November 28, 2023 • 55 mins
India controls numerous islands in the Indian Ocean, and they have a strange set of rules for North Sentinel Islands -- a tiny, remote place most people wouldn't visit anyway. You see, the Indian government maintains a 'zone of exclusion' surrounding the island, with no ships, helicopters or people allowed within miles of the shore. Ordinarily one might assume this is a secret military base or the site of an environmental disaster -- but the real answer is even stranger. Tune into to learn more about the mystery of North Sentinel Island.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist. It is no secret that the three
of us are consumed, at times obsessed with all the
places in the world that you cannot go. There are,
clearly there are some that we believe should be open
to the public just in the interest of transparency. But
(00:20):
all the world, there is one place that I think
we've all agreed we will not go to because the
people don't want you there. No, they sure don't North
Sentinel Island.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
No matter how exciting this place seems, both from the
aerial photographs you've seen or the stories you've heard about it,
you can't go. You shouldn't go. Some people have and
it didn't go so well.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, I have a mental image of missionaries being shot
by arrows. Maybe that's this one, right, that is the
very same. North Sentinel Island is home to an ancient
isolated population, and they have that. There's a reason why
(01:08):
they have become so isolationists, which we explore in this episode.
I'm just gonna throw it out there, because you know,
there's no harm in trying. If you are from North
Sentinel Island and you are hearing this podcast, we would
love to hear from you. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Noel is off on an adventure that we can't disclose yet,
but soon.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
producer Paul Decat Paul Wilson Decade. Maybe is that appropriate
for this episode? Matter like it that?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
You mean you're talking about the soccer ball?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yes? Okay, Most importantly, you are you and you are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Today,
we are diving into something that Matt, you and I
explored during our video series.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yes, and it's I think our fifth most popular video
that we ever made. Really, Yes, almost a million dollar
views at this point.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
All he smokes, Still not gonna beat that. Uh what
about Satan?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, Satan will always be at the top.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
And I'm kind of I feel very fortunate for both
of us that not that many people watched the instructions
on How to Get Away with Murder?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yes, of less than fifty thousand. I want to say great,
but that's still a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
People. We do we we do tell people not to
commit murder, right, we do. At some point in that one.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
We can take it down. Do you want me to
take it down?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I know, you know. I feel like we did a
good job, is the thing? Okay, a moral notions aside.
It does feel like we did a good job. But yes,
we did a video on North Sentinel Island several years ago,
(03:27):
more years than I think. Well, you probably know, Matt,
when did we do that one?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I believe it was twenty thirteen, but it has been
a minute since I looked at it.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
It's been a while. So North Sentinel Island has a
mystery to it, and if you have seen our earlier video,
you might have an inkling about what we're going to
dive into today. But to get to this mystery, we
have to first explore human beings.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Oh that sounds good.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, that's great. Human beings are a species that loves
to talk about itself. Yeah, and that's us, and that's us,
that's you, that's you too, and yes, specifically you. So
human beings, our species exist to some degree on every continent,
which is insane when you think about it. Our tremendous
(04:19):
ability to adapt to inhospitable environments has spread us across
the planet and the modern age, technological breakthroughs allow us
to communicate instantaneously regardless of our physical location. I mean,
just think of all the podcasts that have Like you
and I prefer to hang out in person in the room,
(04:41):
but there are many very successful, very fascinating podcasts with
hosts that rarely see each other in person.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Much like stuff you missed in history class.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, that's that's actually I'm surprised I didn't think about that. Yeah.
One of our hosts is based in Atlanta on that show,
and the other in Boston, and they can commune pretty
much instantaneous.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Sounds like they're having a conversation in the room. And
one more thing I just want to add here. We're
talking about the humans us living on all these continents,
we also live on islands that aren't considered a continent
all over the planet.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
That's true, that's true, and even in those spaces people
can communicate thanks to technology. Modernity, it seems, is contagious.
But here's the fascinating and somewhat disturbing thing. As we've
spread farther and farther, some groups of humans also became isolated.
(05:37):
Those geographical boundaries bedeviled us, impassable mountains, shifting ice, dense
dangerous jungles, rising seas, and treacherous currents to your point
about islands, right, all played a role in keeping some
groups of human beings hidden from the progress and the
curses of global society. And you know, we've all, like
(05:58):
you've heard these stories, right, we even without thinking of
a specific one. We've all heard the stories wherein some
intrepid explorer encounters a tribe of people who had no
knowledge of the outside world. Right, mm hmm. I I
remember thinking that these were relatively I don't know, fictionalized
things growing up. Yeah, Like I don't want to say
(06:21):
fairy tales, but fictional adventure stories.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yes, they're They're depicted in film and in books all
over the place, various fictional ones and non fictional encounters
of this sort. And the I think that line gets
blurred a little bit in our popular culture of what
what a real encounter looks like in what a a
(06:46):
played up one looks like for the screen.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Right, That's a very important point in the modern age.
It seems like these events and encounters, whether they were truthful,
whether they were fiction or whether they were a blood
of the two, usually to make someone from the West
feel more important about themselves.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Or less like they were colonizers.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Or less like they were colonizers. That's true regardless. Nowadays,
it seems like most of these events or encounters are
going to be relegated to history books. In short, everyone
has met everyone or is aware of everyone, right, we
all get it.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Everyone is at least aware enough that there's an outside world.
Like a tribe, most tribes of isolated people are aware
that there's an outside world with some technology in it.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Right. And it is sadly true that there are many
countries that people in other countries aren't very much aware of,
you know, yes, like you've seen, especially European media gives
people in the US a real devil of a time
with this. And you can see new YouTube compilations of
(08:02):
Americans being asked to point to a country on the
map on the world map and getting it cartoonishly wrong.
That's a little bit of a stereotype. Well, I promise
people are I promise the editors are cherry picking that
for all our non American listeners.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
We certainly hope, so we certainly hope so.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
And regardless of how hilarious those videos might be, Matt,
your point, I would say, is absolutely correct. We are
aware of the other We are aware that it exists.
There will be a you know, the majority of people
who live in China will probably never travel to the States,
and the majority of people who live in the States
will probably never travel to China. But both are aware
(08:46):
that the other country exists and is a real thing.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Thank you television and Internet.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Thank you television and books. Yes, in a world though,
where everything is rapidly urbanizing, right, I think it was
what while you and I were first working together, the
shift occurred and the majority of human beings began to
live in cities.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yes, we've been working together for a long time, and
it sounds like around twenty fourteen that's when we we
went past the fifty percent mark. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
By twenty fourteen, fifty four percent of the world's population
lived in an urban area.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
And that shift is pretty crazy, right, pretty recent too.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, it's it's definitely a condensing of humanity into these
places that, for better or for worse, do really well
for various economies and for populations, but not so great
in a lot of other ways, you know, pollution, crime,
a lot of those things, right.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Right exactly. And this in this world where there are
increasingly fewer isolated populations and a larger number of densely
let's say, densely combined populations, we can understand why people
would think there there are no more uncontacted tribes. There are.
(10:15):
Many people say that's a myth because so many anthropologists
of the past and days of yore wanted to be
the first outsider to encounter some group. That probably that
has happened, right yeah, But a hard definition of an
uncontacted tribe, as in someone who is some group that
has never seen nor, as they say in Tennessee, heard
(10:38):
tell of any other group. The odds of that still
existing are preposterously low, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And I think a lot of that has to do
with something as simple as Google Maps, where you can
you can open it up and you can see every island.
Because we have the satellite imagery, we know that that
island exists there, but wherever it is as isolated as
it is, that island exists here in this program. So
obviously somebody's been there, right, that's the assumption, at least
(11:08):
or you could go there, So why wouldn't have someone
gone there already? Right?
Speaker 1 (11:13):
And then there's that related point. Maybe there are any
uncontacted tribes, but maybe the human experiment has grown so
large that there aren't even any really isolated tribes anymore. Yeah, right,
that's the assumption. That's a safe assumption. But the problem
is that could not be further from the truth. Today's
(11:35):
episode concerns a particular community that you may not have
heard of on a tiny island off the coast of India,
one that is lost to time again.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
It's called North Sentinel Island. It's relatively tiny. It's just
seventy two square kilometers that's twenty eight square miles. And
it's well that's before the two thousand and four earthquake
because the land mass changed slightly.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
There expanded, and.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
It's a part of the Andaman Archipelago. This is a
grouping of the Endemen and Nicobar Islands. It's located at
the crux of the Bay of Bengal and the Andemen Sea. Now,
just we're gonna give you some degrees here so you
can find it on your globe if you've got one handy.
They're between six degrees and fourteen degrees north latitude and
ninety two degrees and ninety four degrees east longitude. Now
(12:27):
that's fourteen hundred kilometers from mainland India on one side.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
That's like one hundred and seventy miles.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, and then one thousand kilometers from Thailand.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And that is about six hundred and twenty one miles.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So it's kind of in the center of those. Basically,
if you zoom out far enough on Google Maps and
you draw a line between the center of in this case,
I'm using Sri Lanka because it's like the island at
the bottom of India there and to the center of Thailand,
this will be located pretty close to the center of
that line. Just if you're looking at Google Maps or something,
(13:02):
and it's these two sets of islands, the Andomen and
the Nicobar Islands. It's some of the most remote spots
on the entire planet.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yes, some of the islands around this area are referred
to in one of my absolute favorite books in the world,
The Atlas of Remote Islands. I highly recommend you check
it out if you are interested in exploration and remote locations.
