedded in and aware of it; the islanders on the other hand have deliberately chosen isolation rather than having isolation forced upon them by any external agent. I would say it's really up to them to head into the outside world rather than for us to do anything, if they want to see what's out here. And clearly they don't. The only hint of 'oppression' I see here is the idea of pushing our way of thinking onto a group of people who aren't interested and, to my mind, would derive questionable benefit from it. They must surely have sufficient 'science' to have survived there for this long and unless they intend to venture away from their island, what useful things could we teach them? I can't picture them building a particle accelerator or sitting around all day puzzling over integrals.
dirktheman 13y ago
Fascinating story, as well as the wikipedia article about uncontacted peoples. I really appreciate the Indian government for the exclusion zone, as contact with the rest of the world will probably wipe them away. From a anthropological standpoint, this is a nice paradox. I'm sure anthropologists would LOVE to study an uncontacted tribe. Particularly this tribe, as they appear to be of African descent yet are living in the middle of the Indian ocean. Unfortunately, there is no way of studying these people without, well, 'contaminating' them.
- terhechte 13y ago
  You can always fly drones around. Edit: Non-Lethal, Non-Army drones. Just flying cameras to see what's happening there, or how they're living. Even better, really small cameras that look a bit like slow-moving birds.
  - JoshGlazebrook 13y ago
    Somehow I think drones wouldn't do well in the dense jungle.
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      Maybe quadrotors, then.
  - dirktheman 13y ago
    I think it would freak them out. A metal bird, making strange humming noise, hovering over their heads... A couple of years ago I was driving on the I-95 from Las Vegas to Tonopah. Out of nowhere, a predator drone came up and flew next to our car for a good couple of hundred yards. A strange and somewhat frightening experience, even for someone who knows what drones are. Besides, the thick jungle canopy wouldn't allow drones to get a good look anyway. We could launch crawling cameras, disguised as forest creatures, but the risk of getting exposed isn't worth the potential damage to the tribe, IMHO. I think the best thing to do is to just leave them alone.
JoshGlazebrook 13y ago
Definitely one of the most interesting things I've read in months. Had me thinking of LOST at first heh heh.
derleth 13y ago
Just think: A life without the damage wrought by modern antibiotics, dentistry, surgery, and preventative medicine! Where if you get sick with something that a week's worth of pills would clear right up, you're gonna die in pain! Paradise! Yep, nothing quite like the Noble Savage, who has the dignity to die of something you've only heard about in old novels.
- tnjm 13y ago
  But... the choice is theirs, not yours or mine. It's clear they know the outside world exists. They have chosen not to engage. (To put it mildly.) As an aside, there are more than 100 'uncontacted' tribes in the world. All of them know of the outside world; all have chosen -- for now -- not to interact directly with mainstream society.
  - derleth 13y ago
    > But... the choice is theirs, not yours or mine. How much do they really know, though? Do they know that some of their diseases could be cured, for example?
    - tnjm 13y ago
      I've been fortunate enough to interview several tribal people who were only recently 'contacted'. The latest came out of the forest in 2009. What is striking is how many of their friends and relatives died of outsiders' disease after making contact, and how fondly they spoke of their life before. When I spoke to them, some were considering leaving the village where they now live and returning to a life in the forest. With regards to healthcare -- the health services offered to settled tribal and indigenous people in many places is poor to nonexistent. Amazonian tribal peoples have dozens to hundreds of medicinal plants, many of which have been proven to have active pharmacological properties. Some are now used in Western medicine.
    - kaybe 13y ago
      But then, some of the plants in the jungle seem to be amazing. I read some books about expeditions to find them for western medicine. One talked about a black paste you put on a tooth and it will simply fall out, no pain and no problem. A plant that makes women infertile for 7 years (they give it to their teenagers, apparently). Also, great plants against many sorts of other problems like abscesses. Sadly, the results simply got ignored. The woman in the book was sent by a US pharmy company and brought back many plants and samples which she had won from the tribes in hard work (they don't just tell anyone). They probably still have them in a freezer somewhere. An experienced person I talked to said that it probably was too much trouble and costs to clear it for drugs since there often are side effects, often psychological. He took one or two of the jungle things and said it was intense. Still, it's a great loss for our civilisation that it played out like this so far. So, we'd have much to give, but also much to gain. Our diseases could be cured too.
scdoshi 13y ago
Meanwhile, on other Andaman islands, there were human safaris happening. Most likely still are, but you probably have to grease some palms. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/07/andaman-islands-tribe-tourism-threat http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/07/andaman-islands-...
ambuj 13y ago
This is interesting too - "An expedition led by Maurice Vidal Portman, a government administrator who hoped to research the natives and their customs, accomplished a successful landing on North Sentinel Island in January 1880. The group found a network of pathways and several small, abandoned villages. After several days, six Sentinelese were captured and taken to Port Blair. They soon became sick, and two of them died. The other four were returned to the island." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island
- adrianb 13y ago
  It's described in the article as well: "Finally, after several days on the island, the party stumbled across an elderly couple who were too old to run away, and several small children. Portman brought the two adults and four of the children back to Port Blair. But the man and the woman soon started to get sick and then died, probably from exposure to Western diseases like smallpox, measles, and influenza, to which they would have had little or no resistance. So Portman returned the four children to North Sentinel Island and released them with gifts for the rest of the tribe. The children disappeared into the jungle and were never seen again. "
ExpiredLink 13y ago
Site was ycombinatored. Down now.
__voidcast__ 13y ago
Wow. Here is the account of one of the helicopter pilots(Captain Robert Fore) who rescued the Primrose crew...http://www.eternalidol.com/?p=8593 http://www.eternalidol.com/?p=8593
geuis 13y ago
I'm pretty late to leaving a comment, so it won't get a lot of exposure. Let's just leave these people the fuck alone. What threat are they under? Curious assholes like us. There are probably less than 1000 people on that island, all descended from people tens of thousands of years ago. There are more people than that that visit an Apple store on a Tuesday before 2pm. Leave them alone. We don't need to assuage our 10 second collective attention span by ruining their lives, destroying their history, and effectively ending a lineage thousands of years old. These people probably have their own ideas about the weird shit washing up on their beaches and the crazy stuff in the sky that drops outsiders and food from time to time. Leave them to it. It doesn't matter what they think, no matter how curious you think you are. Leave them alone. For the physics-minded, think of them as a sample of humanity in Schrödinger's box. It's not a cat, but people. Except in this experiment, any direct observation will absolutely kill the people. Any exposure to disease, customs, or technology without their explicit choice will kill them. Maybe they don't physically die, but their lineage will end.
