North Sentinel Island, one of India's united Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, is located just 40 kilometers from the coast of South Andaman Island and 50 kilometers from the developed administrative center of Port Blair located on it. These 72 square kilometers of forest are only one fifth larger than Manhattan. All other islands of the archipelago have been explored, and their peoples have long established relations with the government of India, but not a single stranger has yet set foot on the land of North Sentinel Island. What's more, the Indian government has established a five-kilometer exclusion zone around the island to protect the local people known as the Sentinelese, who have been isolated from world civilization for millennia. Thanks to this, the Sentinelese are in stark contrast to the rest of the peoples.
The inhabitants of the island are currently one of the approximately one hundred non-contact peoples left on the planet. Most are closely located in remote West Papua and the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and Peru. But many of these non-contact tribes are not completely isolated. As human rights organization Survival International notes, these peoples will undoubtedly learn from their cultural neighbors. Nevertheless, many non-contact peoples, whether because of the atrocities of the colonialists who conquered them in the past or lack of interest in the achievements of the modern world, prefer to remain closed. They are now more changing and dynamic peoples, retaining their languages, traditions and skills than ancient or primitive tribes. And since they are not completely secluded, missionaries and even people who want to uproot them for the sake of a free land take an interest in them. It is because of their territorial isolation from other cultures and external threats that the Sentinelese are a unique ethnic group even among non-contact peoples.
But this does not mean that no one has ever tried to contact the Sentinelese. Humans have swum to the Andaman Islands for at least the last thousand years. Both the British and Indians began colonizing the region in the 18th century. Over the past century, on most islands, even the most remote tribes had contacts with other ethnic groups, and their inhabitants were assimilated by a larger people and even appointed to government positions. Despite laws restricting access to traditional tribal lands since the 1950s, illegal contact with tribes occurs in much of the archipelago. And yet no one has yet set foot on the lands of North Sentinel Island, because its population responded with incredible aggression to all attempts by modern scientists to visit the island. One of the first clashes with the local population was with an escaped Indian prisoner who was washed ashore in 1896. Soon his body, strewn with arrows, with a slit throat was found on the coast. The fact that even neighboring tribes find the Sentinelan language completely incomprehensible implies that they have maintained this hostile isolation for hundreds or even thousands of years.
For years, India has tried to contact the Sentinelese for many reasons: scientific, protectionist and even proceeding from the idea that it is better for a tribe to maintain contact with the state than with fishermen who accidentally swam here, destroying the ethnos with disease and cruelty. But the locals successfully hid from the first anthropological mission in 1967 and scared away the scientists who returned in 1970 and 1973 with a hail of arrows. In 1974, a National Geographic director was shot in the leg by an arrow. In 1981, a beached sailor was forced to fight off the Sentinelese for several days before help arrived. During the 1970s, several more people were injured or killed in an attempt to establish contact with the natives. In the end, almost twenty years later, the anthropologist Trilokin Pandey did make a few meager contacts, having spent several years dodging arrows and gifting the natives with metal and coconuts - he allowed the Sentinelese to strip him and gathered some information about their culture. But realizing the financial losses, the Indian government finally gave up, leaving the Sentinelese alone and declaring the island a no-go zone to protect the tribe's residence.
Considering what happened to the rest of the tribes of the Andaman Islands, this may be for the best. The Large Andamans, of which there were about 5,000 before the first contact, after waves of migration, represent only a few dozen people. The Jarawa people have lost 10 percent of their population in the two years since first contact in 1997 due to measles, displacement and sexual abuse by newcomers and police. Other tribes, such as Onge, in addition to bullying and insults, suffer from rampant alcoholism. It is typical of people whose culture has been radically changed, and whose lives have been turned upside down by an external force that has burst into their territory.
Sentinelese Archery Helicopter
Meanwhile, a video of the Sentinelese - over 200 dark-skinned people whose only "clothing" consisted of ocher on their bodies and cloth headbands - showed that the inhabitants of the tribe are alive and well. We do not know much about their life and can only be guided by Pandey's observations and subsequent videos taken from a helicopter. They are supposed to feed on coconuts by splitting them with their teeth, and also hunt turtles, lizards and small birds. We suspect they are extracting metal for their arrowheads from sunken ships near the coast, since they do not have modern technology - not even fire extraction technology. (Instead, they have an intricate procedure for storing and transporting smoldering woods and burning coals in earthen vessels. Coals have been maintained in this state for millennia and probably date back to prehistoric lightning strikes.) We know that they live in thatched huts. for fishing, they make primitive canoes, with the help of which it is impossible to go out into the open ocean, as a greeting they sit on each other's knees and slap the interlocutor on the buttocks, and also sing using a two-note system. But there is no certainty that all these observations are not false impressions, given how little information we know about their culture.