(13:32):
It's a great book. But enough about that book. Yeah,
the islands just on their own, there are what nearly
six hundred and only nine are open to foreign tourists. Yeah,
very very rural locations in addition to being very remote, but.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
They are open to tourism. Those nine, those come into
play in the rest of our story.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, they're very much open to tourism. Locals be damned.
And you might say, well, who owns this guys, I'm
I'm pretty good at pointing to countries on the map,
and I've never heard of a country called the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands. No worries, trick question. There is no country.
(14:18):
It is a territory of India and it is controlled
by India. Generally, speakings compose these two islands and think
about it in terms of latitude. So any of the
islands located north of ten degrees latitude are known as
Andaman Islands, while islands located south of that latitude are
(14:42):
called Nicobar Islands.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
That's easy enough, that's pretty easy.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Nominally, these territories and the island we're talking about today,
North Sentinel Island, belong in the South Andman Administrative District,
which is again part of this Indian territory. The nearby
South Sentinel Island is uninhabited. It occasionally receives visitors, mostly
(15:08):
adventurous divers who are like the let's go somewhere no
one has, like aber Ben. I'm sure they don't sound
like that.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
I'm sure they sound exactly like.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Well, people who people who want adventure. No one lives there.
And here's the thing. Although the Government of India legally
possesses both North and South Sentinel Island and again all
of the Andamans all of the Nicobar Islands, they do
not have any installations, no government, no scheduled route of
(15:44):
transportation to visit the area. People can visit South Sentinel
Island and often probably sneak there, yeah, just to dive
for a day or something.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Like going without a lifeguard.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Basically right, But all the ships in the nearby area
and all the planes are banned from approaching North Sentinel
Island through the use of a three mile exclusion zone.
Because you see, unlike South Sentinel Island, North Sentinel Island
(16:16):
is inhabited.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
But by who, you might ask, Well, we'll tell you
right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Here's where it gets crazy. The answer to your question, Matt,
they posed before the break is we don't really know
the residents of North Sentinel Island. The Sentineles are one
of the most mysterious populations on the planet, and there
aren't many of them. Estimates range from as few as
(16:53):
fifty people to maybe as many as four hundred. The
last census that the Indian government conducted that touched upon
that area, I only found fifteen people. I think three
women and twelve men.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
But yeah, that's something we're going to see here as
we get into the story of the people that you
find when you're searching for people on North Sentinel Island.
Generally aren't all of the people that are on the island.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Right, because you see when they conducted that most recent census,
the way they conducted it was by taking a boat,
by getting special permission to go inside the exclusion zone,
and then trying to get close enough to see if
there was anyone on the shore, and then immediately high
tailing it out post taste.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And there's a reason for that.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
They are violently opposed to outside contact of any kind.
This behavior has been universally consistent for thousands of years
they've resided on this island, this population living in much
the same manner as their ancestors from millennia and from
(18:04):
what we can guess, the Sentinel these people practice traditional
hunting and gathering with no I mean, I think it's
a leap to say no knowledge of agriculture but no
practice of it.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, there's no evidence of agriculture that's been seen in
the few times that people have actually gotten close enough
to check it out. Their diet consists of mostly fruits, plants,
stuff that's found on the island, coconuts, forest plants. Sometimes
they've been know to eat sea turtles, fish, some small birds,
and wild honey. And some researchers compare the Sentineliese to
(18:40):
the Ungei tribe, which is another tribe that's on the
Andamanese Islands. They're indigenous peoples to one of the other islands.
And we should just say here that the Sentinel use
that name is a name given to them. If you
were ever to speak with one and could speak with
someone of you know, the North Sentinel Island, they would
not call themselves that right exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
This this culture has several barriers to communication, yes, and
we'll get to these, but they the Onay are an
excellent example of the one of the closest analogs that
we have sure to this population, at least we being
the part of the species that doesn't live on this island,
(19:25):
we who are forced to guess. So, like the Sentinealese,
the Ongay were one hunter gatherers living out an ancient
tradition and ancient set of subsistence practices right that date back,
by the way to some of the earliest human civilization
(19:47):
practices that we know of today. So these are doing
these people are doing some of the first things that
people did. Still well, the Sentinelese, we suspect yes, not
the Gay yes, because unlike the Sentineleese, the on Gay
were somewhat assimilated to their detriment. In nineteen oh one,
(20:10):
the population was registered at six hundred and seventy two.
After colonization, there were fewer than one hundred left. Ultimately,
like the number kept going down in the fifties, it
was only one hundred and fifty or so, and this
was due to the brutal acts of the colonizers. Also
unanticipated factors like exposure to non native diseases.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Which is one of the biggest problems when making contacts.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Right right, right, It's one of the problems with when
Europeans came to the North and South American continents, the
same things occurred for them.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
It wasn't a problem, it was a right.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, Well I'm the same for the native populations. Yea,
the time it was it was a horrific thing. And
there's something else here that on a personal level mystifies
and disturbs me. And it does. It disturbs me because
I can't explain why it's happening, and I don't understand,
(21:12):
and I don't think that there's any technology that people
would have had to do this on purpose. There's something
deeper at play. Well, anyway, I'm too much preface. Here's
what's happening today. The Onnget is still around, but a
major cause of the decline in the population is both
the changes in food habits brought about by contact with
(21:33):
the outside world. But here's the scary thing. Nowadays they're
one of the least fertile and most sterile communities on
the planet. About forty percent of married couples are sterile.
On Gay women rarely become pregnant before the age of
twenty eight. Infant and child mortality is in the range
of forty percent. Now we could explain, we could explain
(21:58):
infinite and child mortality due to you know, quality of
life right for the family, for the mother, for the kid,
so on. But the idea that an entire population without
you know, some clear environmental cause just starts to dwindle
that way.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah, I don't like that at all.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It's frighting. It's it's not it's not something that I
can explain. I would welcome anybody to write to us
and let us know. You know, is there some epigenetic
factor at play? Did the community decide not to have children?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Or is there some kind of outside force that's acting
on them in some way? Right, cical exposure of some
sort that they're unaware of.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Like force sterilization, which many governments have done, which would yeah,
which would be explicable. At least that's a mundane cause.
That's less scary than some sort of switch turning, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
So, also, the on gay have been victims of sexual
exploitation and alcoholism, forced labor, all the terrible unexpected things
that happen often to these tribes. So there may be
(23:21):
a lesson for us to learn with the sentinealese through
the perspective of the Ongay. Observers have compared the Sentinalese
community to communities that existed in the Stone Age. They
make weapons, they make tools. They're pretty bad ass with
bows and arrows.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yeah it's like three hundred something feet. They can get
you with an arrow.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, yeah, three hundred and four hundred. I think they
do not appear to make fire, at least again from
what we can observe. And their language is unclassified, meaning
it's unintelligible even to tribal communities from close by islands.
Like they brought an on gay person there to attempt
(24:07):
to speak with them, but they either couldn't get close
enough to understand the shouting because of all the arrows,
or they simply have been the Sentinel Eese simply have
been isolated for so long again for thousands of years,
and their language has become its own unintelligible thing.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, that's that. That is incredible because that certainly doesn't happen.
That's one of the least uh regularly occurring things to have,
and a language that is so isolated, that's incredible. Now
prior to the European encroachment, Well, that's what we're gonna
(24:51):
call it there. There were ancient traditions by the tribespeople
who lived around North Sentinel Island that the people on
North Centinel Island were cannibals, the only they apparently were
aware of North Central Islands for some time. But the
first European report didn't actually occur until seventeen seventy one,
(25:12):
which isn't that long ago, just before the United States
became a thing.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Oh that's true, Matt, I didn't think of it in
that perspective. Yeah. This British surveyor named John Ritchie passed
the island on a ship called the Diligent. The Diligent
was a hydrographic survey vessel owned by the East India Company. Paul,
can we get a spooky sound effect when we say
(25:37):
East India Company?
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Just booze? Just put some booze in there, perfect, that's appropriate.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah. So Richie made one note where he essentially said
he saw a multitude of lights. We don't know if
this means fires, Yeah, but he saw it from into
Since he made a short note about it, the boat
continued on and no one in the West would make
any sort of reference to this island for another one
(26:08):
hundred years. Yeah, it's just the one guy who's like, oh, whoa,
look at that. That's a that's not water.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
That's definitely an island. Bye.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
So we fast forward to March eighteen sixty seven.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
That's when Jeremiah Humphrey, he's the officer in charge of
the Andamanese, he journeyed to North Central Island on the
trail of some convicts who escaped from this penal colony
that was there called Port Blair. And Okay, so he
he's approaching the island, he's escorted by police and what
they're called Great Andemanese, and these are tribes people from
(26:45):
like again kind of like what we were discussing before, a
different tribe, but I guess similar enough to where perhaps
there could be communication. He saw some ten men on
the beach, naked, long haired, with bows and arrows, shooting fish,
and apparently the Sentineleese spoted the boat and they hid,
(27:09):
and the Great Antemonese on board were visibly frightened and
warrened Hamphrey, the leader here that the islanders had a
reputation for cannibalism, and Hamphrey said, yep, I'm not going there,
which he never actually landed.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah, which was surprisingly smart of him right to listen
to the experts in the area.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
He did have a police escort with him, so it
is fascinating that he didn't. But I guess maybe he
just wasn't he wasn't confident enough in the people there
with him. Sure, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Well.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Also, notice that at this point, despite this reputation, I'm
sure it's largely exaggerated for cannibalism.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
The Sentinelaes are hiding, they're avoiding and evading, right, they're
not confronting. And then also there's a note here they're
described as long haired by Mfrey. But when you see
footage of the Sentinlies people today, there are no long
(28:14):
haired people.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
There's just a little bit of footage and your right.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
So interesting because it seems as though things are changing.
