By: S. Rowan Wolf, Ph.D. Uncommon Thought Journal
January 9, 2005
This work is under a fair use Creative Commons License
Six tribes (Great Andamanese, Jarawa, Onge, Nicobarese, Sentinelese, and Shompen) live on the Nicobar and Andaman Island chains which are part of India's territories. These tribes have survived the onslaught of Britain's efforts at genocide in the late 1800s and more recent conflicts with India, before India agreed to break all contact and ban non-tribespeople from their territories. By all accounts that I have found, most of the tribespeople seem to have survived though there are fears for the largest group - the Nicobarese. A few of the Shompen and Great Andamanese have been removed to protected locations temporarily.
These tribes have chosen to live in their traditional and historic ways, and want no contact with the so-called "modern world." They are variously referred to as "primitive," "stone age," and "paleolithic" tribesman. They are certainly among the few peoples on the planet who have been able to resist the decimation of millenia of conquerors, colonizers, and more recently, "devlopment."
The fact that these peoples seem to have largely escaped the disaster that has swept the region, and their islands, while so many thousands have not, speaks perhaps to one of the costs of so-called "civilization." It is both interesting and sad, that their survivng the most recent disaster is cedited (by some) to a "sixth sense":
“They can smell the wind. They can gauge the depth of the sea with the sound of their oars. They have a sixth sense which we don't possess,” said Ashish Roy,... (AP Report 1/04/05)
How similar that sounds to this report from Fox News
There’s even been talk that the animals possess a “sixth sense” that may have saved them from the huge waves spawned by the massive 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra (search) two weeks ago. ...For years, scientists have been trying to determine whether those sensory abilities can someday be captured and used by humans — and their governments — for detecting natural disasters."
I do not believe that either the tribespeople, or the animals, have a "sixth-sense." What they do have is the ability to listen and observe uncluttered by a belief that they are above and beyond the world. One of the costs of permeating hegemonic cultural influences across the planet is the pervasive belief that humans stand separate from, and above, the natural environment. It is a belief that humans control, and have "dominion" over the earth. Therefore, the messages and rhythms of the planet and its inhabitants are interesting but unimportant in our daily lives. Our sensitivity to those signals and their interpretation is not some "sixth sense" that humans have lost, but a sacrifice on the alter of modernization.
It is clear from the survival of the Nicorbar and Adamanese tribespeople that humans have these abilities. The tribespeople are not genetic throwbacks to some earlier version of humans. They have chosen to live in the ways of their ancestors. They have violently rejected being forced into the "modern" world. This does not make them in someway closer to "animals," and I have great problems with calling these peoples "primitive" with all of the baggage that term conveys.
I believe there is a lesson here about life, and about the costs of so-called "civilization." It is ironic and telling that highly sophisticated technology is seen as the solution to a problem that our path has created. Most of the human population as moved from a relationship to the planet where we understood the messages it sends us, to the necessity for tremendously sophisticated technology to "sense" and "interpret" those messages. Computers, massive networks of telecommunication and monitoring devices, and satellites, to replace a knowledge that we have discounted as unimportant, and now try to write off as some sixth sense apparently still used by both animals and "primitive" peoples living a "stone age" existence. One has to wonder what else we have "lost."
Resources
Survival International - an organization dedicated to protecting indigenous peoples.
12/28/04 Dutta & Mago, The Times of India, What happened to the rare tribes?
1/02/05 Survival International, First confirmed news on isolated tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India
1/03/05 Lobe, IPS, Tsunami Impact: Hope for Survival of Stone Age Tribes in Andamans
1/04/05 AP, Stone Age tribes shun tsunami aid
1/05/05 Chui, Blogcritics, Tsunami Affects Some of Asia’s Last Stone Age Tribe
1/06/08 Reuters, Stone-age tribes evacuated from Indian isles
1/07/05 Yahoo News, Indian commandos scour Andaman island for Stone Age aborigines
1/09/05 Donaldson-Evans, Fox News, Tsunami Animals: A Sixth Sense?