Comment

Bonnie Raitt: Right Down the Line

188
Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus4/12/2012 2:10:15 am PDT

The thing I question about that article is this:

The small tribe on North Sentinel Island continues to resist all contact with the outside world — just as they have for the past 60,000 years

Not only does it not make sense (i.e., what would have been the “outside world” 60,000 years ago?) but there is no evidence for it.

If genetic data could be collected we could determine if some of the Andaman island inhabitants are their close relatives, which is likely. Similarly small populations of people in the region have very low fertility, probably due to inbreeding over the centuries. As such, it is highly unlikely the Sentinelese have been there for longer than several centuries.