The Sentinelese: a Truly Natural Tribe @Places

Watch on YouTube · 2025-07-26 · 28 min

0:00 Hey everyone, seeing as I recently made a video about the fake Adidas Hadza tribe, I thought that it would be interesting to review a video about the Sentinelese. Maybe you will learn how a real natural tribe lives. Of course, we don't actually know how they live, but

[video] 0:25 we get glimpses of how they live 2018 an almost unknown island attracted the attention of the media springing into general consciousness apparently out of nowhere that's when news outlets widely reported the tragic story of an american missionary who had been killed by the native population of sentinel island a remote island

0:43 It's interesting that religious people believe that they can go to natural people and convert them, so to speak. I always talk about this one guy who went to a completely different tribe. they were not even that natural sort of and they converted him in the sense that he stopped believing in the bible god and everything because he realized how happy people in nature are that they don't need any religions because they are not lost only lost people need religions in the indian ocean

[video] 1:23 It's not even so much about that. It's that you have your family and the Sentinelese simply live with their own family on the island and

1:51 then you see people who are not part of your family come to you, to this island. It's just a natural response, that's it. It's not so much about not wanting to be contacted.

[video] 2:02 It's highly accurate, offering little clarity on the history of the island, its population, and especially the history of their contact with outsiders. So where did the Sentinelese originate from? Had they always been so isolated? What was the reason for the hostility? And had they always been so antagonistic and violent toward outside visitors? People wouldn't try to understand them anyway, that's nonsense. They would try to...

2:42 cultivate them in the sense that they would try to apply their man-made culture to them they would try to domesticate them that's a better word

[video] 2:52 North Sentinel Island, also simply known as Sentinel Island, occupies a surface area of about 60 square kilometers, which is approximately the same size as Manhattan. The island is surrounded by coral reefs and is a western outlier of the Andaman Archipelago, a group of some 500 isles stretching along a north-south axis, roughly dividing the Bay of Bengal from the Andaman Sea. Only six of these islands are inhabited by natives, divided into four ethnic groups, the Andamanese, the Anga, the Jorawa, and the Sentinelese.

[video] 3:17 Oh my god. That's crazy.

[video] 3:32 medieval times, and according to Goodhart, these charts derive from the work of Romano-Egyptian geographer Claudius Ptolemy, active in the 2nd century AD. Ptolemy chose to name the island Insula Boni Fortunae, or Island of Good Fortune. And this sounded promising, but Ptolemy saw it fit to add a warning to his map, quoted by his medieval fanboys, the inhabitants of the island are cannibals. Arab travelers in the 8th century A.D. held similar beliefs about the inhabitants of the entire archipelago and preferred to brave the storms in the open seas rather than seek shelter on the sandy beaches and paradisical groves of Andaman. It's not known if these convictions were founded on truth. What is certain is that tales of flesh-eating natives may have been inspired by Venetian explorer Marco Polo, who never visited the archipelago, to describe the Andamese in 1296 as a most brutish and savage race, having heads, eyes, and teeth like those of dogs. They are very cruel and kill and eat every foreigner who they can lay their hand on.

4:24 Very interesting. That's what I would expect, but just interesting to see this.

4:33 Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Also, I made a video about feral children, wild natural children. They were described the same way, because if you live in nature, That's how you are. That's the natural, real self. When you compare that to domesticated humans who live in their prison cells today with their clothes and styled this and that, then yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. Because when you're exposed to actual nature, real survival, yeah.

5:16 eyes and teeth like dogs probably very strong and sharp teeth from just eating animals chewing the meat off the bones and he uses the word savage again meaning natural that's all that it means

5:41 And when they see anybody who's not part of their family, that's how they react. Yeah, very interesting.