- eshvk 13y ago
  Why leave them alone? (I have my own reasons why they should or shouldn't be left alone. I am just curious to figure out why you are so insistent that they be left alone.)
  - JonnieCache 13y ago
    A. it is clearly what they want. B. contact with us is likely to be deadly to them.
    - homeomorphic 13y ago
      > A. it is clearly what they want. We all encounter at times fellow humans who want something that clearly is based on lacking information. Of course we respect such things, but only up to a certain point. We often do try to help people see the bigger picture - sometimes we do say "I hear you say that that is what you want, but have you considered the fact that...". > B. contact with us is likely to be deadly to them. This can be remedied with technology. A crude solution would be to land in hazmat suits and have a chat. I don't know how we should deal with the bows and arrows though.
peterclary 13y ago
I knew there had to be a Control Group somewhere...
ddeck 13y ago
>It's estimated the the 28-square-mile island (slightly larger than Manhattan) is capable of supporting as many as 400 hunter-gatherers Assuming this is accurate, I'm amazed that so much land is required to support a single individual. More so given it's an island with access to marine food sources.
gokhan 13y ago
On leaving / not leaving them alone: "... They make it clear they want to be left alone." "But could this be because they don’t see the benefits of ‘our’ way of life? If they knew, might they want to join us?" "They won’t get the chance. In reality, the future offered by the settler society is to ‘join’ at the lowest possible level – often as beggars and prostitutes. History proves that tribal peoples end up in a far worse state after contact, often dead." http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions-and-answers-uncontacted-tribes http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions-and...
- nazgulnarsil 13y ago
  This needs to be higher. Many commenters seem to be acting as if the choice is between mud hut and glorious western way of life.
- Chris2048 13y ago
  Beggars and prostitutes in their own society? does 'joining us' literally mean buying a one way ticket to NYC?
julianpye 13y ago
Well, ever since the Intergalactic foundation created a no-fly zone around our solar-system in order to let us remain uncontacted, we are in a similar boat. People outside there look fondly at our antiquated technology as the good old days.
- dadoes 13y ago
  O.O Is this from a book or something?
restlessmedia 13y ago
I'm thinking of the 'mind blown' meme when wondering how they would react if they knew I was sitting here, using my fingers to display a language that could be instantly available across the world. Oh, the power.
lechevalierd3on 13y ago
I can't find anything on the inbreeding. From what I've read somewhere an animal species need at very least 200, or so, specimen to survive. There are guessed to be between 40 and 400.
gngeal 13y ago
This was the best part: "when an Indian Navy helicopter tried to recover them from the beach, the Sentinelese fought it off with bows and arrows" Indian Navy should feel ashamed! :D
yread 13y ago
> They've never invented oars, without which they cannot leave the island. Hmm so how did they get there?
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Actually looking at a map, the island is a mere 20km from a much larger island, which in turn is a few hundred km from mainland. The larger island is situated such that anything floating out to sea from the mainland has a 25% chance of hitting the larger island. From there, someone would find their way to the smaller island. Quite possible that some people floated out to North Sentinel Island in a confluence of events. Once there, if you don't have oars odds are you're not coming back if you leave (floating or swimming).
- samatman 13y ago
  Sea levels have varied quite a bit in the last 65,000 years.
- namenotrequired 13y ago
  Possibly with primitive sail boats, or over land before the sea cut them off. It´s also possible they did have oars but forgot about them at some point over the thousands of years because they didn´t need them.
smountcastle 13y ago
Is anyone able to find the wreck of the Primrose on Google Maps satellite image? I've looked around the perimeter of the island but cannot see it -- did the Indian government clean it up?
- Malcx 13y ago
  https://maps.google.com/maps?q=primrose,+north+sentinel+island&hl=en&ll=11.597885,92.212071&spn=0.021776,0.042272&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.042042,86.572266&t=h&hq=primrose,&hnear=North+Sentinel+Island&z=15 https://maps.google.com/maps?q=primrose,+north+sentinel+isla...
- ColinWright 13y ago
  https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11.593508,92.212452&spn=0.002627,0.003449 https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11...
dirktheman 13y ago
Let’s suppose our earth is visited by aliens. Giant extraterrestial spaceships appear. They make contact, abduct a couple of humans, some of which return with strange diseases. Oh yeah, and heaps of iPads as gifts. The people that make it back speak of a strange society, where everybody is essentially a mindless part of a big mainframe, not unlike the Borg in Star Trek. One day, the aliens make contact. We try to fend them off, but our weapons don’t seem to harm them. They explain that their intentions are good, and that by assimilating mankind, we no longer have to deal with hunger, poverty, crime, fear or even death. You like? Absurd, right? Yet this is probably not far from how the Sentinelese see us. They have heard from diseases they cannot fight from other tribes, they have witnessed the abductions. Why should things be different all of the sudden? My point is: we have to stop seeing our culture or civilization as superior. In the alien analogy, becoming a Borg-like drone is probably far better in the eyes of the aliens. Why would these ‘savage’ humans would want to deal with the perils of life? Why can’t they see that we’re just here to help them? Their culture, their world view is so far apart from ours. Do we really think that, when we show them a modern hospital, they’ll think it’s a good idea? Do we really believe that these people would somehow benefit from things like cell phones, cars, education, healthcare? Besides, we can’t show them just the good stuff. We can’t NOT show them pollution, taxes, budget crises, alcoholism, child pornography or facebook. I’m sure the ones that genuinly want to help these people have good intentions. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. No matter how good our intentions are, making contact is not in the best interest of these people. They don’t need our view of what is civilized, and they don’t need our vices and virtues. And they make it pretty clear, too. Leave them alone.
- resu_nimda 13y ago
  The devil is in the details, as always. Would I want to be left alone by the Borg? Yes. But what if it was The Culture? I would be very disappointed if a civilization like that saw us and said "Oh, they probably wouldn't want all of our bullshit, leave them alone." I'm sure there are many who would disagree. The big problem with the alien analogy is our level of knowledge and language. The tribesmen are...savages. There is no framework whatsoever for them to understand anything about modern society and make reasoned evaluations. Conversely, it's hard to imagine that scenario between us and aliens. It's certainly possible that their society is so far beyond our wildest dreams that we can't even begin to make sense of it, but it's also possible that we have crossed some fundamental threshold of knowledge and communication. Is our culture superior, is it not, how can that be evaluated? Most people do tend to stay in it rather than set out into the woods. Of course they have been biased towards that since birth, likewise for the Sentinelese and their ways, it's a really interesting and highly subjective question. Whether we attempt to contact/assimilate them or not, we have made a choice. If we did try, it could go well or it could go poorly; they could be eternally grateful for knowledge and technology, or they could be destroyed. There are so many factors and ideological viewpoints at play, I just don't understand how people here can be so sure that one way or the other is The Right Thing to Do.
