March 28, 2020 • 53 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
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Noel
is off on an adventure that we can't disclose yet,
but soon they called me Ben. We are joined with
our super producer, Paul Decant Paul Wilson Decade. Maybe is
that appropriate for this episode? Matt, you mean you're talking
about the soccer ball? Yes? Most importantly, you are you
(00:47):
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 explore during our video series. Yes,
and it's I think our fifth most popular video that
we ever made. Really, Yes, almost a million dollar views
(01:07):
at this point. All these smokes still not going to
beat that. Uh what about Satan? Yeah, Satan will always
be at the top. 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? Yes,
less than fifty I want to say great, but that's
(01:29):
still a lot of people. That's a lot of people,
and we do. We we do tell people not to
commit murder, right, we do. At some point in that one,
we can take it down. Do you want me to
take it down? I know, you know. I I feel
like we did a good job, is the thing? Okay,
a moral notions aside. It does feel like we did
(01:52):
a good job. But yes, we did a video on
North Sentinel Island several years ago, more years than I think. Well,
you probably don Matt. When do we do that one?
I believe it has been a minute since I looked
at it. It's been a while. Uh So North Sentinel
Island has a mystery to it, and if you have
(02:16):
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.
Oh that sounds good. Yeah, that's great. Human beings are
a species that loves to talk about itself. That's us,
(02:37):
and that's us, that's you, that's you doo uh 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 ability to adapt to inhospitable environments
has spread us across the planet, and the modern age,
(02:58):
technological breaks allow us to communicate instantaneously regardless of our
physical location. I mean, just just think of all the
podcasts that have Like you and I prefer to hang
out in person in the room, but there are many
very successful, very fascinating podcast with hosts that rarely see
(03:20):
each other in person, much like stuff you missed in
history class. Yeah, that's that's actually I'm surprised I didn't
think about that. Yeah, one of our host is based
in Atlanta on that show, and the other in Boston,
and they can communicate pretty much instantaneous. 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
(03:42):
on islands that aren't considered a continent all over the planet.
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
(04:04):
spread farther and farther, some groups of humans also became
isolated those geographical boundaries bedeviled us, impassable mountains, shifting ice,
dense dangerous jungles, rising seas, and treacherous currents to your
point about islands, right, all all played a role in
keeping some groups of human beings hidden from the progress
(04:27):
and the curses of global society. And you know, we've all,
like 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. I remember thinking
(04:47):
that these were relatively I don't know, fictionalized things growing up,
like fair not I don't want to say fairy tales,
but fictional adventure stories. Yes. There, They're depicted in film
and in um books all over the place, various fictional
ones and nonfictional encounters of this sort. And the I
(05:10):
think that line gets blurred a little bit in our
in our popular culture of what what a real encounter
looks like, in what a u a played up one
looks like for the screen. 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,
(05:31):
or whether they were a blend of the two, usually
to make someone from the West feel more important about
themselves or less like they were colonizers or less like
they were colonizers. That's true regardless. Nowadays, it seems like
most of these events are encounters are going to be
relegated to history books. In short, everyone has met everyone
(05:57):
or is aware of everyone, right, we all get it.
Everyone is at least aware enough that there's an outside world.
Like a tribe, most most tribes of isolated people are
aware that there's an outside world with some technology in it. Right.
And it is sadly true that there are many countries
(06:18):
that people in other countries aren't very much aware of,
you know, like you've seen, especially European media gives people
in the US a real devil of a time with this.
And you can see numerous YouTube compilations of Americans being
asked to point to a country on the map on
(06:39):
the world map and getting it cartoonishly wrong. That's a
little bit of a stereotype. Well, I promised, people are
I promised the editors are cherry picking that for all
our non American listeners. We certainly hope, so we certainly
hope so. And regardless of how hilarious those videos might be.
Matt your point, I would say, absolutely correct. We are
(07:01):
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
that the other country exists and is a real thing.
Thank you television and Internet. Thank you television and to
(07:24):
add books. Yes, uh, 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. Yes,
we've been working together for a long time, and it
(07:45):
sounds like around that's when we we went past market. Yeah,
by of the world's population lived in an urban area,
and that shift is pretty crazy, right, pretty recent too. Yeah,
it's it's definitely um a condensing of humanity into these
(08:07):
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,
you know a lot of those things right, right exactly,
And in this in this world where there are increasingly
(08:30):
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. Many
people say that's a myth because so many anthropologists of
(08:53):
the past and days of yore wanted to be the
first outsider to encounter some group. That probably that has happened, right,
But a a hard definition of an uncontacted tribe, as
in someone who's some group that has never seen nor,
as they say in Tennessee, heard tell of any other group.
(09:14):
The odds of that still existing are are preposterously low, right, yeah.
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
(09:38):
obviously somebody's been there, right, that's the assumption at least,
or you could go there. So why why wouldn't have
someone gone there already, right, 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
(09:58):
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 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. It's called North Sentinel Island. It's
(10:22):
relatively tiny. It's just seventy two square kilometers that's square
miles um. And it's well that's before the two four earthquake.
Because the the landmass changed slightly, they're expanded and it's
a part of the Andaman Archipelago. This is a grouping
of the Endeman and Nicobar Islands. It's located at the
(10:43):
crux of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman 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.
There between six degrees and fourteen degrees north latitude and
ninety two degrees and ninety four degrees east longitude. Now
that's four hundred kilometers from mainland India on one side,
(11:05):
that's like a hundred and seventy miles, and then a
thousand kilometers from Thailand, and that is about six hundred
and twenty one miles, so it's kind of in the
center of those. Basically, if you zoom out far enough
on Google 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
(11:25):
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, and
it's in these these two sets of islands, the Andaman
and the Nicobar Islands. It's it's some of the most
remote spots on the entire planet. Yes, some of the
(11:46):
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. It's a
great book. But enough about that book. Uh, the islands
(12:09):
just on their own there are what nearly six hundred
and only nine are open to foreign tourists, very very
rural locations in in addition to being very remote. But
but they are open to tourism. Those nine, those that
those come into play in the rest of our story. Yeah,
they're very much open to tourism. Uh, locals be damned honestly,
(12:33):
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.
