I'm pretty late to leaving a comment, so it won't get a lot of exposure.
Let's just leave these people the fuck alone.
What threat are they under? Curious assholes like us. There are probably less than 1000 people on that island, all descended from people tens of thousands of years ago. There are more people than that that visit an Apple store on a Tuesday before 2pm.
Leave them alone.
We don't need to assuage our 10 second collective attention span by ruining their lives, destroying their history, and effectively ending a lineage thousands of years old.
These people probably have their own ideas about the weird shit washing up on their beaches and the crazy stuff in the sky that drops outsiders and food from time to time. Leave them to it. It doesn't matter what they think, no matter how curious you think you are.
Leave them alone.
For the physics-minded, think of them as a sample of humanity in Schrödinger's box. It's not a cat, but people. Except in this experiment, any direct observation will absolutely kill the people. Any exposure to disease, customs, or technology without their explicit choice will kill them. Maybe they don't physically die, but their lineage will end.
I don't know… suppose some highly advanced aliens with for the most part benign intent found us. Would you really like them to "stay the fuck away"? I, for one, would love for our technology to leapfrog ahead centuries, even though it would completely change our culture.
The disease part can be handled today. We could go visit them in hazmat suits. And I know I'm being really generous when I'm comparing the modern world to benign aliens, but properly managed (as access to the island already appears to be) surely we can approach them in a decent way?
That they violently defend themselves is of course a highly complicating factor.
I guess all I'm saying is that not establishing contact is also a choice that we're making on their behalf. Is deciding that they can't parttake in modern society any more OK than deciding they must? Can we not contact them in a way where they get to choose?
Edit: I certainly agree that we as humans have an absolutely horrible track record on these kinds of things. But it's been a while now, hasn't it? Can't we pull this off by now? These guys are our brothers and sisters - should we at least not have a chat with them to see if they really want to be left the fuck alone, or if they might want to not die whenever they get an infected wound, or half the time they have kids, or whenever they break a leg? Hell, it might well be that some of them want to be left the fuck alone, while some would like to see the world. How come those latter ones have to stay on that island just because we say so?
Most of the Australian aborigine people had walked out of the desert by the 1960's, but in 1984 a family of 9 that had lived in the desert, finally also walked out to reunite with their relatives [1]. The relatives had already lived ca. 20 years in an Australian village nearby.
When they finally saw the comfortable lifestyle their relatives had enjoyed already for 20 years, they were quite angry [2] that they had been left living in the desert, and not contacted earlier:
"They told us there was plenty of food and water came out of pipes," Yardi said.
"The older ones were angry that their long-lost relatives – who they had not seen for nearly 20 years – had left them out in the desert eating lizards while they lived in what they saw as the lap of luxury,"
"I like this life," Yardi said. "I much prefer it to the old ways."
The Sentinelese people (of the article) are not the only indigenous people around there, they are just on the most distant island.
On nearby larger islands there live e.g. the Jarawa [1] and Onge [2] people and some others [3].
The Jawara inhabit jungle areas of a larger island, that has also for already very long time been settled by Indian farmers. The Jarawa used to stay in the jungle, and there were occasional violent encounter and conflicts. But in 1997 the Jarawa started to make peaceful visits to nearby villages, wanting food and gifts.
The farmers see the Jarawa as a nuisance. They don't want to escalate violence, but they also don't want the Jarawa to learn that they could walk in people's homes and steal whatever they want.
Apparently [4,5] the Jarawa and Onge languages are not very well studied, either.
So, whatever anthropological, cultural and humanitarian interest anyone might have toward the un-contacted people on the North Sentinel island, they could first direct their interest and charity toward these other nearby tribes who have already had some contact with civilization for last decades or centuries, but are apparently not faring very well at the moment.
The (Star Trek's) Prime Directive is not something worthwhile to be considered here? The representatives of these people (the ones with bows and other kind of weapons that dare to face the outsiders) are stating clearly their policy. Maybe it is us that must get over our desires to intrude supposedly on someone else's benefit.
Representatives notwithstanding, I think ever member of the community has a right to make their own informed choice.
I never liked the prime directive in any case. Culture is not a tangible thing to be 'lost' nor something that need be preserved at the cost of the health and comfort of human beings.
"I think ever member of the community has a right to make their own informed choice."
Point taken. For now all we have are members of their community that made contact with external world and expressed an isolationist stance. Of course we may not like it and consider that (regardless whether they want or not) they should be exposed again and again until we'll finally get out of them the buyer's "yes". I also guess that only then we'll call their decision "right" and "informed". If we may somehow disable our influence as actors in their decision then yes, I agree with you that individuals that desire the freedom of making informed choice should have it. For those who chose (having peaceful reasons) to willingly get in contact with external world, there should be left a door somewhere in their reach.
"Culture is not a tangible thing to be 'lost' nor something that need be preserved"
Here I doubt that you got in contact with enough cultures to make for yourself an informed opinion.
The representatives of these people are hardly in a situation where they can make an informed decision. Even if they were, they have no right of condemning their children to such life.
That doesn't really matter. If a girl refuses to go out with you, she might not be in a position where she can make an informed decision. And she is possibly depriving her future children of a magnificent father, condemning them to life without you. But you should still respect her "NO".
On a more serious note, given some historic evidence how our contact with other tribes ended (pick any tribe, anytime, anywhere) I am both surprised and happy that they exist. I hope they stay the same for as long as possible and may we never learn anything about them.
But if a man is jumping of a cliff because he thinks he can fly, you should not respect his 'NO' when trying to catch him.
Your serious argument is one of the little valid points raised so far. And I agree, we might not be in a position to help them now. But the statements that even if we could bring them to our society in a humane manner we still shouldn't, because they're clearly fine as they are... That just disgusts me.
They're not jumping off a cliff. They've been doing fine (insofar as they're surviving with a small population) for some 60 thousand years. First contact alone will probably kill them with diseases (a well-documented phenomenon).
More akin to a guy standing on a ledge of a cliff, albeit precarious but doing fine; if you try to help him, he'll probably fall and die fast. He knows this, and he's telling you to stay the he11 away.
That said, I am sympathetic with your basic view. Les Stroud's Beyond Survival was fascinating, but the recurring theme of "and this ancient people is about to die out or lose their culture" struck me as "well, if doing stupid things[1] isn't survivable then maybe those ways should change, and the consequences of sticking to them are natural." The Sentinese however seem to be holding it together pretty well; not advancing, but living on what is otherwise a stereotypical tropical paradise island (food growing on trees, good climate, water), methinks they've achieved some form of comfortable equilibrium and are doing pretty well (I'm sure some here on HN are thinking "I'd like to join them").
Someone mentioned above "your 100 kids will leave the island, move to India, and become call center employees". That vs. where & how they're living now, I'm not so sure "bring[ing] them to our society in a humane manner" really is. Someday it will happen, someday modern life will crash into their ancient and stable culture, someday they will have to deal with new diseases and cell phones and high-speed transport, and "someday" probably isn't very long from now.
"But the kids need to do X and Y and Z!" my wife declares. "They're content and playing nicely with their toys and crayons," I'll reply. "Let them enjoy it a little longer."
[1] - the clincher was a tribe that fishes by dangling bare hooks in the ocean for hours while sitting on poles. I'm amazed that culture lasted so long. Yeah, they need some help.
I was going to say the same thing. Their scientific value as a primitive society preserved against all odds is something we will never see again. To destroy it on a whim would be akin to killing the last dodo for food.
Some type of hidden observation as in the movie Insurrection might be worthwhile though? Someone should ask the NSA, are they really comfortable with these people NOT being monitored constantly? They could be a terrorist threat?
Would they be better off with a desk job in some western city? That's likely out of grasp, as they would have no competitive skills compared to westerners that have trained for our economy for their whole lives. They would likely be wards of the state in a strange land, and so would their children.
Or, you know, they could live a life that makes them happy.
What about their grandchildren? They could get a good education, integrate into modern society and have the opportunity to live a way happier life than if they had stayed in the island.
I think he made the point quite well. "No" means "no", and they're saying "no" pretty emphatically and consistently - and no amount of "but I'll make your life so much better" trumps that.
That isn't the point, he specifically likened the situation to asking out a girl; and "no means no" is an emotionally charged idiom, for that matter.
So "you should still respect her \"NO\"" - How is this relevant? He doesn't expand on why you should do this, so we can't link that logic to the situation and and, all we have is "You'd accept 'no' if you asked someone out, so you should also do so here", with no further reasoning on how the two are similar.
The adults are saying "no", the children just have to go along with that choice that was made for them. This is arguably a form of coercion because the children are being denied the opportunity to a better life.
If someone was raising their children in a similar quality of life in a western society, they would have their children taken away by social security. Do you disagree?
But these people don't live in a western society. They don't share our cultural beliefs of what is good or civilized. They live by a whole different set of rules and conventions. We can't just go there, impose our vastly superior beliefs upon them with the argument that it's for their best because WE believe that.
Have you ever travelled to another continent? If you're American or from Western Europe, try going to Japan. Or somewhere in Africa, off the beaten path. You're likely to experience a culture shock, right? You can do two things. You can think 'I can't believe these fucktards, why the hell would they want to live like this, now where's the nearest Motel 6' or you can accept the fact that their culture is just different. I'm not speaking in terms of better or worse, just different.