JonSkeptic 13y ago
>members of a hunter-gatherer tribe that has lived on the island for 65,000 years. >It's estimated the the 28-square-mile island (slightly larger than Manhattan) is capable of supporting as many as 400 hunter-gatherers, but no one knows how many people live there. Did anyone else read that and think "That is a lot of inbreeding."?
malkia 13y ago
"62,000 years before the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza" - this is probably mistake.
- dgesang 13y ago
  Why? Because the Earth is only 6000 years old?
aet 13y ago
If you find this interesting, you may also like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha
- andyking 13y ago
  The difference being, people can and do go to Tristan da Cunha. I know someone who's been there. They have telephones, internet access, satellite TV and a radio station.
  - aet 13y ago
    You can go, but you can't stay.
- 205guy 13y ago
  I have been reading up on distant islands for years. The topic is fascinating and seemingly endless (wikipedia now has more and more articles covering these remote specs). However, Tristan da Cunha was uninhabited and the current settlement is part of the modern world--just significantly limited by distance and difficulty of access. It is fascinating to study how humans live and relate in such small communities, but Tristan's inhabitants are fundamentally unlike the Sentinelese with their status as an uncontacted tribe.
maerek 13y ago
Prime Directive.
bedhead 13y ago
Fun tidbit I read while searching for more info about these people. Evidently, some explorers sat in their boat just offshore in 1970 as some of the male warriors were on the beach. The explorers threw the men some gifts but refused to leave. How did the natives respond? Why, the women emerged from the jungle and immediately engaged in a giant orgy with the warriors, of course. Dont mess with a good thing.
iskander 13y ago
>last 65,000 years...62,000 years before the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza. A very minor nitpick, but the Giza pyramids were built around 2500BC, not 1000BC.
huherto 13y ago
This is fascinating. What about genetic diversity? With only 1000 people can they keep reproducing without long term effects? I can't believe they have been isolated for over 60,000 years.
- n11 13y ago
  I was wondering the same thing. And, I'm curious to how they sensed the tsunami coming and were able to escape to higher ground in time.
adamwong246 13y ago
Prime Directive, folks. Respect it!
ColinWright 13y ago
In case you're interested, here's the shipwreck: https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11.593508,92.212452&spn=0.002627,0.003449 https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11...
canvia 13y ago
Would there be any chance that in their isolation that different diseases evolved that the rest of the world doesn't have immunity to? It would seem to me that us wiping them out with one of our diseases isn't the only thing we should be worried about.
snake_plissken 13y ago
I am curious, what methods are anthropologists using to try to date how long they have live on the island?
- 205guy 13y ago
  I had the same question (the article isn't that great, it comes from a "bathroom reader"). From previous reading about this fascinating topic, I think they must've established the dates for the other tribes and other islands of the Andaman chain, and then just assummed North Sentinel was similar. I think that's a fair assessment because its size and location is not atypical, so there's no (apparent) reason to assume it was settled earlier or later than the other islands. This of course begs the question of how they got to the island. In the past, when sea levels were lower, there may have been land bridges between islands and the mainland (not sure 'cause I haven't studied the bathymetry). Another explanation for how they got there is that they did have sails or oars in the past, but they were forgotten over time.
dgbsco 13y ago
Send in the robots.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
thecosas 13y ago
Leave them alone. They've somehow managed to stay alive through tens of thousands of years and limited interaction with us. People have approached them over decades and they have made the choice numerous times to push out the outsiders. Despite this, I went down a rat-hole of trying to find out more about them... and then decided thats where it should end. I don't need any more information than what's already out there. Anthropologists need not find out more while risking their own safety and the survival of these people.
tiatia 13y ago
Would be a nice idea to just get rid of the few bozos there and open your own nice little kingdom. Maybe develop a tax heaven and vacation destination.
Friedduck 13y ago
The naivete of anyone who thinks introducing a 65k year-old culture to modern society is truly, truly impressive. Imagine what it would take to achieve a perfect (as evidenced by the span of time) equilibrium with your environment. We through around the word sustainable pretty readily these days, but this is the real thing. These people have achieved a sustainable existence unlike any other.
conductr 13y ago
Makes me wonder what they think of us. Who are we? Aliens? Where are we coming from? Space? What is all this weird technology? UFOs? They must have a story of "visitors" they tell to each generation. It started a long time ago. They came in weird boats and wore weird cloths. Over time, they would appear again and again. Different weird boats and different weird clothes every time. Sometimes they had white skin, sometimes they had brown skin, sometimes maybe even with pale skin with slanted eyes. They always looked different and weird. They always carry different weird looking weapons. Recently, they come a lot. They fly in weird boats with wings. They fly in weird boats with spinning blades.
adriancooney 13y ago
Project Loon's target audience.
b0rsuk 13y ago
I wonder, has anyone tried visiting them naked ? At the very least, what would their reaction be ? Also, maybe sending a party of black-skinned people would accomplish something ? As for my personal opinion, I would be most pleased if we could make enough contact to talk with them for at least 1 day, then leave them alone. To learn their beliefs and outlook of life.
ZanyProgrammer 13y ago
I'd like to see some actual evidence for that 65,000 year old claim. It doesn't pass the paleoanthropological smell test.
sjay 13y ago
Question: if we investigated these people, and found out that they had some 'bad' ritual practice like female circumcision or human sacrifice -- would we have a moral obligation to intervene and stop them? Or would we have a moral obligation to leave them the fuck alone?
bevan 13y ago
Ironically, they could be the last ones standing if a disease sweeps the rest of the world. On another note, it would be interesting to know what they eat, and to know the incidence of chronic disease in their culture. The results would likely be surprising: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price
billiam 13y ago
Stick to the comments about node and ember, guys. Your views about humanity, civilization, and anthropology make me embarrassed for you.
javert 13y ago
A bunch of strangers all over the world conversing on the Internet about whether a primitive tribe ought to be contacted. This really does seem like science fiction. In comparison to them, we are like godly beings, communicating in some unfathomably high-tech way to discuss their fate.
mariuolo 13y ago
Leave them alone, or find a way to study them without their knowledge.
alexvr 13y ago
I wonder if they have evolved differently. Is 65,000 years enough time for any significant change given their circumstances?
zenocon 13y ago
Discovered this guy's flickr photostream via article, and it is amazing: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/christiancaron2000/page1/ https://secure.flickr.com/photos/christiancaron2000/page1/