It is a territory of India and it is controlled
(12:55):
by India's generally speakings composed 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
called Nicobar Islands. Enough, that's pretty easy. Nominally, these territories
(13:21):
and the island we're talking about today, North Sentinel Island,
belong in the south and a man administrative district which
is again part of this Indian territory. The nearby South
Sentinel Island is uninhabited. It occasionally receives visitors, mostly adventurous
(13:41):
divers who were like, Yeahlberg, let's go somewhere where no
one les, like Overbend. I'm sure they don't sound like that,
and I'm sure they sound exactly well, people who people
who want to adventure. No one lives there. And here's
the thing. Though the Government of India legally possesses both
(14:03):
North and South Centinel Island and again all of the
and amens all of the Nicobar Islands. They do not
have any installations, no government, no scheduled route of transportation
to visit the area. People can visit South Centinel Island
and often probably sneak there just to dive for a
(14:25):
day or something like going without a lifeguard basically right,
But all the ships in the nearby area and all
the plains are banned from approaching North Sentinel Island through
the use of a three mile exclusion zone. Because you see,
unlike South Centinel Island, North Sentinel Island is inhabited. But
(14:51):
by who, you might ask, Well, we'll tell you right
after a quick word from our sponsor. 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
(15:13):
of North Centinel Island. The Centinel Ees are one of
the most mysterious populations on the planet, and there aren't
many of them. Estimates range from as few as fifty
people to maybe as many as four hundred. The last
census that the Indian government conducted that touched upon that
(15:33):
area only found fifteen people I think three women and
twelve men. But yeah, that that's something we're gonna see
here as we get into the story of the people
that you find when you're searching for people on North
Centinel Island generally aren't the all of the people that
(15:54):
are on the island, 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 inclusion 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 doubt
post haste. And there's a reason for that. They are
(16:17):
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 what we
(16:37):
can guess, the Sentinel East 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. Yeah,
there there's no evidence of agriculture that's been seen in
a few times that people have actually gotten close enough
to check it out. Um. Their diet consists of mostly fruits, plants,
(17:01):
stuff that's found on the island, coconuts, forest plants. Uh,
sometimes they will. They've been known to eat sea turtles, fish,
some small birds, and wild honey. And some researchers compare
the Sentinels to the Gay tribe, which is another tribe
that's on the Enemonese Islands, that they're indigenous peoples to
one of the other islands. And we should just say
(17:21):
here that the Sentinel Leaves 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 this, This culture has several barriers to communication, yes,
(17:41):
and we'll get to these, but they are an excellent
example of the one of the closest analogs that we
have to this population, at least we being the part
of the species that doesn't live on this island, we
who are forced to guess. So, like the Sentinels, they
(18:04):
were a hundred gatherers living out an ancient tradition, ancient
set of subsistence practices right that date back, by the
way to some of the earliest human civilization practices that
we know of today. So these are doing these people
(18:24):
are doing some of the first things that people did.
Still well, the Sentinel Ease, we suspect yes, yes, because
unlike the Sentinel Ease, the young gay were somewhat assimilated
to their detriment. In nineteen o one, the population was
registered at six hundred and seventy two. After colonization, there
(18:49):
were fewer than a hundred left. Ultimately, like the number
kept going down in the fifties, it was only a
hundred and fifty or so, and this was due to
the brutal acts of the Calling Nightser's also unanticipated factors
like exposure to non native diseases, which is one of
the biggest problems right right, right, It's one of the
(19:10):
problems with When Europeans came to the North and South
American continents, the same things occurred for them. It wasn't
a problem, it was a right. Yeah, well, I'm saying
for the native populations at the time it was it
was a horrific thing. And there's something else here that
(19:30):
on a personal level mystifies and disturbs me. And it
does it. It disturbs me because I can't explain why
it's happening, and I don't understand, 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,
(19:52):
I'm too much preface here. Here's what's happening today. The
younger is still around, but a major cause of the
decline in population is both the changes in food habits
brought about by contact with 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 of married
(20:16):
couples or sterile on Gay women rarely become pregnant before
the age of infant, and child mortality is in the
range of Now we could explain, we we could explain
infinite and child mortality due to you know, quality of
life right for the family, for the mother, for the kid,
(20:37):
so on. But the idea that an entire population without
you know, some clear environmental cause just starts to dwindle
that way. Yeah, I don't like that at all. It's frightening.
It's it's not it's not something that I can explain.
(20:58):
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, or is
there some kind of outside force that's acting on them
in some way, celical exposure of some sort that they're
unaware of, like forced sterilization, which many governments have done,
(21:20):
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. So also, the
on Game have been victims of sexual exploitation and alcoholism,
(21:44):
forced labor, all the all the terrible and expected things
that happen often to these tribes. So there may be
a lesson for us to learn with the Sentinel ease.
Through the perspective of the On Game, observers have compared
the Sentinelies community to communities that existed in the Stone Age.
(22:07):
They make weapons, they make tools. Uh, they're pretty badass
with bows and arrows. It's like three something feet they
can get you with an arrow. Yeah, yeah, four hundred
I think. Uh. 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
(22:34):
from close by islands. Like they brought an on gay
person there to attempt 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
Sentinelies simply have been isolated for so long again for
(22:55):
thousands of years, and their language has become its own
un intelligible thing. 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 in a language that is
so isolated. That's incredible. Now. Prior to to the European encroachment,
(23:22):
well that's what we're gonna call it. There, Um, there
were ancient traditions by the tribes people who lived around
North Centinel Island that the people on North Centinel Island
were cannibals, the only gay they They apparently were aware
of North Centinel Islands for some time, but the first
European report didn't actually occur until seventeen seventy one, which
(23:45):
isn't that long ago, just before the United States became
a thing. 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. Uh.
The Diligent was a hydrographic survey vessel owned by the
(24:05):
East India Company. Paul, can we get a spooky sound
effect when we say East India Company? Just booze? Just
put put some booze in there, perfect, that's appropriate. Yeah.
So Richie made one note where he essentially said he
saw a multitude of lights. We don't know if this
(24:27):
means fires, but he saw it from a distance. 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 hundred years. It's
just the one guy was like, oh whoa look at
that that's a that's not water, that's definitely an island.
(24:50):
So we fast forward to March eighteen sixty seven. That's
when Jeremiah Humphrey, he's the officer in charge of the
and Amonese, he journeyed to North s Little 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
(25:12):
what they're called Great and Amnese, and these are tribespeople
from 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,
(25:34):
shooting fish and apparently the sentineliest spot of the boat,
and they hid, and the Great and Amnees on board
were visibly frightened and warned Mphrey, the leader here, that
the islanders had a reputation for cannibalism, and Humphrey said, yep,
I'm not going there. He never actually landed, yeah, which
(25:56):
was surprisingly smart of him, right to listen to the
experts in the area. 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.
We'll also notice that at this point, despite this reputation
(26:20):
I'm sure it's largely exaggerated for cannibalism, the Sentinel Ease
are hiding, their avoiding and evading right there, not confronting.
