June 27, 2023 • 44 mins
Author Ben Thompson and Dr. Pat Larash discuss one of the few places left on Earth about which we still know next to nothing, the people of North Sentinel Island remain almost completley untouched by the outside world. Surrounded by unapproachable reefs, and covered in dense jungle, this tiny island in the Indian Ocean is home to a civilization that is almost completely unobservable, even with modern drones and satellites. More curiously, the people who live there have no interest in communication or interaction with the outside world -- the North Sentinelese have repeatedly responded to all attempts at communication with violence.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Somewhere in the Bay of Bengal, hidden
between Indonesia and India, is a heavily jungled island roughly
twenty percent larger than Manhattan, New York. Canopy forests circle
large sandy beaches. This mysterious place has no natural harbors.
(00:22):
It's completely surrounded by dangerous coral reefs, and since the
dawn of mankind, this island has been almost completely untouched
by the outside world. To this day, it is illegal
for anyone to set foot on this would be paradise.
The Coast Guard of India maintains a three mile cordon
around the island. It is completely forbidden to visit. The
(00:44):
cordon is there for your protection, because while this minuscule
speck of land in the Indian Ocean may appear to
be completely uninhabited, it is in fact home to one
of the last civilizations on Earth, about which we know
absolutely nothing, and few who have set foot on this
island I had lived to tell the tale. This is
(01:05):
North Sentinel Island. Hey, hello, and welcome back to the show.
This is Badass of the Week. My name is Ben
Thompson and I am here with my co host, doctor
Pat Larish. So I'm down in Brazil for basically to
(01:26):
escape the Seattle winter. So I'm away from the rain
and I'm down here in the sun where it also
rains pretty heavily occasionally for an hour or two every day.
But we went out on my father in law's boat
and he was talking to me about an island that
I've heard of before, the island of Kimatagaje. It's one
hundred and six acres, which is zero point one seven
(01:48):
square miles, which is not large. It's about the size
of like a big resort hotel, like a ranch or something.
It's not huge. It's an island off the coast of Salpolo.
It's a temperate rainforest, and it has more snakes per
square meter of land than anywhere else in the world.
(02:09):
It's colloquially known as Snake Island.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Now this is not to be confused with Snake Island, Ukraine,
which has its own badass story, but that's a matter
for another time.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Right, Yeah, that's the Russian worship Go fuck Yourself Island.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Right exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
That's a different badass Snake island. Yeah, and at one
point there were thought to be four hundred thousand snakes
living there. I think the number is like actually way
smaller than that, but like that's how packed full of
snakes this island is. And among these snakes is a
species of snake called the golden lance head pit viper,
(02:45):
and it exists only on this island and they are
extremely venomous. There's not a lot of data on them
because it's illegal to go to this island. Only like
Brazilian navy personnel are allowed there, and only to like
repair the lighthouse, and only because they don't really want
to be responsible for people crashing into this island when
(03:06):
they're trying to pull into the harbor at self. Follow
So we don't have a ton of data on the
snake bites of the golden lancehead pit viper, but we
do know that their cousins, the non golden lancehead pit viper,
are responsible for more fatal snake bites than any other
snake in North or South America. So the idea is
that like basically, if you get bit by them, you'll
(03:28):
be dead within like a couple hours if you don't
get treatment. And because they only live on this island.
There is no treatment except for if you can get
helicopter lifted or take a boat back to Selpollo, which
will take a couple hours and you'll be dead. Bey.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah. Yeah, that seems a little hard to schedule.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They think that it's like an evolutionary thing.
So the theory on Snake Island, Brazil is that it
used to be attached to the mainland and then one
of these ice ages like made it into an island,
and some of these pit vipers got stuck out on
that island and became, you know, kind of evolved Pokemon
(04:05):
evolved into the Golden lands head pit vipers. And they
think it has to be so potent because they have
to kill birds. The only thing they can eat is birds.
Oh so they have to like bite the bird and
have it die before it flies away.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Okay, Yeah, because the island is so small, there aren't
that many possible prey animals that live there.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I like this. Of all the like badass islands, this
is a pretty solid, pretty solid one.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Definitely, definitely.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I will also say that, like the ice age thing
is probably the explanation for these things, but there's an
amazing theory out there that these snakes were introduced by
pirates because there's buried treasure all over the island, and
so the pirates put these super deadly snakes on the
island to keep people from searching for the treasure. And
then because there's no predators, they bred out of control,
(04:54):
and now they were on the island and this Brazilian
pirate treasure will never be found, which I love, but
it seems improbable.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Improbable. It also seems like a backfired.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
People did used to live on the island, is my understanding. Yeah, like,
just to like tend the lighthouse story goes that they
were all killed by snakes, the lighthouse keeper being the
last one when just mountains of snakes like piled in
through his window while he was sleeping and killed him
and his whole family and ate her buddy. Oh no,
it's probably legend, but it might not be, Okay, you know,
(05:28):
there's lots of stories of people trying to land on
that island and yeah, then being killed by snakes. Wow,
pretty weird and cool and it's a fun story that
I like. And we did we did not attempt to
sail near it when we were on my father in
law's little selboat.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Good for you.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I didn't see it, and I don't want to see it,
and I don't want to go there, and I don't know. No,
I don't want to encounter a Golden Lands had pit
viper in the wild.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
No, No, that would suck.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Well, since we're on the subject, it got me thinking,
let's talk about another weird forbidden island that's legal to visit.
It's one that I wrote about on the website a
while back and that I've been really excited to talk
about on the show. Here. It is called North Sentinel Island.
It is possibly one of the most awesome, badass forbidden
places on Earth. We're going to talk about it right
(06:15):
after this break Welcome Back. We are going to talk
about North Sentinel Island. And there's a reef that surrounds
the entire island that makes it really hard for any
kind of like deep water boats to approach. So you
(06:38):
can take a big boat to the outside of the reef,
but if you want to approach the main island from
any direction, you kind of need a canoe. And that
isolated the island, which is such a fascinating thing to
talk about. And kind of affected its development the way
that it did. So there are people that live on
North Sentinel Island and they are people about which we
(07:01):
know nothing. They're probably like among the last civilizations on
Earth about which we know very very little, almost nothing.
The only thing we really know about these people is
that they try to kill anyone who lands on their island.
They're like very protective of the island and very defensive
of it and very aggressive to outsiders. Most of the
(07:22):
photographs you see of the people that live here are
like pointing arrows at the camera that's taking the photo.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, and it's a camera that's on like a helicopter
or some sort of aircraft.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Right, a drone or a helicopter or something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
So we are in the Bay of Bengal, so we're
off the coast of India, and technically it's one of
the Andaman Islands. Technically it's like under like Indian jurisdiction.
But the people that live there are very dark skinned.
They appear almost African in appearance. We don't know anything
about their background because we have no DNA from these people.
(07:59):
We've never taken in And one of the other interesting
things about the area is that it is extremely heavily forested,
so we can't see through the canopy cover, so we
don't know how many people live there. We don't know
where they sleep. Really. We have ideas about their shelters
(08:19):
and what they eat and things like that, but realistically
we know very very little about these people. From the water,
we've seen them collect coconuts, and they spear hunt for
fish and other wildlife. They have canoes, they wear jewelry,
but we really don't know very much about these people
at all. We can't communicate with them because we can't
(08:41):
speak their language. And not only is their language not
like decipherable, it has no resemblance to any other language
that we know of, which is really interesting, or.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
No resemblance that we can discern to any other language.
If we had a chance to get to know their
language better, we might find out more about it and
realize that, oh, maybe it actually it's somehow related to
this language family or that language family. But yeah, if
you look up the North Sentin Louise language on say Wikipedia,
it will say that it is undescribed, and that means
(09:14):
that it's undescribed by linguists, and that's kind of a
big deal because most languages of the world, linguists have
been able to learn enough about to at least describe,
like what family do they belong to, or at least
make a conjecture as to what family they belong to,
some sort of introduction to the language, even if it's incomplete,
even if it's imperfect, even if it's distorted somehow. But
(09:35):
to say that a language is undescribed means that even
professional linguists don't have enough to go on.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Okay, so we'll start with Ptolemy. And Ptolemy is writing
in the second century AD, and he talks about, among
other things, a quote island of cannibals in the Bay
of Bengal that's in the general vicinity of North Sense Island,
and cannibalism is a thing that comes up a lot whenever, quote,
(10:05):
civilized people are talking about people that they don't understand
or tribes they don't understand. But he does write about
an island in the Bay of Bengal in which anyone
who tries to land on this island is met with
violence by people who kill them. And you know, Telemy
takes it a step further to say that they cut
up and mutilate and eat the dead bodies, which maybe
(10:26):
is true, maybe is not.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
And you have to remember, tell me, is living in Alexandria,
in Egypt, so geographically he's pretty far away. He's not
giving a first hand account of anything.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, he was, like he was a pretty high ranking
aristocrat living it up in his palace in Alexandria, writing
down stories that he's heard. And that is a thing
that is going to continue to come up as we
talk about North Sentinel Island. Yes, and it's a thing that,
like I confess, I think is cool, but also it's
something worth keeping in mind. You're going to approach it
(11:01):
from a historical standpoint or an anthropological standpoint, which is
that like North Sentinel Island gets a lot of that
Tarzan kind of treatment of the like pulp dime novel
adventure story treatment of like you know, oh, the last
Uncharted place on Earth, you know, all adventure and danger
and cannibals and all of this stuff. A lot of
(11:22):
that is attributed to North Sentinel Island, not all earned
and deserved. And we don't hear about anything in this
general vicinity again for about a thousand years. In twelve
ninety six, Marco Polo, our good friend of the podcast
Marco Polo. He's sailing through the Indian Ocean and he
hears from one of the sailors on his boat that
(11:43):
he about an island of like head hunting cannibals who
can't be reasoned with, and they'll attack you no matter
what if you try to land on their island. Might
be North Sentinel might not be. We're not sure.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, And did Marco Polo actually go there?