[video] 5:47 For the first documented contact between the Sentinelese and the outside world, we have to wait until 1771. While sailing at night in the area, the East India Company vessel named the Diligent passed the island, sighting several lighted bonfires along its shore. The captain did not approach to investigate, but he did sketch the outline of the island and bestowed its current name, noting how it appeared as a sentinel guarding a broad strait. For a more eventful account, we must skip to 1867. At the end of the summer monsoon season, the Indian merchantman Nineveh was wrecked on the coral reefs surrounding North Sentinel. The crew of 20 sailors and their 86 passengers rode to safety on the beach, but after two days of calm, they were attacked by the locals. As reported by the captain, the savages were perfectly naked, with short hair and red-painted noses, and were opening their mouths and making

6:26 Naked of course also, it's warm there and that's why you don't need clothes anyway.

6:34 But why would you in general? Yeah, except if you're called short-haired. Short-haired? That's weird. Do they all have short hair? Even the women? Or the women stay back and they only saw the men? Probably, maybe? There are some tribes which have their strange, weird...

6:59 habits, the way they style themselves. Some use tattoos, some piercings. You've probably seen that. You know what I'm talking about. Maybe the whole tribe just cuts their hair short. That's possible.

7:19 Who knows where they come from and what was seen as normal back where they come from. I would be more curious to know if they eat raw meat, how long they live. That would be very interesting, which we cannot find out.

7:41 Yeah, it would be also interesting how they even got the iron. That means that either somebody came to them, or they come from a different place where they used to also cut their hair short, and then they were stranded there, or they just moved there, it's possible, and they stayed there, but they kept this... way of living. Yeah, because whatever you learn when you live in a civilization, society, you usually take that with you.

[video] 8:14 Anthropologist Dr. Mathumala Chattopadhyay, a research associate at the Anthropological Survey of India, was indeed the first woman to make contact with the Sentinelese. So let's get back to that January 4, 1991 day, shall we? At around 8 AM, a small team of 13, including Chata Parahay, a medical doctor, a director of tribal welfare, and a support crew, reached the waters of North Sentinel aboard a small craft. Before reaching land, the team started dropping coconuts in the water, which attracted the attention of some Sentinelese men on the beach. The locals sprinted into the water, scooping up the tasty gifts and erupting into a chant of Nareala Jabba Jabba. No one had ever studied in detail the Sentinelese language up to that point. However, Dr. Chata Parahay was proficient in several Andamanese languages. languages, and recognize the similarity with the dialect of the Ongar tribe also residing in the archipelago. In the Ongar dialect, the chant translates as more and more coconuts. The Sentinelese became bolder, getting closer and closer to the boat. A rapport was being established, but there's always one guy that has to ruin everything, isn't there? In this case, it was a young local man who had been sitting on the shore. He stood up, raised his bow, and aimed at the landing expedition.

[video] 9:11 Dr. Chattahobbeday, unfazed, made eye contact with the bowman, smiling at him and gesturing for him to come and collect his share of coconuts. Hmm, interesting, uh...

[video] 9:45 no crooked teeth they seem to be eating good food there not surprising obviously but still as reported by several indian publications the success of the expeditions in early 1991 can be ascribed to the presence of dr chattopadhyay her knowledge of the andamanese dialects and her ability to establish a non-threatening rapport with the sentinelese women even at a distance the indian government however did not take advantage of these successes to strike the iron while it was hot The Andaman and Nicobar administration acknowledged the implicit risk in increasing contact with the Sentinelese that they might cause a deadly outbreak of infectious diseases that are unknown to the locals. In fact, in September of 1991, the local authorities decided to severely limit any expedition to the island. Moreover, they declared a five-kilometer exclusion zone around Sentinel to protect the locals from poachers, fishermen, or any unauthorized visitor. Regular gift-dropping missions continued until 1996, when the Andaman and Nicobar administration decided to put an end to them. The only problem could have been that you would have brought them fake food. It's interesting that they say that they appeared healthy. Yeah, of course.