597 points by VexXtreme 13y ago

damian2000 13y ago

I read about it earlier here via this wikipedia entry ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

batbomb 13y ago

Sterilize some drones and send them on in.

nobodyshere 13y ago
I guess you are one of the main reasons why they really don't appreciate our appearances there.
zwegner 13y ago
You're being downvoted, but assuming you're talking about small non-weaponized drones, it's not necessarily a horrible idea. If you could do it without the people noticing, then you could learn a lot and not harm them. Of course, you'd heavily violate their privacy, but it's better than exposing them to diseases. I'd say I'm still against it, but given the kinds of viewpoints on privacy that are mainstream these days, it's at least worth contemplating...

snambi 13y ago

Yes, this is true. I have seen this on indian TV channels. Even indian govt doesn't go there. Somehow indian politicians are not able to bribe and corrupt the tribes. Well done tribes.

joering2 13y ago

as one of the comments from the article points out to google map: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11.593418,92.21249&spn=0.016049,0.007178&hnear=North+Sentinel+Island&gl=us&t=h&z=17 https://maps.google.com/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11.5... looking at this island (looks huge!), am I the only one who feel so sick and tired of what the US government does to its people and our land, that I want to fill up my jetski and just head that way? Only if the tank was large enough... Edit: zoom out on the island.. and think about this: somewhere under the green down there there are living people like me and you that do not know what internet is... or cell phones.. or ipads.. cable TV... anything..

