Another ancient tribe discovered to survive tsunami
Two days after a tsunami thrashed the island where his ancestors have lived for tens of thousands of years, a lone tribesman stood naked on the beach and looked up at a hovering coast guard helicopter.
He then calmly took out his bow and shot an arrow toward the rescue chopper.
It was a signal the Sentinelese have sent out to the world for millennia: They want to be left alone.
Elsewhere, on the isolated, tsunami-ravaged Andaman and Nicobar islands, members of the ancient Jarawa tribe emerged from forests for the first time since the tsunami struck. Seven men, wearing only underwear and amulets, told government and police officials that all 250 of their tribe had fled to forested areas and had survived.
A boy from the Jarawa tribe, one of the five tribes in India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, which are believed to have knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds.
"They can smell the wind. They can gauge the depth of the sea with the sound of their oars. They have a sixth sense, which we don't possess," said Ashish Roy, a local environmentalist and lawyer who has urged the courts to protect the tribes by preventing their contact with the outside world.
Anthropologists speculate that ancient knowledge of wind movement and the flight of birds may have saved the lives of many tribesmen, who seem to have fled the shores well before the waves could hit the coast, where they would typically be fishing at this time of the year.
The tribes live the most ancient, nomadic lifestyle known to man, frozen in their Paleolithic past. Many produce fire by rubbing stones. They fish and hunt with bow and arrow, and live in community huts of leaves and straw. (via CBS news)
He then calmly took out his bow and shot an arrow toward the rescue chopper.
It was a signal the Sentinelese have sent out to the world for millennia: They want to be left alone.
Elsewhere, on the isolated, tsunami-ravaged Andaman and Nicobar islands, members of the ancient Jarawa tribe emerged from forests for the first time since the tsunami struck. Seven men, wearing only underwear and amulets, told government and police officials that all 250 of their tribe had fled to forested areas and had survived.
A boy from the Jarawa tribe, one of the five tribes in India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, which are believed to have knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds.
"They can smell the wind. They can gauge the depth of the sea with the sound of their oars. They have a sixth sense, which we don't possess," said Ashish Roy, a local environmentalist and lawyer who has urged the courts to protect the tribes by preventing their contact with the outside world.
Anthropologists speculate that ancient knowledge of wind movement and the flight of birds may have saved the lives of many tribesmen, who seem to have fled the shores well before the waves could hit the coast, where they would typically be fishing at this time of the year.
The tribes live the most ancient, nomadic lifestyle known to man, frozen in their Paleolithic past. Many produce fire by rubbing stones. They fish and hunt with bow and arrow, and live in community huts of leaves and straw. (via CBS news)
posted by O.marian at 15:07
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