In that same year again, eighteen sixty seven, an Indian
merchant ship called the nineveh was wrecked on the reef
surrounding the shore, and their captain was a real piece
of work. So eighty six passengers survived, twenty crew members survive.
They make it. They crash on that reef surrounding the island.
(28:42):
These are also very treacherous waters and boom celebration time
they survive these what one hundred and six people survive.
On the third day of the native population, which had
been completely in hiding, attacks the captain. His strategy is
to take the ship's lifeboat and run away, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
To get picked up by some other ship that's.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Coming by a passing brig And then a Royal Navy
ship came to rescue the remaining survivors who had held
the natives off by for several days by throwing stones
and brandishing sticks.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
And again this is a story that gets around, so
nobody else goes to that island for another thirteen years.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yes, and then in January of eighteen eighty, an armed
British expedition manages a successful landing on North Sentinel Island.
They're led by the officer in charge of the antonomise
by this time twenty year old fellow by the name
of Maurice Vidal Portman. They went through the island in
(29:50):
search of local people, and they had again some of
people from the Greater Antonamese population guiding them. So what
did they find.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Well, the first thing they came upon were a network
of pathways where people had been traveling by foot there
were several freshly abandoned villages that they saw. Again, with
nobody around, they kept surveying the island. They found that it
had fertile soil, there were groves of tropical hardwoods, and
(30:22):
this gentleman Portman didn't see a single human being other
than the people that he brought to the island.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
So was it a ghost island?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Maybe? But I don't think so. Eventually, after several days
of searching, the party discovered just six Sentinelies. It was
an elderly couple and they had four children with them.
And you know, as as they tended to do, I
guess in the colonial path, they abducted these six people
(30:53):
and they took them with them.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Right, Yeah, they took them, the parents and the children.
The father was by far the oldest of the six.
They took them back onto the vessel with them. But
as soon as they were leaving the island, probably because
they were exposed to new diseases, the family fell ill
(31:17):
rapidly ill. The parents died, and so in a strange move,
Portman and co. Sent the four surviving children back home
with presents the likes of which the Sentinelese community had
probably never seen before. And he talked about them in
a really smug, condescending way. He said, you know, he
(31:39):
didn't feel particularly bad about it. He was annoyed by
what he considered to be their mannerisms and idiotic expressions.
That's his choice of wording there.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
And they did send four unaccompanied children back to an
island that, to their observation, was uninhabited.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Oh yeah, I didn't even think about that part.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Just go Lord of the flies kids, We'll see you later.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Wow, here's a doll. Yeah. And Portman did go on
to visit the island several more times. In August of
eighteen eighty three. They in August of eighteen eighty three,
a volcanic explosion was mistaken for the sounds of gunshots
and possibly a distress signal, so several search parties go out.
(32:27):
Portman's search vessel lands on North Sentinel Island. The native
people hide. He doesn't see anyone. Most importantly, he doesn't
see a ship in distress. So they just leave more
gifts on the shore and they depart. And then over
the span of eighty five through eighteen eighty seven, he
(32:47):
visits a few more times, and in his way, in
a very smug condescending way. Matt, he grows fond of
the natives, and we have a quote when he was
explaining how his chilly heart had warmed to them.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
In many ways, they closely resemble the average lower class
English country school boy. As you see, I've only ever
seen them running away except for those four children and
the two parents that I killed with my diseases.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
So the beginning of that quote is absolutely true. Yes,
but I think the whole thing really captures the spirit
of where he was coming from. Yeah, maybe a little
more self aware than he was at the time, but
then you know, there's a relative period of calm because
why would you go so far out of your way
to visit this place?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any interaction that happens,
at least if you've read the stories or reports of
the previous interactions or lack of so yeah, no, no reason. However,
in eighteen ninety six, three escaped Indian convicts fled that
Port Blair that we mentioned before. They got on a
makeshift raft and they drifted about thirty miles to North
Sentinel Island. Here's the deal. Two of the fugitives drowned
(34:04):
in the reefs, that are surrounding the island. Again that
we've mentioned before. The one guy, the one survivor, made
it to the beach, only to be killed.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
By the natives.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
By the natives, ostensibly nobody probably saw this, I'm assuming,
but that's what appeared to have happened. A British party
later spotted and retrieved his body, and they noticed that
it was pierced with arrows and his throat was cut.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
And after this, North Sentinel Island was left alone for
another almost hundred years.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
But what happened after that, There's more to the story
will continue after a word from our sponsor. So meanwhile,
for the rest of civilization that was not part of
the community on North Sentinel Island, a bunch of stuff
(35:03):
was happening, you know what I mean. Amazing inventions, new
depths of human depravity, wars, peace, beautiful moments. Some of
the most amazing people in history are born and forgotten.
And the people on this island have not only no
real idea about it, but they just don't want to
(35:24):
be forced to participate in this whole human experiment. In
nearby India, in nineteen forty seven, the country finally gains independence,
from British rule, and with this it gains control of
the Andamans and the Nicobar Islands, including North Sentinel Island.
(35:47):
So things are pretty hectic when you become a newly
independent country. And they didn't really get to the concept
of North Sentinel Island or the mysterious people living on
it for about two twenty years. And in nineteen sixty seven,
an Indian anthropologist named Trilonath Pondit was summoned by the
(36:09):
governor of the Andaman Islands for a major expedition to
North Sentinel Island. Pondit was offered the opportunity to become
the first anthropologists to land there, accompanied by armed police,
naval officers, two large patrol boats and inflatable rubber dinghies
(36:29):
to get around the reef without breaking up a ship. Yeah,
and getting trapped.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Not so good against arrows though.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Not so great. Yeah, not so great against arrows. Later
in life, pondits when he's talking about why he agreed
to do this, he says, there was a feeling that
we were trying to establish friendly contact, which would be
considered an achievement at the government level. So on the
first expedition, the Sentineleese retreat into the jungle and they
(36:59):
disappear because they know this better than any non native
ever would. There's no contact. So the party leaves gifts
of buckets, cloth and candy and the empty huts of
the village. But they also they also steal some stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah, they did.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
They called it collecting, but they stole some stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
And they left blankets and things that could have been tainted.
As we found with American native populations, something as simple
as a blanket can hold a lot of pathogens.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Can be a vector for disease. Right, So what kind
of stuff did they take?
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Oh, they took bows, arrows, There was a basket and
even the painted skull of a wild boar. And they
were like, this is ours. Enjoy the things, the candy.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, And then they return another trip. On the twenty
ninth of March nineteen seventy, Pondit and his party find
themselves trapped on the reflats between North Sentinel Island and
Constant Islet. Constance is lit was just a little bit
away from the actual island itself, and that when we
(38:11):
talked about how the island grew a little bit larger
after the two thousand and four earthquake and tsunami, the
same way that the Grinch's heart grew a little bit
larger at the end of the film spoilers. Now, the
islet is attached to the island, but beforehand you could
get caught in between there, just to give the geography.
(38:32):
So they were certain that they were going to be attacked.
This is it, thought Pandit and company. So Pandit or pandit,
I want to be clear that we are not native speakers,
so go to be mispronouncing this name. They were certain
that this was going to spell the end and that
(38:52):
they were going to die in the pursuit of this
great anthropological experiment. But something un expected occurred. So at
first they see that the they see that two of
the natives who were just sort of observing them have
(39:15):
realized that they're stuck. And more people come out of
the cover, more men, more warriors, threatening to shoot at them,
you know, brandishing their arrows, and so they try to
appease them by giving them fish that they had caught,
but that didn't work. More dudes were coming at them,
(39:39):
getting closer and closer to shoot, and when they got fish,
some of them started to calm down. But other people
weren't having it, and they were still hostile, so they
were still taking the fish, but then just picking the
(39:59):
bows back up, getting ready to kill them. So the
guys were thinking, eventually, we're going to run out of fish,
right what then, at this moment this is a quote
from an eyewitness account in the seventies. At this moment,
a strange thing happened. A woman paired off with a
warrior and sat on the sand in a passionate embrace.
This act was being repeated by other women, each claiming
(40:20):
a warrior for herself, a sort of community mating, as
it were. Thus did the militant group diminish. This continued
for quite some time, and when the tempo of this
frenzied dance of desire abated, the couples retired into the
shade of the jungle. However, some warriors were still on guard.