unimpressive 13y ago
>Edit: zoom out on the island.. and think about this: somewhere under the green down there there are living people like me and you that do not know what internet is... or cell phones.. or ipads.. cable TV... anything.. Or books, for that matter. Such things probably aren't as important if everybody you will ever have the chance to meet in your life numbers 400 people.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  Isn't it just as unethical to withhold modern learning from these tribes as it would be to infect them with our modern diseases?
  - danparsonson 13y ago
    If they wanted it, certainly, but they attack any non-islanders who come near so it seems reasonable to assume they're not interested. Besides, what do they need to know that they don't already after living on the same island for 65,000 years? I'm assuming you're thinking about modern medicine but I expect they have their own ways of dealing with illness, and increasing their life expectancy might actually make things worse - the island can presumably only support a limited number of people at any one time.
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      I'm thinking more of math and science. I suppose if the island's leaders are aware of the outside world and all it can and can't do, then I'd be less concerned about the "oppressed" minds of the island's inhabitants. I feel similarly about ultra-sheltered children in cultish societies.
      - danparsonson 13y ago
        I would say those are two different examples though - children in cultish societies are removed from society at large while the cult remains embedded in and aware of it; the islanders on the other hand have deliberately chosen isolation rather than having isolation forced upon them by any external agent. I would say it's really up to them to head into the outside world rather than for us to do anything, if they want to see what's out here. And clearly they don't. The only hint of 'oppression' I see here is the idea of pushing our way of thinking onto a group of people who aren't interested and, to my mind, would derive questionable benefit from it. They must surely have sufficient 'science' to have survived there for this long and unless they intend to venture away from their island, what useful things could we teach them? I can't picture them building a particle accelerator or sitting around all day puzzling over integrals.

dirktheman 13y ago

Fascinating story, as well as the wikipedia article about uncontacted peoples. I really appreciate the Indian government for the exclusion zone, as contact with the rest of the world will probably wipe them away. From a anthropological standpoint, this is a nice paradox. I'm sure anthropologists would LOVE to study an uncontacted tribe. Particularly this tribe, as they appear to be of African descent yet are living in the middle of the Indian ocean. Unfortunately, there is no way of studying these people without, well, 'contaminating' them.

terhechte 13y ago
You can always fly drones around. Edit: Non-Lethal, Non-Army drones. Just flying cameras to see what's happening there, or how they're living. Even better, really small cameras that look a bit like slow-moving birds.
- JoshGlazebrook 13y ago
  Somehow I think drones wouldn't do well in the dense jungle.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Maybe quadrotors, then.
- dirktheman 13y ago
  I think it would freak them out. A metal bird, making strange humming noise, hovering over their heads... A couple of years ago I was driving on the I-95 from Las Vegas to Tonopah. Out of nowhere, a predator drone came up and flew next to our car for a good couple of hundred yards. A strange and somewhat frightening experience, even for someone who knows what drones are. Besides, the thick jungle canopy wouldn't allow drones to get a good look anyway. We could launch crawling cameras, disguised as forest creatures, but the risk of getting exposed isn't worth the potential damage to the tribe, IMHO. I think the best thing to do is to just leave them alone.

JoshGlazebrook 13y ago

Definitely one of the most interesting things I've read in months. Had me thinking of LOST at first heh heh.

derleth 13y ago

Just think: A life without the damage wrought by modern antibiotics, dentistry, surgery, and preventative medicine! Where if you get sick with something that a week's worth of pills would clear right up, you're gonna die in pain! Paradise! Yep, nothing quite like the Noble Savage, who has the dignity to die of something you've only heard about in old novels.

tnjm 13y ago
But... the choice is theirs, not yours or mine. It's clear they know the outside world exists. They have chosen not to engage. (To put it mildly.) As an aside, there are more than 100 'uncontacted' tribes in the world. All of them know of the outside world; all have chosen -- for now -- not to interact directly with mainstream society.
- derleth 13y ago
  > But... the choice is theirs, not yours or mine. How much do they really know, though? Do they know that some of their diseases could be cured, for example?
  - tnjm 13y ago
    I've been fortunate enough to interview several tribal people who were only recently 'contacted'. The latest came out of the forest in 2009. What is striking is how many of their friends and relatives died of outsiders' disease after making contact, and how fondly they spoke of their life before. When I spoke to them, some were considering leaving the village where they now live and returning to a life in the forest. With regards to healthcare -- the health services offered to settled tribal and indigenous people in many places is poor to nonexistent. Amazonian tribal peoples have dozens to hundreds of medicinal plants, many of which have been proven to have active pharmacological properties. Some are now used in Western medicine.
  - kaybe 13y ago
    But then, some of the plants in the jungle seem to be amazing. I read some books about expeditions to find them for western medicine. One talked about a black paste you put on a tooth and it will simply fall out, no pain and no problem. A plant that makes women infertile for 7 years (they give it to their teenagers, apparently). Also, great plants against many sorts of other problems like abscesses. Sadly, the results simply got ignored. The woman in the book was sent by a US pharmy company and brought back many plants and samples which she had won from the tribes in hard work (they don't just tell anyone). They probably still have them in a freezer somewhere. An experienced person I talked to said that it probably was too much trouble and costs to clear it for drugs since there often are side effects, often psychological. He took one or two of the jungle things and said it was intense. Still, it's a great loss for our civilisation that it played out like this so far. So, we'd have much to give, but also much to gain. Our diseases could be cured too.

