Latest news with #tribe
Daily Mail
10-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Fears isolated tribe could be wiped out by Indian efforts to carry out census... or KILL anyone trying to count how many villagers dwell on their island
A remote island tribe known for killing outsiders on sight could be at risk of being wiped out as India prepares to carry out its first national census in over a decade. The Sentinelese people of North Sentinel Island, considered the most isolated tribe on Earth, have long resisted contact with the outside world. But now officials are facing the dilemma of counting those who reside on the island without sparking violence or exposing the tribe to diseases they have no immunity to. Experts have warned that even attempting to tally the population of the world's most reclusive tribe could end in bloodshed or spark a humanitarian catastrophe. In 2006, two Indian fishermen paid with their lives after their boat accidentally drifted too close to the island which is protected by India. According to witnesses on a nearby fishing boat, the two men were brutally hacked to death with axes. A few days after the killings, their bodies were reportedly hooked up on bamboo sticks like 'a kind of scarecrow', according to an Indian police chief who shared details of the incident. And after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, the tribe made international headlines when one lone warrior fired an arrow at a military helicopter conducting a welfare check. Now, with the next census due in 2027, enumerators in India face the difficult - and potentially life-threatening - task of attempting to count those who do not want to be found. After the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, the tribe made international headlines when one lone warrior fired an arrow at a military helicopter conducting a welfare check The job becomes even more fraught in light of India's 2014 decision to leave the Sentinelese entirely undisturbed, formally recognising their right to live in isolation. To safeguard their isolation and protect them from contracting potential diseases from outsiders to which they have no immunity, the Indian government has imposed strict prohibitions on approaching the island. Delhi has declared the island and its surrounding waters an exclusion zone enforced by Navy patrols, to which unauthorised entry is illegal and contact with the tribe is forbidden. Violating these restrictions can have deadly consequences, as the Sentinelese are legally permitted to defend their territory - even to the point of killing trespassers. Now, India are considering the use of drones or satellite imagery to attempt to count the population from afar. But even this raises ethical alarms. 'There have been talks of using certain technology to map their population but it is not clear if this will give an accurate estimate or whether it is even ethical to conduct such an exercise,' said Dr M Sasikumar, joint director of the Anthropological Society of India. Survival International's Jonathan Mazower added: 'Any contact with such peoples, who lack immunity to common outside diseases, could well be deadly for them'. The Sentinelese aren't the only tribe in the crosshairs. On Great Nicobar Island, the elusive Shompen people - a semi-nomadic tribe believed to number just over 200 - also pose a census conundrum. Delhi has declared the island and its surrounding waters an exclusion zone enforced by Navy patrols, to which unauthorised entry is illegal and contact with the tribe is forbidden Deep in dense jungle, far from the reach of modern life, they too risk being swept into the government's data drive. Plans to develop the island with a vast airport and port sparked outrage earlier this year, with dozens of genocide experts branding the project a 'death sentence' for the Shompen in an open letter to India's president. In 2011, officials managed only a partial count of the Shompen, and the Sentinelese were never tallied at all, with officials relying on glimpses from a safe distance at sea to guess at their numbers. At the time, they estimated just 15 people - 12 men and three women. Contact with the tribe has proven fatal. In 2018, American missionary John Allen Chau was killed after a brazen attempt to convert the Sentinelese to Christianity. On his third secretive approach to the island - after offering gifts and speaking in what he believed was a friendly tone - the tribe turned to violence. The fisherman who had been aiding the Christian missionary said that they had watched in horror from a distance as the tribesmen dragged his body away with a rope around his neck. His body was later buried by islanders. It has never been recovered. Even this year, another American adventure had to be arrested after making an illegal nine-hour voyage to a restricted reserve on North Sentinel Island and leaving behind a can of Coke as an 'offering' for the world's most isolated tribe to try. Experts branded Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov's attempted visit as 'deeply disturbing', and warned that not only did he put himself in danger, but also put the entire Sentinelese tribe at risk of being wiped out were they to contract a common disease, such as measles or influenza. The 24-year-old was seized by police when he returned to land - but this outcome may have been far kinder than the deadly consequences he could have faced had he had fallen into the hands of the dangerous tribe.