Speaker 1 (11:57):
He did not know. He's recounting a story that he heard.
This would not be admissible in court. As this hear say.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Okay, if that's the story that you're hearing, you might
understand why he did not actually go there. Okay, maybe
it wasn't actually a convenient place to stop. But also
maybe he had a disincentive to go there. Maybe he
liked his head attached to shoulders.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, you know, island of murders, headhunting cannibals, and I
don't need to stop there. Yeah, I gotta take your
word for it. These two descriptions of islands in this
general vicinity weren't particularly appealing to many adventurers, and North
Sentinel went mostly untouched for the next five hundred years
or so, and then the next one is seventeen seventy one,
(12:36):
the British East India Company, they survey the island. They
dub it North Sentinel Island. We call it that today
because we have no idea what the native inhabitants of
this island call it. And history has shown that, you know,
if you're gonna once it's written on the map as
North Sentinel by the British Ust India Company in seventeen
seventy one, we don't really care what you call your island.
(12:58):
This is what it's called now. And they didn't duck there.
They just named it and went on sailed away without
ever setting foot on the island, which ye, why not. Yeah,
that's a very British East India Company thing to do.
Nobody else really comes near the island again for another
one hundred years or so, so now we're in eighteen
sixty seven and nobody's really set foot on this island before.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I mean, no one from the outside world, because of
course the people we call center Lees have been like
setting foot on the island for generations because they live there.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
That is fair, and that is a good point, and
it is well taken. It was not ventured to by
people from outside the island. For now, we're going on
eighteen sixty seven. There was a ship, an Indian ship
called the nineveh and it shipwrecked on the beach of
North Centinent Island after a storm and then out of
(13:48):
the forest almost immediately upon the shipwreck are warriors with
bows and spears, and they come out and they attacked
the shipwreck. They don't ask any questions, they don't try
to communicate. They come out of the jungle on the attack.
Several people on the Ninovar are killed. They kill a
few of their attackers, and they eventually are able to
(14:09):
drive off the sentinel ease. They have swords and guns,
which are two things that traditionally win against out k Yeah,
spear and the longboat.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
But they are able to kind of fight off the
attack and escape the small boats on the Ninevah. They
take them out past the reefs, they get picked up,
everything works out for them.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
They spread the word, Hey, it's a small island, don't
go there. People there don't like us.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
So we'll jump forward a little bit now and we'll
go to eighteen ninety six. The British kind of come
in and they colonize the Andemen Islands. They want to
kind of set up some trading posts here. They want
to do the colonialism thing, and they manage to do
that pretty successfully. And what do they do with the
Endeman Islands. They of course set them up as a
(14:53):
penal colony in the same style as Australia. And one
of these convicts manages to escape his prison colony sounds
kind of badass. He builds a canoe and he sails
pretty awesome. It's like the Alcatraz thing, right. Yeah, it
builds a canoe, he sails north. He's trying to get
to India, but he you know, he doesn't have a compass.
He doesn't really know where he is even. Yeah, he
(15:14):
lands on North Sentinel Island. That turns out, which is
probably worse than being in the penal colony. What happened
to him, Well, they cut his throat, they stabbed him
and they shot him full of arrows and he died
and they buried him on the beach.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Right, that's what they do.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, what happens to outsiders if you try to land
on this island. Yeah, And they've been very consistent about
this for the last three thousand years of history. So
the next story about these people comes from nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
WHOA, that's within living memory, right.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
This is the craziest thing about North Sentinel Island, where
for me, like one of the most interesting things is that,
like we talk about this kind of Indiana Jones time
period thought the way we think about the people that
live on this side island. But this is not that
of all of the stuff we know about them, most
of it comes from the last like forty to fifty years.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, So in nineteen seventy four, National Geographic decides they're
going to go to the island and meet these people because,
for whatever reason, probably involving some violence and killing and
cutting people up and burying their bodies and rumors of
cannibalism or whatever else, nobody's really bothered to try to
land on North Sentinel Island and communicate with these people
(16:33):
in any real way. So National Geographic in nineteen seventy four,
they get a TV crew together and they're going to
go and explore it.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
How does that go?
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Well, how do you think it goes?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Well, Okay, it could go either of two ways.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I'll just tell you what happened. So they show up
with speedboats. So they take the big boat out there.
They take little speedboats over the reef. They go onto
the beach and they leave a baby doll, some coconuts,
and a live pig, and they go back to the butt.
They walk away. They wait a minute. It doesn't take
(17:09):
long before the Sentineliese show up. They come out of
the woods. They're armed, they are ready for combat. They
look at all this stuff on the beach. They look
at this National Geographic Crew. They look at these speedboats,
which like this is going to be a recurring thing
with the Sentineleese, which is just like a lot of
indigenous tribes kind of were historically very scared of any
(17:31):
kind of technology. But it doesn't seem to even phase
the Sentineliese at all. They can look at a speedboat
and just be like, well, this is an enemy. I
gotta fight this thing, you know, yeah, which is what
they do. They shoot arrows at the National Geographic Crew.
They hit the director in the knee, puts an end
to his adventuring days. National Geographic jumps back on other speedboats.
(17:53):
They speed away, and then the Sentinalese warriors on the
beach smash everything on the beach, including the live pig,
destroy it all, smash it into pieces and buried on
the beach, and then wait for the National Geographic Crew.
They stand on the beach with their weapons and wait
for the National Geographic Crew to.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Leave, saying don't come back, get off for a lawn.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, they're they're yelling and shaking their spears at them
and waving their dicks at them, which is a thing apparently. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, and some cultures that's it.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
They don't wear a lot of clothes, like some say loincloths,
some say nothing at all, and so some dick waving,
which probably is threatening, probably is meant to be threatening.
I mean that kind of speaks for itself. I feel like, yeah,
National Graphic leaves and they don't, they don't try to
come back. Again.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
They took the hint.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah, I get the hint, like, we're not we're not
being subtle about this. We really don't want your shitty coconuts.
So we have another encounter with the North Sentinel leaves
in nineteen eighty one. Yeah. Again, we're up to nineteen
eighty one and we've had maybe like a half dozen
encounters with the North Sentinel leies, and this one was
(18:56):
an accident. It was a freighter coming from Hong Kong
called the Primrose. They are in a storm and they
end up running aground on one of the reefs a
couple hundred yards off the coast of North Sentinel. For
a day, nothing happens. They're sending out to stress signals.
They're like, hey, you know, we ran a ground help,
So just to.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Make clear, the Primrose. They're on a reef, so they're
not like literally on the beach. There's a little bit
of distance. There's a little bit of water between them
and the island.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Right. It's kind of what we've been talking about. You
can't get a ship up, yeah, which is why North
Sentinel kind of was left alone for a while. You
can't get a big draft ship over that reef, so
you need a small boat to approach the shore. And yeah,
they're fine with that. So this big ship hits the
reef and it's stuck, yeah, off the coast, and after
about a day it doesn't take the Sentinal least long
to organize a war party. So these guys are coming
(19:44):
out of forest and they got weapons and they are
looking at this nineteen eighty one, this modern freighter ship,
and they're like, we got to get these guys. Yeah,
the Primrose are looking out at this group of I
don't want to say like stone age tech, but I
want to say like they're carrying like wooden spears and
(20:04):
wooden bow and arrows and you know, kind of tribal
indigenous population. And these guys they start putting on warpaint
and more from start coming out of the woods, and
the Primrose is like, they're radioly in, we got a problem. Yeah,
And then the Sentineliese start cutting down trees and they
start building canoes, and the Primrose is like, yeah, we
(20:27):
got a big problem.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
And the thing is, this is a big freighter, right,
this is I mean the Primos. It's this big boat.
It's huge. It's not the sort of vessel that you
would think would be.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Vulnerable, right, it doesn't have a big crew. Okay, yeah,
but I don't feel like the Sentineliese would have known that, right. Yeah,
a giant modern hunk can take like a freighter ship,
like we've seen what this looks like. And imagine that
like the Alien battle cruiser like crash landed in your
backyard and you were just like, well, I got a sword,
right you can, I'll go see what I could do
(21:02):
to this thing. Yeah, And I mean I love it.
