![]() They've never invented oars, without which they cannot leave the island. They propel their dugout canoes through the shallow lagoons by poling along the bottom, but they cannot navigate in water deeper than the length of the poles. The food provided by these lagoons is so plentiful that the Sentinelese have never needed to fish in the deep sea waters beyond the coral reefs. (Image credit: Flickr user Christian Caron)Īt the same time that they keep strangers out, the coral reefs help keep the Sentinelese in, because the reefs create several shallow lagoons that are teeming with sea life. For the remaining ten months, the island cannot be safely approached from the sea. Narrow openings in these reefs allow small boats to slip through and land on the beach, but these are passable only in good weather and calm seas, which occur as infrequently as two months out of the year. This was especially true during the age of sail, when ships had no way of quickly maneuvering out of harm's way once they realized that the reefs were there. Furthermore, the island is surrounded by a ring of submerged coral reefs that prevent large ships from approaching. And unlike many of those islands, North Sentinel has no natural harbors, so there's no good place for a ship to take shelter from a storm. It's too small to interest settlers or colonial powers, especially when there are bigger, better islands within a few hours' sailing time. North Sentinel Island is amazingly well suited to both support and isolate a tribe like the Sentinelese. It's estimated the the 28-square-mile island (slightly larger than Manhattan) is capable of supporting as many as 400 hunter-gatherers, but no one knows how many people live there. The outside world calls them the "Sentineli" or the "Sentinelese," after the island. No one knows what language they speak or what they call themselves -they have never allowed anyone to get close enough to find out. The outside world has known about North Sentinel Island for centuries, but the islanders have been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world all that time, and they fiercely maintain their isolation to this day. These people are believed to be the direct descendants of the first humans out of Africa. That's 35,000 years before the last ice age, 55,000 years before the great woolly mammoths disappeared from North America, and 62,000 years before the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids at Giza. Anthropologists believe the men who appeared on the beach that morning in 1981 are members of a hunter-gatherer tribe that has lived on the island for 65,000 years. They were lucky to get away: It was their misfortune to have run aground just offshore of one of the strangest islands on Earth, and probably the very last of its kind. Worrying they will board us at sunset."Īfter a tense standoff lasting a few more days, the crew of the Primrose were evacuated by helicopter to safety. The captain made another radio distress call, this one much more urgent: "Wild men! Estimate more than 50, carrying various homemade weapons, are making two or three wooden boats. Each man carried either a spear, a bow and arrows, or some other primitive weapon. Was it the rescue party? It seemed possible …until the men came a little closer and the lookout could see that every one of them was naked. Or perhaps he'd figured out just which tiny island lay beyond the reef: It was North Sentinel -the deadliest of the 200 islands in the Andaman Island chain.Ī few days later, a lookout aboard the Primrose spotted a group of dark-skinned men emerging from the jungle, making their way toward the ship. It was monsoon season, and he may have concerned about lowering the men into the rough sea in tiny lifeboats. The beach must have seemed like an ideal spot to wait for a rescue, but the captain ordered the crew to remain aboard the Primrose. ![]() It was uninhabited, as far as anyone could tell: There were no buildings, roads, or other signs of civilization there -just a pristine, sandy beach and behind it, dense jungle. The following morning, as it became light, the sailors saw an island a few hundred yards beyond the reef. But there was no danger of it sinking, so after radioing for assistance, the captain and crew settled in for a few days' wait until help arrived. The ship, called the Primrose, was hopelessly stuck. Late on the night of August 2, 1981, a Hong Kong freighter navigating the choppy waters of the Bay of Bengal ran aground on a submerged coral reef. What makes it so odd? The people -they've been there a long time, completely cut off from the rest of the world. The following is an article from Uncle John's 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader.Įver heard of North Sentinel Island? Probably not …even thought's one of the most unusual places on Earth.
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