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Say "bye bye" to the Stone Age

By razib on July 12, 2006.

A few months ago I posted on a conundrum that faces liberal moderns when it comes to engaging "traditional" peoples. The short of it is that the typical Eurasian pathogen load is deadly over the life history of individuals from many smaller isolated populations. I posted after reading Land of the Naked People, an attempt by an Indian science journalist to assay the situation on the ground in the Andaman Inslands. Now, John Hawks points to an article in Science which moots many of the issues I brought up.

Fundamentally a liberal order assumes equality before the law, but, as realists who know there is human variation we generally take this as an idealization. Nevertheless, we assume that within reasonable bounds blindness before the law can work because we share powerful commonalities as human beings. But contact with other human beings might be fatal from some humans, and as a whole the Andanman Island population seems very vulnerable. Should we care? Should we treat them like ethnic Bubble Boys?

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genetics

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Yes, the rest of the human race should definitely stay away from North Sentinel Island, the last "uncontacted" Andamanese. The Jarawa tribe first came into regular contact with Indians in the late 1990s and there population has dropped significantly already from diseases. The Sentinelese don't want to be contacted -- they killed two drunken Indian fishermen who washed up on their shore just a few months ago -- so let's leave them alone.

To read more about them, here's my interview with George Weber, founder of the Andaman Society:

http://www.isteve.com/Andamanese.htm

Steve,

That's why I wonder if the Sentinelese may harbor Neanderthal genes, as they are possibly the most isolated community on earth??

Of course to check this theory out, might destroy them.

That's why I wonder if the Sentinelese may harbor Neanderthal genes, as they are possibly the most isolated community on earth??

well, if they took the southern route that is unlikely. though i am not totally convinced that they have been isolated for "30,000 years." looking at a uniparental lineage can confuse when you go back tens of thousands of years.