I love that these people are so defensive of their homeland, right,
like that's amazing. And the crew of the Primrose sends
a distress signal, and the distress signal says, quote wild
men estimate more than fifty carrying various homemade weapons, are
making two or three wooden boats, worrying they will board
(21:25):
us at sunset. Crew members' lives not guaranteed. WHOA I
just I love so For the next two days, the
Sentineliese attacked the Primrose, and the Primrose has one gun
and two flare guns like one pistol, two flare guns,
and some firefighting axes. And they are fighting off the
(21:47):
North Sentine elie who are attempting to board their ship
with these homemade canoes. They're fighting on the reef off
the coast of North Sentinel Island, fighting for their lives,
and the crew of the Primrose is eventually rescued by helicopter.
Helicopter over drop a ladder and these guys like get
picked up and taken off as like the Sentineleese are
swarming over the ship trying to kill them.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Wow, So the crew members abandoned ship. They just okay, helicopter,
we're out of here. And so the Primrose is just
kind of there, Yeah, and the Sentineleese are taking it over.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
They swarm over it, and they loot it. They take
everything of value off of it. They strip the metal
off of it and start making metal arrow heads out.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Of it, because of course you would.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yeah, right, it's a And if you go on Google
Maps today and you search for North Sentinel Island, you
can find the wreck of the Primrose. You can see
it from Google Maps or from the satellite view. It's
still there. Like, So that kind of puts us with
these Sentinel Eese who we are now in nineteen eighty one,
and nobody has like successfully fucked with them and lived
(22:49):
to tell the tail. Yeah, they are extremely dangerous and
extremely protective of their of their land. And there have
been any indigenous tribes that have been very fearless and
very brave and very protective of their homelands, but very
few of those tribes have made it to nineteen eighty
(23:10):
one without some British East India Company or British East
India company adjacent organization managing to assert their dominance. But
nineteen eighty one and spoiler alert twenty twenty three, as
this is being recorded, still nobody has. One thing that
I do want to say is that we have been
(23:31):
kind of talking a lot about the violent reactions they've
been having, and there is another layer to this, and
I know, Pat, you've been wanting to talk about it,
and so we're going to get into that after this.
There's a second side. There's another side of the story
that really we should we should get into as well.
So we'll get into that right after this break. Okay,
(23:58):
welcome back. We aren't going to talk now. We've talked
a lot about the North Sentinelleese and them attacking and
fighting and being very violent, but there's more to it
than that, right Pat.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Oh, totally.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
So they're dangerous. The thing is, are they inherently dangerous
or do we see their dangerous side? Because they have
reasons to be suspicious of outsiders, So their image as
being badass dangerous do not mess with them in a way.
It's good pr for them because it reinforces the message
that hey, just leave them alone. Okay, they want to
be left alone, okay. And on the other hand, there
(24:31):
have been a few non bad encounters, so we left
you in nineteen eighty one when the Hong Kong freighter
the Primrose ran aground on a reef and the crew
of the Primrose is really fearing for their lives because
the Sentinelies were making canoes and coming after them and
looking kind of hostile and saying like go away, leave
us alone. Then a decade later, the Anthropological Survey of India,
(24:56):
which is something that got set up after India independence
from Britain, decides that maybe they want to learn more
about the island. Is there a chance we could learn
more about these people? I don't know. So one of
the people on the team is a woman named doctor
Madumala Chattapatie, and she gets why the sentineliese are suspicious
(25:19):
of outsiders. She knows the story of Maurice Portman. Should
we tell our listeners the story of Maurice Portman? Ben?
Speaker 1 (25:26):
We should I skipped it chronologically because we wanted to
put it in this section. But this was one other
attempt to contact the North Sentineleese. By of all things,
the British East India Company Maurice Portland was a British
officer and he landed on the island in eighteen eighty
and it seems that like most of the people who
(25:47):
live there just kind of avoided him once he came in,
they didn't come out to attack him. I think he
was there with like pretty superior numbers and weapons, and
maybe the Sentinelese decided it was better to not try
to fight it. But then he did eventually come across
a group of six people, two elderly folks and four children.
(26:10):
He grabbed them and brought them back with them to
the Endeman Islands as hostages, and the two elderly individuals
they died pretty much immediately. They got sick and died
because encountering the North Sentinel Eese, when you are a
British officer from India, you are exposing these people to
a lot of germs that they have never been exposed
(26:31):
to before. And these two elderly folks they couldn't. They
died within weeks of coming in contact with Murray's Portman.
He felt bad about this, so he released the four
children back onto the island. He tried to research them
the island a little bit more, but didn't have much
success contacting anybody and left. But you know that was
(26:55):
a pretty negative experience with outsiders for the North Sentinel Eese.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, and so this is the context in which we
can see say that hostile reaction to the National Geographic
Team or the hostile reaction to the Primrose in nineteen
eighty one. The thing is, nineteen ninety one rolls around
and India wants to send some anthropological teams to I
guess learn what they can maybe see what should the
(27:21):
Indian government's relationship be to this island. And I'd love
to talk a little bit about Matamala Chadapadyaye herself. She's
in her own way, she's kind of badass. She actually
had a lifelong dream. When she was twelve, she learned
about various people living on the islands in this part
of the world. She learned about the Adamanese Islanders. She
(27:44):
wanted to meet them. She became an anthropologist. She wrote
her dissertation based on work that she did among the
Andaman Islanders and the Nicobarese Islanders, all in that area.
She wanted to make another attempt at North Sentinelian and
the thing is the Anthropological Survey of India didn't want
to give her a grant because they thought that it
(28:05):
would be too dangerous for a woman.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
The no girl's allowed rule that we keep seeing on
this podcast.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yes, yeah, Now, the thing is, the truth of the
matter is chattapad Gay's academic record was so good that
they gave her the grant. Anyway, they did make her
sign waivers, and they didn't just make her sign a
waiver saying yes, I recognize the risks, I'm not going
to hold the Indian government libel, YadA, YadA, YadA. They
also made her parents sign waivers. I guess they're just
trying to think like anyone who could possibly sue us
(28:32):
should things go horribly awry needs to sign you know what. No,
I don't know. I don't know. She's part of a team,
a thirteen person team, mostly men, including a director of
tribal welfare, a medic support staff, and Chattapadyaye herself is
the anthropologist. They sail off to the coast of North
Central Island. They get in a smaller boat and they
(28:54):
get nearish to the shore and they make a peace
gesture and they drop some coconuts in the water, And
I know Ben you said that in an earlier encounter,
you said, the National Geographic folks left an off ring
or a gift of coconuts and a baby doll and
a pig, and that gift was rejected and destroyed and
buried in the sand.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Well, one thing that they did too that was better
was that the National Geographic folks walked on the beach
and set the coconuts down and were standing on the
beach when the Sentinelesee came out and Chattaputy and her
team float the coconuts to shore from a boat off.
So they're not standing on the beach. Yeah, they're not
(29:36):
on your land. I'm float you some presents from here.
You stay there, I'll toss it to you. You know,
if you were going to like a drug deal in
the movies, you know, like I'll put this over your Yeah, okay, you.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Say drug deal. I say, you know, trying to demonstrate
that you respect boundaries.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
That's probably anthropologically more accurate, but yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Know, jokes side, Okay, Yeah, there's if this were a movie,
this would be a very tense moment in the movie.
So they put the coconuts in the water and kind
of maybe give him a gentle shove and the coconuts
drift on to the beach and some Sentinelese men with weapons.
These are armed Sentineliese. They go out, they gather the coconuts,
(30:21):
and the Indian team on their boat is observing.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
This is military history in a nutshell, right, Like if
you have an assault rifle, then you're not scared as
scared of the dude with the bow and arrow. But
if you're unarmed and he's got a bone arrow, that
is scary. Yes, bone arrows and bone arrows have been
killing people for thousands of years. Yes, and in nineteen
ninety one they are still just as capable of killing
a person as they were at the Battle of Agincourt.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
So there's this guy, he's about fire. He looks serious,
and doctor chadabay Yay calls out not in Sentinealese, because
no one on the outside knows how to speak sentinelsee.
And the only reason I'm calling it Sentinelise is because
I don't have a better name for it. We don't
know what the Sentineliese themselves call their language. So she
calls out in a language of one of the neighboring islands. Mother, mother,
(31:13):
come and have more and more coconuts. And why does
she say mother mother, Because she has a hypothesis based
on based on what she has observed of the culture
of the peoples of some of the neighboring islands, the
Anga and the car Niko Barrez, that in those cultures,
(31:33):
women are often a moderating influence or have some sort
of authority when it comes to keeping violence within bounds.
So she's gambling is maybe not the right word, but
she's maybe kind of hoping that if she a woman,
can somehow kind of vibe with a woman among the Sentineliese,
(31:55):
maybe there's a chance to avoid some violence. So as
it turns out, you know, Centralese guy who is getting
his bone arrow ready, he's there, but there's a Sentinalese
woman standing next to him. She reaches out her hand
and she gently puts her hand on his arm and
pushes his arm down. Paddy, I was right.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Worked, It worked.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
It worked, so they were able to have an encounter
of a few hours. I guess, you know, Batamala Chattabudy
I got to live her childhood dream of meeting people
indigenous to these islands.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Making contact with an undiscovered based you know, undiscovered for
lack of a better word, like try it quote unquote
in nineteen ninety one at a time in which that
didn't really exist anymore in the world, right, yeah, yeah,
I think that today we have very few undiscovered you know,
Like I said, I don't I think there's probably a
(32:51):
better word for this, but I don't know what it is.
