North Sentinel Island is an island de-jure owned by India but is de-facto self-governing. It is illegal to visit the island due to how dangerous it is, along with the risk of spreading diseases that the inhabitants do not have any resistance to.
The island is inhabitated by around 50-500 (true number unknown) indigenous people who have inhabited the island for over 60,000 years. The Sentinelese people are well-known to attack most outsiders who dare to come visit the island. Apparently, one major catalyst was when a British man kidnapped an elderly couple and four children. The couple died and the children were returned but had serious diseases which may have spread to the rest of the islanders.
In 2018, an American tourist illegally visited the island in order to attempt to convert them to Christianity. He was later killed by the Sentinelese.
I don’t why, but for some reason, this island is quite fascinating. There is so little known about it. The very concept of an isolated society that wants to be left alone is something that I find interesting.
Have any two cents to give?
They should be left alone unless absolutely necessary is my take on it, they’re just minding their own business.
Also, retreating into complete isolation as a result of their first contact being with nasty colonial Anglos is totally understandable.
LEAVE THEM ALONE
I find it endlessly fascinating too. Uncontacted peoples in general can inspire a lot of wonder and curiosity in me. It’s like trying to wonder how people felt throughout history, except that with history you have all these records and accounts and evidence left behind to give you an idea. You’ll never know for sure, you can get an idea.
How these people feel and comprehend the world? Total mystery. They are disconnected from the vast majority of humanity in experiences and knowledge.
We know so little about them, and their day to day life would be entirely disconnected from the day to day life of you and me. They know the same about us - basically nothing, except that whenever we visit we tend to bring disaster to their homes. They don’t want anything to do with it and will shoot arrows at visiting helicopters.
And how wild is that? I have to imagine seeing a helicopter when you skipped several tool ages would overwhelm the mind, but it doesn’t. They’re not interested in our planes, helicopters, hulking cargo ships - they just want to be left alone. It’s not like they don’t know we’re cooking some wild shit out here, either. They’ve looted the wreckage of a cargo ship that ran ashore and since then they’ve been observed using new tools in new ways.
I sometimes wonder if we’ll blow ourselves up one day and leave these guys to inherit the Earth.
I just hope no one ever finds rare earth or fuel on their island
Give them a bunch of guns, anti-ship missiles and air defense systems in case another Anglo tries to set foot on their land. In fact give them nukes too, just to be sure.
Apart from that just leave them be and don’t bother them.
PS
(The first part is a joke)
Just give them nukes, the rest is a joke.
What comrade @[email protected] said
They have a choice to leave their island. They don’t use this choice so this means they really want to live like that
Isn’t this the island on which some guy got lost and then allegedly cannibalized or did I mix it with some other?
It’s probably be best to leave it alone even after achieving full global communism, full support for the island!
I believe you might be thinking about Rockefeller’s son who some people theorize joined a cannibal tribe or something to that degree.
Yes
I think we should NEVER force contact with them. We can kinda initiate it, but the decision to make contact should come from them. If they want to live like that, let them be. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with their lifestyle since they chose to keep it. Don’t force people to have a modern lifestyle if they don’t want it.
But it’s weird that India claims the island, even though they don’t own it.
But it’s weird that India claims the island, even though they don’t own it.
That does “give them access” to the resource in a 200 nautical miles radius from it, so even if they don’t get too close to the island they can still extract resources farther out around it or they just claim it to avoid others from using it as a base against India.
I wonder how long it will be until inbreeding reaches a critical state and the island becomes naturally uninhabited.
I mean, there’s no new bloodlines coming in, and there’s only so many marriages and branches in the family trees that can happen.
The common 50/500 rule seems to be exactly the amount of people in this island.
It would be cool to send a remote device (super disinfected of course) to record their language and find out how to communicate with them. We shouldn’t send any people to the island though unless they tell us to.
The current model of limited gift giving and contact to learn their language is reasonable and a valuable endeavor. There is no reason we should not be able to learn from them, or try to slowly improve their opinion of the outside world.
Other then that? Leave them alone.