scdoshi 13y ago

Meanwhile, on other Andaman islands, there were human safaris happening. Most likely still are, but you probably have to grease some palms. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/07/andaman-islands-tribe-tourism-threat http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/07/andaman-islands-...

ambuj 13y ago

This is interesting too - "An expedition led by Maurice Vidal Portman, a government administrator who hoped to research the natives and their customs, accomplished a successful landing on North Sentinel Island in January 1880. The group found a network of pathways and several small, abandoned villages. After several days, six Sentinelese were captured and taken to Port Blair. They soon became sick, and two of them died. The other four were returned to the island." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island

adrianb 13y ago
It's described in the article as well: "Finally, after several days on the island, the party stumbled across an elderly couple who were too old to run away, and several small children. Portman brought the two adults and four of the children back to Port Blair. But the man and the woman soon started to get sick and then died, probably from exposure to Western diseases like smallpox, measles, and influenza, to which they would have had little or no resistance. So Portman returned the four children to North Sentinel Island and released them with gifts for the rest of the tribe. The children disappeared into the jungle and were never seen again. "

ExpiredLink 13y ago

Site was ycombinatored. Down now.

__voidcast__ 13y ago

Wow. Here is the account of one of the helicopter pilots(Captain Robert Fore) who rescued the Primrose crew...http://www.eternalidol.com/?p=8593 http://www.eternalidol.com/?p=8593

geuis 13y ago

I'm pretty late to leaving a comment, so it won't get a lot of exposure. Let's just leave these people the fuck alone. What threat are they under? Curious assholes like us. There are probably less than 1000 people on that island, all descended from people tens of thousands of years ago. There are more people than that that visit an Apple store on a Tuesday before 2pm. Leave them alone. We don't need to assuage our 10 second collective attention span by ruining their lives, destroying their history, and effectively ending a lineage thousands of years old. These people probably have their own ideas about the weird shit washing up on their beaches and the crazy stuff in the sky that drops outsiders and food from time to time. Leave them to it. It doesn't matter what they think, no matter how curious you think you are. Leave them alone. For the physics-minded, think of them as a sample of humanity in Schrödinger's box. It's not a cat, but people. Except in this experiment, any direct observation will absolutely kill the people. Any exposure to disease, customs, or technology without their explicit choice will kill them. Maybe they don't physically die, but their lineage will end.

eshvk 13y ago
Why leave them alone? (I have my own reasons why they should or shouldn't be left alone. I am just curious to figure out why you are so insistent that they be left alone.)
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  A. it is clearly what they want. B. contact with us is likely to be deadly to them.
  - homeomorphic 13y ago
    > A. it is clearly what they want. We all encounter at times fellow humans who want something that clearly is based on lacking information. Of course we respect such things, but only up to a certain point. We often do try to help people see the bigger picture - sometimes we do say "I hear you say that that is what you want, but have you considered the fact that...". > B. contact with us is likely to be deadly to them. This can be remedied with technology. A crude solution would be to land in hazmat suits and have a chat. I don't know how we should deal with the bows and arrows though.

peterclary 13y ago

I knew there had to be a Control Group somewhere...

ddeck 13y ago

>It's estimated the the 28-square-mile island (slightly larger than Manhattan) is capable of supporting as many as 400 hunter-gatherers Assuming this is accurate, I'm amazed that so much land is required to support a single individual. More so given it's an island with access to marine food sources.

gokhan 13y ago

On leaving / not leaving them alone: "... They make it clear they want to be left alone." "But could this be because they don’t see the benefits of ‘our’ way of life? If they knew, might they want to join us?" "They won’t get the chance. In reality, the future offered by the settler society is to ‘join’ at the lowest possible level – often as beggars and prostitutes. History proves that tribal peoples end up in a far worse state after contact, often dead." http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions-and-answers-uncontacted-tribes http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions-and...

nazgulnarsil 13y ago
This needs to be higher. Many commenters seem to be acting as if the choice is between mud hut and glorious western way of life.
Chris2048 13y ago
Beggars and prostitutes in their own society? does 'joining us' literally mean buying a one way ticket to NYC?

julianpye 13y ago

Well, ever since the Intergalactic foundation created a no-fly zone around our solar-system in order to let us remain uncontacted, we are in a similar boat. People outside there look fondly at our antiquated technology as the good old days.

dadoes 13y ago
O.O Is this from a book or something?

restlessmedia 13y ago

I'm thinking of the 'mind blown' meme when wondering how they would react if they knew I was sitting here, using my fingers to display a language that could be instantly available across the world. Oh, the power.

lechevalierd3on 13y ago

I can't find anything on the inbreeding. From what I've read somewhere an animal species need at very least 200, or so, specimen to survive. There are guessed to be between 40 and 400.

gngeal 13y ago

This was the best part: "when an Indian Navy helicopter tried to recover them from the beach, the Sentinelese fought it off with bows and arrows" Indian Navy should feel ashamed! :D

yread 13y ago

> They've never invented oars, without which they cannot leave the island. Hmm so how did they get there?