They don't need our help and they don't want our help. We have showed time after time that 'helping savages' does not work. Native Americans? Unless you think the inabriated guy with the poncho selling roadside flatbread is actually happier than his ancestors, it's hard to argue we did a good job helping them. Numerous tribes in South America now have to deal with alcoholism, crime, murder. The ones that don't are just smart enough to evade us.
Ask yourself this: should we contact these people if we were certain that our contacting them would lead to their loss of culture, and most likely would wipe them away? Do you think that, despite ALL the times where we screwed up entire tribes, this time it will be different? Why is it our responsibility anyway to 'help' them, even against their will?
I don't really understand this argument. Other cultures have survived contact with technologically superior civilizations. Examples are listed in your own post: Africa, Japan, etc.
People can negotiate how much an outside culture influences them. Even in cases where campaigns are made to stamp out culture (e.g. W. Africa, wherein anyone in schooling was given Western names and forbidden to speak their native language in school), the old mores still prevail if people where were willing to fight for it.
And how can you measure that the parts of the culture that are lost, are more important than the practical benefit of say.... modern medicine dropping the early childhood mortality rate by 90%?
For one, we don't know enough about their quality of life to say anything about it. I would assume they have a better quality of life than the majority of the planet, in particular it is likely to be better than the majority of urban dwellers and subsistence farmers in the 3rd world.
If you wanted to give them the quality of life enjoyed in the nicer parts of the US or Europe you would have to provide all those amenities for them, and it is in any case unlikely that they would appreciate them the same way that you do.
The only likely benefit that "we" could provide would be medical care for infections or easily treated disorders. That would have to be balanced with the high likelihood that contacting and attempting to integrate them would actually kill most of them. Anything else is a egocentric view of what is good for mankind.
For those interested, the article below is a study on what happened to the inhabitants of the nearby island Little Andaman after it was settled by mainlanders. Infant mortality rose (to 40%), malnutrition and disease increased, and life expectancy, even excluding infant mortality, was approx 35 yr.
"I would assume they have a better quality of life than the majority of the planet"
I'd agree with you that they probably have a more enjoyable day to day experience, however I also would bet that they have an infant mortality rate that is astronomical even by 3rd world standards. And that they have an average life expectancy which isn't hard to beat in the 3rd world. I'm not saying that these 2 things justify us forcing contact with them, just that it is hard for someone to justify that lower infant mortality and higher life expectancy are always positive things for our species to strive for. Its not just an issue of culture.
Of course, many other countries cook the infant mortality books be not reporting premature babies that die shortly after birth or are "hopeless" because they don't have the medical tech that the US does. Consequently, that skews US life expectancy down.
All I'm saying is that the US isn't all sunshine and daisies. There are a TON of poor areas (rural and urban alike) where it's just not safe to live, kids don't get enough mental and physical nourishment, and there's a good chance you'll die before high school. That sucks. And that's a problem that should be fixed. As a US citizen, I care infinitely more about fixing these problems before trying to contact and civilize the inhabitants of some remote island.
A lot of the infant mortality in the 3rd world is due to infectious disease or conditions like diarrhea. These are diseases common in crowded unsanitary places accompanied by poor nutrition.
It would be mistaken, therefore, to assume that the same conditions would prevail in isolated places like North Sentinel Island, where the people are apparently well nourished. So the infant mortality rate there may be above the best found elsewhere, but it is probably lower than many other places.
Is ~400 people a large enough population to support most diseases, or is it possible that they essentially (infectious) disease free by virtue of their tiny population?
I'm also curious what the genetics of a 400-person island look like. I always assumed that the minimum viable population was larger than that -- somewhere in the thousands -- but if the population estimate is correct, and has been for tens of thousands of years, then that's pretty concrete evidence that it's no more than 400.
A small isolated population like that will be free of most infectious diseases. The number of Sentinelese isn't known, but may be as low as 100, since the Sentinelese, Great Andamanese, and Onge,(i.e. those on the island in question as well as the neighboring islands) have "a combined population of 400–500 individuals." [2].
Several studies, two on the genetics of the Andamanese [1,2] and the other on their linguistics [3] suggest that they have been isolated for 50-70,000 yr. The genetics studies also showed a very low population diversity, so in common parlance they are "inbred". Oddly enough, if they have been isolated for long enough, they will therefore be free of most genetic diseases, since the rare ones will be manifested early on in their isolation due to inbreeding, and then selected against. Genetic conditions that don't affect reproductive fitness could be common, though. Genetic isolation can also result in increased susceptibility to pathogens later introduced from outside said population.
[1]Kashyap, V. K., et al. "Molecular relatedness of the aboriginal groups of Andaman and Nicobar Islands with similar ethnic populations." International Journal of Human Genetics 3 (2003): 5-11.
[2] Thangaraj, Kumarasamy, et al. "Genetic affinities of the Andaman Islanders, a vanishing human population." Current Biology 13.2 (2003): 86-93.
[3]Abbi, Anvita. "Is Great Andamanese genealogically and typologically distinct from Onge and Jarawa?." Language Sciences 31.6 (2009): 791-812.
Because of the conditions, or because of how far removed their lifestyle is from western societal norms?
What if the tribe decided our children were being severely mistreated with glowing distraction screens, processed corn sugar, helicopter parenting, etc.? Surely you'd let them take our kids away.
We are getting into politics here. We all have representatives and policy makers that are deciding all the time for us and we also have to support the consequences of their decisions, no mater how informed they were.
Considering they have no marketable skills or education, how could their situation get any better? There are tons of poor people in the world who die from easily preventable diseases that you could help instead if that's your true motivation.
They are a self-sufficient people that don't seem to be screwing up the world nearly as much as we are... why would we even assume we're superior? Maybe we're just jealous?
Personally I like refrigeration, modern medicine, transportation, and high technology. Maybe those aren't your thing, but I know if I was born into a society like that, I would spend my life trying to see what was beyond the water.
Life's good when you're at the top of the totem poll.
However, if the greener grass turns out to be a Mumbai slum or an e-waste site in China, or one of many other terrible but more realistic fates, maybe you'd pass on that opportunity... because, you know, a lot of people die there too.
I'd take a job in a factory churning out iPhones in China over dying a slow and painful death from gangrene that started as an ingrown toenail.
People in the first world romanticize ancient ways of life, but the reality is that life without basic technology is nasty, brutish, and short.
Another blind spot is that there are degrees of bad. Living in a village in northern Afghanistan is better in a lot of ways than living in Darfur, which is better than Somalia. Honestly, people didn't choose to live in cities and work long hours in factories because we tricked them. They do it because it's better than their previous existence.
> They do it because it's better than their previous existence.
Something to consider is that if some members of a society choose the new existence (provided by the new outsiders), then it can undermine the rest of the society.
I don't think its really fair to deny people a chance at a better life as they see it, simply because it'll negatively impact the original community they came from.
Exactly!!!! They are superior in that they are sustainable, and it's so horrible that people want to convert them into us. Let's build them a Walmart while we're at it.
Regarding the aliens... how do we know they aren't already doing exactly that to us? "Leave them alone"?
Also, with advanced technology comes advanced ways of self destruction. Maybe we don't poses the cultural requirements for being accepted in that club?
I would argue the same for the Sentinese (there are good historical examples for this[1]). Maybe if we give them weapons, they will kill themselves, or end up in constant warring state or something else.
Answer 1: Yes, stay the fuck away. If Race XYZ has ability to monitor us without us knowing, thus not interfering with us, sure go ahead. Its not like there's much we could to stop them. But the moment they make their existence known, we're fucked.
At that moment, we aren't the world-conquering successful species we love and proclaim to be. We're the little tribe living on the little island that's quietly being protected by the corrupt government of a minor power in the universal state of nations and empires that we just are now learning about. There's a lot of euphemisms in my last few sentences. Figure them out.
Leave these people alone.
This is kind of in response to your second point. Think about the scale of what we're talking about. We have a massively global, interconnected society of both economy and knowledge comprising billions of people. Even the poorest person in the most desolate parts of the world can, with some inconvenience, get on to the Internet. The people on this island, 400-1000 souls that they be, don't even have the understanding of modern society that the poorest person in the modern world has. Where do you start with that?
So suppose your friendly aliens show up and say "Hi!". What then? We're the people that struggle to maintain ONE space station. We have no extra-terrestrial colonies or establishments. Aliens decide to claim Mars? What are we going to do? The Moon? Its theirs. Pretty much anything outside of our little island Earth is open for claim, and not by us necessarily. The fucked up part is that if you traveled tens or hundreds of light years to get here, Earth itself is probably not the main goal. Its just the natural resources of the system. And what happens in a few hundred years when we decide to get off our asses and go into space? Nothing's left, because fucking Zork claimed it all.
So when you think about all of this together, what options do you present to these people even if they were interested? Medicine, food? Sure. Maybe we can get them vaccinated before the common cold or bird flu wipes them out. Education? Here's some books representing external human history from the perspective of the people supplying the money. Oh, check out our religion too! By the way, did you know that your island is one of several others claimed by India? Its a big island (not really) with over 1 billion people. Too many to count? Don't worry, once your 100 kids have moved to Bangalore to become tech support reps and within 20 years your entire culture has died they'll be able to explain.
I know this is a bit rambly, but hopefully you can see where I'm going. There is no benefit to the people in question to be contacted by us. It only changes and hurts them.
Modern medicine, physics, modern housing, sanitation, plumbing, etc, etc. They have a massive amount to gain. You can romanticize their situation, or we can decide to leave them there for other reasons but claiming they have nothing to gain is just plain wrong.