We got close to the shore and throw some more fish,
which were immediately retrieved by a few youngsters. It was
(40:42):
well past noon, so we headed back to the ship.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
So they managed to survive, but they had to watch
something very weird.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Very personal interesting. I wonder what kind of because it
must be a show of force in some way. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I don't know. I mean, we're not anthropologists, man.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yeah, maybe it was just the time of day that
was the thing that happened at that time. We could
just think about it all day long. Yeah, I think
it's more like, I think there's gotta be power in
there somewhere.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Right, maybe a calming effect or something. I don't know,
I don't know, maybe something ritualistic, who knows, who knows.
We would like to hear your theories as well, right
to us conspiracy at HowStuffWorks dot com. They're also unproven
murders or at least missing person cases associated with the island.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Oh yeah. In that same year of nineteen seventy, there
was a wreck that was spotted on a coral reef
right on the southeast coast of the island, and after
people were looking at it to see what the heck's
going on here, it was concluded that the vessel had
been just sitting there for about seven or eight months,
and there was no sign of the crew, no sign
of the fate of the crew. So who knows. That
(41:56):
one's just a mystery, and I don't think we'll ever
have a just a concrete reason for why that happened.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
And then of course the big the big deal, right,
the big tent. As far as the encounters go, it's
we can tell you the story of the encounter that
actually had video footage, which you mentioned earlier, right, Matt.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, it's one of the only existing it is really
it's the only existing footage that I have seen of
the Sentinel ease. It was in the spring of nineteen
seventy four when there was a visit by this team
of anthropologists and they were filming a documentary called Man
in Search of Man, and there was a National Geographic
photographer with them. They're also armed police officers. They actually
(42:45):
wore padded armor they had under these jackets, and again
who's to say what that does against arrows. Hopefully that
would have been, you know, some kind of protection, but
who knows sure. And there is actual footage that you
can see. I believe that's the nineteen seventy four footage,
unless it's from earlier. It's the only one that I've seen.
(43:08):
I think. Then in September nineteen ninety one, after both
confirmed and suspected deaths at the hands of the Sentinel Is,
the Indian government added this this zone. It's a five
kilometer three mile exclusion zone around the island, and it's
under the provisions of the Andaman and Nicobar Protection of
Aboriginal Tribes Regulation. It's called a n pat R.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yes, love a good acronym. Right. We should also add,
you know, nobody died in the nineteen seventy four incident,
but oh yeah, I got shot through the thigh. I
think that was their reaction to giving the gifts.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
So it's interesting because before this exclusion zone exists, and
before it gets extended even we see this history of
people trying to peacefully high stay away from US outsiders,
and then at some point in this occasional you know,
every every few decades, every century or so, in this
(44:11):
occasional badgering from the outside world, the sentinel ease stop
putting up with this.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Well, yeah, who knows what internal folklore they've they have
now for the people that come and visit them every
few decades.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Yeah, there are there's Okay, so there are a couple
of indications that they might have some ancient myths similar
to those of the Onngay. But it's just in the
only way we know is that when that two thousand
and four disaster occurred. They got to high ground, so
they knew to they knew that some sort of natural
(44:48):
disturbance was coming, and that may be based on an
oral history about similar events in the distant past shared
with the people would later become known as the Game.
So that's possible. But can you imagine we're entirely speculating here, Matt.
Can you imagine what oral histories may exist now, based
(45:10):
on those four kids who returned? Yeah right, I mean
that sounds insane. You know, they took me, they killed
my parents, they brought me back with this.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
These strange beings on ships. We saw things that looked
like this that we have no way of really describing
to you.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
Right, And these deaths at the hands of the Sentineleese
residents still occur. In two thousand and six, two men
were illegally fishing from mud crabs off the coast and
North Sentinel Island, and the Sentineleese killed them. An Indian
Coastguard helicopter tried to go retrieve the bodies, and it
(45:52):
was warded off by bows and arrows and ambitious explorers.
An anthropologists attempting to make first contact may have already
violated the prime directive. In some ways, they may have
accelerated the age of the civilization or culture on the island.
(46:14):
And by age, I don't mean just age in terms
of numbers. I mean the technological age. They may have
gone from the Stone Age to something else, because we
have to remember these are people. They may be living
differently than many other people on the planet, but that
doesn't make them not human. They're still really smart because
human beings are for the most part, insanely supervillain level
(46:38):
brilliant in comparison to other living things. And that means
that they took salvaged metal and they made weapons, they
made ornaments, they made jewelry. But as we get to
the end of today's show, we know that the they
(46:59):
in today's episod Zode is the Sentinelesee people, and the
stuff they don't want you to know is anything about
how they live, or what their lives are like, or
what they think about you, specifically you, specifically Matt Paul
nol and I as well. They want to be left alone.
(47:22):
And is that so bad? What should happen to the
residents of the island. We're asking you, should they be
left alone? As is apparently their desire or is it
too late already? Will they need assistance as local wildlife
dies out as oceanic biodiversity decreases, you know, and like
(47:43):
it's all well and good to say that we should
leave this community alone. But some people would argue, well,
what if environmental catastrophes make their way of life unsustainable?
Does the human species have a responsibility to help the
people on this island?
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (48:01):
I think they're two. I see the sides in both
of these arguments. Personally, I'm more on the leave them
alone side. Yeah, everything I have ever witnessed about this
this sort of situation tells me that it's it's okay
to not want to participate. You shouldn't force people to
(48:21):
do stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
I think you're right there. There is a point to
be made about perhaps they are just protecting their own
and their territory rather than really not wanting to be contacted,
you know.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yeah, the Indian government has never prosecuted them for any
of these murders, by the way, and they are murders,
or you could call them cultural self defense. But when
we ask this question, we also have to ask I
don't want to tilt the scales too much. But we
also have to ask ourselves what happened to the other
(48:57):
indigenous peoples of these island groups when outsiders contacted them.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Well, we have one example that's not the same and
in really many respects, but we can see the effects
that civilization has had on them. They're called the Jarawa.
They were a native tribe and a Native Andaman tribe,
and there is a They live on one island where
there is a road that goes through their reservation essentially
(49:26):
on this island. They're kind of in the center of
the island, and then there's there are like some tourist
areas and other Indian locals who live on the outer
side and the outer rim of the island, and there's
some civilization out there. And this road that goes right
through their reservation was in use for a while, but
then it was decided by the Indian government that hey,
(49:47):
we should not use this road anymore. We're interrupting the
life of this tribe, this relatively uncontacted tribe, because I
think nineteen ninety eight was the first time that they
were officially contacted. Then tourism kind of became the thing
where this road began. These companies started taking human safaris
(50:10):
down this road where they would get in vans at
large jeeps and pay people money to take these trips
to perhaps get a chance look at some of these
tribes people just living their lives and looking at them
as though they're in a zoo or something. It's a
pretty horrifying thought, especially just it feels very icky first
(50:34):
of all, but then the second thing is that you
are disturbing these people in their way of life. Every
time a single vehicle goes by on this road that
they make an encounter. It's pretty crazy. You can also
just grab a taxi by the way and go through there.
You do have to get through a military checkpoint and
you are not allowed, at least according to the authorities
(50:55):
there and all the signs they put up. You're not
allowed to take any pictures, photography or video of the
Jarwa tribe, which is I guess a good thing, but
how do you police you know that many people in
that many vehicles going through at the time. It's just
not great. And the other thing are destination resorts which
are all around these islands, specifically those nine islands that
(51:19):
are inhabited or I guess eight, But there are resorts
and there's a tradition for local peoples who live on
these islands, peoples of I guess Western civilization, who burn
their refuse. That's what they do. They've got, you know,
their small residences and they burn their trash. These larger resorts, though,
(51:41):
make so much trash that there's no way to really
burn it without creating massive issues. So then it becomes
a different massive issue where it's just a giant pile
of trash. And there are multiple resorts around these islands.
So anyway, that's just one thing to think about. If
North st to the island ever becomes contacted to the
(52:03):
point where there are buildings and businesses being put up
on the island, we can kind of see what might
happen to the tribe.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Right, Yeah, you can also in addition to the point
you've made met you can also check out videos of
some of these native people being taunted to dance for
food and similar things like that. So the question is
now that we know the stuff they don't want you
(52:35):
to know. On the Sentinalese side, what is humanity to do?
Is the government of India correct to create this exclusion
zone and to force all traffic to keep this island
essentially lost in time or should something else be done?
(52:59):
If so, and if so, how we don't have the answers.
I mean, clearly, Matt, I'm gonna go out on a
limb and say you're also on the side of leave
them alone.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
Yes, but I'm aware of the inevitability that they will
I mean, they will be engulfed by civilization at some point.
Time is very long and humanity expands ever so.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Well, let me ask you this, what if what if
someone in the population decides to build several boats and
what if they, under their own power, go into the
outside world? What then? You know what I mean, It's
different because that goes both ways, this human need for expansion.
So at this point we don't know the answers. No
(53:47):
one does. We wanted to introduce you to one of
the most secret places in the world, right one of
the places where you most likely we'll never get to travel.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
And don't. If you do get a chance, just don't.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
And probably you shouldn't, right, I'm I'm having a tough
time saying that. I know it's the right thing to do, Matt.
I know you're right, but again we want to hear
from you. Thank you so much for tuning into the show.
Friends and Neighbors, fellow conspiracy realist. You can find us
on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter. You can
(54:25):
find us on Facebook, especially our community page. Here's where
it gets crazy, and.
