[blam]

GGG Ping.

This post is compliments of Shermy.

[eccentric]

Well, I guess anthropologist have records of these tribes. Now it is time to find the survivors and see if they want to join the rest of the world.

[SittinYonder]

Fascinating. And sad. Thanks for the information.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam, send our thanks to Shermy.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[SE Mom]

Amazing. I've learned more about the countries in Asia this week than my mind can absorb. I've had a rather provincial view of the southern hemisphere til now. A little while ago I was surfing and caught some of Anderson Cooper on CNN- it was a good show. He interviewed the father of a young man who was visiting a tiny obscure island off Thailand...can't even remember the name of it. He hasn't heard from his son, so he's flying over there and taking a boat (God knows how he'll find one) out to the island to search for his son. I'd no idea so many westerners visited that part of the world...

Prayers to the suffering..

[umgud]

Tourists, locals or rare tribes....... just plain sad and painful.

[Ksnavely]

very interesting, maybe this will convince them that there is definate advantages to joining the modern world (like Tsunami detection grids).

[Kitten Festival]

I'm not gonna weep for the inhabitants of the Nicobar islands - there have been some sad stories about Western tourists going there and not coming back. Some areas have always been sealed off.

Why?

Because they are cannibals. Real ones.

[NautiNurse]

Thank you for the post. Half a world away, it is tough to absorb all of the implications from this catastrophe.

Once again, we are a very changed world.

[diverteach]

This most certainly falls perfectly inline with the prophecy of the end times to have "Earthquakes in DIVERSE places"

[Jhensy]

I'm a geography buff; these lands have always been my "fantasy" islands: the Andamans and Nicobars, the Maldives, Seychelles, etc. Much of their charm is their unfamiliarity to westerners. Not anymore.

Sadly, I've never been to any of them. It was just nice knowing that exotic, mysterious places like these still existed.

Lay off the cannibals.

[visualops]

Head Hunting Cannibals: The Facts
Alongside the perfectly accurate image of swimming elephants, another rather less correct assumption about the Andaman Islands has become part of popular folklore: don’t set foot on any of the more remote islands or your crew will be massacred and eaten by headhunting natives.

Or, as a collection of Arab notes dating from 851 puts it, "The inhabitants of these islands eat men alive. They go naked and have no boats. If they had, they would devour all who passed near them. Sometimes ships that are windbound and have exhausted their provision of water, touch here and apply to the natives for it; in such cases the crews sometimes fall into the hands of the latter and most of them are massacred."

This view was to persist amongst mariners for the next 1,000 years or so until very recently, despite the fact that the Andamanese have always insisted that they have never been cannibals. In fact, as is often the case with most indigenous tribal communities around the world, the natives have much more to fear from interlopers than vice versa. Despite the best efforts of the Indian government to help preserve their culture, the Onge, Sentinelese and Jarawa, who are of Negroid descent and live on the Andamans; and the Shompen and Nicobarese, who are of Mongoloid descent and live on the Nicobar Islands, are on the verge of extinction and are vastly outnumber by the immigrant Indian population. Visiting the tribal areas on Little Andaman Island, Strait Island, and the western coast of South and Middle Andaman is strictly prohibited to tourists.

The modern myth of the headhunters can be attributed to one tiny island in the chain: North Sentinal, which lies 29 kilometres off the west coast of South Andaman. The Sentinalese are one of the last remaining Stone Age tribes on earth and virtually nothing is known about them. The Indian government has attempted to make contact on several occasions before being driven from the beach by primitive spears and arrows. Needless to say, North Sentinal is to be avoided at all costs and boats should not attempt to approach it – apart from being completely illegal, it could be a potentially fatal experience. However, sailors can be confident of a friendlier welcome elsewhere in the archipelago.

Other info points to the likelyhood in centuries past, of Malay pirates perpetuating the cannibal stories to keep people away.

[WestTexasWend]

Very sad. Hadn't thought of rare tribes being wiped out.
Did wonder about the monitor lizards in Sumatra/Borneo.

[Darnright]

Bump

[It's me]

Thank goodness the dinosaurs are gone!!

[Quix]

Wow. Reducing people groups before I expected it. Wow.

[eclectic]

Darwin rules

[Styria]

Bump.

I like tribes. But I'm more interested in Germanic and Gothic ones.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Shermy for the link: King of Stone Age tribe to return to jungle to rebuild lives