Posted on 02/07/2006 5:58:05 PM PST by blam
Stone Age tribe kills fishermen who strayed on to island
By Peter Foster in New Delhi
(Filed: 08/02/2006)
One of the world's last Stone Age tribes has murdered two fishermen whose boat drifted on to a desert island in the Indian Ocean.
The Sentinelese, thought to number between 50 and 200, have rebuffed all contact with the modern world, firing a shower of arrows at anyone who comes within range.
Sentinelese tribesmen prepare to fire arrows at the coastguard helicopter after the fishermen's murder
They are believed to be the last pre-Neolithic tribe in the world to remain isolated and appear to have survived the 2004 Asian tsunami.
The two men killed, Sunder Raj, 48, and Pandit Tiwari, 52, were fishing illegally for mud crabs off North Sentinel Island, a speck of land in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands archipelago.
Fellow fishermen said they dropped anchor for the night on Jan 25 but fell into a deep sleep, probably helped by large amounts of alcohol.
During the night their anchor, a rock tied to a rope, failed to hold their open-topped boat against the currents and they drifted towards the island.
Tribesmen clamber over the fishermen's beached boat
"As day broke, fellow fishermen say they tried to shout at the men and warn them they were in danger," said Samir Acharya, the head of the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology, an environmental organisation.
"However they did not respond - they were probably drunk - and the boat drifted into the shallows where they were attacked and killed."
After the fishermen's families raised the alarm, the Indian coastguard tried to recover the bodies using a helicopter but was met by the customary hail of arrows.
Photographs shot from the helicopter show the near-naked tribesmen rushing to fire. But the downdraught from its rotors exposed the two fisherman buried in shallow graves and not roasted and eaten, as local rumour suggested.
Mr Acharya said the erroneous belief in the tribe's cannibalism grew from the practice of another tribe, the Onge, who would cut up and burn their dead to avoid them returning as evil spirits.
"People saw the flesh cooking on the fire and thought they must be cannibals but this incident clearly contradicts that belief," he said.
Attempts to recover the bodies of the two men have been suspended, although the Andaman Islands police chief, Dharmendra Kumar, said an operation might be mounted later.
"Right now, there will be casualties on both sides," he said from Port Blair. "The tribesmen are out in large numbers. We shall let things cool down and once these tribals move to the island's other end we will sneak in and bring back the bodies."
Environmental groups urged the authorities to leave the bodies and respect the three-mile exclusion zone thrown around the island.
In the 1980s and early 1990s many Sentinelese were killed in skirmishes with armed salvage operators who visited the island after a shipwreck. Since then the tribesmen have remained virtually undisturbed.
DNA analysis of another tribe, the Jarawa, whose members made first contact with the outside world in 1997, suggest that the tribesmen migrated from Africa around 60,000 years ago.
However, the experience of the Jarawa since their emergence - sexual exploitation, alcoholism and a measles epidemic - has encouraged efforts to protect the Sentinelese from a similar fate.
Give them sleepy-juice, pick them all up, and transplant them to the Arizona-Mexican border.
Interesting! I once read that these tribes are related to Bushman and Pygmy tribes. I know throughout Southeast and South Asia there are Black tribes, including Negritos.
I would not be surprised if they have legends of strangers from a civilization that existed 10,000 years ago. I suspect they would be Ainus/Vedda/Polynesians.
In a lot of ways, there are large numbers of people everywhere who have been devastated by western society.
In the US, there are a lot of people unable to cope with the changes in the US. They are the inner city hip hop culture. They are the slackers. They are the pot heads, the alcoholics. The bitter men who don't understand women today. The bitter women who fell for all the man hating liberal crap. The uneducated who don't understand finance or credit cards.
The key is adapting and learning. If I had stopped either 20 years ago, I'd be a bitter man, totally befuddled by today's world.
Always makes me think of Ginger and her evening dresses! :-)
For a girl like her, those are necessities!
Then again they could end up having worse lives, if they want to be left alone leave them alone
Not me. I'd advocate the "interuption" of cultural isolation to create an understanding that innocents are NOT to be randomly slaughtered without severe implications for their health.
A one time show of extreme force (not necessarily violent, I mean show) would go a long way. make them understand that we will leave them alone if they don't murder innocents who happen to get caught on their island.
I know that the fishermen were breaking the law and stuff, but who's to say next time it won't be a family or something?
I would done the same to the Mayans and Aztecs in South America if they were around. I'd leave their civilizations mostly intact, but this sacrifice of captured strangers? Maybe a few environmentalists at first, but I'd put a stop to it. Let them feed upon their own people.
"Environmental groups urged the authorities to leave the bodies and respect the three-mile exclusion zone thrown around the island."
Environmental groups????
Ping.
.....wonder what religion they prescribe to....
Methodist or perhaps Moslem...... they sure have it in for drunks
In this case. there's a lot that needs to be said about personal responsibility. Not smart to get drunk and pass out in a danger zone.
I guess voting him off wasn't an option.
I agree. I find it horrifying that anyone from the so-called civilized world would ever prefer not retrieving bodies for grieving families in deference to savage "sensibilities." Obviously, they have never been American Marines. In fact, they could scarcely be called other than savages themselves. Oh, they call themselves environmentalists.
That would kill anybody's buzz.
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