North Sentinel Island

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North Sentinel Island
North Sentinel Island, NASA satellite photo, 2009
North Sentinel Island, NASA satellite photo, 2009
Waters Indian Ocean
Archipelago Andaman Islands
Geographical location 11 ° 33 '  N , 92 ° 15'  E Coordinates: 11 ° 33 '  N , 92 ° 15'  E
North Sentinel Island (Andaman and Nicobar Islands)
North Sentinel Island
length 12 km
width 10 km
surface 59.67 km²
Highest elevation 122  m
Residents 50 Sentinelese (December 31, 2013
estimate)
<1 inh / km²
main place -

North Sentinel Island is the westernmost island of the Andaman archipelago belonging to India in the Indian Ocean . It was the first European to sight John Ritchie in 1771, and it was the first European to see it in 1880 by Maurice Vidal Portman .

The island is inhabited exclusively by the Sentinelese , who refuse any contact with the rest of the world. The Onge , another indigenous people of the Andamans, call the island Chankute . What the Sentinelese call their homeland is unknown.

geography

Map of North Sentinel Island → Note: The highest point is given here as “98  m ” - official information is 122 m

The island is somewhat isolated from the rest of the group and is surrounded by dangerous reefs . It has an area of ​​almost 60 km². The highest point reaches 98 or 122 meters above sea level. The island has dense tropical vegetation and is quite flat. The circumference of the island is approximately 28 kilometers. The island belongs to the Ferrarganj tehsil in the South Andaman District .

population

The population was 39 according to the 2001 census, but it could also be more than a hundred who live in the island's forests, as no actual census took place due to the self-chosen isolation of the Sentinelese. The estimate as of December 31, 2013 listed 50 residents but suffered from the same problem.

history

The British John Ritchie reported in 1771 that North Sentinel Island must be populated, as numerous lights had been seen on the coast from the Diligent , a research ship of the East India Company .

In 1880, the British colonial official Maurice Vidal Portman landed on the island as the first European and abducted some Sentinelese who quickly fell ill and died. Portman returned to the island several times between January 1885 and January 1887.

In 1896 an Indian convict escaped from the Great Andamans on a raft and came to the island. The search team found him hit by arrows and with his throat cut days later.

Heinrich Harrer tried in 1974 in the company of the Belgian ex-King Leopold III. to make contact with the Sentinelese, but was threatened with bow and arrow and withdrew. In 1975 anthropologists and photographer Raghubir Singh were there for National Geographic . They lured residents to the beach with coconuts and other foods and photographed them from a distance.

On August 2, 1981, during a typhoon, the freighter Primrose ran aground in the north-west of the island. The 33-strong crew was rescued by helicopter. The wreck remained in place ( location ) because it was not possible to recover it.

On January 4, 1991 there were attempts to establish contact. The ethnologists Trilokinath Pandit and Vishvajit Pandya were involved. This contact was peaceful.

The island was declared a restricted area in 1996 , so visiting the island has been prohibited since then. The ban is monitored by the Indian Navy and Indian Police .

When a helicopter belonging to the Indian Coast Guard flew over the island after the earthquake in the Indian Ocean in 2004 , it was shot at with arrows and forced to turn back. The earthquake raised the tectonic plate beneath the island by one to two meters, expanding its coastline and drying some of the coral reefs.

On January 26, 2006, two fishermen may have been killed by the Sentinelese . The exact circumstances of death are unclear, as is the question of whether the fishermen had secretly rowed to the coast or accidentally deviated from course. The discovery of the bodies on January 28, 2006 by a search helicopter contradicts rumors that the Sentinelese practiced cannibalism for a long time .

On November 17, 2018, the American missionary John Allen Chau was killed while illegally trying to get to the island.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Rainer Leurs: Dread Island North Sentinel Island: Abandoned by all good guests. one day on Spiegel Online , September 9, 2013.
  2. ^ PK Mohanty: Encyclopaedia of Primitive Tribes in India, Volume 2 . Kalpaz Publications, Delhi 2004, ISBN 9788178352794 , pp. 585-587.
  3. ↑ Vinay K. Srivastava: The Sentinelese (PDF: 1.5 MB, 16 pages). National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST), New Delhi 2017 (English; Powerpoint presentation by a professor from the Anthropological Survey of India at the PVTGs seminar Conservation of Particularly Vulnerable Tribes of Andaman and Nicobar Islands ).
  4. ^ Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Administrative Divisions 2011
  5. ^ Andaman & Nicobar Islands: Statistical Hand Book 2007-08 to 2009-10. (PDF; 368 kB) Andaman & Nicobar Administration; Table - 1.7; As of August 28, 2017 (English).
  6. ↑ Islandwise Area and Population - 2011 Census. (PDF) Table-1.23; Schedule Tribe population in A & N Islands (as of December 31, 2013)
  7. ↑ a b c George Weber: Chapter 8: The Tribes; Part 6. The Sentineli . In: The Andamanese . Archived from the original on May 7, 2013.
  8. ^ Adam Goodheart: The Last Island of the Savages . In: American Scholar . 2000. Archived from the original on September 25, 2012.
  9. ↑ a b Jayanta Sarkar: Befriending the Sentinelese of the Andamans: A Dilemma . In: Georg Pfeffer, Deepak Kumar Behera (Eds.): Development Issues, Transition and Change (=  Contemporary Society: Tribal Studies ). tape 2 . Concept Publishing Company, New Delhi 1997, ISBN 81-7022-642-2 , pp. 287 ( books.google.com ).
  10. ↑ baits for Sentinelese March 2nd 2011, accessed on November 22, 2018
  11. ↑ https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Leiche-des-Amerikaners-der-unkontaktierter-Volk-missionieren-wollte-soll-nicht-geborgen-haben-4233065.html
  12. ↑ Film recordings
  13. ^ Vishvajit Pandya: The Specter of 'Hostility': The Sentinelese between Text and Image . In: In the Forest: Visual and Material Worlds of Andamanese History (1858-2006) . University Press of America, Lanham MD 2009, ISBN 978-0-7618-4153-1 , pp. 326-364.
  14. ↑ Aborigines kill a tourist with a bow and arrow . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 21, 2018 ( faz.net ).