Using DNA samples from the surrounding tribes, and given the unique isolation of the Sentinelan language, we suspect that the genetic lineage of the North Sentinelian inhabitants could go back 60,000 years. If so, then the Sentinelese are direct descendants of the first humans to leave Africa. Any geneticist wants to study the DNA of a Sentinelese for a better understanding of the history of mankind. Not to mention, the Sentinelese somehow survived the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, which devastated the surrounding islands and washed away much of their own. The inhabitants themselves remained untouched, hiding on the island's tops as if they had predicted a tsunami. This gives rise to speculation about whether they have secret knowledge about the weather and nature that could be useful to us. But this secret is carefully guarded, and, as ironic as it may sound, the Sentinelese are clearly not eager to teach us. Nevertheless, if they make contact, because of their long-term isolation, the whole world will surely be enriched, both culturally and scientifically.
But despite all the success of the tribe and attempts to maintain its isolation, we can see disturbing signs signaling the imminent forceful invasion of the outside world into the life of the island. Thus, the murder by the islanders of two fishermen who were accidentally thrown ashore and the subsequent unsuccessful attempt to pick up their corpses - a helicopter with rescuers was driven away by the arrows of the Sentinelese - entailed a thirst for justice among the Indians. In the same year, authorities noticed that the island waters became attractive to poachers and that some of them could enter the island itself (although at the moment there is no data on contacts of poachers with the Sentinelese). Today there is a real threat of collision. And when contact with the tribe happens, the best we can do is to prevent the atrocities that have prompted the Sentinelese to atrocities in the past, and to try to preserve their ancient history and culture as much as possible.
Posted by Mark Hay.
Original: GOOD Magazine.
In the modern world on Earth every year there are fewer and fewer secluded places where civilization has not gone before. It comes everywhere. And wild tribes are often forced to change the places of their settlements. Those of them that make contact with the civilized world are gradually disappearing. They, libor dissolve in modern society, or simply die out.
The thing is, centuries of life in complete isolation did not allow the immune system of these people to develop properly. Their bodies haven’t learned to make antibodies that can fight off the most common infections. A banal cold can be fatal for them.
Nevertheless, anthropological scientists continue to study, whenever possible, wild tribes. After all, each of them is nothing more than a model of the ancient world. A kind of possible variant of human evolution.
Piahu Indians
The way of life of wild tribes, in general, fits into the framework of our idea of primitive people. They live mainly in polygamous families. They are engaged in hunting and gathering. But the way of thinking and language of some of them is capable of striking any civilized imagination.
Once, the famous anthropologist, linguist and preacher Daniel Everett went to the Amazonian Piraha tribe for scientific and missionary purposes. First of all, he was struck by the language of the Indians. It had only three vowels and seven consonants. They had no idea of the singular or plural. There were no numerals in their language at all. And why should they, if Piraha did not even have a clue about more and less. And it turned out that the people of this tribe live outside of all time. Such concepts as the present, past and future were alien to him. In general, the polyglot Everett had a very difficult time learning the Pirach language.
Everett's missionary mission was in for a big embarrassment. First, the savages asked the preacher if he was personally acquainted with Jesus. And when they found out that he was not, they immediately lost all interest in the Gospel. And when Everett told them that God himself created man, they completely fell into complete bewilderment. This bewilderment could be translated something like this: “What are you? So stupid is not how people are made? "
As a result, after visiting this tribe, the unfortunate Everett, according to him, almost turned from a convinced Christian into a complete one.
Cannibalism still exists
Some wild tribes also have cannibalism. Now cannibalism among savages does not occur as often as it was about a hundred years ago, but nevertheless, cases of eating their own kind are not yet rare. The savages of the island of Borneo are most successful in this matter, they are famous for their cruelty and promiscuity. These cannibals are happy to eat and tourists. Although the last outbreak of kakkibalism dates back to the beginning of the last century. now this phenomenon among wild tribes is episodic.