I claim that they have plenty to lose. There are people in our society without access to modern medicine, no concept of physics, no chance of what you consider to be modern housing, terrible sanitation, no plumbing, etc, etc.
You can romanticize how much better their situation will be all you want, but there's plenty of evidence it won't be.
I read an article years ago on feral surfers who were basically turning indigenous peoples into diseased addicts, sex workers, and slaves. Not because they intended to, but it just happened to be convenient. I'll try and dig it up.
Almost no society needs any of that for the continued survival of the society. Modern hunter and gatherer tribes have been "fine" by this measure with murder rates as high as 50%, but that is a pretty ridiculous standard.
65k years and counting, lets see if our "modern" and "advanced" civilization makes it that far. Mark the start to where ever you feel like doesn't matter. Imperial or Feudal Europe, Rome? Bronze Age? Who knows and doesn't matter, moves the result by give/take 3000 years - less than 5%.
>65k years and counting, lets see if our "modern" and "advanced" civilization makes it that far.
Uh, we have.
You're assuming that they've lived for 65,000 years with no social or cultural or technological upheaval within their own little sub-civilization. While at that same time drawing arbitrary end-points in ours.
At this point, they're only surviving because of the benign interests of outsiders. Do you really think they could survive a hypothetical contest of "what society can survive the longest?". If our culture hadn't evolved to accept and respect indigenous people like this, or if there was any economic value on that island, they'd be dead or subjugated by now. So how can you claim that they've figured out better civilization survival instincts than the rest of the world?
In practice, this seems to be a large part of what Western governments do. There's nothing the West loves to do so much as meddling in other people's affairs and bringing the blessings of democracy to people that never wanted it.
Ehm, Isn't their violent reaction a clear representation of their choice?
Individuals might want to get out and wonder as you say, but some makes a choice for them - their leaders. For one reason or another good or bad.
Just like people make choices for you and you have bare minimum say. They way your government, state government, mayor they all make choices that impact your life one way or another, some highly, some to a low degree.
>I guess all I'm saying is that not establishing contact is also a choice that we're making on their behalf. Is deciding that they can't parttake in modern society any more OK than deciding they must? Can we not contact them in a way where they get to choose?
one thing about the western world, and America especially: we have no cultural memory of what it feels like to have another culture impose their value system upon you.
it's therefore easy to see other cultural views as falling into these categories: odd/silly, needlessly restrictive (possibly also immoral), or downright immoral [1].
that's a mental trap, though, much like believing yourself to live at the center of the universe.
once you remove the "superior culture" argument, it becomes quite hard to formulating a reason to touch this island.
for instance: we have medicine! but we only value it because we fear death, etc.
[1] examples come to mind: some cultures believe using birth control is like murder (silly). some cultures believe a woman should not exposition her shoulders in public (no rights). some cultures believe infanticide is acceptable, others find it natural for men to have romantic relationships with boys (immoral). these are all examples from a western perspective, of course.
>for instance: we have medicine! but we only value it because we fear death, etc.
I could understand that argument when considering prolonging of life when you're already really old and pretty much falling apart, but for completely preventable deaths?
I remember reading somewhere that a cult of death is considered a pretty universal value.
> I guess all I'm saying is that not establishing contact is also a choice that we're making on their behalf.
It's also a choice that they are making for themselves. It may or may not be a fully informed choice, but they are making their opinions pretty clear. They certainly aren't coming across as a group of people looking desperately to some outside group to save them from anything.
I guess all I'm saying is that not establishing contact is also a choice that we're making on their behalf.
Assimilating a culture is an irreversible action. Once it's assimilated, there is no going back. Once we assimilate everyone on the planet, there will be no enclaves. Nothing to learn or wonder about. Is it not scary? To be a complete monoculture?
If everyone on Earth could join advanced aliens any time, could Earth be considered an independent society?
That they violently defend themselves is of course a highly complicating factor.
I feel that this is a choice of theirs that should be respected rather than considered as an inconvenient obstacle. True, it's an ignorant choice, but nothing is preventing them taking a more curious stance.
Yes and those islands are also protected by the Indian Navy quite diligently. It's important to prevent curious assholes from touching the island for two reasons:
1. These tribes have not developed medical immunity against the kind of diseases we're host to.
2. They're truly wild and curious like us too. Protecting the former quality needs a restraint from our side.
I've been to Andaman & Nicobar in 2004 and did feel a sense of excitement and curiosity when at the edge of our side of world. Check out this fifteen year old video on these tribesmen, their walking manners and the gap that we're talking about here [1].
Andamans have a tremendous diversity with its colonial history, modern day torture equipment at Cellular jail that the Brits used during their rule of the region, and exotic tribes like these. Apart from blue beaches and coral life that most tourists love to see.
The clip is absolutely fascinating. It's sad that the person who uploaded it also threw up a bunch of BS about garden of eden and Abrahamic religions. Come on, this contact with people unlike us. One of the downsides of greater contact and communication is the homogenization (somewhat) of civilizations around the world. These are people who have escaped much of that except a few contacts.
We really do need to fight the urge to put nike's on them, although I must admit to being interested the number of things we might learn about ourselves from studying these people. But then again, I understand the Schrodinger's "People" analogy.
except a lot of the tribes were further reduced to paltry sizes after the tsunami. If I remember correctly from my last visit in 1996/97, the census numbers for some of the tribes were already around ~100. Since Port Blair is on the middle island of the Andaman land mass, it has affected all the other tribes on that island. Especially the Jarwa.
North andaman (Jarwa) tribes at the time were hostile, which I believe since the construction of the Andaman grand trunk road have become more subdued.
Compared to Jarwa, the sentilese have it better, they dont share their island.
First, in "The Truman Show" the protagonist was not participating with his own volition. He did not wanted to restrain himself inside. These people had a lot of contact with the outside world and still want to be left alone. The parallel is not quite valid. Second, this is natural. The island is natural, the people with their ancestry and isolationist policy are as natural as possible. Even if we'd put cameras, we'd record (just) reality, as we do in a lot of other instances among ourselves.
Actually, I would argue that their information is VERY relevant. Humans make the same mistakes / crimes / ... over and over and over again. I am quite sure that Columbus approached the natives with gifts, and look where it ended.
What can they trade ? Knowledge about their way of living, genomic studies, dieting habits, linguistic analysis, anthropological studies of they way they represent the world.
Last both are really dangerous to them because those interactions will alter their culture in significant ways.
The first one are highly valuable.*
What can we trade ? A lot. What can we trade that wouldn't annihilate their core identity ? I can't think of anything yet.
* but not yet as valuable as oil, diamonds or uranium otherwise the Indian authorities would have adopted a very different set of directives.
The first paragraph reads disturbingly like the reason we should make contact with them is because the people themselves are resources to be harvested.
Phrased like this, it's a really good reason why we should not make contact, because ultimately the primary thing we would gain from such contact is exploiting the people themselves.
I didn't say we have to gut them. We can talk to them and then nicely ask to pick up some stool and blood samples.
Frankly, I am more concerned about this argument I read in this thread : "We should do it for their children because they aren't given a choice by their parents get in touch with us and it isn't fair." That, is supremacy and way more dangerous than curiosity as an ideology.
This sort of comment is exactly what is wrong what the world.
What is your expertise in this area? Are you a anthropologist??
I suspect you are just one of these sick people who like the idea mini zoos with humans in them.
These are human beings. They deserve access to modern medicines like the rest of us of the world even if you lose this precious zoo.
How are their women treated? That is the ones who don't die in child birth? Going off other primitive societies probably not great no matter what the Hollywood idea of how these societies operate and everything is great.
This sickness of how the majority of the population would never ever want to live like this if they had a choice but somehow the people living it are having the time of their lives is bizarre.
For all we know this island is just another North Korea and although I respect nations statehood I don't pretend it's somehow a moral decision not to get involved.
You do realize that there are massive amounts of people who are part of our world that are living in worse conditions than this tribe is? How about we focus on them first before we decide that our way of life is so superior just because a minority of us have regular access to modern medicine...
I'm positive you don't need to be an anthropologist to realize this.
I don't even understand the zoo reference. This is not a man made entrapment, it's their home. "Leave them alone" doesn't mean starting island tours.
This world cop attitude is incredibly egotistic. It assumes that we've found the superior way of life. Evidence points to the contrary when you consider the number of species we've played a key role in extinguishing and endangering with our super amazing society.
>You do realize that there are massive amounts of people who are part of our world that are living in worse conditions than this tribe is? How about we focus on them first before we decide that our way of life is so superior just because a minority of us have regular access to modern medicine...
Why should we focus on them? Your logic is that modern medicine is not an improvement or a factor in relieving suffering, but is only an illusion of our egotistical viewpoint. Why would it help those who are 'part of our world' that have insufficient access?
I think your comment is what's "wrong" with the world. You are applying your western values onto a completely foreign culture. Modern medicine? I'm sure after having survived for that long, they are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. You want to give them jeans and t-shirts too? Maybe the gift of starbucks?
It's the opposite of a zoo that the op is talking about.
Who cares if their civilization is 65,000 years old or 2,000 years old. They have clearly indicated, as a matter of their own free will, that they are not interested in our big ships, little ships, helicopters, cameras, or anything else they've seen of us. So why do WE have some moral authority or responsibility to show them "what they're missing". Your perspective is relative to your own life. In order to "inform" them of their options we'd have to basically invade their space, go against their free will, and would probably extinguish most of the population in the process. Once again, as the OP said... LEAVE THEM ALONE!