And then also there's a note here they're described as
long haired by m. Free But when you see footage
(26:41):
of the Centinel Ease people today, there are no long
haired people. There's just a little bit of footage, And
you're right, so interesting because it seems as though things
are changing. In that same year again, eighteen sixty seven, UH,
an Indian merchant ship called the nineveh was surrect on
the reef surrounding the shore, and their captain was a
(27:03):
real piece of work. So eighty six passengers survived, twenty
crew members survived. They make it. They crash on that
reef surrounding the island. These are also very treacherous waters
and boom celebration time. UH. They survived these what one
and six people survived. On the third day, the native population,
(27:27):
which had been completely in hiding, attacks the captain. His
strategy is to take the ship's lifeboat and run away, yeah,
to get picked up by some other ship that's coming
by the passing brig And then a Royal Navy ship
came to rescue the remaining survivors who had held the
(27:48):
natives off by for several days by throwing stones and
brandishing sticks. And again this is a story that gets around,
so nobody else goes to that island for another third
teen years, yes, and then in January eight eight, an
armed British expedition manages a successful landing on North Sentinel Island.
(28:11):
They're led by the officer in charge of the Antonomese
by this time, uh twenty year old fellow by the
name of Maurice Vidal Portman. They went through the island
in search of local people, and they had again some
of people from the greater Antonomese population guiding them. So
(28:32):
what did they find. Well, the first thing they came
upon were a network of pathways where people had been
traveling by foot. Um there were several freshly abandoned villages
that they that they saw again with with nobody around.
They kept surveying the island they found and it had
fertile soil, there were grows of tropical hardwoods and this
(28:54):
this gentleman Portman didn't see a single human being other
than the people that he brought to the island. So
was it a ghost island? Maybe, but I don't think so. Eventually,
after several days of searching, the party discovered just six
Sentinel Ease. It was an elderly couple and they had
four children with them. And you know, as as they
(29:19):
tended to do, I guess in the colonial path, they
abducted these six people and they took them with them. 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
(29:40):
as they were leaving the island, probably because they were
exposed to new UH diseases, the family fell ill rapidly ill.
The parents died, and so in a strange move, Portman
and co. Sent the four surviving children back home with
(30:00):
presence the likes of which the Sentinel East community had
probably never seen before. And he talked about them in
a really smug, condescending way he said. You know, he
didn't feel particularly bad about it. He was annoyed by
what he considered to be their mannerisms and idiotic expressions.
That that's his choice of wording there. And they did
(30:23):
send four unaccompanied children back to an island that, to
their observation, was uninhabited. Oh yeah, I didn't even think
about that part. Just go lord of the flies kids,
we'll see you later. Wow, here's a here's a doll
with your presence. And Portman did go on to visit
the island several more times. In August of eighteen eighty three.
(30:45):
Uh 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. Portman's
search vessel lands on North Sentinel Island. The native people hide.
(31:08):
He doesn't see anyone, most importantly 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
eight five seven he 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
(31:29):
quote when he was explaining how is his chilly heart
had warmed to them. 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
(31:50):
my diseases. So the beginning of that quote is absolutely true.
But I think the whole thing really captures the spirit
of where is coming from. Right, 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
(32:11):
visit this place? Yeah, there's there doesn't seem to be
any interaction that happens, at least if you've read the
stories of reports of the previous interactions or lack of
so yeah, no, no reason. However, in eighteen s 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
(32:35):
of the fugitives drowned 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 by the natives. By by the natives. Ostensibly
nobody probably saw this, I'm assuming, but but that's what
appeared to have happened. A British party later spotted and
(32:58):
retrieved his body, and they noticed that it was pierced
with with arrows and his throat was cut. Yep, And
after this, North Centinal Island was left alone for another
almost hundred years. But what happened after that, There's more
to the story, will continue after a word from our sponsor.
(33:25):
So meanwhile, for the rest of civilization that was not
part of the community on North Sentinel Island, a bunch
of stuff was happening, you know what I mean. Amazing inventions,
new depths of human depravity, wars, peace, beautiful moments. Some
(33:45):
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
be forced to participate in this whole human experiment. In
nearby India, in nine the country finally gains independence from
(34:08):
British rule, and with this it gained control of the
Andamans and the Nicobar Islands, including North Sentinel Island. 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
(34:30):
about twenty years and uh in nineteen sixty seven, an
Indian anthropologist named Trilokanath Pondit was summoned by the governor
of the Andaman Islands for a major expedition to North
Sentinel Islands. Ponda was offered the opportunity to become the
first anthropologists to land there, accompanied by armed police, naval officers,
(34:56):
too large patrol boats and inflatable rubber ding ease to
get around the reef without breaking up a ship and
getting trapped. Not so good against arrows though 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,
(35:17):
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 Sentinel Ease
retreat into the jungle and they 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
(35:40):
in the empty huts of the village. But they also
they also steal some stuff. They called it collecting, but
they stole some stuff, and they left blankets and things
that could have been tainted. As we found with the
American native populations, something as simple as a blanket can
hold a lot of pathogens, can be a actor for disease. Right,
(36:01):
So what what kind of stuff did they take? 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. Uh Yeah,
And then they return another trip. On the nine March,
(36:23):
Ponda and his party find themselves trapped on the reef
flats between North Sentinel Island and Constant Islet. Constance Islet
was just a little bit away from the actual island itself,
and that when we talked about how the island grew
a little bit larger after the two thousand four earthquake
(36:48):
and Snami, 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 pot in between there, just to give the geography.
So they were certain that they were going to be attacked.
This is it, thought Pandit and company, So pendit or Pandit.
(37:14):
I want to be clear that we are not native speakers,
so may be mispronouncing this name. Uh. They were certain
that this was going to spell the end and that
they were going to die in the pursuit of this
great anthropological experiment. But something unexpected occurred. So at first
(37:38):
they see that the they see that two of the
natives who were just sort of observing them have realized
that they're stuck, and more people come out of they cover,
more men, more warriors, threatening to shoot at them, you know,
brandishing their arrows. Uh. And so they tried to appease
(38:01):
them by giving them fish that they had caught, but
that didn't work. More more dudes were coming at them,
getting closer and closer to shoot uh. And when they
got fish, some of them started to calm down, but
other people weren't having it, and they were still hostile there.
(38:28):
So they were still taking the fish, but then just
picking the bows back up and getting ready to kill them.
So the guys were thinking, eventually, we're gonna run out
of fish, right. But 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 and a
passionate embrace. This act was being repeated by other women,
(38:51):
each claiming 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 in the tempo of
this frenzy 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 through
some more fish, which were immediately retrieved by a few youngsters.
(39:13):
It was well past noons, so we headed back to
the ship. So they managed to survive, but they had
to watch something very weird, very personal interesting. I wonder
what kind of because it must be a show of
force in some way. I don't know. I don't know.