The top my head, uncontacted tribes, uh huh. Yeah, it's
all like maybe the Congo Brazil if we're going to
do another Brazil to North Centinel Island connection, and then
like New Guinea and that's pretty much it. Right, There's
not a lot of opportunity, So to be able to
do that is amazing, and.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
To do it in a way that at least as
far as I can tell, was peaceful and mutually respectful
and was like okay.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And the Anthropological Survey of India had brought cameras with
them in video and audio recording, and they were able
to get the vast majority of the data we have
on these people. It comes from from this expedition. And
then I think they did another one, right.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
They did, Yeah, yeah. Soon thereafter, in the same year,
India sent along another expedition featuring researcher ten Pundit, who
is the world's foremost expert on the centinel ease, and
he'd figured out the thing of leaving a bunch of
coconuts and then sailing away and just you know, doing
like that. But the thing is, for a while, for
(33:56):
much of the time, anytime he saw people on the beach,
they either shot out rows at him or honestly weave
their dicks at the boat. Or you know, if we're
talking about making gestures with your body bent over and
pretended to poop mm hmm, fantastic as a way to
show pandit. Hey, you're a piece of shit or whatever.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Goway, So we think of you, right.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Yes, we're we're excreting you from our presence.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Not a lot of ways to misinterpret that.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's it's one thing. It's
one thing to show someone your bare button. Another thing
to actually like go through the gestures of tending to
take a ship.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Not very welcoming.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
And so then eventually the sentinels do eventually come out
to the boat, and this encounter, Pontit gets out and
he hands them coconuts. But as soon as the boat
starts to drift away an arrow lands in his boat.
But the thing is this one didn't have an arrowhead.
It was just like, uh no, no, we could get
you if we wanted to.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
So Chatta putty, Chatta putty. I was on this journey
as well.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
So she makes two trips to the island and t
and Penditt kind of is the overarching guy for the
Anthropological Survey of India setting a lot of this up
and she's on the first expedition, but he doesn't go
on that first expedition. He does go on the second one,
and they'd had some success on that first expedition, so
he was like, let's try it again, yeah, and let's
(35:19):
see if we can go a little further. And she's
there for this as well. Yeah, but he's kind of
the guy and he's kind of taken over and this
is like not a knock on him, because he got
farther than anybody else has, but like they pushed it
a little too far and got offended and they didn't
like it. And when he went to leave, they shot
this arrow onto his boat and that was his cue
(35:43):
that like, we don't really want you to come back, yeah,
and he didn't, and that was kind of the end
of the Anthropological Survey of India story. Here, the Indian
Navy sets up a cordon around the island and it's
declared illegal under Indian law for any person to ever
visit the island. It's not just for the safety of outsiders,
(36:05):
but it's also for the safety of these people, right Like, yeah,
you float them a couple bags of coconuts, but like
maybe you have.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
If you breathe on them, COVID. Yeah, you want to
have given diseases, you know, make Portman's mistake.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
You have to be very careful when you're contacting indigenous populations.
And because it is extremely dangerous for the people that
live there for you show up there with all your
grody European diseases.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, or Indian diseases as the case may be, or whatever.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, And if you just barge on in, you might
you might also, not just from a medical point of view,
but also from a cultural social point of view, do
things to disrupt their culture. I feel like I'm getting
all like prime directive v in a Star Trek sense here.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
That's how I feel about it, though, right Like, I mean,
it's it is like making contact with aliens in a
science fiction movie, right, Like, there are a million different
ways this can go bad, and we've seen it all
kind of represented that way in sci fi and stuff,
but like, I mean, this is real people on Earth
right now, human beings. But there is a lot of
(37:17):
ways in which trying to make contact can go very
poorly for the people that live there and for the
people trying to make contact. We get into the two
thousands and we start saying, like, maybe it's better to
just leave these people alone. They don't want to be bothered,
and like there's a lot of stuff that can go
wrong if they are bothered. And this kind of actenuating
circumstances happen around two thousand and four. Two thousand and four,
(37:41):
there's a huge tsunami that happens in the Bay of
Bengal that causes tons of destruction in the Andaman Islands
and the surrounding areas the Indian coastline, and it's just
kind of smashes everything in its way, and a lot
of people in the Indian government we're thinking that this
is possibly catastrophic for the people that live on North
(38:03):
Central Island, so they send helicopters to provide aid and
to see what's going on. What they discover is very interesting.
So the tsunami did devastate the island. It did create
a lot of destruction on the forest and the beach,
but it turns out not only did it not wipe
out the Sentineles, but it didn't seem to affect them
(38:28):
that badly. Anthropologists, including Chattapurier, they think that it's possible
that the North Sentinalese knew that the tsunami was coming
to some degree, just were kind of people who were
a little bit more in tune with nature. Didn't look
like it affected the population that much. But the Indian
government was like, all right, we should do something like
(38:49):
people might be her people might need medical attention. So
they land an Indian Red Cross helicopter on the beach
to deliver food and medical supplies. Yea, on the beach. Well,
the Sentinel eese came out of the forest and they
shot arrows at the helicopter and they wound it. The
pilot and you had to fly away in a hurry,
fearing for his life. Okay, so yeah, that was it.
(39:14):
The Indian Red Cross was like, okay, well you know,
have to tell me twice okay, come back.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Just two years later, in two thousand and six, we
have another encounter with the North Sentinel ease. This is
another accidental encounter. There were some fishermen who were off
the coast of one of the Andaman Islands. They probably
had a little too much to drink. Both these guys
have been killed by the North Sentinel eese and their
bodies are left on the beach. Who the Coastguard helicopter
(39:43):
attempts to land to recover the dead bodies, and the
Sentinelese charge out of the forest after the helicopter and
start attacking it. Pilot it just just gets out of there.
He's like, I'm not even gonna try to recover these bodies.
I'm out of here.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
You know, it's like she's just not into you. She's yeah,
it's just not that into you, right, Jesus got to
let it go at some point. Yeah, Well, one guy
who didn't let it go. In twenty eighteen, there was
another encounter with the outside world, and this one involved
an American and this one was also international news that
kind of brought North Centinel Island back into the public view.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah. I remember that headline when I came out. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Yeah. There was an American missionary and his name was
John Alan Show and he had heard about North Central Island.
He was a very devout evangelical Christian and he didn't
like the idea that there was this island of people
out there who hadn't heard the word of God. Yeah,
and so he was going to go teach them about Jesus.
(40:43):
Everybody told him not to do it, and the Indian
government told him not to do it, and he bribed
a couple of fishermen to take him out there, and
he writes in his journal that, like, you know, I'm
going to do this because this is what I believe in,
and even if they kill me, I got to do
what I believe in. And of course they shoot arrows
at him, and they leave his dead body on the beach,
as they have been doing to people since presumably the
(41:07):
second century AD, possibly even before that, And when the
coast guard went to try to recover his dead body
on two different occasions, they were attacked by the North
sentin Elise and had to flee, as we have seen
happen repeatedly. There's you know, whatever technology you show up with,
they are completely fearless and do not want you on
(41:28):
their island. And how many times do I have to
tell you, stupid helicopters away from me, we don't want it,
we're not interested. Please take me off of your caller list,
no solicitors, don't bother me. Unsubscribe from your email message list.
And that's where it stands today. There's been no other
INtime of the contact than North sentinelise since then, and
(41:51):
there is still a five mile cordon of Indian Navy
ships that are kind of telling you that it's illegal
to go there and don't let you through. North Central
Island is completely autonomous, belongs to the Indigenous people that
live there, which is an extreme rarity in the world today,
and there are no current plans as of the time
(42:14):
of this recording to change that. Yeah, so that is
North Centinel Island. It is a crazy and weird and
amazing story of people who have so strongly do not
want you to try to talk to them or contact them.
And it's amazing to me that like these guys have
been able to kind of maintain their autonomy, and presumably
(42:35):
there is much more to their culture than violence, and
presumably a lot more depth that we don't know about Yeah, yeah,
and I think it's cool that we don't know about it.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, Yeah, it's none of our business.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Do you want to talk a little bit about the
sources that you we use for this? I saw an
interview with Chada Putier that was a very good one,
and we'll put a lot of this in the show notes.
I think that's probably the best place for it.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yeah. Two academic anthropological articles by m. Sassi Kumar in
the Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India. And I
also got some stuff from an article by Michael Schoenhut
in Anthropology Today from twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
It's a lot of kind of news article, he kind
of thing. Yeah, you can go check the show notes
and you can kind of see where we got a
lot of our data from and definitely learn more as
much as more can be learned about nor Central Islands. Yeah. Anyway,
thanks so much for listening as always, and we hope
to see you next week.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me, Pat Larish,
and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is by me
and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs Brandon Phibbs.
Mixing and music and sound design is by Jude Brewer.
(43:57):
Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass of the
Week is based on the website Badass of Theweek dot com,
where you can read all sorts of stories about other badasses.
