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First Friendly Contact with the Sentinelese

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Re: First Friendly Contact with the Sentinelese

#31

Post by ikeboy »

jwise0 wrote: post #22
ikeboy wrote: post #19

Is it known how similar they are besides for culture, i.e. would an infant from there raised among humans or an infant from us raised by them be able to learn the culture? Has anything similar been tried with other isolated tribes?

These people are humans.

The question is whether anything relevant has changed in 60,000 years of separation.

Given that humans only evolved around then, it's reasonable to ask about tribes that split off.

"modern humans evolved in Africa possibly from Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis or Homo antecessor and migrated out of the continent some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution

I suppose this could be mostly answered with a DNA test, on further thought.

Re: First Friendly Contact with the Sentinelese

#32

Post by camel_Snake »

ikeboy wrote: post #31
jwise0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are humans.

The question is whether anything relevant has changed in 60,000 years of separation. Given that humans only evolved around then, it's reasonable to ask about tribes that split off. "modern humans evolved in Africa possibly from Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis or Homo antecessor and migrated out of the continent some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution I suppose this coul…

What makes you think they've been fully isolated for 60,000 years?

Re: First Friendly Contact with the Sentinelese

#33

Post by ikeboy »

camel_Snake wrote: post #32
ikeboy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is whether anything relevant has changed in 60,000 years of separation. Given that humans only evolved around then, it's reasonable to ask about tribes that split off. "modern humans evolved in Africa possibly from Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis or Homo antecessor and migrated out of the continent some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution I suppose this coul…

What makes you think they've been fully isolated for 60,000 years?

>Perhaps no people on earth remain more genuinely isolated than the Sentinelese, one of the few un-contacted people in the world, who have lived in the North Sentinel Islands of the Andamans for last estimated 60,000 years shunning any contact with the outside world.

I took this to mean they've been isolated at least in terms of not having genes cross over.

Re: First Friendly Contact with the Sentinelese

#34

Post by devishard »

codezero wrote: post #5
redsummer wrote: post #4

Any significant contact would wipe the Sentinelese out. Even a common cold infection would be the end of them. The anthropologists know this, but seem willing to risk this for their own ego. If we wanted to learn anything about the Sentinelese, then perhaps we could use well-camouflaged camera traps, and other electronic eavesdropping devices. The moral considerations are difficult - it's a privacy breach, but the in…

I don't think the moral considerations are that difficult. Would you accept NSA surveillance if they said it was so that your descendants could understand you, and "For Science"?

That frames it as if it were your choice.

If I trusted the NSA to actually do that, I'd have no problem with it.

The problem is, I don't have the choice of being surveilled by the NSA, and I don't trust them. Just as the Senigalese would have no choice in redsummer's proposal, and many reasons not to trust outsiders.

Re: First Friendly Contact with the Sentinelese

#35

Post by mcbits »

ikeboy wrote: post #31
jwise0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are humans.

The question is whether anything relevant has changed in 60,000 years of separation. Given that humans only evolved around then, it's reasonable to ask about tribes that split off. "modern humans evolved in Africa possibly from Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis or Homo antecessor and migrated out of the continent some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution I suppose this coul…

That's an ambiguous/misleading "and" in that sentence. Modern humans date back to around 200,000 years ago. And it's thought that there was a great migration from Africa roughly 50,000 years ago. Presumably the Sentinelese ancestors were part of that migration, since they are quite far from Africa. Though I agree that it's worth asking how much the population has diverged after 50,000+ years.

Re: First Friendly Contact with the Sentinelese

#37

Post by ikeboy »

mcbits wrote: post #35
ikeboy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is whether anything relevant has changed in 60,000 years of separation. Given that humans only evolved around then, it's reasonable to ask about tribes that split off. "modern humans evolved in Africa possibly from Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis or Homo antecessor and migrated out of the continent some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution I suppose this coul…

That's an ambiguous/misleading "and" in that sentence. Modern humans date back to around 200,000 years ago. And it's thought that there was a great migration from Africa roughly 50,000 years ago. Presumably the Sentinelese ancestors were part of that migration, since they are quite far from Africa. Though I agree that it's worth asking how much the population has diverged after 50,000+ years.

Thanks for picking that up, I had misread it as saying both happened then.

Re: First Friendly Contact with the Sentinelese

#38

Post by x1798DE »

DougWebb wrote: post #17
takee wrote: post #8

If this really was the first successful contact, I don't quite understand how the language of these people is the same as/similar to other Andaman island/Indian languages. Context: "Nariyali Jaba Jaba".

They obviously didn't evolve there independently from other humans. They and the other tribes have common ancestry, and a common root language. I doubt anyone knows about inter-tribal contact through those 60,000 years that could have kept the languages from diverging too much.

According to the current Wikipedia article on the Sentinelese language [1], it is not mutually intelligible with Onge. This is more like what I would have expected from a strictly xenophobic and (presumably non-literate) tribe, but it doesn't square with the account in the article...

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language

Re: First Friendly Contact with the Sentinelese

#39

Post by x1798DE »

codezero wrote: post #26
skepicurean wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears you didn't closely read the article because it documents two separate events: 1. The author's meeting with the Sentinelese. 2. The author's meeting with the Jarawa. You are correct that most of the photos are from the meeting with the Jarawa and that much of the article describes the author's time with the Jarawa but there is a segment which explicitly describes the meeting with the Sentinelese, separate f…

I am saying that the author is using Sentinelese interchangeably with Jarawa/Andaman incorrectly. The only reference I can find for such contact is a blog post and a 1993 news article that appears anecdotal. I'd like to see the journal article written about this contact by the Anthropological Survey of India which funded the contact with the Andaman Islanders, but I can't find a source, leading me to believe it didn'…

According to Wikipedia, Sentinelese is apparently (based on other encounters) ,not mutually intelligible with Onge, which does seem to be an inconsistency in the idea that she heard them asking for coconuts in Onge.

Re: First Friendly Contact with the Sentinelese

#40

Post by sampo »

codezero wrote: post #2

It appears this is about contact with a different people, the Jarawa, I don't see anything indicating contact with the Sentinelese except the caption to the photo, is there any documented evidence? It appears the author has incorrectly labeled any tribe on the Andaman Islands as "Sentinelese."

> I don't see anything indicating contact with the Sentinelese except the caption to the photo, is there any documented evidence?

While in theory a similar looking beach could be anywhere, and the native people could be of any tribe, in the first photo the visitors are standing in water, offering coconuts. The other tribes live in the mainland of Andaman island, so when meeting them you would more probably arrive on foot on land.

This is some, perhaps indirect, indication that the visitors arrived on a boat, and the photo really is from where the caption says it is.

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