[video] 10:57 remained actively engaged in ensuring the sentinels were undisturbed, regularly patrolling the surrounding waters. Following the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004, the Coast Guard flew a helicopter above Sentinel to check if there had been any casualties. The team realized that the tsunami had impacted the geography of the island, causing several stretches of coral reefs submerged thus far to rise above the surface. but the locals appeared to be alive and very well indeed. One of them was photographed in the act of aiming an arrow against the chopper. The pilot wisely decided to not fly any closer to the ground, but the Coast Guard team returned to base with the striking photo of a warrior from a forgotten past. As described by author Adam Goodhart, none of his features are visible, but the man's blurred silhouette, his tensile black body poised against the stark white sand, has the timeless immediacy of a Paleolithic cave painting. The photo was widely circulated, and Sentinel made it again to international news wires since the days of the Primrose wreck. Barely thirteen months later, on January 26, 2006, the island would become infamous again. Two Indian fishermen, Sundararaj and Pandit Tiwari, were found dead on the shores of Sentinel, pierced by spears and arrows.

[video] 11:55 The subsequent investigation found that the fishermen had braved the exclusion zone to poach in the waters around the island, but their boat had drifted onto the shore, attracting the attention of the Sentinelese. It appeared that the presence of poaching fishermen was a common occurrence, as the Sentinel waters were and are rich in lobsters and sea cucumbers. Years later, in November 2014, seven Burmese fishermen were apprehended by the Coast Guard in the vicinity of the island. According to one report, at least one of them had actually made it on shore. But now, let's dive into the event which cemented Sentinel Island's place into the cultural zeitgeist, the John Allen Chao incident. On November 17, 2018, the 27-year-old US citizen John Allen Chow was reported dead on the shores of North Sentinel Island, apparently killed by a volley of arrows. According to the Andaman and Nicobar Police, Chow had illegally entered the exclusion zone with the help of a local fisherman. Press release by Survival International described his visit to the island as the result of a temporary lift on restrictions by the Indian government. Early newspaper reports of the event stated that Chow was a Christian missionary who had been trying to make contact with the Sentinelese on numerous occasions in order to convert them to Christianity.

12:54 I really do wonder about the mentality of these people. They know that there is natural people living there as natural as it can be today. Clearly they had some influence from the outside because of the hair cutting alone. Maybe they came somewhere from Myanmar, India, who knows what, or the nearby island, the bigger one. But still, those are kind of civilized places compared to actual natural places, actual real natural people. But of course, they live closer to nature than almost anybody today, whatever they were influenced by from the outside. And then this guy believes that

13:52 they want to believe in God, or he believes that they won't go to heaven, or he's afraid that they will go to hell. Kind of just strange.

14:09 this kind of audacity almost that you need to have to actually think that somehow you're better or you know better and that these people are living wrong that you go there and want to teach them as if you can teach them anything It's just interesting how messed up somebody's head must be to actually think that.

[video] 14:33 Union Home Ministry sources clarified that Chao was an adventure sports enthusiast and there was no evidence of him being an evangelist. Nonetheless, his friends described him as a fervent Christian who had done volunteer work in South Africa, Kurdistan, and Burma. Thus it appeared that John Allen Chao was truly an altruistic individual whose motivations were rooted in profound spiritual belief. Chao had first visited the Andaman Archipelago in 2015, but it took him three years to finally reach the shores of Sentinel. According to local police, On November the 14th, the young American reached the island aboard a rented boat, crewed by some fishermen.