If you want to reach out with questions ideas, you
can email us at Badass Podcast at Badass oftheweek dot com.
(44:17):
If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell
your friends and your enemies if you want as. We'll
be back next week with another one. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Somewhere in the Bay of Bengal, hidden
between Indonesia and India, is a heavily jungled island roughly
twenty percent larger than Manhattan, New York. Canopy forests circle
large sandy beaches. This mysterious place has no natural harbors.
(00:22):
It's completely surrounded by dangerous coral reefs, and since the
dawn of mankind, this island has been almost completely untouched
by the outside world. To this day, it is illegal
for anyone to set foot on this would be paradise.
The Coast Guard of India maintains a three mile cordon
around the island. It is completely forbidden to visit. The
(00:44):
cordon is there for your protection, because while this minuscule
speck of land in the Indian Ocean may appear to
be completely uninhabited, it is in fact home to one
of the last civilizations on Earth, about which we know
absolutely nothing, and few who have set foot on this
island I had lived to tell the tale. This is
(01:05):
North Sentinel Island. Hey, hello, and welcome back to the show.
This is Badass of the Week. My name is Ben
Thompson and I am here with my co host, doctor
Pat Larish. So I'm down in Brazil for basically to
(01:26):
escape the Seattle winter. So I'm away from the rain
and I'm down here in the sun where it also
rains pretty heavily occasionally for an hour or two every day.
But we went out on my father in law's boat
and he was talking to me about an island that
I've heard of before, the island of Kimatagaje. It's one
hundred and six acres, which is zero point one seven
(01:48):
square miles, which is not large. It's about the size
of like a big resort hotel, like a ranch or something.
It's not huge. It's an island off the coast of Salpolo.
It's a temperate rainforest, and it has more snakes per
square meter of land than anywhere else in the world.
(02:09):
It's colloquially known as Snake Island.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Now this is not to be confused with Snake Island, Ukraine,
which has its own badass story, but that's a matter
for another time.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Right, Yeah, that's the Russian worship Go fuck Yourself Island.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Right exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
That's a different badass Snake island. Yeah, and at one
point there were thought to be four hundred thousand snakes
living there. I think the number is like actually way
smaller than that, but like that's how packed full of
snakes this island is. And among these snakes is a
species of snake called the golden lance head pit viper,
(02:45):
and it exists only on this island and they are
extremely venomous. There's not a lot of data on them
because it's illegal to go to this island. Only like
Brazilian navy personnel are allowed there, and only to like
repair the lighthouse, and only because they don't really want
to be responsible for people crashing into this island when
(03:06):
they're trying to pull into the harbor at self. Follow
So we don't have a ton of data on the
snake bites of the golden lancehead pit viper, but we
do know that their cousins, the non golden lancehead pit viper,
are responsible for more fatal snake bites than any other
snake in North or South America. So the idea is
that like basically, if you get bit by them, you'll
(03:28):
be dead within like a couple hours if you don't
get treatment. And because they only live on this island.
There is no treatment except for if you can get
helicopter lifted or take a boat back to Selpollo, which
will take a couple hours and you'll be dead. Bey.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah. Yeah, that seems a little hard to schedule.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They think that it's like an evolutionary thing.
So the theory on Snake Island, Brazil is that it
used to be attached to the mainland and then one
of these ice ages like made it into an island,
and some of these pit vipers got stuck out on
that island and became, you know, kind of evolved Pokemon
(04:05):
evolved into the Golden lands head pit vipers. And they
think it has to be so potent because they have
to kill birds. The only thing they can eat is birds.
Oh so they have to like bite the bird and
have it die before it flies away.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Okay, Yeah, because the island is so small, there aren't
that many possible prey animals that live there.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I like this. Of all the like badass islands, this
is a pretty solid, pretty solid one.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Definitely, definitely.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I will also say that, like the ice age thing
is probably the explanation for these things, but there's an
amazing theory out there that these snakes were introduced by
pirates because there's buried treasure all over the island, and
so the pirates put these super deadly snakes on the
island to keep people from searching for the treasure. And
then because there's no predators, they bred out of control,
(04:54):
and now they were on the island and this Brazilian
pirate treasure will never be found, which I love, but
it seems improbable.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Improbable. It also seems like a backfired.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
People did used to live on the island, is my understanding. Yeah, like,
just to like tend the lighthouse story goes that they
were all killed by snakes, the lighthouse keeper being the
last one when just mountains of snakes like piled in
through his window while he was sleeping and killed him
and his whole family and ate her buddy. Oh no,
it's probably legend, but it might not be, Okay, you know,
(05:28):
there's lots of stories of people trying to land on
that island and yeah, then being killed by snakes. Wow,
pretty weird and cool and it's a fun story that
I like. And we did we did not attempt to
sail near it when we were on my father in
law's little selboat.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Good for you.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I didn't see it, and I don't want to see it,
and I don't want to go there, and I don't know. No,
I don't want to encounter a Golden Lands had pit
viper in the wild.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
No, No, that would suck.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Well, since we're on the subject, it got me thinking,
let's talk about another weird forbidden island that's legal to visit.
It's one that I wrote about on the website a
while back and that I've been really excited to talk
about on the show. Here. It is called North Sentinel Island.
It is possibly one of the most awesome, badass forbidden
places on Earth. We're going to talk about it right
(06:15):
after this break Welcome Back. We are going to talk
about North Sentinel Island. And there's a reef that surrounds
the entire island that makes it really hard for any
kind of like deep water boats to approach. So you
(06:38):
can take a big boat to the outside of the reef,
but if you want to approach the main island from
any direction, you kind of need a canoe. And that
isolated the island, which is such a fascinating thing to
talk about. And kind of affected its development the way
that it did. So there are people that live on
North Sentinel Island and they are people about which we
(07:01):
know nothing. They're probably like among the last civilizations on
Earth about which we know very very little, almost nothing.
The only thing we really know about these people is
that they try to kill anyone who lands on their island.
They're like very protective of the island and very defensive
of it and very aggressive to outsiders. Most of the
(07:22):
photographs you see of the people that live here are
like pointing arrows at the camera that's taking the photo.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah, and it's a camera that's on like a helicopter
or some sort of aircraft.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Right, a drone or a helicopter or something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
So we are in the Bay of Bengal, so we're
off the coast of India, and technically it's one of
the Andaman Islands. Technically it's like under like Indian jurisdiction.
But the people that live there are very dark skinned.
They appear almost African in appearance. We don't know anything
about their background because we have no DNA from these people.
(07:59):
We've never taken in And one of the other interesting
things about the area is that it is extremely heavily forested,
so we can't see through the canopy cover, so we
don't know how many people live there. We don't know
where they sleep. Really. We have ideas about their shelters
(08:19):
and what they eat and things like that, but realistically
we know very very little about these people. From the water,
we've seen them collect coconuts, and they spear hunt for
fish and other wildlife. They have canoes, they wear jewelry,
but we really don't know very much about these people
at all. We can't communicate with them because we can't
(08:41):
speak their language. And not only is their language not
like decipherable, it has no resemblance to any other language
that we know of, which is really interesting, or.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
No resemblance that we can discern to any other language.
If we had a chance to get to know their
language better, we might find out more about it and
realize that, oh, maybe it actually it's somehow related to
this language family or that language family. But yeah, if
you look up the North Sentin Louise language on say Wikipedia,
it will say that it is undescribed, and that means
(09:14):
that it's undescribed by linguists, and that's kind of a
big deal because most languages of the world, linguists have
been able to learn enough about to at least describe,
like what family do they belong to, or at least
make a conjecture as to what family they belong to,
some sort of introduction to the language, even if it's incomplete,
even if it's imperfect, even if it's distorted somehow. But
(09:35):
to say that a language is undescribed means that even
professional linguists don't have enough to go on.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Okay, so we'll start with Ptolemy. And Ptolemy is writing
in the second century AD, and he talks about, among
other things, a quote island of cannibals in the Bay
of Bengal that's in the general vicinity of North Sense Island,
and cannibalism is a thing that comes up a lot whenever, quote,
(10:05):
civilized people are talking about people that they don't understand
or tribes they don't understand. But he does write about
an island in the Bay of Bengal in which anyone
who tries to land on this island is met with
violence by people who kill them. And you know, Telemy
takes it a step further to say that they cut
up and mutilate and eat the dead bodies, which maybe
(10:26):
is true, maybe is not.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
And you have to remember, tell me, is living in Alexandria,
in Egypt, so geographically he's pretty far away. He's not
giving a first hand account of anything.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, he was, like he was a pretty high ranking
aristocrat living it up in his palace in Alexandria, writing
down stories that he's heard. And that is a thing
that is going to continue to come up as we
talk about North Sentinel Island. Yes, and it's a thing that,
like I confess, I think is cool, but also it's
something worth keeping in mind. You're going to approach it
(11:01):
from a historical standpoint or an anthropological standpoint, which is
that like North Sentinel Island gets a lot of that
Tarzan kind of treatment of the like pulp dime novel
adventure story treatment of like you know, oh, the last
Uncharted place on Earth, you know, all adventure and danger
and cannibals and all of this stuff. A lot of
(11:22):
that is attributed to North Sentinel Island, not all earned
and deserved. And we don't hear about anything in this
general vicinity again for about a thousand years. In twelve
ninety six, Marco Polo, our good friend of the podcast
Marco Polo. He's sailing through the Indian Ocean and he
hears from one of the sailors on his boat that
(11:43):
he about an island of like head hunting cannibals who
can't be reasoned with, and they'll attack you no matter
what if you try to land on their island. Might
be North Sentinel might not be. We're not sure.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, And did Marco Polo actually go there?