I mean, we're not anthropologist, man. Maybe it's just the
(39:35):
time of day. That was the thing that happened at
that time. We could we could just think about it
all day long. I think it's more like, I think
there's gonna be power in there somewhere, 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 his conspiracy
(39:58):
how Stuff Works dot com. They're also unproven murders or
at least missing person cases associated with the islands. Oh yeah.
In that same year of nine 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 is going
on here, it was concluded that the vessel had been
(40:19):
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 one's
just a mystery, and I don't think we'll ever have
a just a concrete reason for why that happened. And
then of course, the big, the big deal, right, the
(40:40):
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, Yeah,
it's one of the only existing it is really it's
the only existing footage that I have scene of the
Sentinel Ease. It was in the spring of nineteen four
(41:04):
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 wore padded armor
um that they had under these jackets, and again who's
to say what that does against arrows. Hopefully that would
(41:26):
have been, you know, some kind of protection, but who
knows um. And there is actual footage that you can see.
I believe that's the nineteen seventy four footage ulsits from earlier.
It's the only one that I've seen, I think. Then
in September nine, after both confirmed and suspected deaths at
(41:47):
the hands of the Sentinel Ease, the Indian government added
this uh 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 Aborigine tribes regulation. Um,
it's called a N P A t R. Yes, I
(42:07):
love a good acronym. Right. We should also add, you know,
nobody died in the nineteen seventy four incident, but I
got shot through the thigh. I think, uh, the that
was their reaction to giving the gifts. So it's interesting
because before this exclusion zone exists, and before it gets
extended even we see this history of people trying to
(42:30):
peacefully hide, 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 occasional badgery and from
the outside world, the sentinel East stop putting up with this. Yeah,
who knows what internal folklore they've they have now for
(42:54):
the people that come and visit them every few decades. Yeah,
there are there's Okay, so there are a couple of
Indie patients that they might have some ancient myths similar
to those of the on gay But it's just in
the The only way we know is that when that
two thousand and four disaster occurred, they got to high ground,
(43:15):
so they knew two. They knew that some sort of
natural 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
gay So that's possible. But can you imagine, and we're
(43:36):
entirely speculating here, Matt, can you imagine what oral histories
may exist now based on those four kids who returned, right?
I mean that sounds insane. You know. They took me,
they killed my parents, they brought me back with this
these strange beings on ships. We saw things that looked
(43:56):
like this that we have no way of really scribing
to you, right, And these deaths at the hands of
the Sentinel Ease residents still occur. In two thousand six,
two men were illegally fishing from mud crabs off the
coast and North Sentinel Island, and the Centinel Ease killed them.
(44:19):
An Indian Coast Guard helicopter tried to go retrieve the bodies,
and it was warded off by bows and arrows and
ambitious explorers. An anthropologist attempting to make first contact may
have already violated the prime directive in some ways. They
(44:39):
may have accelerated the age of the the civilization and
culture on the island, 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 in planet, but
(45:01):
that doesn't make them not human. They're still really smart
because human beings are for the most part, insanely super
villain level 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 as
(45:23):
we get to the end of today's show, we know
that the the they in today's episode is the sentinel
ease 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,
(45:47):
specifically Matt, Paul, Noel and I as well. They want
to be left alone. And is that so bad? What
should happen to the residents of the island. We're asking you.
Should they be left to own 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,
(46:13):
and like, like, 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? Yeah, I think
they're too. I I see these sides and both of
(46:36):
these arguments. Personally, I'm more on the leave them alone side.
Every 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 do stuff.
I think there there is a point to be made
(46:57):
about perhaps they are just protecting their own and their
territory rather than really not wanting to be contacted. You know. 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
asked this question, we also have to ask I don't
(47:21):
want to tilt the scales too much, but we also
have to ask ourselves what happened to the other indigenous
peoples of these island groups when outsiders contacted them. Well,
we have one example that's not the same in in
really many respects, but we can see the effects that
(47:43):
civilization has had on them. They're called the Jarwah. There
were a native tribe and native and Iman tribe, and
there is a They live on one island where there
is a road that goes through their reservation essentially on
this island. They're kind of in the center of the island,
and then there's, uh, there're like some tourist areas and
(48:03):
other Indian locals who live on the outer side at
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, we should
not use this road anymore. We're we're interrupting the life
of this tribe, this relatively uncontacted tribe, because I think
(48:26):
was the first time that they were officially contacted um.
But then tourism kind of became the thing where this
road began. They they these companies started taking human safaris
down this road where they would get in you know,
vans at large jeeps and pay people money to take
(48:49):
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. Um,
it's a pretty horror find thought, especially just it's it
feels very icky first of all. But then the second
thing is that you are disturbing these people in their
(49:10):
way of life. Every time a single vehicle goes by
on this road that they make an encounter. Um, it's
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 there and all the
signs they put up. You're not allowed to take any pictures,
(49:30):
photography or video of the Jarwi tribe, which is I
guess a good thing, But how do you police you
know that many people and 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 are inhabited um or I
(49:53):
guess eight. But um there are resorts and there's a
tradition for local peoples who live on these islands people's
of I guess Western civilization who burn their refuse. That's
what they do. They've got, you know, they're small residences
and they burn their trash. These larger resorts, though, make
so much trash that there's no way to really burn
(50:16):
it with 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 this these islands.
So anyway, that's just the one thing to think about.
If North Centinel Island ever becomes contacted to the point
where there are buildings and businesses being put up on
(50:38):
the island, we can kind of see what might happen
to the tribe, right, Yeah, you can also in addition
to the point you've made met you can you can
also check out videos of some of these native people
being taunted to dance for food and uh and similar
(51:01):
things like that. So the question is, now that we
know the stuff they don't want you to know on
the Sentinel east 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
(51:24):
lost in time? Or should something else be done. If so, what,
and if so how? We 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. Yes, but I'm aware of the inevitability that
(51:45):
they will I mean, they will be engulfed by civilization
at some point. Time is very long and humanity expands
ever so well, let me ask you this, what if
what if someone and in the population decides to build
several boats, and what if they under their own power
(52:07):
going to the outside world. But 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 one does. We wanted to introduce
you to one of the most secret places in the world,
(52:27):
right one of the one of the places where you
most likely will never get to travel and if you
do get a chance, just and probably you shouldn't write
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
(52:48):
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 find us on Facebook,
especially our commune d page. Here's where it gets crazy,
and in a lot of those places we are conspiracy
stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can also give us
a call and leave a message, and you might get
(53:09):
on the show. You might hear us directly answer to
your voice. Hopefully that's what we'll be doing. All you
have to do is give us a call one eight
three three s T d W y t K. And
if none of that quite badge of badgers, you can
always go relatively old school for the modern age and
(53:30):
email us directly. We are conspiracy at how stuff Works
dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Noel
is off on an adventure that we can't disclose yet,
but soon they called me Ben. We are joined with
our super producer, Paul Decant Paul Wilson Decade. Maybe is
that appropriate for this episode? Matt, you mean you're talking
about the soccer ball? Yes? Most importantly, you are you
(00:47):
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 explore during our video series. Yes,
and it's I think our fifth most popular video that
we ever made. Really, Yes, almost a million dollar views
(01:07):
at this point. All these smokes still not going to
beat that. Uh what about Satan? Yeah, Satan will always
be at the top. 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? Yes,
less than fifty I want to say great, but that's
(01:29):
still a lot of people. That's a lot of people,
and we do. We we do tell people not to
commit murder, right, we do. At some point in that one,
we can take it down. Do you want me to
take it down? I know, you know. I I feel
like we did a good job, is the thing? Okay,
a moral notions aside. It does feel like we did
(01:52):
a good job. But yes, we did a video on
North Sentinel Island several years ago, more years than I think. Well,
you probably don Matt. When do we do that one?