ctdonath 13y ago
Actually looking at a map, the island is a mere 20km from a much larger island, which in turn is a few hundred km from mainland. The larger island is situated such that anything floating out to sea from the mainland has a 25% chance of hitting the larger island. From there, someone would find their way to the smaller island. Quite possible that some people floated out to North Sentinel Island in a confluence of events. Once there, if you don't have oars odds are you're not coming back if you leave (floating or swimming).
samatman 13y ago
Sea levels have varied quite a bit in the last 65,000 years.
namenotrequired 13y ago
Possibly with primitive sail boats, or over land before the sea cut them off. It´s also possible they did have oars but forgot about them at some point over the thousands of years because they didn´t need them.

smountcastle 13y ago

Is anyone able to find the wreck of the Primrose on Google Maps satellite image? I've looked around the perimeter of the island but cannot see it -- did the Indian government clean it up?

Malcx 13y ago
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=primrose,+north+sentinel+island&hl=en&ll=11.597885,92.212071&spn=0.021776,0.042272&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.042042,86.572266&t=h&hq=primrose,&hnear=North+Sentinel+Island&z=15 https://maps.google.com/maps?q=primrose,+north+sentinel+isla...
ColinWright 13y ago
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11.593508,92.212452&spn=0.002627,0.003449 https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11...

dirktheman 13y ago

Let’s suppose our earth is visited by aliens. Giant extraterrestial spaceships appear. They make contact, abduct a couple of humans, some of which return with strange diseases. Oh yeah, and heaps of iPads as gifts. The people that make it back speak of a strange society, where everybody is essentially a mindless part of a big mainframe, not unlike the Borg in Star Trek. One day, the aliens make contact. We try to fend them off, but our weapons don’t seem to harm them. They explain that their intentions are good, and that by assimilating mankind, we no longer have to deal with hunger, poverty, crime, fear or even death. You like? Absurd, right? Yet this is probably not far from how the Sentinelese see us. They have heard from diseases they cannot fight from other tribes, they have witnessed the abductions. Why should things be different all of the sudden? My point is: we have to stop seeing our culture or civilization as superior. In the alien analogy, becoming a Borg-like drone is probably far better in the eyes of the aliens. Why would these ‘savage’ humans would want to deal with the perils of life? Why can’t they see that we’re just here to help them? Their culture, their world view is so far apart from ours. Do we really think that, when we show them a modern hospital, they’ll think it’s a good idea? Do we really believe that these people would somehow benefit from things like cell phones, cars, education, healthcare? Besides, we can’t show them just the good stuff. We can’t NOT show them pollution, taxes, budget crises, alcoholism, child pornography or facebook. I’m sure the ones that genuinly want to help these people have good intentions. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. No matter how good our intentions are, making contact is not in the best interest of these people. They don’t need our view of what is civilized, and they don’t need our vices and virtues. And they make it pretty clear, too. Leave them alone.

resu_nimda 13y ago
The devil is in the details, as always. Would I want to be left alone by the Borg? Yes. But what if it was The Culture? I would be very disappointed if a civilization like that saw us and said "Oh, they probably wouldn't want all of our bullshit, leave them alone." I'm sure there are many who would disagree. The big problem with the alien analogy is our level of knowledge and language. The tribesmen are...savages. There is no framework whatsoever for them to understand anything about modern society and make reasoned evaluations. Conversely, it's hard to imagine that scenario between us and aliens. It's certainly possible that their society is so far beyond our wildest dreams that we can't even begin to make sense of it, but it's also possible that we have crossed some fundamental threshold of knowledge and communication. Is our culture superior, is it not, how can that be evaluated? Most people do tend to stay in it rather than set out into the woods. Of course they have been biased towards that since birth, likewise for the Sentinelese and their ways, it's a really interesting and highly subjective question. Whether we attempt to contact/assimilate them or not, we have made a choice. If we did try, it could go well or it could go poorly; they could be eternally grateful for knowledge and technology, or they could be destroyed. There are so many factors and ideological viewpoints at play, I just don't understand how people here can be so sure that one way or the other is The Right Thing to Do.

JonSkeptic 13y ago

>members of a hunter-gatherer tribe that has lived on the island for 65,000 years. >It's estimated the the 28-square-mile island (slightly larger than Manhattan) is capable of supporting as many as 400 hunter-gatherers, but no one knows how many people live there. Did anyone else read that and think "That is a lot of inbreeding."?

malkia 13y ago

"62,000 years before the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza" - this is probably mistake.

dgesang 13y ago
Why? Because the Earth is only 6000 years old?

aet 13y ago

If you find this interesting, you may also like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha

andyking 13y ago
The difference being, people can and do go to Tristan da Cunha. I know someone who's been there. They have telephones, internet access, satellite TV and a radio station.
- aet 13y ago
  You can go, but you can't stay.
205guy 13y ago
I have been reading up on distant islands for years. The topic is fascinating and seemingly endless (wikipedia now has more and more articles covering these remote specs). However, Tristan da Cunha was uninhabited and the current settlement is part of the modern world--just significantly limited by distance and difficulty of access. It is fascinating to study how humans live and relate in such small communities, but Tristan's inhabitants are fundamentally unlike the Sentinelese with their status as an uncontacted tribe.