They're part of the Andamanese people, of which there is data (from the surrounding islands described in the article you read). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andamanese
Also, if it's no one's call to determine whether they leave or not, why would it be anyone's call to unilaterally interject into their society? Besides, I figure if some of those people do really want to leave, they can set up camp near the beach/wreck unarmed (probably at the risk of civil war, but hey, it's their call). One of us will probably notice eventually.
And to build on that, if you really want to give them free choice, rather than going into their island to forcibly "enlighten" them, build them a removed, but easily reachable dock in the reef/wreck or something like that. From there you can do all sorts of things. A mini library, a vessel, etc. Though I wonder if any of them have even bothered to explore the extant wreck.
For all we know this island is just another North Korea
For all we know this island is a tropical paradise.
Reading further down the comments on the linked page (you did read the whole thing, right?) there's an additional encounter described which, shall we say, indicates they're quite content.
I'm all for providing guidance and assistance to the poor, and intervening when serious moral problems are systemic (abuse, wanton violence, diseases untreated, etc.). I'm also all for leaving people alone when they make it very clear they've got things under control, are content with their situation, want you to leave them alone, and there is no indication of moral problems.
they have survived there for 65000 years, what are you going to bring themthat will ensure they are still there in another 65000 years? Nothing.
You want to bring them medicine, but with that comes illnesses they have never been exposed to, you want to bring them food, excellent take along obesity with you. You want them to have access to modern amenities that they have never required but could become dependent on.
Tell you what go drop a couple of crates of jack daniles and few 1000 packs of marlboro and some mcdonalds just so they know what they are missing out on.
There is a vast difference between these people and their society and North Korea. In NK the ruling elite have access to everything youmention and the general population do not. On this island they all have equal access to the same stuff, sure some tribal leader may get the "big bit of chicken" or first choice when it comes to games night, but there is not the inequality that exists in NK.
That's a little presumptuous, don't you think? What gave you the impression that these people need to be saved, and from what? You're absolutely right. These are human beings. Treat them like human beings, not pitiful beings that you need to save because they don't have C-sections and cars and Xanax and lawyers. Stop acting like you know what is best for them. What is your expertise in this area?
If you are concerned about their health, then it is best that we stay away anyway. History (and even this article) has taught us that isolated cultures are incredibly susceptible to our diseases (a.k.a. diseases they have never had contact with), and often times the results are fatal.
And this sort of comment is exactly what's wrong with HN. You could have made these same points more effectively without baiting the person you're replying to.
All you have to do is issue a decree that encourages people to upvote civility and downvote incivility, as opposed to the current standard which says upvote agreement and downvote disagreement.
People upvoted this guy because they agreed with his fundamental points despite the baiting, and in turn he received positive feedback. I think maybe you underestimate the effect karma has on posting behavior; it's not just about pushing comments up and down the page.
>All you have to do is issue a decree that encourages people to upvote civility and downvote incivility, as opposed to the current standard which says upvote agreement and downvote disagreement.
This doesn't matter. Doesn't work on reddit, doesn't work on StackOverflow, and won't work anywhere else.
I'd be interested in reading more about that if you have a link. Reddit says to "moderate based on quality, not opinion" whereas PG said explicitly to do the opposite. (I can't remember how to find the link atm, but it was a comment in some thread on HN that I've seen people refer to.)
I also found this discussion, which says that in practice there will always be a middle ground between moderating based on quality and moderating based on opinion:
It's almost like you didn't read the words the parent wrote, he never advocated sailing on over and starting tours...
These people want to be left alone and should be left alone. They've survived for 65000 years on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. I'd say the rest of the "developed" world has something to learn from the way these people sustain themselves without, looking from the outside in, destroying a beautiful tropical island.
Are YOU an anthropologist? Because the men in many primitive societies had to be taught by the colonists to treat women as inferiors, and that's well-documented by anthropologists. It sounds like you have a single caricature of what "primitive societies" are like, and using that as a basis for a lot of assumptions about the Sentinelese.
We all encounter at times fellow humans who want something that clearly is based on lacking information. Of course we respect such things, but only up to a certain point. We often do try to help people see the bigger picture - sometimes we do say "I hear you say that that is what you want, but have you considered the fact that...".
> B. contact with us is likely to be deadly to them.
This can be remedied with technology. A crude solution would be to land in hazmat suits and have a chat. I don't know how we should deal with the bows and arrows though.
A. Yeah, except we never tell them the down side. We arrogantly assume our oh so clever technical ways are better. Sadly we are still not mature enough to decently make contact with such people.
You can't be serious. How many children are you willing to condemn to extremely premature death because of your noble savage illusion?
Yes, our 'oh so clever technical ways' are not perfect. But they are so much better. Perhaps these people are just as happy as we are. Even so, their stillborn children are still dead. They almost certainly see more murder and rape. How can you condemn people to living like that, even if they want to because they don't know any better?
Oh the children? Whats next, terrorists and pedophiles? Go get an education.
OK, how many kiddies in the fabulous USA live under the international levels of poverty? Around 9,000,000 ,right? 9M kids "condemned" just for living in the wrong country? And you want to interfere with proud people living their way on a island? You want to wade in and force western ideals and so on on to them?
And how dare you compare western happiness to that of a tribes people. You sound as arrogant and disgusting as we Brits must have 400 years ago. Please learn from our mistakes.
And just because your culture might well rape and murder their way to a false sense freedom, it does not mean others will or do.
How dare you so arrogantly and ignorantly judge them. People have the right to self determination, whether the West likes it or not. That is actually something I would risk my life for. That is freedom.
If the people venture out and want to be part of us, of course, we open our arms to embrace them. Mean while, leave the the hell alone.
Don't you dare bring out the fucking "oh the children" argument. People die all the fucking time. Its what people do, we die.
These people, if the suppositions are to be believed, have been able to survive and reproduce for tens of thousands of years. They don't need your pity or "help".
If you sit back for an hour or so and re-read your comment 10-20 times, you'll realize what a Western missionary statement it is. Basically, your mindset seems to be similar to the "save the heathens" mindset of 18th - 19th century Europe in regards to the US and Australia, among other places.
Surely we can't save them in body, but if we convert them before they die then they'll be saved in the light of the Lord. Hala loola or whatever.
> People die all the fucking time. Its what people do, we die.
Yes, and it's a problem! We should be doing everything we can so that people finally STOP DYING. And we should strive especially hard when it's children dying because their parents are too used to everyone dying to ASK FOR HELP.
Now, in some cases it's difficult. We can't do it for everyone just yet.
But in this case it's not.
>These people, if the suppositions are to be believed, have been able to survive and reproduce for tens of thousands of years.
Oh, that makes it all right then! Let's stop any kinds of aid, it's not like people will go extinct. Most of them will die, but some will survive and reproduce, and that makes it all right!
> Yes, and it's a problem! We should be doing everything we can so that people finally STOP DYING.
There is a difference between dying as a result of problems in our society and dying as the inevitable result of having been born. Societies generally have fix their own issues, other people cannot do it for them. As outsiders who know nothing of the society of the people living on this island, we cannot and should not attempt to change their society to a way we feel more appropriate, that is literally genocide.
>dying as the inevitable result of having been born
Dying is not the inevitable result of having been born (or rather, dying before the heat death of the universe is not).
>As outsiders who know nothing of the society of the people living on this island, we cannot and should not attempt to change their society to a way we feel more appropriate, that is literally genocide.
Genocide: ..any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
> Genocide: ..any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
> (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
> It's definitely not literally genocide.
That is such an incomplete definition of genocide. No doubt genocide commonly is used to refer to physical violence, but cultural genocide is a real and well documented phenomenon. Pulling a dictionary definition of a large concept like this is insulting and is a farce.
Good point. Since in joining modern society they'd be missing out on those things those things that no longer ever occur, a fair trade would be to introduce them to consumerism and all of the lovely, healthy, meaningful things that includes.
I'm suggesting that your suggestion that we solve those medical problems for them while introducing them to the negative cultural influences of modern society is not really a fair trade.
Especially when these people(and possibly a handful of others in the Amazon) are literally the last remaining people on earth to be unaffected by modern man.
They could be. What do you know? These people have a culture that spans 60 thousand years, way longer than anything that forms the basis of our culture.
Can you explain how this specific 65,000 years of history, in the context of a history that may go on for millions of years in the future for these people, is any more important than any other, and vital to protect?
Maybe a million years from now their ancestors will look back to the time they "joined the real world" as the biggest, most important positive development in their history. Kind of like how the spread of language, the alphabet and math worked for us.
There seem to be two types of people in this world: those who romanticize about the past and think that everything was better in simpler times, and those that think that things are just getting better as we go. I'm of the latter.
Do you ever wish you were still a hunter gatherer? I don't, nor do I know anyone who does. Why is that?
Not disagreeing with you at all, but they are not completely isolated. They come and go off the island and have compulsory education like the rest of the United States. So it's not like they don't know about pollution or helicopters or the like.
"... They make it clear they want to be left alone."
"But could this be because they don’t see the benefits of ‘our’ way of life? If they knew, might they want to join us?"
"They won’t get the chance. In reality, the future offered by the settler society is to ‘join’ at the lowest possible level – often as beggars and prostitutes. History proves that tribal peoples end up in a far worse state after contact, often dead."
Let’s suppose our earth is visited by aliens. Giant extraterrestial spaceships appear. They make contact, abduct a couple of humans, some of which return with strange diseases. Oh yeah, and heaps of iPads as gifts. The people that make it back speak of a strange society, where everybody is essentially a mindless part of a big mainframe, not unlike the Borg in Star Trek.
