Episode – 2076 : North Sentinel Island
Podcast Transcript
In the Indian Ocean lies an island notorious for its extreme isolation from the outside world: North Sentinel Island.
The Sentinelese, who call North Sentinel Island home, are people who live a Stone Age existence and fiercely defend their territory.
Their isolation and violence towards outsiders mean that we know almost nothing about them and probably won’t for quite some time.
Learn more about North Sentinel Island, the Sentinelese, and why the world has chosen to leave them alone on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
In a previous episode, I discussed uncontacted peoples. These are people who have had little to no contact with the outside world and live a primitive, subsistence lifestyle.
What few uncontacted people exist in the world are mostly found in hard to reach placed such as the interior of Papua New Guinea and the Amazon Rainforest.However, there is one such group that has drawn the world’s attention more than any other: the people of North Sentinel Island.
North Sentinel Island is located in the Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, in the Indian Ocean.
The Andaman Archipelago is technically part of the South Andaman administrative district in India. However, the people who live there probably have no clue that they are technically Indian, or even know what India is.India’s control is in name only, as the territory is protected by the “Andaman and Nicobar Islands Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation,” enacted in 1956.
To protect the island’s Native people from foreign diseases, this order forbids traveling within five kilometers or three nautical miles of the island.
The Indian government protects the sovereignty of the Sentinelese by monitoring the island from a safe distance by boat and plane.
The Sentinelese people maintain their isolation and are known to kill any outsiders who land on the island. Respecting the tribe’s desire for isolation, the Indian government enforces strict penalties against violators and will not pursue legal action against the Sentinelese themselves.
Covering about 23 square miles, North Sentinel Island is fairly small. Its rounded-square shape features a narrow coastal beach and a tree-covered forest interior.
The island’s terrain gradually slopes upward toward its center, where the highest elevation is found. This peak reaches 400 feet (122 meters) above sea level.
The danger posed by natives has prevented researchers from identifying the island’s plant and animal species. Observers believe coconut crabs and boars live there, based on boar skulls found on the beach and the presence of coconut crabs on nearby islands.
Encircling the island, a coral reef stretches a half mile or farther into the ocean. The Sentinelese hunt among the reefs with rudimentary boats and likely rely on seafood.
Because the Sentinelese are so isolated, little is known about the people who live there.
It is thought that the Sentinelese are direct descendants of the first human populations in Africa. They then migrated from Africa to the Andaman Islands, likely via island-hopping or by boat.
The Sentinelese have lived in the Andaman Islands for an estimated 60,000 years, and it’s believed they’ve been isolated for the vast majority of that time.
The language differences between the Sentinelese and other Andaman Islanders highlight the tribe’s isolation. These vast differences suggest they developed their language over thousands of years in seclusion.
The Sentinelese are believed to be a hunter-gatherer society. Aerial surveys suggest the tribe does not practice farming or other agricultural methods.
These aerial surveys give the outside world the only real insight into how the Sentinelese live. The tribe appears to live in small huts. Observers describe the people as shorter in stature, very muscular, and having darker skin.
From what we’ve observed, the tribe is quite small. The most recent survey was conducted in 2012, where a total of 39 people were reported.
More recent estimates, based on remote observations and analysis, suggest the population could range widely from 50 to 400 people. These figures remain imprecise due to the challenges of direct observation.
Observed clothing on the island is limited; inhabitants mainly appear nude, often with belts strapped around their waists.
The Sentinelese, despite remaining isolated from the rest of the world for tens of thousands of years, have developed more modernized tools and weapons.
These tools and weapons are more similar to those developed during the Stone Age and are typically made from metals found in shipwrecks near the reef.
Because of the violence used to defend their isolation, the Sentinelese are typically viewed as “backward” to the outside world. However, the hostility shown by the Sentinelese is understandable when considering the risks outsiders pose to the people.
The first recorded sighting of North Sentinel Island was in 1771. A British Surveyor passed by the island and reported seeing numerous lights. Despite this early discovery, attempts to contact people on the island weren’t documented until the late 1860s.
The first documented European to visit North Sentinel Island was Jeremiah Homfray in 1867. He arrived on the island while on a separate voyage, pursuing escaped criminals.
Multiple Sentinelese were seen fishing along the beach when Homfray passed by. Upon noticing the ship, the natives went into hiding. Homfray made no attempt to land or contact the tribe.
Later, in 1867, the Sentinelese had their second introduction to outsiders. This interaction saw the Indian merchant vessel, the Nineveh, shipwrecked near the island.
All 106 crew members and passengers survived and went to the nearby beach, which happened to be North Sentinel Island. For the first two days on the island, everything was peaceful, but on the third day, the crew and passengers of the shipwreck were attacked by the natives with arrows.
A few days later, the sunken ship was located, and the Royal Navy dispatched a rescue mission. The shipwreck victims had managed to repel the attack by the Sentinelese.
In 1880, Maurice Vidal Portman, a British government administrator, undertook a research expedition to the Andaman Islands to study the native tribes and their customs. North Sentinel was one of the islands he visited.
While on the island, Portman and his crew found narrow pathways and multiple abandoned small villages. Portman eventually found an inhabited village and captured six people: one woman, an elderly man, and four children.