maerek 13y ago

Prime Directive.

bedhead 13y ago

Fun tidbit I read while searching for more info about these people. Evidently, some explorers sat in their boat just offshore in 1970 as some of the male warriors were on the beach. The explorers threw the men some gifts but refused to leave. How did the natives respond? Why, the women emerged from the jungle and immediately engaged in a giant orgy with the warriors, of course. Dont mess with a good thing.

iskander 13y ago

>last 65,000 years...62,000 years before the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza. A very minor nitpick, but the Giza pyramids were built around 2500BC, not 1000BC.

huherto 13y ago

This is fascinating. What about genetic diversity? With only 1000 people can they keep reproducing without long term effects? I can't believe they have been isolated for over 60,000 years.

n11 13y ago
I was wondering the same thing. And, I'm curious to how they sensed the tsunami coming and were able to escape to higher ground in time.

adamwong246 13y ago

Prime Directive, folks. Respect it!

ColinWright 13y ago

In case you're interested, here's the shipwreck: https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11.593508,92.212452&spn=0.002627,0.003449 https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11...

canvia 13y ago

Would there be any chance that in their isolation that different diseases evolved that the rest of the world doesn't have immunity to? It would seem to me that us wiping them out with one of our diseases isn't the only thing we should be worried about.

snake_plissken 13y ago

I am curious, what methods are anthropologists using to try to date how long they have live on the island?

205guy 13y ago
I had the same question (the article isn't that great, it comes from a "bathroom reader"). From previous reading about this fascinating topic, I think they must've established the dates for the other tribes and other islands of the Andaman chain, and then just assummed North Sentinel was similar. I think that's a fair assessment because its size and location is not atypical, so there's no (apparent) reason to assume it was settled earlier or later than the other islands. This of course begs the question of how they got to the island. In the past, when sea levels were lower, there may have been land bridges between islands and the mainland (not sure 'cause I haven't studied the bathymetry). Another explanation for how they got there is that they did have sails or oars in the past, but they were forgotten over time.

dgbsco 13y ago

Send in the robots.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

thecosas 13y ago

Leave them alone. They've somehow managed to stay alive through tens of thousands of years and limited interaction with us. People have approached them over decades and they have made the choice numerous times to push out the outsiders. Despite this, I went down a rat-hole of trying to find out more about them... and then decided thats where it should end. I don't need any more information than what's already out there. Anthropologists need not find out more while risking their own safety and the survival of these people.

tiatia 13y ago

Would be a nice idea to just get rid of the few bozos there and open your own nice little kingdom. Maybe develop a tax heaven and vacation destination.

Friedduck 13y ago

The naivete of anyone who thinks introducing a 65k year-old culture to modern society is truly, truly impressive. Imagine what it would take to achieve a perfect (as evidenced by the span of time) equilibrium with your environment. We through around the word sustainable pretty readily these days, but this is the real thing. These people have achieved a sustainable existence unlike any other.

conductr 13y ago

Makes me wonder what they think of us. Who are we? Aliens? Where are we coming from? Space? What is all this weird technology? UFOs? They must have a story of "visitors" they tell to each generation. It started a long time ago. They came in weird boats and wore weird cloths. Over time, they would appear again and again. Different weird boats and different weird clothes every time. Sometimes they had white skin, sometimes they had brown skin, sometimes maybe even with pale skin with slanted eyes. They always looked different and weird. They always carry different weird looking weapons. Recently, they come a lot. They fly in weird boats with wings. They fly in weird boats with spinning blades.

adriancooney 13y ago

Project Loon's target audience.

b0rsuk 13y ago

I wonder, has anyone tried visiting them naked ? At the very least, what would their reaction be ? Also, maybe sending a party of black-skinned people would accomplish something ? As for my personal opinion, I would be most pleased if we could make enough contact to talk with them for at least 1 day, then leave them alone. To learn their beliefs and outlook of life.

ZanyProgrammer 13y ago

I'd like to see some actual evidence for that 65,000 year old claim. It doesn't pass the paleoanthropological smell test.

sjay 13y ago

Question: if we investigated these people, and found out that they had some 'bad' ritual practice like female circumcision or human sacrifice -- would we have a moral obligation to intervene and stop them? Or would we have a moral obligation to leave them the fuck alone?

bevan 13y ago

Ironically, they could be the last ones standing if a disease sweeps the rest of the world. On another note, it would be interesting to know what they eat, and to know the incidence of chronic disease in their culture. The results would likely be surprising: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price

billiam 13y ago

Stick to the comments about node and ember, guys. Your views about humanity, civilization, and anthropology make me embarrassed for you.

javert 13y ago

A bunch of strangers all over the world conversing on the Internet about whether a primitive tribe ought to be contacted. This really does seem like science fiction. In comparison to them, we are like godly beings, communicating in some unfathomably high-tech way to discuss their fate.

mariuolo 13y ago

Leave them alone, or find a way to study them without their knowledge.

alexvr 13y ago

I wonder if they have evolved differently. Is 65,000 years enough time for any significant change given their circumstances?

zenocon 13y ago

Discovered this guy's flickr photostream via article, and it is amazing: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/christiancaron2000/page1/ https://secure.flickr.com/photos/christiancaron2000/page1/