One day, the aliens make contact. We try to fend them off, but our weapons don’t seem to harm them. They explain that their intentions are good, and that by assimilating mankind, we no longer have to deal with hunger, poverty, crime, fear or even death.
You like?
Absurd, right? Yet this is probably not far from how the Sentinelese see us. They have heard from diseases they cannot fight from other tribes, they have witnessed the abductions. Why should things be different all of the sudden?
My point is: we have to stop seeing our culture or civilization as superior. In the alien analogy, becoming a Borg-like drone is probably far better in the eyes of the aliens. Why would these ‘savage’ humans would want to deal with the perils of life? Why can’t they see that we’re just here to help them?
Their culture, their world view is so far apart from ours. Do we really think that, when we show them a modern hospital, they’ll think it’s a good idea? Do we really believe that these people would somehow benefit from things like cell phones, cars, education, healthcare? Besides, we can’t show them just the good stuff. We can’t NOT show them pollution, taxes, budget crises, alcoholism, child pornography or facebook.
I’m sure the ones that genuinly want to help these people have good intentions. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. No matter how good our intentions are, making contact is not in the best interest of these people. They don’t need our view of what is civilized, and they don’t need our vices and virtues. And they make it pretty clear, too.
Would I want to be left alone by the Borg? Yes. But what if it was The Culture? I would be very disappointed if a civilization like that saw us and said "Oh, they probably wouldn't want all of our bullshit, leave them alone." I'm sure there are many who would disagree.
The big problem with the alien analogy is our level of knowledge and language. The tribesmen are...savages. There is no framework whatsoever for them to understand anything about modern society and make reasoned evaluations. Conversely, it's hard to imagine that scenario between us and aliens. It's certainly possible that their society is so far beyond our wildest dreams that we can't even begin to make sense of it, but it's also possible that we have crossed some fundamental threshold of knowledge and communication.
Is our culture superior, is it not, how can that be evaluated? Most people do tend to stay in it rather than set out into the woods. Of course they have been biased towards that since birth, likewise for the Sentinelese and their ways, it's a really interesting and highly subjective question.
Whether we attempt to contact/assimilate them or not, we have made a choice. If we did try, it could go well or it could go poorly; they could be eternally grateful for knowledge and technology, or they could be destroyed. There are so many factors and ideological viewpoints at play, I just don't understand how people here can be so sure that one way or the other is The Right Thing to Do.
tribesmen.. savages.. how about people? You can't judge them solely by technology. If the historians are correct, they have 65.000 years of cultural evolution under their belts.
The thing is, we know for a fact that attempting contact or "assimilation" will result in a wide variety of failures. It has happened again and again. There is no incentive at all for us to make them fare well in our society. We can't even take care of our own. They seem to be healthy, happy and free of trouble; why not focus your good will on the 1 billion other people that are already 'assimilated' and live in much worse conditions?
Thank you for giving the most reasonable comment in this entire discussion. You're absolutely right, there is no way for us to objectively judge whether they will benefit from our 'help' or not.
I don't know for sure if not contacting them is the best way for them. However, they make it clear that they don't appreciate our contacting them. I think that as long as they're not asking for our help and/or are in apparent need for help, we should let them be.
Fascinating story, as well as the wikipedia article about uncontacted peoples. I really appreciate the Indian government for the exclusion zone, as contact with the rest of the world will probably wipe them away.
From a anthropological standpoint, this is a nice paradox. I'm sure anthropologists would LOVE to study an uncontacted tribe. Particularly this tribe, as they appear to be of African descent yet are living in the middle of the Indian ocean. Unfortunately, there is no way of studying these people without, well, 'contaminating' them.
You can always fly drones around.
Edit: Non-Lethal, Non-Army drones. Just flying cameras to see what's happening there, or how they're living. Even better, really small cameras that look a bit like slow-moving birds.
I think it would freak them out. A metal bird, making strange humming noise, hovering over their heads...
A couple of years ago I was driving on the I-95 from Las Vegas to Tonopah. Out of nowhere, a predator drone came up and flew next to our car for a good couple of hundred yards. A strange and somewhat frightening experience, even for someone who knows what drones are.
Besides, the thick jungle canopy wouldn't allow drones to get a good look anyway. We could launch crawling cameras, disguised as forest creatures, but the risk of getting exposed isn't worth the potential damage to the tribe, IMHO. I think the best thing to do is to just leave them alone.
How long do you think it'll be until drone hunting is a widespread sport? Although, the only place with enough hunting rifles is the US, and it's probably not going to be popular there.
> A metal bird, making strange humming noise, hovering over their heads...
Because a huge tanker stuck in the water would not freak them out, maybe? It's way more impressive than a small drone flying around, for people who don't even have boats.
The beauty of _not_ having science is that you can explain anything. Initially they'll be frightened and respond appropriately (withdrawal with cautious acts of violence, it seems), over time familiarity will breed contempt.
Pretty sure they were. I can only imagine the smile of the drone operator, seeing the faces of the freaked out tourist couple in their rental car... Can't say I wouldn't do the same!
No you cannot. Not in the Andaman Islands. These islands are the base for the Indian Tri-Services Command [1] and rumor has it, for the Indian Nuclear ICBM command. In addition there are more rumors of serious electronic warfare going on there against the Chinese listening posts on Coco Island.
No way are there going to be drones around Andamans anytime soon.
How long do we think this Indian protection of this island will last? The current Indian government, who Indian colleagues tell me is led by a mafia related Italian family, is one of the most corrupt in the world. It is only a matter of time before whichever intelligent anthropologist in the bureaucracy/judicary is currently protecting them falls by the wayside.
I am curious. What is the purpose of your comment?
> How long do we think this Indian protection of this island will last?
Is this a rhetorical question? A call to arms so that someone "more responsible" takes over the island and helps protect the "noble savage"? Or did you want an actual response?
> mafia related Italian family
Did you mean the Italian mafia? Because the only references to such a thing that I can find are from what look like conspiracy stories.
Alternatively, was the fact they were "Italian" supposed to count against them?
If you mean to say that being Italian makes them more ready to look down on others, then of course YES. Euro-style nationalism and its other part known as Christianity are based upon the very idea of us-vs-them where 'we' are superior and have moral obligation to 'help' others.
This is categorically racist. Think about what you are saying. You are saying that just because a person is Italian, they have a tendency to be superior; they are christian.
Seriously though, is there a way to be nationalist and not be racist? Nationalism, as a concept that started in Europe, is entrenched in racism. I can see that you are from USA from your anguish. But USA enjoys a very special history - that of no historical baggage that pits, say, French against the German, or Poland against Germany and Russia.
But back in Europe, 'racism', as it is taught, has been reduced to an outdated concept that has already been conquered. I can assure you it hasn't been. It has rather enabled many people to be racist without being called one.
Sorry, drifted away. Coming back to your point, people are racist. Italy and India share different narrated history - one of a old conqueror in decline and the other of a old underdeveloped civilization in turmoil after British left it out of pity. Everyone seems to believe it. All of their opinions are based upon it. It might be wrong to call Sonia (the Italian in question) racist because she is Italian, it is also not wrong to want to get rid of political bosses because they are Italian.
There is a lot that can be said here, but I guess I will have to resort to quoting from dusty books and running into abstract ideas.
Well, ever since the Intergalactic foundation created a no-fly zone around our solar-system in order to let us remain uncontacted, we are in a similar boat. People outside there look fondly at our antiquated technology as the good old days.
Who are we? Aliens?
Where are we coming from? Space?
What is all this weird technology? UFOs?
They must have a story of "visitors" they tell to each generation. It started a long time ago. They came in weird boats and wore weird cloths. Over time, they would appear again and again. Different weird boats and different weird clothes every time. Sometimes they had white skin, sometimes they had brown skin, sometimes maybe even with pale skin with slanted eyes. They always looked different and weird. They always carry different weird looking weapons. Recently, they come a lot. They fly in weird boats with wings. They fly in weird boats with spinning blades.
Yes, this is true. I have seen this on indian TV channels. Even indian govt doesn't go there. Somehow indian politicians are not able to bribe and corrupt the tribes. Well done tribes.
This is interesting too - "An expedition led by Maurice Vidal Portman, a government administrator who hoped to research the natives and their customs, accomplished a successful landing on North Sentinel Island in January 1880. The group found a network of pathways and several small, abandoned villages. After several days, six Sentinelese were captured and taken to Port Blair. They soon became sick, and two of them died. The other four were returned to the island." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island
"Finally, after several days on the island, the party stumbled across an elderly couple who were too old to run away, and several small children. Portman brought the two adults and four of the children back to Port Blair. But the man and the woman soon started to get sick and then died, probably from exposure to Western diseases like smallpox, measles, and influenza, to which they would have had little or no resistance. So Portman returned the four children to North Sentinel Island and released them with gifts for the rest of the tribe. The children disappeared into the jungle and were never seen again. "
You're being downvoted, but assuming you're talking about small non-weaponized drones, it's not necessarily a horrible idea. If you could do it without the people noticing, then you could learn a lot and not harm them. Of course, you'd heavily violate their privacy, but it's better than exposing them to diseases. I'd say I'm still against it, but given the kinds of viewpoints on privacy that are mainstream these days, it's at least worth contemplating...