But in general, according to scientists, the fate of the wild tribes on Earth has already been decided. In just a few decades, they will completely disappear.
I wonder if our life would be much calmer and less nervous and hectic without all the modern technological advances? Probably yes, but it's hardly more comfortable. Now imagine that tribes live calmly on our planet in the 21st century, which can easily do without all this.
1. Yarava
This tribe lives in the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. It is believed that the age of Yarava is from 50 to 55 thousand years. They migrated there from Africa and now there are about 400 of them. Yarava live in nomadic groups of 50 people, hunt with bows and arrows, fish in coral reefs and collect fruits and honey. In the 1990s, the Indian government wanted to provide them with more modern living conditions, but Yarava refused.
2. Yanomami
Yanomami lead their usual ancient way of life on the border between Brazil and Venezuela: 22 thousand live on the Brazilian side and 16 thousand on the Venezuelan side. Some of them have mastered the processing of metals and weaving, but the rest prefer not to contact the outside world, which threatens to disrupt their centuries-old life. They are excellent healers and even know how to fish with the help of plant poisons.
3. Nomole
About 600-800 representatives of this tribe live in the tropical forests of Peru, and only from about 2015 they began to show up and carefully contact civilization, not always successfully, I must say. They call themselves nomole, which means brothers and sisters. It is believed that the people of Nomole do not have the concept of good and evil in our understanding, and if they want something, I don’t hesitate to kill their opponent in order to take possession of his thing.
4. Ava-Guaya
The first contact with Ava Guaya occurred in 1989, but it is unlikely that civilization made them happier, since deforestation actually means the disappearance of this semi-nomadic Brazilian tribe, of which there are no more than 350-450 people. They survive by hunting, live in small family groups, have many pets (parrots, monkeys, owls, agouti hares) and have their own names, naming themselves after their beloved forest animal.
5. Sentinelese
If other tribes somehow make contact with the outside world, then the inhabitants of the North Sentinel Island (Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal) are not particularly friendly. Firstly, they are supposedly cannibals, and secondly, they simply kill everyone who comes to their territory. In 2004, after the tsunami, many people were affected on the neighboring islands. When anthropologists flew over the North Sentinel Island to check how its strange inhabitants were there, a group of aborigines came out of the forest and waved menacingly in their direction with stones and bows and arrows.
6. Huaorani, Tagaeri and Taromenane
All three tribes live in Ecuador. The Huaorani had the misfortune of living in an oil-rich area, so most of them were resettled in the 1950s, but the Tagaeri and Taromenane split from the main group of Huaorani in the 1970s and went into the rainforest to continue their nomadic, ancient lifestyle. ... These tribes are rather unfriendly and vindictive, therefore there were no special contacts with them.
7. Kawahiva
The remaining representatives of the Brazilian Kawahiva tribe are mostly nomads. They do not like to contact people and just try to survive by hunting, fishing and occasionally farming. The Kawahiva are endangered due to illegal logging. In addition, many of them died after communicating with civilization, picking up measles from people. According to conservative estimates, there are now no more than 25-50 of them.
8. Hadza
Hadza is one of the last tribes of hunter-gatherers (about 1300 people) living in Africa near the equator near Lake Eyasi in Tanzania. They have been living in the same location for the past 1.9 million years. Only 300-400 Hadza continue to live the old fashioned way and even officially recaptured part of their land in 2011. Their lifestyle is based on the fact that everything is shared, and property and food should always be shared.
Photos from open sources
There are still untouched places on the planet where the way of life is the same as it was a couple of millennia ago.
Today there are about a hundred tribes that are hostile to modern society and do not want to let civilization into their lives.
Such a tribe lives off the coast of India on one of the Andaman Islands - the North Sentinel Island.
They were called that - the Sentinelese. They violently resist all possible contact from outside.
The first evidence of a tribe inhabiting the North Sentinel Island of the Andaman archipelago dates back to the 18th century: navigators, being nearby, left records of strange "primitive" people who did not allow to descend to their land.
With the development of maritime and aviation, the ability to observe the islanders has increased, but all information known to date has been collected remotely.
Until now, no outsider has managed to find himself in the circle of the Sentinelese tribe without losing his life. This non-contact tribe will let the stranger no closer than a bow shot. They even throw stones at helicopters flying too low. The last daredevils to try to get to the island were fishermen-poachers in 2006. Their families still cannot take the bodies: the Sentinelese killed the intruders by burying them in shallow graves.