Speaker 2 (54:31):
That's the end of this classic episode. If you have
any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get
into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist. It is no secret that the three
of us are consumed, at times obsessed with all the
places in the world that you cannot go. There are,
clearly there are some that we believe should be open
to the public just in the interest of transparency. But
(00:20):
all the world, there is one place that I think
we've all agreed we will not go to because the
people don't want you there. No, they sure don't North
Sentinel Island.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
No matter how exciting this place seems, both from the
aerial photographs you've seen or the stories you've heard about it,
you can't go. You shouldn't go. Some people have and
it didn't go so well.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, I have a mental image of missionaries being shot
by arrows. Maybe that's this one, right, that is the
very same. North Sentinel Island is home to an ancient
isolated population, and they have that. There's a reason why
(01:08):
they have become so isolationists, which we explore in this episode.
I'm just gonna throw it out there, because you know,
there's no harm in trying. If you are from North
Sentinel Island and you are hearing this podcast, we would
love to hear from you. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Noel is off on an adventure that we can't disclose yet,
but soon.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
producer Paul Decat Paul Wilson Decade. Maybe is that appropriate
for this episode? Matter like it that?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
You mean you're talking about the soccer ball?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yes? Okay, Most importantly, you are you and you are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Today,
we are diving into something that Matt, you and I
explored during our video series.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yes, and it's I think our fifth most popular video
that we ever made. Really, Yes, almost a million dollar
views at this point.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
All he smokes, Still not gonna beat that. Uh what
about Satan?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, Satan will always be at the top.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
And I'm kind of I feel very fortunate for both
of us that not that many people watched the instructions
on How to Get Away with Murder?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yes, of less than fifty thousand. I want to say great,
but that's still a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
People. We do we we do tell people not to
commit murder, right, we do. At some point in that one.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
We can take it down. Do you want me to
take it down?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I know, you know. I feel like we did a
good job, is the thing? Okay, a moral notions aside.
It does feel like we did a good job. But yes,
we did a video on North Sentinel Island several years ago,
(03:27):
more years than I think. Well, you probably know, Matt,
when did we do that one?
Speaker 2 (03:32):
I believe it was twenty thirteen, but it has been
a minute since I looked at it.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
It's been a while. So North Sentinel Island has a
mystery to it, and if you have seen our earlier video,
you might have an inkling about what we're going to
dive into today. But to get to this mystery, we
have to first explore human beings.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Oh that sounds good.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, that's great. Human beings are a species that loves
to talk about itself. Yeah, and that's us, and that's us,
that's you, that's you too, and yes, specifically you. So
human beings, our species exist to some degree on every continent,
which is insane when you think about it. Our tremendous
(04:19):
ability to adapt to inhospitable environments has spread us across
the planet and the modern age, technological breakthroughs allow us
to communicate instantaneously regardless of our physical location. I mean,
just think of all the podcasts that have Like you
and I prefer to hang out in person in the room,
(04:41):
but there are many very successful, very fascinating podcasts with
hosts that rarely see each other in person.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Much like stuff you missed in history class.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, that's that's actually I'm surprised I didn't think about that. Yeah.
One of our hosts is based in Atlanta on that show,
and the other in Boston, and they can commune pretty
much instantaneous.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Sounds like they're having a conversation in the room. And
one more thing I just want to add here. We're
talking about the humans us living on all these continents,
we also live on islands that aren't considered a continent
all over the planet.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
That's true, that's true, and even in those spaces people
can communicate thanks to technology. Modernity, it seems, is contagious.
But here's the fascinating and somewhat disturbing thing. As we've
spread farther and farther, some groups of humans also became isolated.
(05:37):
Those geographical boundaries bedeviled us, impassable mountains, shifting ice, dense
dangerous jungles, rising seas, and treacherous currents to your point
about islands, right, all played a role in keeping some
groups of human beings hidden from the progress and the
curses of global society. And you know, we've all, like
(05:58):
you've heard these stories, right, we even without thinking of
a specific one. We've all heard the stories wherein some
intrepid explorer encounters a tribe of people who had no
knowledge of the outside world. Right, mm hmm. I I
remember thinking that these were relatively I don't know, fictionalized
things growing up. Yeah, Like I don't want to say
(06:21):
fairy tales, but fictional adventure stories.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yes, they're They're depicted in film and in books all
over the place, various fictional ones and non fictional encounters
of this sort. And the I think that line gets
blurred a little bit in our popular culture of what
what a real encounter looks like in what a a
(06:46):
played up one looks like for the screen.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Right, That's a very important point in the modern age.
It seems like these events and encounters, whether they were truthful,
whether they were fiction or whether they were a blood
of the two, usually to make someone from the West
feel more important about themselves.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Or less like they were colonizers.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Or less like they were colonizers. That's true regardless. Nowadays,
it seems like most of these events or encounters are
going to be relegated to history books. In short, everyone
has met everyone or is aware of everyone, right, we
all get it.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Everyone is at least aware enough that there's an outside world.
Like a tribe, most tribes of isolated people are aware
that there's an outside world with some technology in it.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Right. And it is sadly true that there are many
countries that people in other countries aren't very much aware of,
you know, yes, like you've seen, especially European media gives
people in the US a real devil of a time
with this. And you can see new YouTube compilations of
(08:02):
Americans being asked to point to a country on the
map on the world map and getting it cartoonishly wrong.
That's a little bit of a stereotype. Well, I promise
people are I promise the editors are cherry picking that
for all our non American listeners.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
We certainly hope, so we certainly hope so.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
And regardless of how hilarious those videos might be, Matt,
your point, I would say, is absolutely correct. We are
aware of the other We are aware that it exists.
There will be a you know, the majority of people
who live in China will probably never travel to the States,
and the majority of people who live in the States
will probably never travel to China. But both are aware
(08:46):
that the other country exists and is a real thing.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Thank you television and Internet.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Thank you television and books. Yes, in a world though,
where everything is rapidly urbanizing, right, I think it was
what while you and I were first working together, the
shift occurred and the majority of human beings began to
live in cities.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yes, we've been working together for a long time, and
it sounds like around twenty fourteen that's when we we
went past the fifty percent mark. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
By twenty fourteen, fifty four percent of the world's population
lived in an urban area.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
And that shift is pretty crazy, right, pretty recent too.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, it's it's definitely a condensing of humanity into these
places that, for better or for worse, do really well
for various economies and for populations, but not so great
in a lot of other ways, you know, pollution, crime,
a lot of those things, right.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Right exactly. And this in this world where there are
increasingly fewer isolated populations and a larger number of densely
let's say, densely combined populations, we can understand why people
would think there there are no more uncontacted tribes. There are.
(10:15):
Many people say that's a myth because so many anthropologists
of the past and days of yore wanted to be
the first outsider to encounter some group. That probably that
has happened, right yeah, But a hard definition of an
uncontacted tribe, as in someone who is some group that
has never seen nor, as they say in Tennessee, heard
(10:38):
tell of any other group. The odds of that still
existing are preposterously low, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And I think a lot of that has to do
with something as simple as Google Maps, where you can
you can open it up and you can see every island.
Because we have the satellite imagery, we know that that
island exists there, but wherever it is as isolated as
it is, that island exists here in this program. So
obviously somebody's been there, right, that's the assumption, at least
(11:08):
or you could go there, So why wouldn't have someone
gone there already? Right?
Speaker 1 (11:13):
And then there's that related point. Maybe there are any
uncontacted tribes, but maybe the human experiment has grown so
large that there aren't even any really isolated tribes anymore. Yeah, right,
that's the assumption. That's a safe assumption. But the problem
is that could not be further from the truth. Today's
(11:35):
episode concerns a particular community that you may not have
heard of on a tiny island off the coast of India,
one that is lost to time again.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
It's called North Sentinel Island. It's relatively tiny. It's just
seventy two square kilometers that's twenty eight square miles. And
it's well that's before the two thousand and four earthquake
because the land mass changed slightly.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
There expanded, and.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
It's a part of the Andaman Archipelago. This is a
grouping of the Endemen and Nicobar Islands. It's located at
the crux of the Bay of Bengal and the Andemen Sea. Now,
just we're gonna give you some degrees here so you
can find it on your globe if you've got one handy.
They're between six degrees and fourteen degrees north latitude and
ninety two degrees and ninety four degrees east longitude. Now
(12:27):
that's fourteen hundred kilometers from mainland India on one side.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
That's like one hundred and seventy miles.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, and then one thousand kilometers from Thailand.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
And that is about six hundred and twenty one miles.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So it's kind of in the center of those. Basically,
if you zoom out far enough on Google Maps and
you draw a line between the center of in this case,
I'm using Sri Lanka because it's like the island at
the bottom of India there and to the center of Thailand,
this will be located pretty close to the center of
that line. Just if you're looking at Google Maps or something,
(13:02):
and it's these two sets of islands, the Andomen and
the Nicobar Islands. It's some of the most remote spots
on the entire planet.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yes, some of the islands around this area are referred
to in one of my absolute favorite books in the world,
The Atlas of Remote Islands. I highly recommend you check
it out if you are interested in exploration and remote locations.