>It's estimated the the 28-square-mile island (slightly larger than Manhattan) is capable of supporting as many as 400 hunter-gatherers
Assuming this is accurate, I'm amazed that so much land is required to support a single individual. More so given it's an island with access to marine food sources.
Would there be any chance that in their isolation that different diseases evolved that the rest of the world doesn't have immunity to? It would seem to me that us wiping them out with one of our diseases isn't the only thing we should be worried about.
I'm thinking of the 'mind blown' meme when wondering how they would react if they knew I was sitting here, using my fingers to display a language that could be instantly available across the world.
Actually looking at a map, the island is a mere 20km from a much larger island, which in turn is a few hundred km from mainland. The larger island is situated such that anything floating out to sea from the mainland has a 25% chance of hitting the larger island. From there, someone would find their way to the smaller island.
Quite possible that some people floated out to North Sentinel Island in a confluence of events. Once there, if you don't have oars odds are you're not coming back if you leave (floating or swimming).
Possibly with primitive sail boats, or over land before the sea cut them off. It´s also possible they did have oars but forgot about them at some point over the thousands of years because they didn´t need them.
What about genetic diversity? With only 1000 people can they keep reproducing without long term effects? I can't believe they have been isolated for over 60,000 years.
Fun tidbit I read while searching for more info about these people. Evidently, some explorers sat in their boat just offshore in 1970 as some of the male warriors were on the beach. The explorers threw the men some gifts but refused to leave. How did the natives respond? Why, the women emerged from the jungle and immediately engaged in a giant orgy with the warriors, of course.
Ironically, they could be the last ones standing if a disease sweeps the rest of the world.
On another note, it would be interesting to know what they eat, and to know the incidence of chronic disease in their culture. The results would likely be surprising: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_Price
>members of a hunter-gatherer tribe that has lived on the island for 65,000 years.
>It's estimated the the 28-square-mile island (slightly larger than Manhattan) is capable of supporting as many as 400 hunter-gatherers, but no one knows how many people live there.
Did anyone else read that and think "That is a lot of inbreeding."?
I had the same question (the article isn't that great, it comes from a "bathroom reader"). From previous reading about this fascinating topic, I think they must've established the dates for the other tribes and other islands of the Andaman chain, and then just assummed North Sentinel was similar. I think that's a fair assessment because its size and location is not atypical, so there's no (apparent) reason to assume it was settled earlier or later than the other islands.
This of course begs the question of how they got to the island. In the past, when sea levels were lower, there may have been land bridges between islands and the mainland (not sure 'cause I haven't studied the bathymetry). Another explanation for how they got there is that they did have sails or oars in the past, but they were forgotten over time.
Question: if we investigated these people, and found out that they had some 'bad' ritual practice like female circumcision or human sacrifice -- would we have a moral obligation to intervene and stop them? Or would we have a moral obligation to leave them the fuck alone?
They've somehow managed to stay alive through tens of thousands of years and limited interaction with us. People have approached them over decades and they have made the choice numerous times to push out the outsiders.
Despite this, I went down a rat-hole of trying to find out more about them... and then decided thats where it should end. I don't need any more information than what's already out there. Anthropologists need not find out more while risking their own safety and the survival of these people.
I have been reading up on distant islands for years. The topic is fascinating and seemingly endless (wikipedia now has more and more articles covering these remote specs).
However, Tristan da Cunha was uninhabited and the current settlement is part of the modern world--just significantly limited by distance and difficulty of access. It is fascinating to study how humans live and relate in such small communities, but Tristan's inhabitants are fundamentally unlike the Sentinelese with their status as an uncontacted tribe.
The difference being, people can and do go to Tristan da Cunha. I know someone who's been there. They have telephones, internet access, satellite TV and a radio station.
The naivete of anyone who thinks introducing a 65k year-old culture to modern society is truly, truly impressive. Imagine what it would take to achieve a perfect (as evidenced by the span of time) equilibrium with your environment.
We through around the word sustainable pretty readily these days, but this is the real thing. These people have achieved a sustainable existence unlike any other.
I wonder, has anyone tried visiting them naked ? At the very least, what would their reaction be ? Also, maybe sending a party of black-skinned people would accomplish something ?
As for my personal opinion, I would be most pleased if we could make enough contact to talk with them for at least 1 day, then leave them alone. To learn their beliefs and outlook of life.
looking at this island (looks huge!), am I the only one who feel so sick and tired of what the US government does to its people and our land, that I want to fill up my jetski and just head that way? Only if the tank was large enough...
Edit: zoom out on the island.. and think about this: somewhere under the green down there there are living people like me and you that do not know what internet is... or cell phones.. or ipads.. cable TV... anything..
> looking at this island (looks huge!), am I the only one who feel so sick and tired of what the US government does to its people and our land, that I want to fill up my jetski and just head that way? Only if the tank was large enough...
Yeah, you should actually try going and living in some of these luddite paradises that you think exist. I grew up in Ethiopia. Very luddite. No U.S. government there either. Except people used to get shot on the streets and their family used to get charged for the bullets used to shoot them.
> somewhere under the green down there there are living people like me and you that do not know what internet is... or cell phones.. or ipads.. cable TV... anything..
I was in Bhutan a few months back. Just me, a few rich people trying to find themselves, no cell phones or ipads or whatever. It was paradise. Except you know, half a million people who had lived for six generations there had been shipped off the country unceremoniously. [1]
>Edit: zoom out on the island.. and think about this: somewhere under the green down there there are living people like me and you that do not know what internet is... or cell phones.. or ipads.. cable TV... anything..
Or books, for that matter. Such things probably aren't as important if everybody you will ever have the chance to meet in your life numbers 400 people.
If they wanted it, certainly, but they attack any non-islanders who come near so it seems reasonable to assume they're not interested.
Besides, what do they need to know that they don't already after living on the same island for 65,000 years? I'm assuming you're thinking about modern medicine but I expect they have their own ways of dealing with illness, and increasing their life expectancy might actually make things worse - the island can presumably only support a limited number of people at any one time.
I'm thinking more of math and science. I suppose if the island's leaders are aware of the outside world and all it can and can't do, then I'd be less concerned about the "oppressed" minds of the island's inhabitants. I feel similarly about ultra-sheltered children in cultish societies.
I would say those are two different examples though - children in cultish societies are removed from society at large while the cult remains embedded in and aware of it; the islanders on the other hand have deliberately chosen isolation rather than having isolation forced upon them by any external agent. I would say it's really up to them to head into the outside world rather than for us to do anything, if they want to see what's out here. And clearly they don't.
The only hint of 'oppression' I see here is the idea of pushing our way of thinking onto a group of people who aren't interested and, to my mind, would derive questionable benefit from it. They must surely have sufficient 'science' to have survived there for this long and unless they intend to venture away from their island, what useful things could we teach them? I can't picture them building a particle accelerator or sitting around all day puzzling over integrals.
> the islanders on the other hand have deliberately chosen isolation rather than having isolation forced upon them by any external agent.
There is an implicit assumption that they are a democratic society where a decision was taken with the consent of everyone. You have no way of knowing that. For all you know, they could very well be a cult with some old fogey launching attack troops at the evil invaders whilst the young struggle mightily against the oppressive regime.
> I can't picture them building a particle accelerator or sitting around all day puzzling over integrals.
That is rather patronizing. You have no way of knowing if they are interested in that. No one knows if they like blueberry pie unless they actually try blueberry pie.
> There is an implicit assumption that they are a democratic society where a decision was taken with the consent of everyone. You have no way of knowing that. For all you know, they could very well be a cult with some old fogey launching attack troops at the evil invaders whilst the young struggle mightily against the oppressive regime.
Or they could be communists. Or anarchists. Or whatever. We have only slight evidence to make any sort of judgement, that evidence being that every time a non-islander has gone near them, the visitor has been repelled or avoided. If that says anything to you besides 'go away' then you're projecting your own opinions onto them.
> That is rather patronizing. You have no way of knowing if they are interested in that. No one knows if they like blueberry pie unless they actually try blueberry pie.
I'm sorry that you chose to interpret it that way; that's not what I intended. The point I was trying to make was that I couldn't imagine these people engaging in any activities unrelated to their current way of life. The reason I make this statement is that they've had thousands and thousands of years to do so and yet apparently haven't. And yes, by your earlier argument, maybe they have a secret underground facility or perhaps they're the prisoners of some other advanced agent but I'm inclined to prefer the simplest explanation which is that they are a basic tribal society with no interest in the world outside their borders. The evidence, scant though it is, suggests nothing more than that without speculation on our part. It's not patronising to suggest that they don't think like others of us do.
Recall that the original post I replied to posed the question of whether or not it was unethical to withhold modern learning from them, and my point (which still stands) is that invading the home land of a group of people who are all shouting "we don't want blueberry pie" to give them blueberry pie because we think it's delicious but dammit, they haven't tasted it yet so how do they know? would be unethical, not the other way around.
If they want to meet us, and partake in the exciting wonders of the modern age - the rest of humanity is a boat ride away. All they need to do is develop oars. Or at least stop shooing away visitors.
I can't find anything on the inbreeding.
From what I've read somewhere an animal species need at very least 200, or so, specimen to survive.
There are guessed to be between 40 and 400.
Is anyone able to find the wreck of the Primrose on Google Maps satellite image? I've looked around the perimeter of the island but cannot see it -- did the Indian government clean it up?
Would be a nice idea to just get rid of the few bozos there and open your own nice little kingdom. Maybe develop a tax heaven and vacation destination.