Speaker 1 (11:57):
He did not know. He's recounting a story that he heard.
This would not be admissible in court. As this hear say.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Okay, if that's the story that you're hearing, you might
understand why he did not actually go there. Okay, maybe
it wasn't actually a convenient place to stop. But also
maybe he had a disincentive to go there. Maybe he
liked his head attached to shoulders.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, you know, island of murders, headhunting cannibals, and I
don't need to stop there. Yeah, I gotta take your
word for it. These two descriptions of islands in this
general vicinity weren't particularly appealing to many adventurers, and North
Sentinel went mostly untouched for the next five hundred years
or so, and then the next one is seventeen seventy one,
(12:36):
the British East India Company, they survey the island. They
dub it North Sentinel Island. We call it that today
because we have no idea what the native inhabitants of
this island call it. And history has shown that, you know,
if you're gonna once it's written on the map as
North Sentinel by the British Ust India Company in seventeen
seventy one, we don't really care what you call your island.
(12:58):
This is what it's called now. And they didn't duck there.
They just named it and went on sailed away without
ever setting foot on the island, which ye, why not. Yeah,
that's a very British East India Company thing to do.
Nobody else really comes near the island again for another
one hundred years or so, so now we're in eighteen
sixty seven and nobody's really set foot on this island before.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I mean, no one from the outside world, because of
course the people we call center Lees have been like
setting foot on the island for generations because they live there.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
That is fair, and that is a good point, and
it is well taken. It was not ventured to by
people from outside the island. For now, we're going on
eighteen sixty seven. There was a ship, an Indian ship
called the nineveh and it shipwrecked on the beach of
North Centinent Island after a storm and then out of
(13:48):
the forest almost immediately upon the shipwreck are warriors with
bows and spears, and they come out and they attacked
the shipwreck. They don't ask any questions, they don't try
to communicate. They come out of the jungle on the attack.
Several people on the Ninovar are killed. They kill a
few of their attackers, and they eventually are able to
(14:09):
drive off the sentinel ease. They have swords and guns,
which are two things that traditionally win against out k Yeah,
spear and the longboat.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
But they are able to kind of fight off the
attack and escape the small boats on the Ninevah. They
take them out past the reefs, they get picked up,
everything works out for them.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
They spread the word, Hey, it's a small island, don't
go there. People there don't like us.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
So we'll jump forward a little bit now and we'll
go to eighteen ninety six. The British kind of come
in and they colonize the Andemen Islands. They want to
kind of set up some trading posts here. They want
to do the colonialism thing, and they manage to do
that pretty successfully. And what do they do with the
Endeman Islands. They of course set them up as a
(14:53):
penal colony in the same style as Australia. And one
of these convicts manages to escape his prison colony sounds
kind of badass. He builds a canoe and he sails
pretty awesome. It's like the Alcatraz thing, right. Yeah, it
builds a canoe, he sails north. He's trying to get
to India, but he you know, he doesn't have a compass.
He doesn't really know where he is even. Yeah, he
(15:14):
lands on North Sentinel Island. That turns out, which is
probably worse than being in the penal colony. What happened
to him, Well, they cut his throat, they stabbed him
and they shot him full of arrows and he died
and they buried him on the beach.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Right, that's what they do.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, what happens to outsiders if you try to land
on this island. Yeah, And they've been very consistent about
this for the last three thousand years of history. So
the next story about these people comes from nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
WHOA, that's within living memory, right.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
This is the craziest thing about North Sentinel Island, where
for me, like one of the most interesting things is that,
like we talk about this kind of Indiana Jones time
period thought the way we think about the people that
live on this side island. But this is not that
of all of the stuff we know about them, most
of it comes from the last like forty to fifty years.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, So in nineteen seventy four, National Geographic decides they're
going to go to the island and meet these people because,
for whatever reason, probably involving some violence and killing and
cutting people up and burying their bodies and rumors of
cannibalism or whatever else, nobody's really bothered to try to
land on North Sentinel Island and communicate with these people
(16:33):
in any real way. So National Geographic in nineteen seventy four,
they get a TV crew together and they're going to
go and explore it.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
How does that go?
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Well, how do you think it goes?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Well, Okay, it could go either of two ways.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I'll just tell you what happened. So they show up
with speedboats. So they take the big boat out there.
They take little speedboats over the reef. They go onto
the beach and they leave a baby doll, some coconuts,
and a live pig, and they go back to the butt.
They walk away. They wait a minute. It doesn't take
(17:09):
long before the Sentineliese show up. They come out of
the woods. They're armed, they are ready for combat. They
look at all this stuff on the beach. They look
at this National Geographic Crew. They look at these speedboats,
which like this is going to be a recurring thing
with the Sentineleese, which is just like a lot of
indigenous tribes kind of were historically very scared of any
(17:31):
kind of technology. But it doesn't seem to even phase
the Sentineliese at all. They can look at a speedboat
and just be like, well, this is an enemy. I
gotta fight this thing, you know, yeah, which is what
they do. They shoot arrows at the National Geographic Crew.
They hit the director in the knee, puts an end
to his adventuring days. National Geographic jumps back on other speedboats.
(17:53):
They speed away, and then the Sentinalese warriors on the
beach smash everything on the beach, including the live pig,
destroy it all, smash it into pieces and buried on
the beach, and then wait for the National Geographic Crew.
They stand on the beach with their weapons and wait
for the National Geographic Crew to.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Leave, saying don't come back, get off for a lawn.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, they're they're yelling and shaking their spears at them
and waving their dicks at them, which is a thing apparently. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, and some cultures that's it.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
They don't wear a lot of clothes, like some say loincloths,
some say nothing at all, and so some dick waving,
which probably is threatening, probably is meant to be threatening.
I mean that kind of speaks for itself. I feel like, yeah,
National Graphic leaves and they don't, they don't try to
come back. Again.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
They took the hint.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah, I get the hint, like, we're not we're not
being subtle about this. We really don't want your shitty coconuts.
So we have another encounter with the North Sentinel leaves
in nineteen eighty one. Yeah. Again, we're up to nineteen
eighty one and we've had maybe like a half dozen
encounters with the North Sentinel leies, and this one was
(18:56):
an accident. It was a freighter coming from Hong Kong
called the Primrose. They are in a storm and they
end up running aground on one of the reefs a
couple hundred yards off the coast of North Sentinel. For
a day, nothing happens. They're sending out to stress signals.
They're like, hey, you know, we ran a ground help,
So just to.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Make clear, the Primrose. They're on a reef, so they're
not like literally on the beach. There's a little bit
of distance. There's a little bit of water between them
and the island.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Right. It's kind of what we've been talking about. You
can't get a ship up, yeah, which is why North
Sentinel kind of was left alone for a while. You
can't get a big draft ship over that reef, so
you need a small boat to approach the shore. And yeah,
they're fine with that. So this big ship hits the
reef and it's stuck, yeah, off the coast, and after
about a day it doesn't take the Sentinal least long
to organize a war party. So these guys are coming
(19:44):
out of forest and they got weapons and they are
looking at this nineteen eighty one, this modern freighter ship,
and they're like, we got to get these guys. Yeah,
the Primrose are looking out at this group of I
don't want to say like stone age tech, but I
want to say like they're carrying like wooden spears and
(20:04):
wooden bow and arrows and you know, kind of tribal
indigenous population. And these guys they start putting on warpaint
and more from start coming out of the woods, and
the Primrose is like, they're radioly in, we got a problem. Yeah,
And then the Sentineliese start cutting down trees and they
start building canoes, and the Primrose is like, yeah, we
(20:27):
got a big problem.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
And the thing is, this is a big freighter, right,
this is I mean the Primos. It's this big boat.
It's huge. It's not the sort of vessel that you
would think would be.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Vulnerable, right, it doesn't have a big crew. Okay, yeah,
but I don't feel like the Sentineliese would have known that, right. Yeah,
a giant modern hunk can take like a freighter ship,
like we've seen what this looks like. And imagine that
like the Alien battle cruiser like crash landed in your
backyard and you were just like, well, I got a sword,
right you can, I'll go see what I could do
(21:02):
to this thing. Yeah, And I mean I love it.
I love that these people are so defensive of their homeland, right,
like that's amazing. And the crew of the Primrose sends
a distress signal, and the distress signal says, quote wild
men estimate more than fifty carrying various homemade weapons, are
making two or three wooden boats, worrying they will board
(21:25):
us at sunset. Crew members' lives not guaranteed. WHOA I
just I love so For the next two days, the
Sentineliese attacked the Primrose, and the Primrose has one gun
and two flare guns like one pistol, two flare guns,
and some firefighting axes. And they are fighting off the
(21:47):
North Sentine elie who are attempting to board their ship
with these homemade canoes. They're fighting on the reef off
the coast of North Sentinel Island, fighting for their lives,
and the crew of the Primrose is eventually rescued by helicopter.