(13:32):
It's a great book. But enough about that book. Yeah,
the islands just on their own, there are what nearly
six hundred and only nine are open to foreign tourists. Yeah,
very very rural locations in addition to being very remote, but.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
They are open to tourism. Those nine, those come into
play in the rest of our story.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, they're very much open to tourism. Locals be damned.
And you might say, well, who owns this guys, I'm
I'm pretty good at pointing to countries on the map,
and I've never heard of a country called the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands. No worries, trick question. There is no country.
(14:18):
It is a territory of India and it is controlled
by India. Generally, speakings compose these two islands and think
about it in terms of latitude. So any of the
islands located north of ten degrees latitude are known as
Andaman Islands, while islands located south of that latitude are
(14:42):
called Nicobar Islands.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
That's easy enough, that's pretty easy.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Nominally, these territories and the island we're talking about today,
North Sentinel Island, belong in the South Andman Administrative District,
which is again part of this Indian territory. The nearby
South Sentinel Island is uninhabited. It occasionally receives visitors, mostly
(15:08):
adventurous divers who are like the let's go somewhere no
one has, like aber Ben. I'm sure they don't sound
like that.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
I'm sure they sound exactly like.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Well, people who people who want adventure. No one lives there.
And here's the thing. Although the Government of India legally
possesses both North and South Sentinel Island and again all
of the Andamans all of the Nicobar Islands, they do
not have any installations, no government, no scheduled route of
(15:44):
transportation to visit the area. People can visit South Sentinel
Island and often probably sneak there, yeah, just to dive
for a day or something.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Like going without a lifeguard.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Basically right, But all the ships in the nearby area
and all the planes are banned from approaching North Sentinel
Island through the use of a three mile exclusion zone.
Because you see, unlike South Sentinel Island, North Sentinel Island
(16:16):
is inhabited.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
But by who, you might ask, Well, we'll tell you
right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Here's where it gets crazy. The answer to your question, Matt,
they posed before the break is we don't really know
the residents of North Sentinel Island. The Sentineles are one
of the most mysterious populations on the planet, and there
aren't many of them. Estimates range from as few as
(16:53):
fifty people to maybe as many as four hundred. The
last census that the Indian government conducted that touched upon
that area, I only found fifteen people. I think three
women and twelve men.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
But yeah, that's something we're going to see here as
we get into the story of the people that you
find when you're searching for people on North Sentinel Island.
Generally aren't all of the people that are on the island.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Right, because you see when they conducted that most recent census,
the way they conducted it was by taking a boat,
by getting special permission to go inside the exclusion zone,
and then trying to get close enough to see if
there was anyone on the shore, and then immediately high
tailing it out post taste.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And there's a reason for that.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
They are violently opposed to outside contact of any kind.
This behavior has been universally consistent for thousands of years
they've resided on this island, this population living in much
the same manner as their ancestors from millennia and from
(18:04):
what we can guess, the Sentinel these people practice traditional
hunting and gathering with no I mean, I think it's
a leap to say no knowledge of agriculture but no
practice of it.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, there's no evidence of agriculture that's been seen in
the few times that people have actually gotten close enough
to check it out. Their diet consists of mostly fruits, plants,
stuff that's found on the island, coconuts, forest plants. Sometimes
they've been know to eat sea turtles, fish, some small birds,
and wild honey. And some researchers compare the Sentineliese to
(18:40):
the Ungei tribe, which is another tribe that's on the
Andamanese Islands. They're indigenous peoples to one of the other islands.
And we should just say here that the Sentinel use
that name is a name given to them. If you
were ever to speak with one and could speak with
someone of you know, the North Sentinel Island, they would
not call themselves that right exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
This this culture has several barriers to communication, yes, and
we'll get to these, but they the Onay are an
excellent example of the one of the closest analogs that
we have sure to this population, at least we being
the part of the species that doesn't live on this island,
(19:25):
we who are forced to guess. So, like the Sentinealese,
the Ongay were one hunter gatherers living out an ancient
tradition and ancient set of subsistence practices right that date back,
by the way to some of the earliest human civilization
(19:47):
practices that we know of today. So these are doing
these people are doing some of the first things that
people did. Still well, the Sentinelese, we suspect yes, not
the Gay yes, because unlike the Sentineleese, the on Gay
were somewhat assimilated to their detriment. In nineteen oh one,
(20:10):
the population was registered at six hundred and seventy two.
After colonization, there were fewer than one hundred left. Ultimately,
like the number kept going down in the fifties, it
was only one hundred and fifty or so, and this
was due to the brutal acts of the colonizers. Also
unanticipated factors like exposure to non native diseases.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Which is one of the biggest problems when making contacts.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Right right, right, It's one of the problems with when
Europeans came to the North and South American continents, the
same things occurred for them.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
It wasn't a problem, it was a right.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, Well I'm the same for the native populations. Yea,
the time it was it was a horrific thing. And
there's something else here that on a personal level mystifies
and disturbs me. And it does. It disturbs me because
I can't explain why it's happening, and I don't understand,
(21:12):
and I don't think that there's any technology that people
would have had to do this on purpose. There's something
deeper at play. Well, anyway, I'm too much preface. Here's
what's happening today. The Onnget is still around, but a
major cause of the decline in the population is both
the changes in food habits brought about by contact with
(21:33):
the outside world. But here's the scary thing. Nowadays they're
one of the least fertile and most sterile communities on
the planet. About forty percent of married couples are sterile.
On Gay women rarely become pregnant before the age of
twenty eight. Infant and child mortality is in the range
of forty percent. Now we could explain, we could explain
(21:58):
infinite and child mortality due to you know, quality of
life right for the family, for the mother, for the kid,
so on. But the idea that an entire population without
you know, some clear environmental cause just starts to dwindle
that way.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah, I don't like that at all.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It's frighting. It's it's not it's not something that I
can explain. I would welcome anybody to write to us
and let us know. You know, is there some epigenetic
factor at play? Did the community decide not to have children?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Or is there some kind of outside force that's acting
on them in some way? Right, cical exposure of some
sort that they're unaware of.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Like force sterilization, which many governments have done, which would yeah,
which would be explicable. At least that's a mundane cause.
That's less scary than some sort of switch turning, you
know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
So, also, the on gay have been victims of sexual
exploitation and alcoholism, forced labor, all the terrible unexpected things
that happen often to these tribes. So there may be
(23:21):
a lesson for us to learn with the sentinealese through
the perspective of the Ongay. Observers have compared the Sentinalese
community to communities that existed in the Stone Age. They
make weapons, they make tools. They're pretty bad ass with
bows and arrows.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yeah it's like three hundred something feet. They can get
you with an arrow.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, yeah, three hundred and four hundred. I think they
do not appear to make fire, at least again from
what we can observe. And their language is unclassified, meaning
it's unintelligible even to tribal communities from close by islands.
Like they brought an on gay person there to attempt
(24:07):
to speak with them, but they either couldn't get close
enough to understand the shouting because of all the arrows,
or they simply have been the Sentinel Eese simply have
been isolated for so long again for thousands of years,
and their language has become its own unintelligible thing.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, that's that. That is incredible because that certainly doesn't happen.
That's one of the least uh regularly occurring things to have,
and a language that is so isolated, that's incredible. Now
prior to the European encroachment, Well, that's what we're gonna
(24:51):
call it there. There were ancient traditions by the tribespeople
who lived around North Sentinel Island that the people on
North Centinel Island were cannibals, the only they apparently were
aware of North Central Islands for some time. But the
first European report didn't actually occur until seventeen seventy one,
(25:12):
which isn't that long ago, just before the United States
became a thing.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Oh that's true, Matt, I didn't think of it in
that perspective. Yeah. This British surveyor named John Ritchie passed
the island on a ship called the Diligent. The Diligent
was a hydrographic survey vessel owned by the East India Company. Paul,
can we get a spooky sound effect when we say
(25:37):
East India Company?
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Just booze? Just put some booze in there, perfect, that's appropriate.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah. So Richie made one note where he essentially said
he saw a multitude of lights. We don't know if
this means fires, Yeah, but he saw it from into
Since he made a short note about it, the boat
continued on and no one in the West would make
any sort of reference to this island for another one
(26:08):
hundred years. Yeah, it's just the one guy who's like, oh, whoa,
look at that. That's a that's not water.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
That's definitely an island. Bye.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
So we fast forward to March eighteen sixty seven.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
That's when Jeremiah Humphrey, he's the officer in charge of
the Andamanese, he journeyed to North Central Island on the
trail of some convicts who escaped from this penal colony
that was there called Port Blair. And Okay, so he
he's approaching the island, he's escorted by police and what
they're called Great Andemanese, and these are tribes people from
(26:45):
like again kind of like what we were discussing before, a
different tribe, but I guess similar enough to where perhaps
there could be communication. He saw some ten men on
the beach, naked, long haired, with bows and arrows, shooting fish,
and apparently the Sentineleese spoted the boat and they hid,
(27:09):
and the Great Antemonese on board were visibly frightened and
warrened Hamphrey, the leader here that the islanders had a
reputation for cannibalism, and Hamphrey said, yep, I'm not going there,
which he never actually landed.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Yeah, which was surprisingly smart of him right to listen
to the experts in the area.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
He did have a police escort with him, so it
is fascinating that he didn't. But I guess maybe he
just wasn't he wasn't confident enough in the people there
with him. Sure, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Well.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Also, notice that at this point, despite this reputation, I'm
sure it's largely exaggerated for cannibalism.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
The Sentinelaes are hiding, they're avoiding and evading, right, they're
not confronting. And then also there's a note here they're
described as long haired by Mfrey. But when you see
footage of the Sentinlies people today, there are no long
(28:14):
haired people.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
There's just a little bit of footage and your right.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
So interesting because it seems as though things are changing.