Just think: A life without the damage wrought by modern antibiotics, dentistry, surgery, and preventative medicine! Where if you get sick with something that a week's worth of pills would clear right up, you're gonna die in pain! Paradise!
Yep, nothing quite like the Noble Savage, who has the dignity to die of something you've only heard about in old novels.
The archaeological record shows that tooth decay increased dramatically with agriculture, and prior to that, was much less frequent than today. It's one step forward, two steps back - at least, for dentistry.
Many of our dramatically beneficial advances - such as covered sewage and vitamin-supplemented bread - solve problems that did not exist for less densely populated hunter-gatherers.
The big problem for them was carrying capacity, meaning you had to migrate, fight the tribe next door... or practice infanticide. Overcoming these is the true achievement of our age.
Don't forget the other major problem that civilization solved really well: infant mortality. (Unless you take the Malthusian perspective and see it as a boon to population management.)
OK, nobody disputes that they have better teeth than my circa 1800 ancestors did, but I very likely have better teeth than they do now, so who really wins here?
> The big problem for them was carrying capacity, meaning you had to migrate, fight the tribe next door... or practice infanticide. Overcoming these is the true achievement of our age.
I get your point, and I think we can all agree that our standards of living are WAY better than theirs, but by OUR standards. Yes, our life expectancy is better, we have better teeth, we are healthier, we get to use all the shiny stuff that comes with our civilization. But those are our standards, not theirs. So there's no 'winner' here.
Look at native Americans. They were also 'savages', and we didn't do very well imposing our superior western civilization upon them. That kind of thinking is old-fashioned and harmful. We can't just assume that our culture, civilization is somehow 'better'. Of course, I wouldn't like living the way they do, but given the ferocity of their defense against others, this goes the same for them.
They seem to live their lives essentially worry-free and they take care of each other. There are records of elderly population.
They seem to like it the way they have it and seeing that their neighbouring tribesmen were either massacred or suffered extremely lethal epidemics, they seem to have achieved the most evolutionarily intelligent behaviour of the region by keeping strangers the fuck away from their island.
Maybe it depends whether you look at it from a collective or individual point of view? Individually we are probably healthier, but as a population they well may be healthier since infirmity is naturally eliminated by death. That sounds pretty bad, but it might not be bad if they have a different, more accepting, view of death than us.
What does this even mean? Talking in platitudes about health and life are all fine and dandy, and yet the in US there are tremendous issues with poverty, health care access, and control of one's own body. Societies do things very differently even if they say they promote life or health, but that kind if wishy washy dialog is useless, what matters are the details.
> Talking in platitudes about health and life are all fine and dandy, and yet the in US there are tremendous issues with poverty, health care access, and control of one's own body.
I think health care access is an even greater problem on that island.
Perhaps age is a universal standard and therefore health and life can be associated to it.
On the other hand, if our contact wipes out a share of their population, it reduces their life expectancy. Furthermore, they survived the 2004 Tsunami, so possibly they are doing better than others in the region.
> If an asteroid hits the Earth, who do you think will be best equipped to survive?
Them, obviously. You and I would die a painful death in a few days without sanitation, proper housing and supermarkets. They on the other hand, are perfectly used to manage with extremely scarce resources.
Er... no. We would have a better chance of deflecting the asteroid if our technology is sufficiently advanced. Therefore, technological progress is objectively superior for survival.
It's clear they know the outside world exists. They have chosen not to engage. (To put it mildly.)
As an aside, there are more than 100 'uncontacted' tribes in the world. All of them know of the outside world; all have chosen -- for now -- not to interact directly with mainstream society.
I'm not sure you have much choice when you are born in such a society. You are probably very much expected/forced to stay and be useful to your tribe. Freedom is very relative...
I've been fortunate enough to interview several tribal people who were only recently 'contacted'. The latest came out of the forest in 2009.
What is striking is how many of their friends and relatives died of outsiders' disease after making contact, and how fondly they spoke of their life before. When I spoke to them, some were considering leaving the village where they now live and returning to a life in the forest.
With regards to healthcare -- the health services offered to settled tribal and indigenous people in many places is poor to nonexistent. Amazonian tribal peoples have dozens to hundreds of medicinal plants, many of which have been proven to have active pharmacological properties. Some are now used in Western medicine.
But then, some of the plants in the jungle seem to be amazing. I read some books about expeditions to find them for western medicine. One talked about a black paste you put on a tooth and it will simply fall out, no pain and no problem. A plant that makes women infertile for 7 years (they give it to their teenagers, apparently). Also, great plants against many sorts of other problems like abscesses.
Sadly, the results simply got ignored. The woman in the book was sent by a US pharmy company and brought back many plants and samples which she had won from the tribes in hard work (they don't just tell anyone). They probably still have them in a freezer somewhere.
An experienced person I talked to said that it probably was too much trouble and costs to clear it for drugs since there often are side effects, often psychological. He took one or two of the jungle things and said it was intense. Still, it's a great loss for our civilisation that it played out like this so far.
So, we'd have much to give, but also much to gain. Our diseases could be cured too.
Plants are limited resources. Even if you wanted to make drugs out of it, it does not scale very well. That's why most of our drugs are synthetic. That's scalable chemistry. Analyzing active ingredients in plants is a lengthy and costly process. And even if they worked as advertised, you would need to go through clinical trials to have them accepted in other countries. You don't put drugs on the market just like that.
Net, it's very costly and it's been tried before, as far as I know, on several plants from the Amazon area. I need to find the source again, but from what I remember most plants failed against placebo. There's probably a lot of placebo effect in the efficacy claimed by people living in these areas.
As compared to the Civilized Man, who has only solidly developed all the things you describe in the last couple hundred years and took thousands of years of war, famine, plague, slavery, and endless grinding inequality (still haven't quite fixed that one it seems) to get where we are now?
Nothing quite like the modern man, where some tiny percentage of the world enjoys all its fruits and a few billion others try to live on subsistence farming, which by most anthropological analysis is a much worse life that the hunter/gatherer tribes of 10,000 years past.
> a few billion others try to live on subsistence farming
There has never been as few famines as in today's world. I'm not sure what you are referring to. And expect for a few countries, life expectancy around the world as well as life standards are increasing progressively. As posted several times on HN, the future is about abundance, not poverty. Even people in Africa nowadays have mobile phones everywhere. Take your blinkers off.
Subsistence farming isn't a reference to famines, its a reference to inequality. My point was that even today, the majority of the civilized world spends their time doing endless agricultural labor for minimal benefit, even though one would think that we would have a better alternative implemented by this point (especially since anthro studies have shown that by and large hunter/gatherer societies spend much less time obtaining food and water than farming ones do).
And my earlier point on famine was that it was a much bigger problem for heavy agricultural societies in centuries past than it was for tribal societies; a bad harvest one year for a civilization could have disastrous effects, while a tribe could generally pack up and move.
And finally, while I agree that the future is abundance, I'm not convinced it's going to be abundance for everyone. Up to this point, wealth in every single civilization I can think of has been heavily stratified, with the top few percent taking the majority of everything (doesn't matter if its nobles, priests, corporate leaders or politicians). I don't really see this changing given our current political/cultural/economic systems, unless basic income becomes a thing (and even then, the stratification will remain; it'll just become irrelevant on a long enough scale of technological improvement).
You focus on the wrong thing. It's not about inequality, it's obvious that the rich should get richer faster. You don't expect the rich to have a 1 dollar salary increase while the poor gets the same thing. Obviously not. So, of course the gap is widening. And it's not necessarily a problem, because even the super rich can't spend all of what they earn, and that money ends up being recycled in the economy (investment, etc..).
It's rather about: is everyone getting richer ? And the answer is clearly yes. Even the poorer people are getting a bit more than before and can afford a better life than their parents. There is a clear progress in all strats of society. That's what abundance mean: it's not about who gets the biggest share of the cake, it's the fact that cake is growing and everyone gets more cake than before.
> It's not about inequality, it's obvious that the rich should get richer faster.
That the rich get richer faster and hoard more and more wealth while others fine their wealth decreasing over time is inequality.
> And it's not necessarily a problem, because even the super rich can't spend all of what they earn, and that money ends up being recycled in the economy (investment, etc..).
This is the trickle down theory, which is not true in any way whatsoever. Wealth does not get reinvested or redistributed in a way that reduces wealth disparity.
> It's rather about: is everyone getting richer ? And the answer is clearly yes.
This is demonstrably false. Don't confuse the availability of consumer goods with wealth. In the US, for example, actual wealth for low and middle class people/families has been declining for the last 30 years or so.
> Even the poorer people are getting a bit more than before and can afford a better life than their parents.
This is not true either. Homelessness, poverty, and unemployment rates are measured and we know that there is no long term downward trend for these things even as wealth disparity gets worse.
> That's what abundance mean: it's not about who gets the biggest share of the cake, it's the fact that cake is growing and everyone gets more cake than before.
Tell that to the people that are homeless or go hungry every day.
The article talks about reductions in extreme poverty, that is living on less than $1.25 a day. Note that doesn't really address wealth disparity, only that more people, esp. in China, are living with higher income.
However, this change doesn't make any statements about increasing equality for different economic classes nor does it talk about sustainability of a lowering extreme poverty rate. It also doesn't talk about various aspects about living just above that extreme poverty line or the challenge facing those people not living in places like China that have seen a big economic boom and are not likely to.
What?! It's all about inequality. The problem isn't everyone is getting richer it's that some are getting waaaay richer than other, they are grabbing the powers, making decisions and isolating themselves from the consequences of those decisions.