Helicopter over drop a ladder and these guys like get
picked up and taken off as like the Sentineleese are
swarming over the ship trying to kill them.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Wow, So the crew members abandoned ship. They just okay, helicopter,
we're out of here. And so the Primrose is just
kind of there, Yeah, and the Sentineleese are taking it over.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
They swarm over it, and they loot it. They take
everything of value off of it. They strip the metal
off of it and start making metal arrow heads out.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Of it, because of course you would.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yeah, right, it's a And if you go on Google
Maps today and you search for North Sentinel Island, you
can find the wreck of the Primrose. You can see
it from Google Maps or from the satellite view. It's
still there. Like, So that kind of puts us with
these Sentinel Eese who we are now in nineteen eighty one,
and nobody has like successfully fucked with them and lived
(22:49):
to tell the tail. Yeah, they are extremely dangerous and
extremely protective of their of their land. And there have
been any indigenous tribes that have been very fearless and
very brave and very protective of their homelands, but very
few of those tribes have made it to nineteen eighty
(23:10):
one without some British East India Company or British East
India company adjacent organization managing to assert their dominance. But
nineteen eighty one and spoiler alert twenty twenty three, as
this is being recorded, still nobody has. One thing that
I do want to say is that we have been
(23:31):
kind of talking a lot about the violent reactions they've
been having, and there is another layer to this, and
I know, Pat, you've been wanting to talk about it,
and so we're going to get into that after this.
There's a second side. There's another side of the story
that really we should we should get into as well.
So we'll get into that right after this break. Okay,
(23:58):
welcome back. We aren't going to talk now. We've talked
a lot about the North Sentinelleese and them attacking and
fighting and being very violent, but there's more to it
than that, right Pat.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Oh, totally.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
So they're dangerous. The thing is, are they inherently dangerous
or do we see their dangerous side? Because they have
reasons to be suspicious of outsiders, So their image as
being badass dangerous do not mess with them in a way.
It's good pr for them because it reinforces the message
that hey, just leave them alone. Okay, they want to
be left alone, okay. And on the other hand, there
(24:31):
have been a few non bad encounters, so we left
you in nineteen eighty one when the Hong Kong freighter
the Primrose ran aground on a reef and the crew
of the Primrose is really fearing for their lives because
the Sentinelies were making canoes and coming after them and
looking kind of hostile and saying like go away, leave
us alone. Then a decade later, the Anthropological Survey of India,
(24:56):
which is something that got set up after India independence
from Britain, decides that maybe they want to learn more
about the island. Is there a chance we could learn
more about these people? I don't know. So one of
the people on the team is a woman named doctor
Madumala Chattapatie, and she gets why the sentineliese are suspicious
(25:19):
of outsiders. She knows the story of Maurice Portman. Should
we tell our listeners the story of Maurice Portman? Ben?
Speaker 1 (25:26):
We should I skipped it chronologically because we wanted to
put it in this section. But this was one other
attempt to contact the North Sentineleese. By of all things,
the British East India Company Maurice Portland was a British
officer and he landed on the island in eighteen eighty
and it seems that like most of the people who
(25:47):
live there just kind of avoided him once he came in,
they didn't come out to attack him. I think he
was there with like pretty superior numbers and weapons, and
maybe the Sentinelese decided it was better to not try
to fight it. But then he did eventually come across
a group of six people, two elderly folks and four children.
(26:10):
He grabbed them and brought them back with them to
the Endeman Islands as hostages, and the two elderly individuals
they died pretty much immediately. They got sick and died
because encountering the North Sentinel Eese, when you are a
British officer from India, you are exposing these people to
a lot of germs that they have never been exposed
(26:31):
to before. And these two elderly folks they couldn't. They
died within weeks of coming in contact with Murray's Portman.
He felt bad about this, so he released the four
children back onto the island. He tried to research them
the island a little bit more, but didn't have much
success contacting anybody and left. But you know that was
(26:55):
a pretty negative experience with outsiders for the North Sentinel Eese.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Yeah, and so this is the context in which we
can see say that hostile reaction to the National Geographic
Team or the hostile reaction to the Primrose in nineteen
eighty one. The thing is, nineteen ninety one rolls around
and India wants to send some anthropological teams to I
guess learn what they can maybe see what should the
(27:21):
Indian government's relationship be to this island. And I'd love
to talk a little bit about Matamala Chadapadyaye herself. She's
in her own way, she's kind of badass. She actually
had a lifelong dream. When she was twelve, she learned
about various people living on the islands in this part
of the world. She learned about the Adamanese Islanders. She
(27:44):
wanted to meet them. She became an anthropologist. She wrote
her dissertation based on work that she did among the
Andaman Islanders and the Nicobarese Islanders, all in that area.
She wanted to make another attempt at North Sentinelian and
the thing is the Anthropological Survey of India didn't want
to give her a grant because they thought that it
(28:05):
would be too dangerous for a woman.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
The no girl's allowed rule that we keep seeing on
this podcast.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yes, yeah, Now, the thing is, the truth of the
matter is chattapad Gay's academic record was so good that
they gave her the grant. Anyway, they did make her
sign waivers, and they didn't just make her sign a
waiver saying yes, I recognize the risks, I'm not going
to hold the Indian government libel, YadA, YadA, YadA. They
also made her parents sign waivers. I guess they're just
trying to think like anyone who could possibly sue us
(28:32):
should things go horribly awry needs to sign you know what. No,
I don't know. I don't know. She's part of a team,
a thirteen person team, mostly men, including a director of
tribal welfare, a medic support staff, and Chattapadyaye herself is
the anthropologist. They sail off to the coast of North
Central Island. They get in a smaller boat and they
(28:54):
get nearish to the shore and they make a peace
gesture and they drop some coconuts in the water, And
I know Ben you said that in an earlier encounter,
you said, the National Geographic folks left an off ring
or a gift of coconuts and a baby doll and
a pig, and that gift was rejected and destroyed and
buried in the sand.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Well, one thing that they did too that was better
was that the National Geographic folks walked on the beach
and set the coconuts down and were standing on the
beach when the Sentinelesee came out and Chattaputy and her
team float the coconuts to shore from a boat off.
So they're not standing on the beach. Yeah, they're not
(29:36):
on your land. I'm float you some presents from here.
You stay there, I'll toss it to you. You know,
if you were going to like a drug deal in
the movies, you know, like I'll put this over your Yeah, okay, you.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Say drug deal. I say, you know, trying to demonstrate
that you respect boundaries.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
That's probably anthropologically more accurate, but yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Know, jokes side, Okay, Yeah, there's if this were a movie,
this would be a very tense moment in the movie.
So they put the coconuts in the water and kind
of maybe give him a gentle shove and the coconuts
drift on to the beach and some Sentinelese men with weapons.
These are armed Sentineliese. They go out, they gather the coconuts,
(30:21):
and the Indian team on their boat is observing.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
This is military history in a nutshell, right, Like if
you have an assault rifle, then you're not scared as
scared of the dude with the bow and arrow. But
if you're unarmed and he's got a bone arrow, that
is scary. Yes, bone arrows and bone arrows have been
killing people for thousands of years. Yes, and in nineteen
ninety one they are still just as capable of killing
a person as they were at the Battle of Agincourt.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
So there's this guy, he's about fire. He looks serious,
and doctor chadabay Yay calls out not in Sentinealese, because
no one on the outside knows how to speak sentinelsee.
And the only reason I'm calling it Sentinelise is because
I don't have a better name for it. We don't
know what the Sentineliese themselves call their language. So she
calls out in a language of one of the neighboring islands. Mother, mother,
(31:13):
come and have more and more coconuts. And why does
she say mother mother, Because she has a hypothesis based
on based on what she has observed of the culture
of the peoples of some of the neighboring islands, the
Anga and the car Niko Barrez, that in those cultures,
(31:33):
women are often a moderating influence or have some sort
of authority when it comes to keeping violence within bounds.
So she's gambling is maybe not the right word, but
she's maybe kind of hoping that if she a woman,
can somehow kind of vibe with a woman among the Sentineliese,
(31:55):
maybe there's a chance to avoid some violence. So as
it turns out, you know, Centralese guy who is getting
his bone arrow ready, he's there, but there's a Sentinalese
woman standing next to him. She reaches out her hand
and she gently puts her hand on his arm and
pushes his arm down. Paddy, I was right.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Worked, It worked.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
It worked, so they were able to have an encounter
of a few hours. I guess, you know, Batamala Chattabudy
I got to live her childhood dream of meeting people
indigenous to these islands.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Making contact with an undiscovered based you know, undiscovered for
lack of a better word, like try it quote unquote
in nineteen ninety one at a time in which that
didn't really exist anymore in the world, right, yeah, yeah,
I think that today we have very few undiscovered you know,
Like I said, I don't I think there's probably a
(32:51):
better word for this, but I don't know what it is.
