I Stayed Home Sick for One Day and Now I’m an Expert on the Isolated Tribes of India

I'm up for a doctorate in Wikipedia.

The Sentinelese tribespeople, 1974 – Photo by Raghubir Singh, Nat Geo Image Collection

Good afternoon, fellow anthropologists. I was somewhat surprised to receive an invitation to speak before you, given that I’m relatively new to the field. However, it’s true that I spent one day in bed with a cold this week, and as a result, I now consider myself an expert on the isolated peoples of the Andaman Islands in the northeastern Indian Ocean.

Where to begin? Perhaps most well-known among these tribes are the Sentinelese people of North Sentinel Island, who have often been hostile—and sometimes violent—toward outsiders who approach their 23-square-mile patch of land. We can all agree that the Sentinelese’s extreme isolation and millennia-old lifestyle make them a fascinating subject of study. Fascinating enough, I daresay, to spend an entire morning reading about them on Wikipedia while you have the sniffles.

But what you may not know, unless you’ve spent 1-2 hours perusing “Related Articles” like I have, is that the Sentinelese make up but one of the six indigenous (and often reclusive) peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands—a fact I know because I copied it directly from one of said Wikipedia articles.

There are also the Great Andamanese, the Jarawas, the Onge, the Shompen, and the Nicobarese. For anyone still questioning my credentials, I may only remember one or two of these tribes long-term, but that’s more than enough for me to bore someone at a party. And if that doesn’t make me an expert, then I’m not sure I understand the term.

Since you’re all specialists here, there’s no need for me to regale you with the many fun facts I picked up thanks to my brief head cold. But I will anyway.

For example, no one outside of their society speaks the Sentinelese language! It’s even mutually unintelligible with their closest neighbors, the Onge. One theory about why the Sentinelese are so hostile to outsiders is that it stems from a measles outbreak caused by British explorers 150 years ago. One of those explorers, a colonial administrator named Maurice Vidal Portman, took what remain the most extensive notes on the Sentinelese society. But unfortunately, his observations mostly reflect the fact that he was a closeted homosexual: “Many of the men are very good-looking… though the women are rather of the Hottentot Venus order of beauty.”

I found this quite interesting, after I subsequently read the Wikipedia article about Hottentot Venus so that I understood the reference.

Listen, I could go on all day, simply summarizing things I learned from an already brief summary of these living historical artifacts, whom we understand almost nothing about to begin with. So I will! Do you realize that the Jarawa people have become notably more interactive with modern society thanks to the controversial construction of the Great Andaman Trunk Road? Don’t get me started! (Mostly because I barely read any of those articles before my cold medicine knocked me out.)

Among all my research, there’s one thing that will stick with me long after this post-nasal drip has run its course: how much we don’t know. We can’t ask them any questions, so we just don’t know… Do they have families? Do they make art? Do they worship?

And, of course, the most important question for a researcher like myself: what Wikipedia articles do they read when they’re not feeling well?

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