15:00 Apparently... Maybe he believed that there's good inside of everybody or something? Or he really just wanted to teach them something about his religion? really just disconnected from nature that's what happens because naturally you understand you don't get close to anybody else's family you just know the natural reaction that they will have everybody always used to know that I think that nowadays I think he came from the US right or something doesn't really matter where he comes from most countries are the same but the US is especially bad there you have a tons of families living together so obviously to him it's just normal oh it doesn't matter you meet this friend that friend everybody is living together it doesn't work like that on that island for sure

[video] 15:57 yeah people just don't get it how it goes down in nature ciao had been helped by a local contact person in his plans identified as ks alexander on the morning of the 15th chao used a foldable kayak to make a solo landing on sentinel carrying gifts such as fish and footballs according to his own diary chao found a population of about 250 sentinelese living in groups of 10 people each in one hut the visitor

16:16 also you gotta realize these people hunt down animals every every other day that's all that they do you gotta understand the difference between you going to school working whatever and then you go to men who hunt all the time their perspective of life is completely different it cannot even be compared to yours

[video] 16:43 The first encounter did not go well. John noted in his diary that, quote, a kid probably about 10 or so years old shot me with an arrow directly into my Bible, which I was holding at my chest. On the morning of the 16th, Charles swam back to the rented boat close to shore where the fishermen were waiting for him. Apparently, he had been injured by arrows, but he refused to return home. He entrusted his diary to the fisherman, collected some fresh supplies, and then returned to Sentinel. The following morning, the fisherman observed the locals burying a body under the sand. The fisherman then alerted Chow's local contact, K.S. Alexander, who then alerted the victim's friends in the United States. News finally reached the American Embassy in Delhi and local authorities. The police quickly found out that John Allen Chow had not secured the necessary permits to visit North Sentinel and opened two inquiries, one for murder against unknown perpetrators on Sentinel and another against those who had helped John in his expedition. I would be really mad if they would try to apply their man-made rules

17:45 slavery to these natural people and go there and do what? You cannot apply something like this to natural people. They have no idea what you're even talking about. They would again just feel attacked and try to attack you. That's how it goes down in nature. You cannot apply man-made rules to natural humans, tigers, dogs. Koala bears, it doesn't matter who it is. A natural being doesn't respond to that. They would never respond to it anyway. You would just have to take all of them then because they would protect each other because it's one big family living on that island.

[video] 18:32 Basically what the guy did

18:44 It's the same as going to an island where he knows it's full of wolves. Same thing. I'm not overreacting. If you don't get it, then you just don't get how natural people are. And then creating an investigation against the wolves. Same exact thing. Literally same thing. And then you try to put wolves in prison and charge them. for hunting. That's it. If they would have done that, that's what it would be. That's how dumb it would be.

[video] 19:16 The police decided not to retrieve John's body, an epidemic outbreak being the main concern. As for John's family, they expressed the wish that all involved in the case be released. Quoting them, we also ask for the release of those friends he had in Andaman Islands. He ventured out of his own free will and his local contacts need not be persecuted for his own actions. Imagine your child dies and you say I forgive you

19:56 Only a slave would do that.

20:01 Imagine you do that to somebody natural. You do that to a wolf. Do you expect them to say, that's okay, I forgive you. No.

[video] 20:08 The Sentinelese are perhaps the only truly isolated hunter-gatherer tribal community in the world today. Their isolation is not geographic because of the inaccessible location of their habitat. It is so because they resist outsiders from landing in their island. They remain steadfast in opposition to all the efforts of the colonial and post-colonial administration to contain them with the might of their bows and arrows. All we know about them is a collection of scattered, direct observations and inferences derived from the knowledge of other, less isolated native groups on the Andamans. We know that the tribe on Sentinel is very small.

20:39 also what you gotta understand is and he already mentioned it himself when these people like the guy come to the island they also see you as food that i don't think he really thinks about because again He is removed from nature. But if you go to an island of wolves, you understand that they will see you as food. Again, same thing, literally no difference.

[video] 21:10 As you would expect from someone who lives in close contact with nature? Fit and healthy?

21:41 Why do modern slaves then always demonize nature? Yeah, we all subconsciously know it, deep down. The more naturally you live, the healthier and fit you will be. But when you actually talk about it, people say, oh no, appeal to nature? Fallacy!

[video] 22:03 Gnarl of infectious diseases such as the seasonal flu or the common cold, as observed in other tribes of the archipelago.