However, interest in this isolated culture is not diminishing: researchers are constantly looking for opportunities to contact and study the Sentinelese. At various times, they were planted with coconuts, dishes, pigs and much more, which could improve their living conditions on the small island. It is known that they liked the coconuts, but the representatives of the tribe did not realize that they could be planted, but simply ate all the fruits. The islanders buried the pigs, having done it with honors and without touching their meat.
An experiment with kitchen utensils turned out to be interesting. The Sentinelese accepted the metal dishes favorably, and the plastic ones were divided according to colors: they threw away the green buckets, and the red ones came up to them. There are no explanations for this, just as there are no answers to many other questions. Their language is one of the most unique and completely incomprehensible to anyone on the planet. They lead the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers, hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants for themselves, while over the millennia of their existence, they have not mastered agricultural activities.
It is believed that they do not even know how to make a fire: using accidental fires, they then carefully store smoldering logs and coals. Even the exact size of the tribe remains unknown: the numbers vary from 40 to 500 people; such a spread is also explained by observations only from the side and assumptions that some of the islanders at this moment may be hiding in the thicket.
Despite the fact that the Sentinelese do not care about the rest of the world, they have defenders on the mainland. Tribal rights organizations call the people of North Sentinel Island “the most vulnerable society on the planet” and remind them that they are not immune to any of the world's most common infections. For this reason, their policy of chasing outsiders can be seen as self-defense against certain death.
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The main part of the peoples of Africa includes groups consisting of several thousand, and sometimes hundreds of people, but at the same time it does not exceed 10% of the total population of this continent. As a rule, such small ethnic groups are the wildest tribes.
It is to such a group that the Mursi tribe belongs, for example.
Ethiopian tribe Mursi is the most aggressive ethnic group
Ethiopia is the oldest country in the world. It is Ethiopia that is considered the progenitor of humanity; it is here that the remains of our ancestor, modestly named Lucy, were found.
More than 80 ethnic groups live in the country.
Living in southwestern Ethiopia, on the border with Kenya and Sudan, settled in Mago Park, the Mursi tribe is distinguished by unusually tough customs. They, by right, can be nominated for the title of the most aggressive ethnic group.
They are prone to frequent alcohol consumption and uncontrolled use of weapons. In everyday life, the main weapon of the men of the tribe is the Kalashnikov assault rifle, which they buy in Sudan.
In fights, they can often beat each other almost to the point of death, trying to prove their primacy in the tribe.
Scientists attribute this tribe to a mutated Negroid race, with distinctive features in the form of short stature, wide bones and crooked legs, low and strongly compressed foreheads, flattened noses and pumped-up short necks.
Mursi's female bodies often look flabby and sore, abdomens and breasts saggy, and stooped backs. There is practically no hair, which was often hidden under intricate headdresses of a very fancy look, using as a material everything that can be picked up or caught nearby: rough skins, branches, dried fruits, marsh mollusks, someone's tails, dead insects and even incomprehensible fell stinking.
The most famous feature of the Mursi tribe is the tradition of putting plates on the lips of girls.
In the more public, who come into contact with civilization, Mursi can not always see all these characteristic attributes, but the exotic look of their lower lip is the calling card of the tribe.
Plates are made of different sizes from wood or clay, the shape can be round or trapezoidal, sometimes with a hole in the middle. For beauty, the plates are covered with a pattern.
The lower lip is cut in childhood, pieces of wood are inserted there, gradually increasing their diameter.
Mursi girls start wearing plates at the age of 20 six months before marriage. The lower lip is pierced and a small disc is inserted into it, after the lip is stretched, the disc is replaced with a larger one and so on until the required diameter is found (up to 30 centimeters !!).
The size of the plate matters: the larger the diameter, the more the girl is valued and the more cattle the groom will pay for her. Girls must wear these plates at all times, except when sleeping and eating, and they can also take them out if there are no men of the tribe nearby.
When the plate is taken out, the lip hangs down in a long round tourniquet. Almost all Mursi have missing front teeth, their tongue is cracked to the point of blood.
The second strange and frightening adornment of Mursi women is monista, which are recruited from human finger phalanges (nek). One person has only 28 such bones on his hands. Each necklace usually consists of phalanxes of five to six tassels, for some lovers of "jewelry" the monist is wrapped around the neck in several rows
Glitters greasy and emits a sweetish rotting smell of melted human fat, every bone is rubbed daily. The source for the beads is never scarce: the priestess of the tribe is ready to deprive the hands of a man who violated the laws for almost every offense.
