2018 - Indian Ocean - North Sentinel Island - The Most Isolated Stone Age Tribe in the World - 23/11

(Wikipedia) - North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands, which includes South Sentinel Island, in the Bay of Bengal.

It is home to the Sentinelese who, often violently, reject any contact with the outside world, and are among the last uncontacted peoples to remain virtually untouched by modern civilisation.

Nominally, the island belongs to the South Andaman administrative district, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

In practice, Indian authorities recognise the islanders' desire to be left alone and restrict their role to remote monitoring; they do not prosecute them for killing non-Sentinelese people.

The island is in effect a sovereign area under Indian protection.

Geography

North Sentinel lies 36 km (22 mi) west of the town of Wandoor in South Andaman Island, 50 km (31 mi) west of Port Blair, and 59.6 km (37.0 mi) north of its counterpart South Sentinel Island.

It has an area of about 59.67 km2 (23.04 sq mi) and a roughly square outline.

North Sentinel is surrounded by coral reefs, and lacks natural harbours. The entire island, other than the shore, is forested.

There is a narrow beach encircling the island, behind which the ground rises 20 m (66 ft), and then gradually to between 46 m (150 ft), 257 and 122 m (400 ft) near the centre.

Reefs extend around the island to between 0.93 and 1.5 km (0.5–0.8 nmi) from the shore.

A forested islet, Constance Island, also "Constance Islet", is located about 600 metres (2,000 ft) off the southeast coastline, at the edge of the reef.

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake tilted the tectonic plate under the island, lifting it by 1 to 2 metres (3 to 7 ft). Large tracts of the surrounding coral reefs were exposed and became permanently dry land or shallow lagoons, extending all the island's boundaries—by as much as 1 km (3,300 ft) on the west and south sides—and uniting Constance Islet with the main island.

Modern period

Indian exploratory parties under orders to establish friendly relations with the Sentinelese made brief landings on the island every few years beginning in 1967.

The cargo ship MV Rusley ran aground on coastal reefs in mid-1977, and the MV Primrose did so in Aug 1981.

The Sentinelese are known to have scavenged both wrecks for iron. Settlers from Port Blair also visited the sites to recover the cargo.

In 1991, salvage operators were authorised to dismantle the ships.

After the Primrose grounded on the North Sentinel Island reef on 2 Aug 1981, crewmen several days later noticed that some men carrying spears and arrows were building boats on the beach.

The captain of Primrose radioed for an urgent drop of firearms so his crew could defend themselves. They did not receive any because a large storm stopped other ships from reaching them, but the heavy seas also prevented the Islanders from approaching the ship.

One week later, the crewmen were rescued by a helicopter under contract to the Indian Oil And Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).

The first peaceful contact with the Sentinelese was made by Triloknath Pandit, a director of the Anthropological Survey of India, and his colleagues on 4 Jan 1991. Indian visits to the island ceased in 1997.

Impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake & Tsunami

The Sentinelese survived the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and its after-effects, including the tsunami and the uplifting of the island.

Three days after the earthquake, an Indian government helicopter observed several islanders, who shot arrows and threw stones at the hovering aircraft.

Although the tsunami disturbed the fishing grounds, the Sentinelese appear to have adapted.

In Jan 2006, two fishermen fishing illegally were killed by the Sentinelese when their boat drifted too close to the island. There were no prosecutions.

In Nov 2018, John Allen Chau, an American Christian missionary from Washington state, was killed shortly after reaching the island. The fishermen who ferried him were prosecuted by Indian police.

Demographics

North Sentinel Island is inhabited by the Sentinelese. Their population is estimated to be between 50 and 400 individuals.

They reject any contact with other people, and are among the last people to remain virtually untouched by modern civilisation.

The population faces the potential threats of infectious diseases to which they have no immunity, as well as violence from intruders.

The Indian government has declared the entire island and its surrounding waters extending 3 nautical miles (5.6 km) from the island to be an exclusion zone.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island
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