Why did the Sentinelese never leave the island and explore the world?

In November 2018, a 26-year-old American missionary was killed by local indigenous people on Sentinel Island in India, which put an isolated tribe, the Sentinals, back at the center of public opinion.

Since the indigenous people of Sentinel Island are the oldest tribes on earth and they are very unfriendly to outsiders, the island has been closed to any tourists since 1953.

According to Indian police, the American missionary asked nearby fishermen to take him to the island without permission, in order to convert the Sentinelese to Christianity.

In fact, the Sentinelese are notorious for being unfriendly to the outside world. They will attack outsiders who land on the island without any legal constraints.

The missionary clearly underestimated the unfriendliness of the Sentinelese and ended up keeping himself on top.

So, what kind of people are the Sentinelese people, and why are they reluctant to communicate with the outside world and are so unfriendly to the outside world?

The oldest isolated tribe on earth

Sentinel Island is a relatively large isolated island in the Indian Archipelago of the Bay of Bengal, with an area of ​​59.67 square kilometers, which is almost the size of an ordinary town in China.

Sentinel Island has a tropical climate. Except for a coastline around the island that is about 45 meters wide, the rest of the island is covered by tropical evergreen forests.

Surrounded by the sea on all sides, there is an evergreen forest in the middle. Generally speaking, the survival resources on Sentinel Island are quite rich, so it supports a group of indigenous people who have lived there for generations - Sentinals.

Many of the islands of the Indies are populated by different indigenous peoples, but none are as special and mysterious as the Sentinelese.

First of all, it is reflected in the language. There are many similarities in the language of other indigenous peoples in the Indies. People from different islands will not have too many obstacles to communicate with each other. any commonality.

Anthropologists deduce that the Sentinelese have been so isolated from the world for so long that even their language is completely different from the neighboring tribes.

In fact, humans arrived in the Indies about 60,000 years ago. After taking root here, they basically had little genetic communication with the outside world, and few tribes chose to leave their islands.

Among them, the Sentinel people are considered to be the most closed group, and they may have basically lost contact with the outside world after arriving on Sentinel Island.

So anthropologists believe that the Sentinelese may have lived on that island for 55,000 to 60,000 years, and because of this, they are considered the oldest human tribe.

Second, Sentinels can be very healthy.

In fact, after people came into contact with the indigenous people of the Indies, people have found that the island lifestyle has caused many health problems for these people.

This is the so-called "island effect". It is difficult for species on the island to communicate with the outside world. Over time, species will fall into the risk of inbreeding and species degradation.

In fact, the biggest problem of our national treasure giant panda in the wild is also this - the giant panda's habitat is limited to a few hilltops to form isolated islands, which eventually leads to a series of problems such as the decline of their reproductive ability.

Since many of the indigenous people of the Indies have health problems, they still need to receive relief from the Indian government, but the Sentineles seem to have no health problems and do not need any relief.

The first contact with the Sentineles was in 1771 due to the need for hydrographic surveys by the notorious East India Company (this may not have been the first contact, but it was the first written record of the Sentinelese). Seoul), after that, many teams on the grounds of scientific research have been in contact with the Sentinals.

Now, most of the descriptions of the Sentinelese indicate that they are relatively healthy, and the male body is very muscular. The only disadvantage is that they are relatively short, and they are rarely more than 1.6 meters tall.

All of this adds to the mystique of the Sentinelese, but people are more concerned about why they don't leave the island, and are so ostracized to communicate with the outside world? After all, there are other islands less than 16 kilometers nearby, inhabited by other tribes.

Why don't the Sentinelese leave their islands?

Since the Sentinelese are so repulsive to outsiders, it is impossible for them to tell anyone why their tribe did not leave the island.

But most anthropologists speculate that they are inseparable at all.

Although the Sentinelese have some very simple tools, including bows and arrows for hunting and fishing boats, they are all very rudimentary. Their fishing boats are almost similar to canoes, and such boats cannot take the inhabitants off the island.

In addition, Sentinel Island is completely surrounded by shallow reefs, and there is no place that can be used as a port. In the age of backward technology, it is difficult for the outside world to enter here.

In fact, the main reason for the outside world to contact the Sentineles is to rescue those fishing boats that accidentally ran aground there.

It can be seen that it is not easy for them to build a larger ship and leave here.

So, rather than saying that the Sentinelese don't want to explore the world, it's better to say that they can't do without, or that it is difficult to leave.

The most important thing is that they don't have many reasons to leave. The island effect keeps their population small, and an island so big is enough to support them.

There have been several attempts by Indian officials to count the Sentinel population, but they have all failed. So far, no one has entered the deep forests of Sentinel Island and left population data.

It is now generally believed that the population of Sentinel Island is between 15 and 500 people, and a tropical island of more than 50 square kilometers is more than enough to feed these people.

Because the population base is small, so far, they still live the most traditional hunter-gatherer life without any crops.

As for why the Sentinelese are so xenophobic, the reason is likely that they are basically not treated friendly every time they come into contact with the outside world.

In 1879, a Sentinel couple and their four children were forcibly taken to Port Blair, the main town of the Indies, but because the Tinars had little contact with the outside world, they were not resistant to external diseases.

So, the couple soon died of illness and the 4 children were sent back to the island, believed to have brought the disease from outside and caused a plague on the island.

Before India banned people from landing on the islands, similar things happened many times, there were many groups that came here to arrest people, they did not treat the Sentinelese as legitimate citizens at all, and they did not feel any guilt for harming them.

As a result, the Sentinelese are hostile towards the outside world, especially men - they are believed to be relatively friendly towards women outside and often aggressive towards men.

at last

When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hit the entire Indian archipelago badly, fears of the impact on the Sentinelese led to a helicopter aerial inspection.

The tsunami destroyed the forest, but it did not seem to affect the Sentinelese. Inspectors did not find any casualties. Perhaps they knew how to avoid the tsunami.

But what is interesting is that when the helicopter was close to the ground, they attacked the helicopter with bows and arrows, which fully reflected their unfriendly emotions to the outside world.

Maybe as time goes by, they will slowly accept the outside world. I don't know if they will feel the outside world is good or bad at that time?