An Island Versus the World

"The lumps of white coral shone round the dark mound like a chaplet of bleached skulls..." — Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

Deep in the heart of the Indian Ocean rest the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Populated by the Andamanese indigenous peoples, it was initially thought these islands were first colonized 60,000 to 70,000 years ago by early migrations out of Africa. More recent genetic analyses suggest the Andaman Islands were settled approximately 26,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum when sea levels were more than 100 meters lower than they currently are. Regardless of the exact date, these indigenous peoples remained isolated from the outside world since the Paleolithic Stone Age. In large part, this isolation was driving by their geographic location which rests outside commonly trafficked sea-faring trade routes.

The Andamanese indigenous peoples consist of several indigenous groups native to the island chain. They have been given the designation by the Indian government as a Scheduled Tribe. Among their members, the Sentinelese alone, sole inhabitants of 23-square mile North Sentinel Island, have resisted nearly all contact with the outside world and continue to live the same hunter-gatherer lifestyle as they did tens of thousands of years ago. Attempts at contact have been not only rare, but are by and large met with pointed arrows - without discourse or compromise. The Sentinelese people have resisted outside contact and remained isolated for such a long period of time their language is now mutually unintelligible to other Andamanese indigenous groups.

The first recorded reference in Western history to island inhabitants dates to 1771. Hailing from the British Empire, an East India Company hydrographic survey ship, the Diligent, sailed within viewing distance of North Sentinel Island during the night hours and noted in ship logs that fires could be seen glimmering on shore. The ship passed without inspecting further and for nearly another century the island remained uncontacted.

In 1867, an Indian merchant ship, the Nineveh, ran aground reefs as it was blown astray during a monsoon. One-hundred and six passengers and crewmen made it ashore. During breakfast on the third day, the Sentinelese, having not previously introduced themselves, emerged from the jungles bearing iron-tipped weaponry. Incidentally, local Andamanese lore tell of the Sentinelese bearing metal. Repelled by sticks and stones, the survivors of the Nineveh were rescued days later by a search conducted by the British Royal Navy.

Later, in 1880, in an attempt to establish relations, British naval officer, Maurice Vidal Portman, led an armed group of military personnel, convicts, and Andamanese trackers from a neighboring island into Sentinelese territory. After a failed search for the natives, they found only two senior citizens and four children. Kidnapping them, the elderly quickly succumbed to disease; after the children fell ill, the British officer quickly returned them to the island bearing gifts... and likely communicable disease.

Over the course of the next century, attempts to make contact, whether accidental or intentional, were met with death. In 1896, an escaped convict from the neighboring Great Andaman Island Penal Colony was found on the beach with arrow wounds and a slit throat. Further search parties to capture fugitives during the late 19th and early 20th century found all those who had made it to the island had met the same fate.

An early 20th century report by the British chief commissioner to the island, Richard Carnac Temple, documents a Sentinelese native that had accidentally drifted onto the neighboring island belonging to the Onge peoples. Upon return years later, not recognizing him, the returning Senteneli was slain on sight.

For the next half-century, the Sentinelese were left to their own devices and in 1956, India declared North Sentinel Island a reserve, making it illegal to travel within 5.6 km and banned photography. To date, armed military patrols attempt to prevent outside disturbance.

Between 1967 and 1991, the anthropologist Triloknath Pandit, working on behalf of the Indian government, attempted to survey North Sentinel Island and make friendly contact with the islanders. His initial efforts discovered, in accordance with previous reports, the Sentinelese had evidently discovered metal-working. As no iron reserves are thought to be on the island, it is taken the metal is reworked from bits that was ashore attached to floating debris. Later expeditions, bearing abundant coconuts for good-will (as seen in the video above), received mixed receptions. Although Pandit had ventured inland on his earliest excursion, finding a hastily abandoned village of lean-to huts, at no point during his later ventures was he ever offered passage. Despite repeated attempts at good will, he and his crew were often met with a barrage of arrows.

During this time period, in 1981, the cargo ship Primrose wrecked, stranding the crew. For a week, the crew was under siege by canoe-traveling armed Sentinelese. The Primrose crew was evacuated with the help of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Indian Navy via helicopter.

Salvage crews later report friendly exchanges with Sentinelese, bribing them with fruits and smaller bits of metal to minimize hostilities.

During the 1990s, with little headway made after decades of good-will attempts, contact efforts were discontinued in 1994 as most anthropological teams that followed Pandit's expeditions could not approach the island without hostility.

For centuries, if not thousands of years, the Sentinelese resisted change, pushing back the outside world. On December 26, 2004, the world pushed back.

At 07:58:53, local time, an undersea megathrust event, now known as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, rumbled beneath their feet, powering a 9.1-9.3 magnitude earthquake that unleashed a tsunami upon their island. Survey efforts by the Indian government in the days and weeks that followed revealed North Sentinel Island was permanently raised 1.5 m, exposing nearly the entirety of the shallow lagoon regions the Sentinelese relied on as a primary food source and exposing much of the coral reef that encircled the island paradise.

Post-quake Landsat imagery shows the island experienced an instantaneous and dramatic shift, literally and figuratively, forever altering the Sentinelese way of life. Thematic mapping using a supervised classification scheme shows 91% of shallow marine lagoons were lost. Initially, becoming beach, between the time of the quake in 2004 and later imagery taken in early 2020, much of the exposed lagoon started to be colonized by low-lying tropical vegetation as the jungle spread like an amoeba in search of food. More recent aerial imagery of the Primrose shows the sands once under water readily giving way to flourishing vegetation.

In addition to loosing nearly all of their lagoon-based fishing, crabbing, and shellfish territory, thematic mapping shows 48% of the coral reef habitat was either raised above sea level, or raised to a level where the sunlight in shallower water proved to be too intense for the finicky corals to survive.

Surveys by the Indian government indicate the Sentinelese people survived the tsunami unscathed; finding no bodies in aerial surveys. In the aftermath, it was noted the environmental degradation produced marked shifts in their behavior. By 2014, it was observed that the Sentinelese had adapted to the destruction of their marine territory by faring out to sea in canoes upwards of 500 m from their shores. In the years that followed, presumably humbled by their experience battling the world itself, Sentinelese hostility declined significantly; for the first time in memory, approaching visiting official parties unarmed.

Despite eased tensions with officials, the Sentinelese still harbor a deep mistrust of the outside world. In November 2018, American missionary John Chau bribed local fishing vessels to transport him to the island. On one of his initial visits, during an attempt to exchange gifts, a boy shot the Bible held across his chest before Chau retreated to safety. The next day, on his final attempt, the local fisherman that had transported him reported seeing him drug away. His body was discovered on the shore the next day.

Referred to by experts as the most isolated peoples in the world, the Sentinelese have outlasted and rebuffed every group since the Stone Age. They have the distinction of defeating the Royal British Navy, the Indian Government, and every merchant, convict, and Christian missionary to set foot on their territory. The Sentinelese battled the world itself and won.