News.com.au
07-06-2025
- Science
- News.com.au
6000 year old skeletons with no connection to modern humans found in Colombia
We don't know where they came from. We don't know where they went. The unique DNA of an ancient tribe of hunter-gatherers is adding to the confusion surrounding the source of South America' s first inhabitants. The story of the region's human settlement is already confusing enough. Some argued it was colonised by Stone Age clans crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Africa and the Pacific Ocean from as far away as Australia. But the prevailing argument is that a migration of Clovis peoples out of Siberia followed an Alaskan ice bridge into North America some 20,000 years ago. Scientists have been squabbling over who went where, when, for decades. The modern discipline of genetics can offer answers. And add to the confusion. A new analysis of mitochondrial DNA (inherited from mothers) alongside complete genome data of 21 ancient burials presents a connect-the-dots puzzle of migration spanning millennia. One group, however, stands out. A tribe of hunter-gatherers who settled the Bogotá Altiplano mountains in what is now Colombia were different. But their isolated plateau sits near the exit from the narrow land bridge that linked Central and South America. Anthropologists don't know where they fit. They're not directly related to the ancient North American Clovis peoples. And their genetic heritage is yet to be found in subsequent Native South American populations. They appeared some 6000 years vanished about 2000 years ago. And there's no hint as to why. First arrivals The oldest human remains found in South America are those of 'Luzia', otherwise dubbed 'The First Brazilian'. This 12,000-year-old woman was most likely from among the first wave of settlers to reach the southern continent. DNA shows they were descendants of the Clovis migration – not African or Australian seafarers as previously believed. A second wave of North American tribes arrived around 9000 years ago, and a third some 5000 years later. 'However, a region that has not been investigated through ancient genomics so far is Colombia, the entry point into South America,' the authors of the study, published in the May edition of the journal Science Advances, state. And that's what they sought to address. They examined five archaeological sites across the Bogota Altiplano plateau. Genetic material was extracted from teeth and bones of 21 skeletons dating from 6000 to 500 years old. The researchers argue the oldest remains must have been from a lingering branch of the first migration of humans into South America. But even then, their clan must have been unique. 'We show that the hunter-gatherer population from the Altiplano dated to around 6000 yr B.P. lack the genetic ancestry related to the Clovis-associated Anzick-1 genome and to ancient California Channel Island individuals,' the study finds. 'The analysed Preceramic individuals from Colombia do not share distinct affinity with any ancient or modern-day population from Central and South America studied to date.' Whatever the case, their isolated mountain plateau could have contributed to its longevity. Until it didn't. 'We couldn't find descendants of these early hunter-gatherers of the Colombian high plains — the genes were not passed on,' explains Kim-Louise Krettek of the University of Tubingen. 'That means in the area around Bogotá there was a complete exchange of the population.' Inevitability of change Who were these people? What did they look like? How did they settle in their strange new homeland? By the time the descendants of the Clovis tribes that crossed the Bering Strait out of northern China and Siberia reached South America, 7000 years of genetic mutation and evolution were already well down the path towards creating distinct new communities. The Bogota Altiplano was among them. Then, their mountaintop plateau home likely kept them isolated from external influence. Until strange new people began climbing the slopes 4000 years ago. The march of progress is relentless. The high tableland transitioned from its hunter-gatherer society into an agrarian economy in a process completed within 2000 years. DNA shows the new people came from Central America. Archaeology reveals they brought with them innovations including pottery and planting seeds. 'In addition to technological developments such as ceramics, the people of this second migration probably also brought the Chibchan languages into what is present-day Colombia. Branches of this language family are still spoken in Central America today,' says co-author Andrea Casas-Vargas of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Whether exterminated through war or overwhelmed in numbers, the earlier Bogota Altiplano people vanished. 'The cultural transition between the Preceramic and Herrera periods is associated with a seemingly complete replacement of the local genetic profile,' the study reads. 'That genetic traces of the original population disappear completely is unusual,' adds National University of Colombia study participant Andrea Casas-Vargas.
New York Times
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘A World-Wise Waitress Came to the Table and Scoped Out the Group'
Image Initiation Dear Diary: It was the early 2000s. I had been resisting my friends' invitations to join them in a night of dancing at one of those only-in-New-York, late-night parties held in the kind of dark, crowded clubs that were tucked into quiet streets along the Hudson River at the time. Intense, sweat-soaked, group experiences like that didn't appeal to me. At some point, I gave in and spent six hours one night dancing as hard as I possibly could. It was magic. I had found my tribe. As the early spring morning broke over Manhattan, seven of us left the club together, footsore, sweaty, exhilarated and exhausted, and then settled in for breakfast at a nearby diner. I felt like I had been initiated, let into the heavy rites of a secret fraternity. I was now one of those guys.