I believe it has been a minute since I looked
at it. It's been a while. Uh So North Sentinel
Island has a mystery to it, and if you have
(02:16):
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.
Oh that sounds good. Yeah, that's great. Human beings are
a species that loves to talk about itself. That's us,
(02:37):
and that's us, that's you, that's you doo uh 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 ability to adapt to inhospitable environments
has spread us across the planet, and the modern age,
(02:58):
technological breaks allow us to communicate instantaneously regardless of our
physical location. I mean, just just think of all the
podcasts that have Like you and I prefer to hang
out in person in the room, but there are many
very successful, very fascinating podcast with hosts that rarely see
(03:20):
each other in person, much like stuff you missed in
history class. Yeah, that's that's actually I'm surprised I didn't
think about that. Yeah, one of our host is based
in Atlanta on that show, and the other in Boston,
and they can communicate pretty much instantaneous. 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
(03:42):
on islands that aren't considered a continent all over the planet.
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
(04:04):
spread farther and farther, some groups of humans also became
isolated those geographical boundaries bedeviled us, impassable mountains, shifting ice,
dense dangerous jungles, rising seas, and treacherous currents to your
point about islands, right, all all played a role in
keeping some groups of human beings hidden from the progress
(04:27):
and the curses of global society. And you know, we've all,
like 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. I remember thinking
(04:47):
that these were relatively I don't know, fictionalized things growing up,
like fair not I don't want to say fairy tales,
but fictional adventure stories. Yes. There, They're depicted in film
and in um books all over the place, various fictional
ones and nonfictional encounters of this sort. And the I
(05:10):
think that line gets blurred a little bit in our
in our popular culture of what what a real encounter
looks like, in what a u a played up one
looks like for the screen. 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,
(05:31):
or whether they were a blend of the two, usually
to make someone from the West feel more important about
themselves or less like they were colonizers or less like
they were colonizers. That's true regardless. Nowadays, it seems like
most of these events are encounters are going to be
relegated to history books. In short, everyone has met everyone
(05:57):
or is aware of everyone, right, we all get it.
Everyone is at least aware enough that there's an outside world.
Like a tribe, most most tribes of isolated people are
aware that there's an outside world with some technology in it. Right.
And it is sadly true that there are many countries
(06:18):
that people in other countries aren't very much aware of,
you know, like you've seen, especially European media gives people
in the US a real devil of a time with this.
And you can see numerous YouTube compilations of Americans being
asked to point to a country on the map on
(06:39):
the world map and getting it cartoonishly wrong. That's a
little bit of a stereotype. Well, I promised, people are
I promised the editors are cherry picking that for all
our non American listeners. We certainly hope, so we certainly
hope so. And regardless of how hilarious those videos might be.
Matt your point, I would say, absolutely correct. We are
(07:01):
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
that the other country exists and is a real thing.
Thank you television and Internet. Thank you television and to
(07:24):
add books. Yes, uh, 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. Yes,
we've been working together for a long time, and it
(07:45):
sounds like around that's when we we went past market. Yeah,
by of the world's population lived in an urban area,
and that shift is pretty crazy, right, pretty recent too. Yeah,
it's it's definitely um a condensing of humanity into these
(08:07):
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,
you know a lot of those things right, right exactly,
And in this in this world where there are increasingly
(08:30):
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. Many
people say that's a myth because so many anthropologists of
(08:53):
the past and days of yore wanted to be the
first outsider to encounter some group. That probably that has happened, right,
But a a hard definition of an uncontacted tribe, as
in someone who's some group that has never seen nor,
as they say in Tennessee, heard tell of any other group.
(09:14):
The odds of that still existing are are preposterously low, right, yeah.
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
(09:38):
obviously somebody's been there, right, that's the assumption at least,
or you could go there. So why why wouldn't have
someone gone there already, right, 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
(09:58):
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 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. It's called North Sentinel Island. It's
(10:22):
relatively tiny. It's just seventy two square kilometers that's square
miles um. And it's well that's before the two four earthquake.
Because the the landmass changed slightly, they're expanded and it's
a part of the Andaman Archipelago. This is a grouping
of the Endeman and Nicobar Islands. It's located at the
(10:43):
crux of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman 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.
There between six degrees and fourteen degrees north latitude and
ninety two degrees and ninety four degrees east longitude. Now
that's four hundred kilometers from mainland India on one side,
(11:05):
that's like a hundred and seventy miles, and then a
thousand kilometers from Thailand, and that is about six hundred
and twenty one miles, so it's kind of in the
center of those. Basically, if you zoom out far enough
on Google 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
(11:25):
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, and
it's in these these two sets of islands, the Andaman
and the Nicobar Islands. It's it's some of the most
remote spots on the entire planet. Yes, some of the
(11:46):
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. It's a
great book. But enough about that book. Uh, the islands
(12:09):
just on their own there are what nearly six hundred
and only nine are open to foreign tourists, very very
rural locations in in addition to being very remote. But
but they are open to tourism. Those nine, those that
those come into play in the rest of our story. Yeah,
they're very much open to tourism. Uh, locals be damned honestly,
(12:33):
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.