In that same year again, eighteen sixty seven, an Indian
merchant ship called the nineveh was wrecked on the reef
surrounding the shore, and their captain was a real piece
of work. So eighty six passengers survived, twenty crew members survive.
They make it. They crash on that reef surrounding the island.
(28:42):
These are also very treacherous waters and boom celebration time
they survive these what one hundred and six people survive.
On the third day of the native population, which had
been completely in hiding, attacks the captain. His strategy is
to take the ship's lifeboat and run away, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
To get picked up by some other ship that's.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Coming by a passing brig And then a Royal Navy
ship came to rescue the remaining survivors who had held
the natives off by for several days by throwing stones
and brandishing sticks.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
And again this is a story that gets around, so
nobody else goes to that island for another thirteen years.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yes, and then in January of eighteen eighty, an armed
British expedition manages a successful landing on North Sentinel Island.
They're led by the officer in charge of the antonomise
by this time twenty year old fellow by the name
of Maurice Vidal Portman. They went through the island in
(29:50):
search of local people, and they had again some of
people from the Greater Antonamese population guiding them. So what
did they find.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Well, the first thing they came upon were a network
of pathways where people had been traveling by foot there
were several freshly abandoned villages that they saw. Again, with
nobody around, they kept surveying the island. They found that it
had fertile soil, there were groves of tropical hardwoods, and
(30:22):
this gentleman Portman didn't see a single human being other
than the people that he brought to the island.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
So was it a ghost island?
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Maybe? But I don't think so. Eventually, after several days
of searching, the party discovered just six Sentinelies. It was
an elderly couple and they had four children with them.
And you know, as as they tended to do, I
guess in the colonial path, they abducted these six people
(30:53):
and they took them with them.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Right, Yeah, they took them, the parents and the children.
The father was by far the oldest of the six.
They took them back onto the vessel with them. But
as soon as they were leaving the island, probably because
they were exposed to new diseases, the family fell ill
(31:17):
rapidly ill. The parents died, and so in a strange move,
Portman and co. Sent the four surviving children back home
with presents the likes of which the Sentinelese community had
probably never seen before. And he talked about them in
a really smug, condescending way. He said, you know, he
(31:39):
didn't feel particularly bad about it. He was annoyed by
what he considered to be their mannerisms and idiotic expressions.
That's his choice of wording there.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
And they did send four unaccompanied children back to an
island that, to their observation, was uninhabited.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Oh yeah, I didn't even think about that part.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Just go Lord of the flies kids, We'll see you later.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Wow, here's a doll. Yeah. And Portman did go on
to visit the island several more times. In August of
eighteen eighty three. They in August of eighteen eighty three,
a volcanic explosion was mistaken for the sounds of gunshots
and possibly a distress signal, so several search parties go out.
(32:27):
Portman's search vessel lands on North Sentinel Island. The native
people hide. He doesn't see anyone. Most importantly, he doesn't
see a ship in distress. So they just leave more
gifts on the shore and they depart. And then over
the span of eighty five through eighteen eighty seven, he
(32:47):
visits a few more times, and in his way, in
a very smug condescending way. Matt, he grows fond of
the natives, and we have a quote when he was
explaining how his chilly heart had warmed to them.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
In many ways, they closely resemble the average lower class
English country school boy. As you see, I've only ever
seen them running away except for those four children and
the two parents that I killed with my diseases.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
So the beginning of that quote is absolutely true. Yes,
but I think the whole thing really captures the spirit
of where he was coming from. Yeah, maybe a little
more self aware than he was at the time, but
then you know, there's a relative period of calm because
why would you go so far out of your way
to visit this place?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any interaction that happens,
at least if you've read the stories or reports of
the previous interactions or lack of so yeah, no, no reason. However,
in eighteen ninety six, three escaped Indian convicts fled that
Port Blair that we mentioned before. They got on a
makeshift raft and they drifted about thirty miles to North
Sentinel Island. Here's the deal. Two of the fugitives drowned
(34:04):
in the reefs, that are surrounding the island. Again that
we've mentioned before. The one guy, the one survivor, made
it to the beach, only to be killed.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
By the natives.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
By the natives, ostensibly nobody probably saw this, I'm assuming,
but that's what appeared to have happened. A British party
later spotted and retrieved his body, and they noticed that
it was pierced with arrows and his throat was cut.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
And after this, North Sentinel Island was left alone for
another almost hundred years.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
But what happened after that, There's more to the story
will continue after a word from our sponsor. So meanwhile,
for the rest of civilization that was not part of
the community on North Sentinel Island, a bunch of stuff
(35:03):
was happening, you know what I mean. Amazing inventions, new
depths of human depravity, wars, peace, beautiful moments. Some of
the most amazing people in history are born and forgotten.
And the people on this island have not only no
real idea about it, but they just don't want to
(35:24):
be forced to participate in this whole human experiment. In
nearby India, in nineteen forty seven, the country finally gains independence,
from British rule, and with this it gains control of
the Andamans and the Nicobar Islands, including North Sentinel Island.
(35:47):
So things are pretty hectic when you become a newly
independent country. And they didn't really get to the concept
of North Sentinel Island or the mysterious people living on
it for about two twenty years. And in nineteen sixty seven,
an Indian anthropologist named Trilonath Pondit was summoned by the
(36:09):
governor of the Andaman Islands for a major expedition to
North Sentinel Island. Pondit was offered the opportunity to become
the first anthropologists to land there, accompanied by armed police,
naval officers, two large patrol boats and inflatable rubber dinghies
(36:29):
to get around the reef without breaking up a ship. Yeah,
and getting trapped.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Not so good against arrows though.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Not so great. Yeah, not so great against arrows. Later
in life, pondits when he's talking about why he agreed
to do this, he says, there was a feeling that
we were trying to establish friendly contact, which would be
considered an achievement at the government level. So on the
first expedition, the Sentineleese retreat into the jungle and they
(36:59):
disappear because they know this better than any non native
ever would. There's no contact. So the party leaves gifts
of buckets, cloth and candy and the empty huts of
the village. But they also they also steal some stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah, they did.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
They called it collecting, but they stole some stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
And they left blankets and things that could have been tainted.
As we found with American native populations, something as simple
as a blanket can hold a lot of pathogens.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Can be a vector for disease. Right, So what kind
of stuff did they take?
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Oh, they took bows, arrows, There was a basket and
even the painted skull of a wild boar. And they
were like, this is ours. Enjoy the things, the candy.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, And then they return another trip. On the twenty
ninth of March nineteen seventy, Pondit and his party find
themselves trapped on the reflats between North Sentinel Island and
Constant Islet. Constance is lit was just a little bit
away from the actual island itself, and that when we
(38:11):
talked about how the island grew a little bit larger
after the two thousand and four earthquake and tsunami, the
same way that the Grinch's heart grew a little bit
larger at the end of the film spoilers. Now, the
islet is attached to the island, but beforehand you could
get caught in between there, just to give the geography.
(38:32):
So they were certain that they were going to be attacked.
This is it, thought Pandit and company. So Pandit or pandit,
I want to be clear that we are not native speakers,
so go to be mispronouncing this name. They were certain
that this was going to spell the end and that
(38:52):
they were going to die in the pursuit of this
great anthropological experiment. But something un expected occurred. So at
first they see that the they see that two of
the natives who were just sort of observing them have
(39:15):
realized that they're stuck. And more people come out of
the cover, more men, more warriors, threatening to shoot at them,
you know, brandishing their arrows, and so they try to
appease them by giving them fish that they had caught,
but that didn't work. More dudes were coming at them,
(39:39):
getting closer and closer to shoot, and when they got fish,
some of them started to calm down. But other people
weren't having it, and they were still hostile, so they
were still taking the fish, but then just picking the
(39:59):
bows back up, getting ready to kill them. So the
guys were thinking, eventually, we're going to run out of fish,
right what then, at this moment this is a quote
from an eyewitness account in the seventies. At this moment,
a strange thing happened. A woman paired off with a
warrior and sat on the sand in a passionate embrace.
This act was being repeated by other women, each claiming
(40:20):
a warrior for herself, a sort of community mating, as
it were. Thus did the militant group diminish. This continued
for quite some time, and when the tempo of this
frenzied dance of desire abated, the couples retired into the
shade of the jungle. However, some warriors were still on guard.
We got close to the shore and throw some more fish,
which were immediately retrieved by a few youngsters. It was
(40:42):
well past noon, so we headed back to the ship.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
So they managed to survive, but they had to watch
something very weird.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Very personal interesting. I wonder what kind of because it
must be a show of force in some way. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I don't know. I mean, we're not anthropologists, man.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yeah, maybe it was just the time of day that
was the thing that happened at that time. We could
just think about it all day long. Yeah, I think
it's more like, I think there's gotta be power in
there somewhere.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Right, maybe a calming effect or something. I don't know,
I don't know, maybe something ritualistic, who knows, who knows.