22:09 Yeah, because the cold comes from cold, except if you eat some toxic grain sludge, maybe also you're going to be detoxing from it. But otherwise, when do you get the cold? Yeah, in winter, because it's cold. That's why it's called the cold.

[video] 22:27 According to Survival International's director Steph Corey speaking in November 2014, the great Andamanese tribes of India's Andaman Islands were decimated by disease when the British colonized the islands in the 1800s. The most recent to be pushed into extinction was the Bo tribe, whose last member died only four years ago. The only way the Andamanese authorities can prevent the annihilation of another tribe is to ensure North Sentinel Island is protected from outsiders. We also know that the Sentinelese sustain themselves by fishing, hunting, and gathering food in the forest, which explains why men always carry spears, bows, and arrows tipped with salvaged iron. They have mastered the art of making outrigger canoes , but they have not developed the use of paddles, and rather steer their crafts with punts, meaning that they cannot venture beyond shallow waters. As a consequence, they have never even attempted contact with other island tribes, Yeah, why would they want to contact anybody else? There's no need to. They have everything that they need to be happy and healthy.

23:30 And if you're optimally happy and healthy, you reach the ultimate level as a human being. Why would you then look for a different place? They don't need that. Their lives are perfect. It's a bit strange that you can never leave the island.

23:50 Still, you have everything that you need there.

[video] 23:56 Stone Age Savages, a description which Survival International disagrees with. To quote them, There is no reason to believe the Sentinelese have been living in the same way for the tens of thousands of years they are likely to have been in the Andaman Islands. Their ways of life will have changed and adapted many times, like all peoples. The genetic origin of the Sentinelese has not been asserted with certainty, although Philip Endicott from the Henry Wellcome Ancient Biomolecules Center, University of Oxford, may have come close. In his paper, The Genetic Origins of the Andaman Islanders, published in 2003, he sought to trace the origins of all groups present in the archipelago. Endicott noted that Andaman inhabitants display an extremely distinctive phenotype, typified by a small average height, graysal build, dark pigmentation, and unusual hair morphology. He also found that the languages spoken in the archipelago have a limited affinity with others found in Papua New Guinea and eastern Indonesia, although there isn't a widely accepted relationship between these separate linguistic families.

24:45 all right this was interesting the one man said that they reminded him of wild dogs because of the teeth and the way they were acting because it is wild animals if you actually leave humans alone they go back to their natural state which is forbidden when you live in captivity we basically live in a sort of zoo today We have zookeepers and everything around us who watch us. We are not allowed to behave naturally because the Sentinelese would be given life sentences or even worse right away if they would be sent out into the zoo. Because in the zoo you're not allowed to behave naturally.

25:41 That some people even suggest that humans should be going there and applying their man-made rules to them is insane. But because they are insane, they of course have such stupid thoughts. They just want to take over everything. At least they are left alone. There's hardly any other people who are today. There are some people who live in the Amazon jungle also, but they have also been all contacted already and most of them eat garbage food. They just sort of live naturally. I would assume that the people on the Sentinel Island eat raw meat. They probably live to, who knows? It depends on what food they get, but I would assume 130, 40, 50.

26:37 The people in the Philippines that Ajna has contacted live to 150, 140. It seems like everything is good there, so we can assume that they also live to around 150

26:53 People in nature look a lot younger, meaning that the man that we saw there could have been in their 80s, 90s already. We would have no idea because we would be comparing them to humans who live in captivity, who age incredibly quickly. That's why our perception of age is so wrong that it's not even worth trying to bother applying our perception of age to them. from everything that i've studied it seems like it's very possible that they live very long lives especially if they don't come from a place where they were eating cooked meat before which is very unlikely if it was hundreds or thousands even years ago and if they come from east indonesia as the man said it's very very likely that they eat raw meat meaning that they live to their hundreds Cool.

27:54 This was interesting for me also. I love it, the way they live. It's great. Thanks for watching.