It is a territory of India and it is controlled
(12:55):
by India's generally speakings composed 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
called Nicobar Islands. Enough, that's pretty easy. Nominally, these territories
(13:21):
and the island we're talking about today, North Sentinel Island,
belong in the south and a man administrative district which
is again part of this Indian territory. The nearby South
Sentinel Island is uninhabited. It occasionally receives visitors, mostly adventurous
(13:41):
divers who were like, Yeahlberg, let's go somewhere where no
one les, like Overbend. I'm sure they don't sound like that,
and I'm sure they sound exactly well, people who people
who want to adventure. No one lives there. And here's
the thing. Though the Government of India legally possesses both
(14:03):
North and South Centinel Island and again all of the
and amens all of the Nicobar Islands. They do not
have any installations, no government, no scheduled route of transportation
to visit the area. People can visit South Centinel Island
and often probably sneak there just to dive for a
(14:25):
day or something like going without a lifeguard basically right,
But all the ships in the nearby area and all
the plains are banned from approaching North Sentinel Island through
the use of a three mile exclusion zone. Because you see,
unlike South Centinel Island, North Sentinel Island is inhabited. But
(14:51):
by who, you might ask, Well, we'll tell you right
after a quick word from our sponsor. 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
(15:13):
of North Centinel Island. The Centinel Ees are one of
the most mysterious populations on the planet, and there aren't
many of them. Estimates range from as few as fifty
people to maybe as many as four hundred. The last
census that the Indian government conducted that touched upon that
(15:33):
area only found fifteen people I think three women and
twelve men. But yeah, that that's something we're gonna see
here as we get into the story of the people
that you find when you're searching for people on North
Centinel Island generally aren't the all of the people that
(15:54):
are on the island, 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 inclusion 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 doubt
post haste. And there's a reason for that. They are
(16:17):
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 what we
(16:37):
can guess, the Sentinel East 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. Yeah,
there there's no evidence of agriculture that's been seen in
a few times that people have actually gotten close enough
to check it out. Um. Their diet consists of mostly fruits, plants,
(17:01):
stuff that's found on the island, coconuts, forest plants. Uh,
sometimes they will. They've been known to eat sea turtles, fish,
some small birds, and wild honey. And some researchers compare
the Sentinels to the Gay tribe, which is another tribe
that's on the Enemonese Islands, that they're indigenous peoples to
one of the other islands. And we should just say
(17:21):
here that the Sentinel Leaves 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 this, This culture has several barriers to communication, yes,
(17:41):
and we'll get to these, but they are an excellent
example of the one of the closest analogs that we
have to this population, at least we being the part
of the species that doesn't live on this island, we
who are forced to guess. So, like the Sentinels, they
(18:04):
were a hundred gatherers living out an ancient tradition, ancient
set of subsistence practices right that date back, by the
way to some of the earliest human civilization practices that
we know of today. So these are doing these people
(18:24):
are doing some of the first things that people did.
Still well, the Sentinel Ease, we suspect yes, yes, because
unlike the Sentinel Ease, the young gay were somewhat assimilated
to their detriment. In nineteen o one, the population was
registered at six hundred and seventy two. After colonization, there
(18:49):
were fewer than a hundred left. Ultimately, like the number
kept going down in the fifties, it was only a
hundred and fifty or so, and this was due to
the brutal acts of the Calling Nightser's also unanticipated factors
like exposure to non native diseases, which is one of
the biggest problems right right, right, It's one of the
(19:10):
problems with When Europeans came to the North and South
American continents, the same things occurred for them. It wasn't
a problem, it was a right. Yeah, well, I'm saying
for the native populations at the time it was it
was a horrific thing. And there's something else here that
(19:30):
on a personal level mystifies and disturbs me. And it
does it. It disturbs me because I can't explain why
it's happening, and I don't understand, 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,
(19:52):
I'm too much preface here. Here's what's happening today. The
younger is still around, but a major cause of the
decline in population is both the changes in food habits
brought about by contact with 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 of married
(20:16):
couples or sterile on Gay women rarely become pregnant before
the age of infant, and child mortality is in the
range of Now we could explain, we we could explain
infinite and child mortality due to you know, quality of
life right for the family, for the mother, for the kid,
(20:37):
so on. But the idea that an entire population without
you know, some clear environmental cause just starts to dwindle
that way. Yeah, I don't like that at all. It's frightening.
It's it's not it's not something that I can explain.
(20:58):
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, or is
there some kind of outside force that's acting on them
in some way, celical exposure of some sort that they're
unaware of, like forced sterilization, which many governments have done,
(21:20):
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. So also, the
on Game have been victims of sexual exploitation and alcoholism,
(21:44):
forced labor, all the all the terrible and expected things
that happen often to these tribes. So there may be
a lesson for us to learn with the Sentinel ease.
Through the perspective of the On Game, observers have compared
the Sentinelies community to communities that existed in the Stone Age.
(22:07):
They make weapons, they make tools. Uh, they're pretty badass
with bows and arrows. It's like three something feet they
can get you with an arrow. Yeah, yeah, four hundred
I think. Uh. 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
(22:34):
from close by islands. Like they brought an on gay
person there to attempt 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
Sentinelies simply have been isolated for so long again for
(22:55):
thousands of years, and their language has become its own
un intelligible thing. 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 in a language that is
so isolated. That's incredible. Now. Prior to to the European encroachment,
(23:22):
well that's what we're gonna call it. There, Um, there
were ancient traditions by the tribes people who lived around
North Centinel Island that the people on North Centinel Island
were cannibals, the only gay they They apparently were aware
of North Centinel Islands for some time, but the first
European report didn't actually occur until seventeen seventy one, which
(23:45):
isn't that long ago, just before the United States became
a thing. 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. Uh.
The Diligent was a hydrographic survey vessel owned by the
(24:05):
East India Company. Paul, can we get a spooky sound
effect when we say East India Company? Just booze? Just
put put some booze in there, perfect, that's appropriate. Yeah.
So Richie made one note where he essentially said he
saw a multitude of lights. We don't know if this
(24:27):
means fires, but he saw it from a distance. 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 hundred years. It's
just the one guy was like, oh whoa look at
that that's a that's not water, that's definitely an island.
(24:50):
So we fast forward to March eighteen sixty seven. That's
when Jeremiah Humphrey, he's the officer in charge of the
and Amonese, he journeyed to North s Little 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
(25:12):
what they're called Great and Amnese, and these are tribespeople
from 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,
(25:34):
shooting fish and apparently the sentineliest spot of the boat,
and they hid, and the Great and Amnees on board
were visibly frightened and warned Mphrey, the leader here, that
the islanders had a reputation for cannibalism, and Humphrey said, yep,
I'm not going there. He never actually landed, yeah, which
(25:56):
was surprisingly smart of him, right to listen to the
experts in the area. 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.
We'll also notice that at this point, despite this reputation
(26:20):
I'm sure it's largely exaggerated for cannibalism, the Sentinel Ease
are hiding, their avoiding and evading right there, not confronting.