It is customary for this tribe to do scarification (scarification).
Men can afford scarring only after the first murder of one of their enemies or ill-wishers. If they kill a man, then they decorate the right hand, if a woman, then the left.
Their religion - animism, deserves a longer and more shocking story.
Short: women are priestesses of death so they give their husbands drugs and poisons every day.
The High Priestess gives out antidotes, but sometimes salvation does not come to everyone. In such cases, a white cross is drawn on the widow's plate, and she becomes a very respected member of the tribe, who is not eaten after death, but buried in the trunks of special ritual trees. Honor is given to such priestesses due to the fulfillment of the main mission - the will of the God of Death Yamda, which they were able to fulfill by destroying the physical body and freeing the Supreme Spiritual Essence from their man.
The rest of the dead will be collectively eaten by the entire tribe. Soft tissues are boiled in a cauldron, bones are used for jewelry-amulets and are thrown on swamps to mark dangerous places.
What seems very wild for a European, for Mursi is routine and tradition.
Bushmen tribe
African Bushmen are the most ancient representatives of the human race. And these are not assumptions at all, but a scientifically proven fact. Who are these ancient people?
The Bushmen are a group of hunting tribes in South Africa. Now these are the remnants of a large ancient African population. Bushmen are notable for their short stature, wide cheekbones, narrow eyes and much swollen eyelids. Their real skin color is difficult to determine, because in the Kalahari it is not allowed to waste water for washing. But you can see that they are much lighter than their neighbors. Their skin tone is slightly yellowish, which is more typical for South Asians.
Young bushmen are considered the most beautiful among the female population of Africa.
But once they reach puberty and become mothers, these beauties are simply unrecognizable. Bushmen women have overdeveloped hips and buttocks, and their belly is constantly swollen. This is a consequence of improper nutrition.
To distinguish a pregnant bushwoman from the rest of the women of the tribe, she is coated with ash or ocher, since in appearance this is very difficult to do. By the age of 35, Bushman men become like 80 years old, due to the fact that their skin sags and the body is covered with deep wrinkles.
Life in Kalahara is very harsh, but even here there are laws and rules. The most important wealth in the desert is water. There are old people in the tribe who know how to find water. At the place that they indicate, representatives of the tribe either dig wells or remove water using the stems of plants.
Each Bushman tribe has a secret well, which is carefully laid with stones or covered with sand. During the dry season, bushmen dig a hole at the bottom of a dry well, take a plant stem, suck water through it, take it into their mouth, and then spit it out into the shell of an ostrich egg
The South African tribe of Bushmen is the only people on Earth whose men have permanent erections.This phenomenon does not cause any unpleasant sensations or inconveniences, except for the fact that when hunting on foot, men have to attach their penis to their belts so as not to cling to them. branches.
The Bushmen do not know what private property is. All animals and plants growing on their territory are considered common. Therefore, they hunt both wild animals and farm cows. For this they were very often punished and destroyed by whole tribes. Nobody wants neighbors like that.
Shamanism is very popular among the Bushmen tribes. They do not have leaders, but there are elders and healers who not only treat diseases, but also communicate with spirits. Bushmen are very afraid of the dead, and they piously believe in the afterlife. They pray to the sun, moon, stars. But they are not asking for health or happiness, but for success in the hunt.
Bushmen tribes speak Khoisan languages, which are very difficult to pronounce by Europeans. A characteristic feature of these languages is clicking consonants. The representatives of the tribe speak among themselves very quietly. This is a long-standing habit of hunters - so as not to scare away the game.
There is confirmed evidence that a hundred years ago they were engaged in drawing. Rock paintings depicting people and various animals are still found in the caves: buffaloes, gazelles, birds, ostriches, antelopes, crocodiles.
In their drawings there are also unusual fairy-tale characters: people-monkeys, eared snakes, people with a crocodile face. There is an entire open-air gallery in the desert that displays these amazing drawings by unknown artists.
But now the Bushmen are not painting, they are great in dance, music, pantomime and legends.
VIDEO: Shamanic ritual healing ceremony of the Bushmen tribe. Part 1
Shamanic ritual healing ceremony of the Bushmen tribe. Part 2
