Thursday, 23 April 2015

Mysterious island Indian home to 60,000-year-old tribe but outsiders cannot visit as they risk being attacked

Sentinelese tribespeople, holding javelins, gather on the shore of North Sentinel Island, located in the Bay of Bengal 
An Indian Ocean island, which is almost the size of Manhattan, has been inhabited by the indigenous Sentinelese for 60,000 years.

The tribe have continually rejected the modern world and are very violent to outsiders, even killing two men in 2006 after they were fishing nearby their North Sentinel Island.

The tribe even go as far as throwing rocks and shooting arrows at planes or helicopters, and such is the hostility they display towards outsiders that only low-quality pictures exist of the inhabitants.

Indian authorities have even gone as far as making it a crime to try to make contact with the Sentinelese.

But while it is illegal to go within three miles of the island, that has not stopped some from venturing nearby.
This satellite image taken by NASA shows the untouched North Sentinel Island, which is about the size of Manhattan
Survival International - which advocates for the rights of tribal groups has alleged that local fisherman are regularly entering the area - with one even stepping onto the island before he and six others were arrested by the authorities.

Survival international now fears that the survival of the tribe is under threat.

Survival International’s director, Stephen Corry, said: "The Great Andamanese tribes of India’s Andaman Islands were decimated by disease when the British colonised the islands in the 1800s.

"The most recent to be pushed into extinction was the Bo tribe, whose last member died only four years ago.

"The only way the Andamanese authorities can prevent the annihilation of another tribe is to ensure North Sentinel Island is protected from outsiders."

The tribespeople are rarely photographed or recorded on video; the only existing images or video clips tend to be of poor quality

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