And then also there's a note here they're described as
long haired by m. Free But when you see footage
(26:41):
of the Centinel Ease people today, there are no long
haired people. There's just a little bit of footage, And
you're right, so interesting because it seems as though things
are changing. In that same year again, eighteen sixty seven, UH,
an Indian merchant ship called the nineveh was surrect on
the reef surrounding the shore, and their captain was a
(27:03):
real piece of work. So eighty six passengers survived, twenty
crew members survived. They make it. They crash on that
reef surrounding the island. These are also very treacherous waters
and boom celebration time. UH. They survived these what one
and six people survived. On the third day, the native population,
(27:27):
which had been completely in hiding, attacks the captain. His
strategy is to take the ship's lifeboat and run away, yeah,
to get picked up by some other ship that's coming
by the passing brig And then a Royal Navy ship
came to rescue the remaining survivors who had held the
(27:48):
natives off by for several days by throwing stones and
brandishing sticks. And again this is a story that gets around,
so nobody else goes to that island for another third
teen years, yes, and then in January eight eight, an
armed British expedition manages a successful landing on North Sentinel Island.
(28:11):
They're led by the officer in charge of the Antonomese
by this time, uh twenty year old fellow by the
name of Maurice Vidal Portman. They went through the island
in search of local people, and they had again some
of people from the greater Antonomese population guiding them. So
(28:32):
what did they find. Well, the first thing they came
upon were a network of pathways where people had been
traveling by foot. Um there were several freshly abandoned villages
that they that they saw again with with nobody around.
They kept surveying the island they found and it had
fertile soil, there were grows of tropical hardwoods and this
(28:54):
this gentleman Portman didn't see a single human being other
than the people that he brought to the island. So
was it a ghost island? Maybe, but I don't think so. Eventually,
after several days of searching, the party discovered just six
Sentinel Ease. It was an elderly couple and they had
four children with them. And you know, as as they
(29:19):
tended to do, I guess in the colonial path, they
abducted these six people and they took them with them. 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
(29:40):
as they were leaving the island, probably because they were
exposed to new UH diseases, the family fell ill rapidly ill.
The parents died, and so in a strange move, Portman
and co. Sent the four surviving children back home with
(30:00):
presence the likes of which the Sentinel East community had
probably never seen before. And he talked about them in
a really smug, condescending way he said. You know, he
didn't feel particularly bad about it. He was annoyed by
what he considered to be their mannerisms and idiotic expressions.
That that's his choice of wording there. And they did
(30:23):
send four unaccompanied children back to an island that, to
their observation, was uninhabited. Oh yeah, I didn't even think
about that part. Just go lord of the flies kids,
we'll see you later. Wow, here's a here's a doll
with your presence. And Portman did go on to visit
the island several more times. In August of eighteen eighty three.
(30:45):
Uh 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. Portman's
search vessel lands on North Sentinel Island. The native people hide.
(31:08):
He doesn't see anyone, most importantly 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
eight five seven he 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
(31:29):
quote when he was explaining how is his chilly heart
had warmed to them. 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
(31:50):
my diseases. So the beginning of that quote is absolutely true.
But I think the whole thing really captures the spirit
of where is coming from. Right, 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
(32:11):
visit this place? Yeah, there's there doesn't seem to be
any interaction that happens, at least if you've read the
stories of reports of the previous interactions or lack of
so yeah, no, no reason. However, in eighteen s 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
(32:35):
of the fugitives drowned 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 by the natives. By by the natives. Ostensibly
nobody probably saw this, I'm assuming, but but that's what
appeared to have happened. A British party later spotted and
(32:58):
retrieved his body, and they noticed that it was pierced
with with arrows and his throat was cut. Yep, And
after this, North Centinal Island was left alone for another
almost hundred years. But what happened after that, There's more
to the story, will continue after a word from our sponsor.
(33:25):
So meanwhile, for the rest of civilization that was not
part of the community on North Sentinel Island, a bunch
of stuff was happening, you know what I mean. Amazing inventions,
new depths of human depravity, wars, peace, beautiful moments. Some
(33:45):
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
be forced to participate in this whole human experiment. In
nearby India, in nine the country finally gains independence from
(34:08):
British rule, and with this it gained control of the
Andamans and the Nicobar Islands, including North Sentinel Island. 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
(34:30):
about twenty years and uh in nineteen sixty seven, an
Indian anthropologist named Trilokanath Pondit was summoned by the governor
of the Andaman Islands for a major expedition to North
Sentinel Islands. Ponda was offered the opportunity to become the
first anthropologists to land there, accompanied by armed police, naval officers,
(34:56):
too large patrol boats and inflatable rubber ding ease to
get around the reef without breaking up a ship and
getting trapped. Not so good against arrows though 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,
(35:17):
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 Sentinel Ease
retreat into the jungle and they 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
(35:40):
in the empty huts of the village. But they also
they also steal some stuff. They called it collecting, but
they stole some stuff, and they left blankets and things
that could have been tainted. As we found with the
American native populations, something as simple as a blanket can
hold a lot of pathogens, can be a actor for disease. Right,
(36:01):
So what what kind of stuff did they take? 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. Uh Yeah,
And then they return another trip. On the nine March,
(36:23):
Ponda and his party find themselves trapped on the reef
flats between North Sentinel Island and Constant Islet. Constance Islet
was just a little bit away from the actual island itself,
and that when we talked about how the island grew
a little bit larger after the two thousand four earthquake
(36:48):
and Snami, 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 pot in between there, just to give the geography.
So they were certain that they were going to be attacked.
This is it, thought Pandit and company, So pendit or Pandit.
(37:14):
I want to be clear that we are not native speakers,
so may be mispronouncing this name. Uh. They were certain
that this was going to spell the end and that
they were going to die in the pursuit of this
great anthropological experiment. But something unexpected occurred. So at first
(37:38):
they see that the they see that two of the
natives who were just sort of observing them have realized
that they're stuck, and more people come out of they cover,
more men, more warriors, threatening to shoot at them, you know,
brandishing their arrows. Uh. And so they tried to appease
(38:01):
them by giving them fish that they had caught, but
that didn't work. More more dudes were coming at them,
getting closer and closer to shoot uh. And when they
got fish, some of them started to calm down, but
other people weren't having it, and they were still hostile there.
(38:28):
So they were still taking the fish, but then just
picking the bows back up and getting ready to kill them.
So the guys were thinking, eventually, we're gonna run out
of fish, right. But 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 and a
passionate embrace. This act was being repeated by other women,
(38:51):
each claiming 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 in the tempo of
this frenzy 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 through
some more fish, which were immediately retrieved by a few youngsters.
(39:13):
It was well past noons, so we headed back to
the ship. So they managed to survive, but they had
to watch something very weird, very personal interesting. I wonder
what kind of because it must be a show of
force in some way. I don't know. I don't know.