We would like to hear your theories as well, right
to us conspiracy at HowStuffWorks dot com. They're also unproven
murders or at least missing person cases associated with the island.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Oh yeah. In that same year of nineteen seventy, there
was a wreck that was spotted on a coral reef
right on the southeast coast of the island, and after
people were looking at it to see what the heck's
going on here, it was concluded that the vessel had
been just sitting there for about seven or eight months,
and there was no sign of the crew, no sign
of the fate of the crew. So who knows. That
(41:56):
one's just a mystery, and I don't think we'll ever
have a just a concrete reason for why that happened.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
And then of course the big the big deal, right,
the big tent. As far as the encounters go, it's
we can tell you the story of the encounter that
actually had video footage, which you mentioned earlier, right, Matt.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, it's one of the only existing it is really
it's the only existing footage that I have seen of
the Sentinel ease. It was in the spring of nineteen
seventy four when there was a visit by this team
of anthropologists and they were filming a documentary called Man
in Search of Man, and there was a National Geographic
photographer with them. They're also armed police officers. They actually
(42:45):
wore padded armor they had under these jackets, and again
who's to say what that does against arrows. Hopefully that
would have been, you know, some kind of protection, but
who knows sure. And there is actual footage that you
can see. I believe that's the nineteen seventy four footage,
unless it's from earlier. It's the only one that I've seen.
(43:08):
I think. Then in September nineteen ninety one, after both
confirmed and suspected deaths at the hands of the Sentinel Is,
the Indian government added this this zone. It's a five
kilometer three mile exclusion zone around the island, and it's
under the provisions of the Andaman and Nicobar Protection of
Aboriginal Tribes Regulation. It's called a n pat R.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yes, love a good acronym. Right. We should also add,
you know, nobody died in the nineteen seventy four incident,
but oh yeah, I got shot through the thigh. I
think that was their reaction to giving the gifts.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
So it's interesting because before this exclusion zone exists, and
before it gets extended even we see this history of
people trying to peacefully high stay away from US outsiders,
and then at some point in this occasional you know,
every every few decades, every century or so, in this
(44:11):
occasional badgering from the outside world, the sentinel ease stop
putting up with this.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Well, yeah, who knows what internal folklore they've they have
now for the people that come and visit them every
few decades.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Yeah, there are there's Okay, so there are a couple
of indications that they might have some ancient myths similar
to those of the Onngay. But it's just in the
only way we know is that when that two thousand
and four disaster occurred. They got to high ground, so
they knew to they knew that some sort of natural
(44:48):
disturbance was coming, and that may be based on an
oral history about similar events in the distant past shared
with the people would later become known as the Game.
So that's possible. But can you imagine we're entirely speculating here, Matt.
Can you imagine what oral histories may exist now, based
(45:10):
on those four kids who returned? Yeah right, I mean
that sounds insane. You know, they took me, they killed
my parents, they brought me back with this.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
These strange beings on ships. We saw things that looked
like this that we have no way of really describing
to you.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
Right, And these deaths at the hands of the Sentineleese
residents still occur. In two thousand and six, two men
were illegally fishing from mud crabs off the coast and
North Sentinel Island, and the Sentineleese killed them. An Indian
Coastguard helicopter tried to go retrieve the bodies, and it
(45:52):
was warded off by bows and arrows and ambitious explorers.
An anthropologists attempting to make first contact may have already
violated the prime directive. In some ways, they may have
accelerated the age of the civilization or culture on the island.
(46:14):
And by age, I don't mean just age in terms
of numbers. I mean the technological age. They may have
gone from the Stone Age to something else, because we
have to remember these are people. They may be living
differently than many other people on the planet, but that
doesn't make them not human. They're still really smart because
human beings are for the most part, insanely supervillain level
(46:38):
brilliant in comparison to other living things. And that means
that they took salvaged metal and they made weapons, they
made ornaments, they made jewelry. But as we get to
the end of today's show, we know that the they
(46:59):
in today's episod Zode is the Sentinelesee people, and the
stuff they don't want you to know is anything about
how they live, or what their lives are like, or
what they think about you, specifically you, specifically Matt Paul
nol and I as well. They want to be left alone.
(47:22):
And is that so bad? What should happen to the
residents of the island. We're asking you, should they be
left alone? As is apparently their desire or is it
too late already? Will they need assistance as local wildlife
dies out as oceanic biodiversity decreases, you know, and like
(47:43):
it's all well and good to say that we should
leave this community alone. But some people would argue, well,
what if environmental catastrophes make their way of life unsustainable?
Does the human species have a responsibility to help the
people on this island?
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (48:01):
I think they're two. I see the sides in both
of these arguments. Personally, I'm more on the leave them
alone side. Yeah, everything I have ever witnessed about this
this sort of situation tells me that it's it's okay
to not want to participate. You shouldn't force people to
(48:21):
do stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:23):
I think you're right there. There is a point to
be made about perhaps they are just protecting their own
and their territory rather than really not wanting to be contacted,
you know.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yeah, the Indian government has never prosecuted them for any
of these murders, by the way, and they are murders,
or you could call them cultural self defense. But when
we ask this question, we also have to ask I
don't want to tilt the scales too much. But we
also have to ask ourselves what happened to the other
(48:57):
indigenous peoples of these island groups when outsiders contacted them.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Well, we have one example that's not the same and
in really many respects, but we can see the effects
that civilization has had on them. They're called the Jarawa.
They were a native tribe and a Native Andaman tribe,
and there is a They live on one island where
there is a road that goes through their reservation essentially
(49:26):
on this island. They're kind of in the center of
the island, and then there's there are like some tourist
areas and other Indian locals who live on the outer
side and the outer rim of the island, and there's
some civilization out there. And this road that goes right
through their reservation was in use for a while, but
then it was decided by the Indian government that hey,
(49:47):
we should not use this road anymore. We're interrupting the
life of this tribe, this relatively uncontacted tribe, because I
think nineteen ninety eight was the first time that they
were officially contacted. Then tourism kind of became the thing
where this road began. These companies started taking human safaris
(50:10):
down this road where they would get in vans at
large jeeps and pay people money to take these trips
to perhaps get a chance look at some of these
tribes people just living their lives and looking at them
as though they're in a zoo or something. It's a
pretty horrifying thought, especially just it feels very icky first
(50:34):
of all, but then the second thing is that you
are disturbing these people in their way of life. Every
time a single vehicle goes by on this road that
they make an encounter. It's pretty crazy. You can also
just grab a taxi by the way and go through there.
You do have to get through a military checkpoint and
you are not allowed, at least according to the authorities
(50:55):
there and all the signs they put up. You're not
allowed to take any pictures, photography or video of the
Jarwa tribe, which is I guess a good thing, but
how do you police you know that many people in
that many vehicles going through at the time. It's just
not great. And the other thing are destination resorts which
are all around these islands, specifically those nine islands that
(51:19):
are inhabited or I guess eight, But there are resorts
and there's a tradition for local peoples who live on
these islands, peoples of I guess Western civilization, who burn
their refuse. That's what they do. They've got, you know,
their small residences and they burn their trash. These larger resorts, though,
(51:41):
make so much trash that there's no way to really
burn it without creating massive issues. So then it becomes
a different massive issue where it's just a giant pile
of trash. And there are multiple resorts around these islands.
So anyway, that's just one thing to think about. If
North st to the island ever becomes contacted to the
(52:03):
point where there are buildings and businesses being put up
on the island, we can kind of see what might
happen to the tribe.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Right, Yeah, you can also in addition to the point
you've made met you can also check out videos of
some of these native people being taunted to dance for
food and similar things like that. So the question is
now that we know the stuff they don't want you
(52:35):
to know. On the Sentinalese side, what is humanity to do?
Is the government of India correct to create this exclusion
zone and to force all traffic to keep this island
essentially lost in time or should something else be done?
(52:59):
If so, and if so, how we don't have the answers.
I mean, clearly, Matt, I'm gonna go out on a
limb and say you're also on the side of leave
them alone.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
Yes, but I'm aware of the inevitability that they will
I mean, they will be engulfed by civilization at some point.
Time is very long and humanity expands ever so.
Speaker 1 (53:25):
Well, let me ask you this, what if what if
someone in the population decides to build several boats and
what if they, under their own power, go into the
outside world? What then? You know what I mean, It's
different because that goes both ways, this human need for expansion.
So at this point we don't know the answers. No
(53:47):
one does. We wanted to introduce you to one of
the most secret places in the world, right one of
the places where you most likely we'll never get to travel.
Speaker 2 (54:01):
And don't. If you do get a chance, just don't.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
And probably you shouldn't, right, I'm I'm having a tough
time saying that. I know it's the right thing to do, Matt.
I know you're right, but again we want to hear
from you. Thank you so much for tuning into the show.
Friends and Neighbors, fellow conspiracy realist. You can find us
on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter. You can
(54:25):
find us on Facebook, especially our community page. Here's where
it gets crazy, and.
Speaker 2 (54:31):
That's the end of this classic episode. If you have
any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get
into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you
don't want to do that, you can send us a
good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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