The kidnapped Sentinelese became ill after being taken to Port Blair. The man and the woman both died. When Portman saw the children’s worsening condition, he rushed them back to North Sentinel Island with various gifts.
The goal of sending gifts was to create a friendly relationship with the Sentinelese. Portman returned to the island three more times, leaving gifts each time.
It is unknown if the children who were returned to the island survived. The swift spread of the disease among the kidnapped Sentinelese while they were at Port Blair strongly suggests that their subsequent return of the children to the island may have triggered an epidemic there.
Another visitor appeared in 1896: an escaped convict from the nearby penal colony on Great Andaman Island.
A search party was sent to find the prisoner, and they managed to discover his body, covered in a multitude of arrow piercings and a cut throat. Despite the violent death, the party did not see any of the Sentinelese.
In the late 1890s, another formal visit by Europeans was attempted. This time, the visit was done by the chief commissioner of the Nicobar and Andaman Islands, Richard Carnac Temple.
In a speech, he stated that he had visited the island to capture fugitives, but upon arrival, found their corpses. He reported seeing the island’s inhabitants retreat when his group arrived.
He later returned to the island with a former Sentinelese who had drifted off to a nearby island. The goal was to have this man establish a friendly connection with the tribe. However, the Sentinelese did not appear to recognize their former tribemate and began to attack the group.
This instance led Temple to report that the tribe would kill any stranger. The stranger could be an unrecognized member of their own tribe, attempting to establish friendship, or from anywhere else, and the tribe would treat them as an enemy.
After this, there were a few other small expeditions to North Sentinel Island over the following 60 years; these expeditions were fairly uneventful.
The next notable visit to North Sentinel Island was in 1974. This time, a National Geographic film crew landed on the island to shoot a documentary called Man in Search of Man.
The crew consisted of anthropologists who were accompanied by armed police. The crew’s goal was to build a friendly connection with the local Sentinelese through a three-day period of gift-giving.
The expedition was a disaster.
Upon approaching the island in their motorboat, the crew was immediately met with a volley of arrows from the native tribe. After reaching a relatively safe area on the island, they left gifts in the sand; however, they were immediately shot at again.
This experience left the film’s director injured; it was the first time an image of the Sentinelese was captured, and the image was subsequently published in National Geographic.
Another notable experience with the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island occurred in 1981, when the ship MV Primrose became stuck on the reef surrounding the island. The crew members were stranded on the reef for a few days when they noticed a group of armed Sentinelese approaching the boat.
The captain of the ship sent out a distress call asking for firearms, wary of the Sentinelese attempting to reach the boat. The crew was fortunate that the tides were too strong for the members of the tribe to reach the boat and that the side of the ship protected the crew from the arrows being shot at them.
It took a week for the crew to be evacuated from the area, and the ship was left behind. The Sentinelese then reportedly scavenged the ship for its contents and metal.
The first true instance of peaceful contact between the Sentinelese and the outside world occurred in 1991. This connection was done by an Indian Anthropological team.
The anthropological group once again offered coconut gifts to show they were peaceful, then buried their weapons to signal to the tribe that they wished for no conflict. This decision allowed the two groups to approach each other and engage in some hand-to-hand trading.
The contact was brief and carefully controlled, and the Indian government soon ended such missions. Since then, Indian authorities have adopted a strict no-contact policy to protect the Sentinelese from disease and outside disruption.
Despite these restrictions, some people still attempted to land on North Sentinel Island. One of these instances occurred in 2006, when two fishermen, who were illegally catching crabs, drifted to the island.
While on the island, the Sentinelese attacked and killed the fisherman. The later expedition to try and collect the bodies failed, due to the Sentinelese attacking the helicopter. It is believed that previous expeditions may have led to the increased the hostility of the Sentinelese.
Another recent attempt at contact on North Sentinel, and one of the most famous, occurred in 2018, when an American Missionary named John Allen Chau visited the island. This attempt at contact drew the attention of Western media to both the island and the Sentinelese people.
Chau illegally visited the island with the goal of spreading Christianity to the natives. He paid local fishermen to take him a few hundred meters off the island and then attempted to give the Sentinelese gifts. The meeting was met with hostility, causing Chau to retreat.
He made a second visit to the island, where he attempted to communicate, sang worship songs to them, and gave more gifts. He reported being laughed at by the native people and having his bible shot by an arrow.
Chau continued his attempted visits until it ultimately resulted in his death. His body was found by the fishermen who were meant to pick him up from the island. Due to the protections given to the Sentinelese, both the US Government and the Indian government took no action against the tribes. Instead, the fisherman who helped Chau get to the island was arrested.
Contact between the outside world and North Sentinel Island has remained almost nonexistent. However, as more people become aware of its existence and status, maintaining the limitation on contact between the Sentinelese and the outside world is becoming increasingly difficult.
For most of human history, every society on Earth eventually came into contact with others, exchanging ideas and goods. The Sentinelese are one of the very few exceptions.
Their continued isolation is not just a curiosity but a reminder that humanity still contains cultures that developed and live entirely on their own terms. In a world where satellites map every corner of the planet and the internet connects billions of people, North Sentinel Island stands as one of the last places that is untouched by the modern world.
The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.
Research and writing for this episode were provided by THE…..Olivia Ashe.
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