Most humans, including you, belong to the 99.9999% of Homo sapiens that are isolated from the much smaller isolated groups left. North Sentinel Island, which is nominally governed by India, is home of one of the very few smaller ones. Its locals number in the few hundreds and have likely been there and rejected outsiders for thousands of years.
Theyve interacted with outsiders to varying degrees…
They were trading for iron just a couple of years before that idiot missionary got it his head god wanted them converted. And they gave him a couple chances.
Fuck missionaries and fuck evangelists of any kind.
If I want to join your religion, I should do it because I respect its followers, not because they shove it in my face and tell me I’ll go to some imaginary horrible place when I die if I don’t.
His Twitter exists still, it’s a little eerie
The Guardian had an article saying they were of the Stone Age, but I think their Iron Age began when they dismantled a nearby shipwreck. Are they also trading with outsiders? And not dying from our diseases?
They’re known for launching spears and arrows at visitors, but their aversion towards outsiders might be what’s keeping them from going extinct. Other tribes have been decimated by disease after contact. Hopefully others continue to respect their independence.
Some other interesting tidbits https://www.atlasandboots.com/travel-blog/north-sentinel-island/
There was a big story about them rejecting an outsider a while back.
A Christian missionary tried to visit and bring its modern diseases. The Sentinilese fired warning shots but the missionary kept coming right for them, so they had to put it down.
I can’t really get behind your tendency to refer to humans as “it”, but other than that, you seem to understand the facts clearly enough.
Wait.
So the average temperature fluctuates between 86F in summer to 73F in winter, surrounded by beaches AND they can ignore most of the world?
I’m jealous.
Seriously but also not: omg I know right?
On the other hand: can you imagine how regressively conservative—including in ways with which you cannot already be familiar—a society that small and that long isolated is? We know ≈nothing about them, but what we do know includes that women there once distracted the men from further attacking outsiders by way of sensual touch.
Finally, and for the armchair enthusiasts and especially for those of us who didn’t groan during the pandemic’s lockdowns: check out Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