I mean, we're not anthropologist, man. Maybe it's just the
(39:35):
time of day. That was the thing that happened at
that time. We could we could just think about it
all day long. I think it's more like, I think
there's gonna be power in there somewhere, 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 his conspiracy
(39:58):
how Stuff Works dot com. They're also unproven murders or
at least missing person cases associated with the islands. Oh yeah.
In that same year of nine 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 is going
on here, it was concluded that the vessel had been
(40:19):
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 one's
just a mystery, and I don't think we'll ever have
a just a concrete reason for why that happened. And
then of course, the big, the big deal, right, the
(40:40):
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, Yeah,
it's one of the only existing it is really it's
the only existing footage that I have scene of the
Sentinel Ease. It was in the spring of nineteen four
(41:04):
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 wore padded armor
um that they had under these jackets, and again who's
to say what that does against arrows. Hopefully that would
(41:26):
have been, you know, some kind of protection, but who
knows um. And there is actual footage that you can see.
I believe that's the nineteen seventy four footage ulsits from earlier.
It's the only one that I've seen, I think. Then
in September nine, after both confirmed and suspected deaths at
(41:47):
the hands of the Sentinel Ease, the Indian government added
this uh 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 Aborigine tribes regulation. Um,
it's called a N P A t R. Yes, I
(42:07):
love a good acronym. Right. We should also add, you know,
nobody died in the nineteen seventy four incident, but I
got shot through the thigh. I think, uh, the that
was their reaction to giving the gifts. So it's interesting
because before this exclusion zone exists, and before it gets
extended even we see this history of people trying to
(42:30):
peacefully hide, 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 occasional badgery and from
the outside world, the sentinel East stop putting up with this. Yeah,
who knows what internal folklore they've they have now for
(42:54):
the people that come and visit them every few decades. Yeah,
there are there's Okay, so there are a couple of
Indie patients that they might have some ancient myths similar
to those of the on gay But it's just in
the The only way we know is that when that
two thousand and four disaster occurred, they got to high ground,
(43:15):
so they knew two. They knew that some sort of
natural 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
gay So that's possible. But can you imagine, and we're
(43:36):
entirely speculating here, Matt, can you imagine what oral histories
may exist now based on those four kids who returned, right?
I mean that sounds insane. You know. They took me,
they killed my parents, they brought me back with this
these strange beings on ships. We saw things that looked
(43:56):
like this that we have no way of really scribing
to you, right, And these deaths at the hands of
the Sentinel Ease residents still occur. In two thousand six,
two men were illegally fishing from mud crabs off the
coast and North Sentinel Island, and the Centinel Ease killed them.
(44:19):
An Indian Coast Guard helicopter tried to go retrieve the bodies,
and it was warded off by bows and arrows and
ambitious explorers. An anthropologist attempting to make first contact may
have already violated the prime directive in some ways. They
(44:39):
may have accelerated the age of the the civilization and
culture on the island, 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 in planet, but
(45:01):
that doesn't make them not human. They're still really smart
because human beings are for the most part, insanely super
villain level 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 as
(45:23):
we get to the end of today's show, we know
that the the they in today's episode is the sentinel
ease 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,
(45:47):
specifically Matt, Paul, Noel and I as well. They want
to be left alone. And is that so bad? What
should happen to the residents of the island. We're asking you.
Should they be left to own 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,
(46:13):
and like, like, 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? Yeah, I think
they're too. I I see these sides and both of
(46:36):
these arguments. Personally, I'm more on the leave them alone side.
Every 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 do stuff.
I think there there is a point to be made
(46:57):
about perhaps they are just protecting their own and their
territory rather than really not wanting to be contacted. You know. 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
asked this question, we also have to ask I don't
(47:21):
want to tilt the scales too much, but we also
have to ask ourselves what happened to the other indigenous
peoples of these island groups when outsiders contacted them. Well,
we have one example that's not the same in in
really many respects, but we can see the effects that
(47:43):
civilization has had on them. They're called the Jarwah. There
were a native tribe and native and Iman tribe, and
there is a They live on one island where there
is a road that goes through their reservation essentially on
this island. They're kind of in the center of the island,
and then there's, uh, there're like some tourist areas and
(48:03):
other Indian locals who live on the outer side at
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, we should
not use this road anymore. We're we're interrupting the life
of this tribe, this relatively uncontacted tribe, because I think
(48:26):
was the first time that they were officially contacted um.
But then tourism kind of became the thing where this
road began. They they these companies started taking human safaris
down this road where they would get in you know,
vans at large jeeps and pay people money to take
(48:49):
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. Um,
it's a pretty horror find thought, especially just it's it
feels very icky first of all. But then the second
thing is that you are disturbing these people in their
(49:10):
way of life. Every time a single vehicle goes by
on this road that they make an encounter. Um, it's
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 there and all the
signs they put up. You're not allowed to take any pictures,
(49:30):
photography or video of the Jarwi tribe, which is I
guess a good thing, But how do you police you
know that many people and 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 are inhabited um or I
(49:53):
guess eight. But um there are resorts and there's a
tradition for local peoples who live on these islands people's
of I guess Western civilization who burn their refuse. That's
what they do. They've got, you know, they're small residences
and they burn their trash. These larger resorts, though, make
so much trash that there's no way to really burn
(50:16):
it with 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 this these islands.
So anyway, that's just the one thing to think about.
If North Centinel Island ever becomes contacted to the point
where there are buildings and businesses being put up on
(50:38):
the island, we can kind of see what might happen
to the tribe, right, Yeah, you can also in addition
to the point you've made met you can you can
also check out videos of some of these native people
being taunted to dance for food and uh and similar
(51:01):
things like that. So the question is, now that we
know the stuff they don't want you to know on
the Sentinel east 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
(51:24):
lost in time? Or should something else be done. If so, what,
and if so how? We 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. Yes, but I'm aware of the inevitability that
(51:45):
they will I mean, they will be engulfed by civilization
at some point. Time is very long and humanity expands
ever so well, let me ask you this, what if
what if someone and in the population decides to build
several boats, and what if they under their own power
(52:07):
going to the outside world. But 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 one does. We wanted to introduce
you to one of the most secret places in the world,
(52:27):
right one of the one of the places where you
most likely will never get to travel and if you
do get a chance, just and probably you shouldn't write
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
(52:48):
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 find us on Facebook,
especially our commune d page. Here's where it gets crazy,
and in a lot of those places we are conspiracy
stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can also give us
a call and leave a message, and you might get
(53:09):
on the show. You might hear us directly answer to
your voice. Hopefully that's what we'll be doing. All you
have to do is give us a call one eight
three three s T d W y t K. And
if none of that quite badge of badgers, you can
always go relatively old school for the modern age and
(53:30):
email us directly. We are conspiracy at how stuff Works
dot com.
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Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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