The top my head, uncontacted tribes, uh huh. Yeah, it's
all like maybe the Congo Brazil if we're going to
do another Brazil to North Centinel Island connection, and then
like New Guinea and that's pretty much it. Right, There's
not a lot of opportunity, So to be able to
do that is amazing, and.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
To do it in a way that at least as
far as I can tell, was peaceful and mutually respectful
and was like okay.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
And the Anthropological Survey of India had brought cameras with
them in video and audio recording, and they were able
to get the vast majority of the data we have
on these people. It comes from from this expedition. And
then I think they did another one, right.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
They did, Yeah, yeah. Soon thereafter, in the same year,
India sent along another expedition featuring researcher ten Pundit, who
is the world's foremost expert on the centinel ease, and
he'd figured out the thing of leaving a bunch of
coconuts and then sailing away and just you know, doing
like that. But the thing is, for a while, for
(33:56):
much of the time, anytime he saw people on the beach,
they either shot out rows at him or honestly weave
their dicks at the boat. Or you know, if we're
talking about making gestures with your body bent over and
pretended to poop mm hmm, fantastic as a way to
show pandit. Hey, you're a piece of shit or whatever.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Goway, So we think of you, right.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Yes, we're we're excreting you from our presence.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Not a lot of ways to misinterpret that.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's it's one thing. It's
one thing to show someone your bare button. Another thing
to actually like go through the gestures of tending to
take a ship.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Not very welcoming.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
And so then eventually the sentinels do eventually come out
to the boat, and this encounter, Pontit gets out and
he hands them coconuts. But as soon as the boat
starts to drift away an arrow lands in his boat.
But the thing is this one didn't have an arrowhead.
It was just like, uh no, no, we could get
you if we wanted to.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
So Chatta putty, Chatta putty. I was on this journey
as well.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
So she makes two trips to the island and t
and Penditt kind of is the overarching guy for the
Anthropological Survey of India setting a lot of this up
and she's on the first expedition, but he doesn't go
on that first expedition. He does go on the second one,
and they'd had some success on that first expedition, so
he was like, let's try it again, yeah, and let's
(35:19):
see if we can go a little further. And she's
there for this as well. Yeah, but he's kind of
the guy and he's kind of taken over and this
is like not a knock on him, because he got
farther than anybody else has, but like they pushed it
a little too far and got offended and they didn't
like it. And when he went to leave, they shot
this arrow onto his boat and that was his cue
(35:43):
that like, we don't really want you to come back, yeah,
and he didn't, and that was kind of the end
of the Anthropological Survey of India story. Here, the Indian
Navy sets up a cordon around the island and it's
declared illegal under Indian law for any person to ever
visit the island. It's not just for the safety of outsiders,
(36:05):
but it's also for the safety of these people, right Like, yeah,
you float them a couple bags of coconuts, but like
maybe you have.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
If you breathe on them, COVID. Yeah, you want to
have given diseases, you know, make Portman's mistake.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
You have to be very careful when you're contacting indigenous populations.
And because it is extremely dangerous for the people that
live there for you show up there with all your
grody European diseases.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, or Indian diseases as the case may be, or whatever.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, And if you just barge on in, you might
you might also, not just from a medical point of view,
but also from a cultural social point of view, do
things to disrupt their culture. I feel like I'm getting
all like prime directive v in a Star Trek sense here.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
That's how I feel about it, though, right Like, I mean,
it's it is like making contact with aliens in a
science fiction movie, right, Like, there are a million different
ways this can go bad, and we've seen it all
kind of represented that way in sci fi and stuff,
but like, I mean, this is real people on Earth
right now, human beings. But there is a lot of
(37:17):
ways in which trying to make contact can go very
poorly for the people that live there and for the
people trying to make contact. We get into the two
thousands and we start saying, like, maybe it's better to
just leave these people alone. They don't want to be bothered,
and like there's a lot of stuff that can go
wrong if they are bothered. And this kind of actenuating
circumstances happen around two thousand and four. Two thousand and four,
(37:41):
there's a huge tsunami that happens in the Bay of
Bengal that causes tons of destruction in the Andaman Islands
and the surrounding areas the Indian coastline, and it's just
kind of smashes everything in its way, and a lot
of people in the Indian government we're thinking that this
is possibly catastrophic for the people that live on North
(38:03):
Central Island, so they send helicopters to provide aid and
to see what's going on. What they discover is very interesting.
So the tsunami did devastate the island. It did create
a lot of destruction on the forest and the beach,
but it turns out not only did it not wipe
out the Sentineles, but it didn't seem to affect them
(38:28):
that badly. Anthropologists, including Chattapurier, they think that it's possible
that the North Sentinalese knew that the tsunami was coming
to some degree, just were kind of people who were
a little bit more in tune with nature. Didn't look
like it affected the population that much. But the Indian
government was like, all right, we should do something like
(38:49):
people might be her people might need medical attention. So
they land an Indian Red Cross helicopter on the beach
to deliver food and medical supplies. Yea, on the beach. Well,
the Sentinel eese came out of the forest and they
shot arrows at the helicopter and they wound it. The
pilot and you had to fly away in a hurry,
fearing for his life. Okay, so yeah, that was it.
(39:14):
The Indian Red Cross was like, okay, well you know,
have to tell me twice okay, come back.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Just two years later, in two thousand and six, we
have another encounter with the North Sentinel ease. This is
another accidental encounter. There were some fishermen who were off
the coast of one of the Andaman Islands. They probably
had a little too much to drink. Both these guys
have been killed by the North Sentinel eese and their
bodies are left on the beach. Who the Coastguard helicopter
(39:43):
attempts to land to recover the dead bodies, and the
Sentinelese charge out of the forest after the helicopter and
start attacking it. Pilot it just just gets out of there.
He's like, I'm not even gonna try to recover these bodies.
I'm out of here.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
You know, it's like she's just not into you. She's yeah,
it's just not that into you, right, Jesus got to
let it go at some point. Yeah, Well, one guy
who didn't let it go. In twenty eighteen, there was
another encounter with the outside world, and this one involved
an American and this one was also international news that
kind of brought North Centinel Island back into the public view.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah. I remember that headline when I came out. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Yeah. There was an American missionary and his name was
John Alan Show and he had heard about North Central Island.
He was a very devout evangelical Christian and he didn't
like the idea that there was this island of people
out there who hadn't heard the word of God. Yeah,
and so he was going to go teach them about Jesus.
(40:43):
Everybody told him not to do it, and the Indian
government told him not to do it, and he bribed
a couple of fishermen to take him out there, and
he writes in his journal that, like, you know, I'm
going to do this because this is what I believe in,
and even if they kill me, I got to do
what I believe in. And of course they shoot arrows
at him, and they leave his dead body on the beach,
as they have been doing to people since presumably the
(41:07):
second century AD, possibly even before that, And when the
coast guard went to try to recover his dead body
on two different occasions, they were attacked by the North
sentin Elise and had to flee, as we have seen
happen repeatedly. There's you know, whatever technology you show up with,
they are completely fearless and do not want you on
(41:28):
their island. And how many times do I have to
tell you, stupid helicopters away from me, we don't want it,
we're not interested. Please take me off of your caller list,
no solicitors, don't bother me. Unsubscribe from your email message list.
And that's where it stands today. There's been no other
INtime of the contact than North sentinelise since then, and
(41:51):
there is still a five mile cordon of Indian Navy
ships that are kind of telling you that it's illegal
to go there and don't let you through. North Central
Island is completely autonomous, belongs to the Indigenous people that
live there, which is an extreme rarity in the world today,
and there are no current plans as of the time
(42:14):
of this recording to change that. Yeah, so that is
North Centinel Island. It is a crazy and weird and
amazing story of people who have so strongly do not
want you to try to talk to them or contact them.
And it's amazing to me that like these guys have
been able to kind of maintain their autonomy, and presumably
(42:35):
there is much more to their culture than violence, and
presumably a lot more depth that we don't know about Yeah, yeah,
and I think it's cool that we don't know about it.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, Yeah, it's none of our business.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Do you want to talk a little bit about the
sources that you we use for this? I saw an
interview with Chada Putier that was a very good one,
and we'll put a lot of this in the show notes.
I think that's probably the best place for it.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yeah. Two academic anthropological articles by m. Sassi Kumar in
the Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India. And I
also got some stuff from an article by Michael Schoenhut
in Anthropology Today from twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
It's a lot of kind of news article, he kind
of thing. Yeah, you can go check the show notes
and you can kind of see where we got a
lot of our data from and definitely learn more as
much as more can be learned about nor Central Islands. Yeah. Anyway,
thanks so much for listening as always, and we hope
to see you next week.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me, Pat Larish,
and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is by me
and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs Brandon Phibbs.
Mixing and music and sound design is by Jude Brewer.
(43:57):
Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass of the
Week is based on the website Badass of Theweek dot com,
where you can read all sorts of stories about other badasses.
If you want to reach out with questions ideas, you
can email us at Badass Podcast at Badass oftheweek dot com.
(44:17):
If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen, and tell
your friends and your enemies if you want as. We'll
be back next week with another one. For more podcasts
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