You can drain a lake for thing X until your lake runs dry. Who is least susceptible to change? Those with money . Either they move or they buy water).
The high Gini coefficient correlates and probably causes so many bad effects it shouldn't be ignored. It's not the one and only measure, and there are other important measures but it is a very good predictor of social unrest.
Not much social unrest in the past 50 years in all developed countries where inequalities have been growing when everyone gets richer.
And wealth is not a Lake. It does not run dry. You can create wealth. If wealth could not be created we would be super poor by now with 7 billion people on the planet compared to 100 years ago. But it's the exact opposite, we are hundred time richer than 100 years ago.
When everyone earns a little more than before over time, there's not so much cause for social unrest. Countries with growing economies tend to be more stable and peaceful Revolutions occur when people get poorer and lose hope for a better future.
Not much unrest? That claim seems dubious. What are your standards for not much unrest?
I never said it is a like a lake. I meant an actual lake. Lake was example how inequalities lead to richest people making policies that don't impact them. That is the biggest threat income inequality may present to any society.
Money is like gravity/mass. The more money you have the more money you attract. You may create wealth, but if you don't distribute it, some points may gather too much like their matter counterparts, turn into a black holes and consume the reality around them. It's like that man that asked Ford "If you don't give money to your workers, who's gonna buy your cars?"
> Countries with growing economies tend to be more stable and peaceful Revolutions occur when people get poorer and lose hope for a better future.
Wait, what about Brazil and Turkey? Aren't they growing economies? Why are their in state of unrest?
Notice the "tend to" != "are". Obviously there are other factors at work. But statistically speaking, or as a rule of thumb, growing economies are clearly leading to more stable countries.
Notice I said a similar thing. Gini coefficient correlates with lower life expectancy, more tensions, etc. I think it is a better predictor of peace and overall quality value, than growing economies.
> thousands of years of war, famine, plague, slavery, and endless grinding inequality (still haven't quite fixed that one it seems) to get where we are now?
Are you trying to tell me that these "noble savages" didn't have war, didn't have famine or inequality?
Tribal warfare was usually a matter of establishing boundaries. If I remember my history correctly, this was pretty clearly demonstrated in battles between Native Americans and European colonists in the 16 and 1700s. Tribal attacks were closer to raids - warriors would fight, some people would die, but damage on a lasting scale was minimal. Colonist attacks, on the other hand, were going to war in the civilized measure of the term; burning down villages/towns, significantly more death, etc.
And as technology has advanced and civilizations have grown in size and strength, our conception of war has grown ever more brutal. Its been shown, for example, that troops at the time of the revolutionary war that fired on each other by and large missed - troops would load gunpowder but not the bullet; they would aim over the heads of the opposing troop at the last second; and so on. Something like 20 or 30 percent of the troops would actually be shooting at their opponents.
When this was discovered (I think in the early 1900s, but I don't really remember - could be as late as the 40s?) armies changed training methods; they would use targets closer to the shape of humans and so on, and there was a massive increase in the accuracy of soldiers using guns. There was also the advent of "total war" during the American Civil War, with the previously unheard-of scale of destruction that brought (which we now consider typical).
In short, "war" is a wildly different thing for two tribes of a few hundred people that have several hundred sq. miles of territory each (and no strong reason to invade the other), and two civilizations deploying thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of troops, with vastly more lethal weapons, to fight each other.
Famine is also less of an issue for a hunter/gatherer tribe; the large expanse of territory means that if one area is temporarily exhausted, you move somewhere else, or you follow the herds, etc.
Lastly, inequality doesn't seem to exist as a problem for most tribal societies. I mean, imagine living with a few hundred other people that are all you know - and are all you will ever know? People will go to great lengths to help their friends and family in our society; is it so strange to think that in a group where everyone knows each other and everyone works, lives and plays together, that the group will naturally enforce some sort of equilibrium between its members? That people will share and help each other based more on their capabilities and the expectations of others?
Further, we can see that stratification and inequality are endless problems for civilized societies - war, rebellion and revolts are constant themes throughout civilized history, often between the "haves" and the "have nots". These problems exist because civilization is an attempt to create human societies at scale - except humans aren't built for social structures beyond a few hundred people, and we have yet to find a way to replace that default social construct with something that works for tens of thousands or millions or billions of people.
"War" is also a wildly different prospect for a society in which a person cannot be considered a man until he has ambushed and killed a random stranger from another tribe and fashioned their body parts into a trophy, to a society so accustomed to peace it requires ever-more-complex rationalizations to breach it, having invented Geneva conventions, treaties and the concept of being "humane" along the way. At the end, you're just as dead whether killed by the ruthless efficiency of an atomic bomb or a Holocaust in a protracted as you are if ambushed by a lone member of another tribe that's just moved into your area.
Let's put things into perspective: a tribe lives in total isolation from the rest of the world for 65000 years, eating an abundance of fish, and the most advanced technology they develop over that time is weapons, which they default to brandishing at the first sign of any outsiders or unexplained phenomenon. That's hardly a great advertisement for the ability of their simpler social structures and lack of external threats to yield peace and harmony.
They may well have good reasons for being hostile to outsiders. Imagine 400 years ago they were friendly and approachable, but after a succession of whalers, slavers, British kidnappers and who knows what else, quickly came to the rational conclusion that outsiders are hostile and must be fought off.
It would be more accurate to say that it is not a great advertisement for our more complex social structures to yield harmony.
You are depicting war among tribes as being a lesser evil than the ones carried among nations. It would be better to compare the tribes' war with clashes among Eurasian ancient cities and later among medieval houses, in which "warriors would fight, some people would die, but damage on a lasting scale was minimal" would be valid for both. That kind of war was carried for thousands of year, and comparatively only little time-span holds the "total war" style.
You are also speculating about tribal social environment. For the most part of human history, the main factor for establishing relations was power enforced through violence. The size of the community didn't matter much, we have domestic violence even now. That "sort of equilibrium between its members" was/is assured most likely by brute force or its projection.
Well, they seem to be doing allright for the past 65,000 years...
I'm the first to admit that I probably wouldn't last a week there. It seems quite romantic, living on a deserted island, without the antics of our society. But gathering food and water is hard, or even near impossible for us. These people however, seem to have found a way to survive.
I'm assuming that, because they have lived in such a closed ecosystem for so long, they have different diseases than we have. I'm also assuming that for the diseases and medical conditions they have, they probably can find medicinal plants in the forest.
I doubt however they have the same life expectancy as we do!
> Well, they seem to be doing allright for the past 65,000 years...
They've survived. Humans can survive terrible things.
> I'm assuming that, because they have lived in such a closed ecosystem for so long, they have different diseases than we have.
Not really, because their ecosystem is not closed. Birds and fish and so on still bring parasites, insects fly around, and malaria is malaria wherever you go.
> I'm also assuming that for the diseases and medical conditions they have, they probably can find medicinal plants in the forest.
But not good ones. We've never once found plants which make anything nearly as good as penicillin, and there's no reason to expect that we ever will.
> I doubt however they have the same life expectancy as we do!
And they may well have to practice infanticide, and/or go on bloody campaigns to keep the population down low enough they don't starve.
Yes and no. It's not synthetic, but it's not naturally occurring, either (at least, not at levels that are useful). A lot of work went into the production process before penicillin actually became viable as an antibiotic (hence the 16-year gap between discovery and first wide scale use):
Yeah? And who's going to pay for all their modern antibiotics, dentistry, surgery, and preventative medicine? I'm no expert on native/Western interactions but it's my understanding that typically the native population nose dives because of new diseases and those that survive are left to try and make money in a new, grander system of society which is completely different from what they've done for generations prior.
Right now they have a way of life in which food is plentiful; they want fruit they pull it from a tree, they want fish they reach into their lagoon. I'm sure they have their share of injuries and sickness but is it really worth trading their current life away for? And what will they replace it with? Over-harvesting their food sources to sell away? Performing their rituals for gawking tourists until the very acts are meaningless? Being exposed to a slew of diseases they've never had to worry about before only to find out that our modern antibiotics cost too much for their measly incomes?
Regardless of how they've done it these people have survived for what... 65,000 years? I don't think they need anything we have to offer. Meanwhile look at how nearly every other native population has fared after coming into contact with Westerners. Sure our society has plenty of great aspects and advantages to it but these things come with a cost. I don't think it's possible for our modern world to mesh with the Sentinelese without totally destroying their way of life if not a majority of their population.
I now find myself wishing I'd read the copy of "The Coral Sea" by Alan Villiers which is sitting on my bookshelf at home. From my understanding it's a book, published some 50 or 60 years ago, chronicling the history of various Pacific Islands and how Western exploration and exploitation have effected them. The general synopsis from what I've read elsewhere has been that they haven't fared too well.
what makes you think they would be rich enough for any of those? as other posts point out - they aren't going to be automatically promoted to middle class americans in the burbs.
Let's just leave these people the fuck alone.
What threat are they under? Curious assholes like us. There are probably less than 1000 people on that island, all descended from people tens of thousands of years ago. There are more people than that that visit an Apple store on a Tuesday before 2pm.
Leave them alone.
We don't need to assuage our 10 second collective attention span by ruining their lives, destroying their history, and effectively ending a lineage thousands of years old.
These people probably have their own ideas about the weird shit washing up on their beaches and the crazy stuff in the sky that drops outsiders and food from time to time. Leave them to it. It doesn't matter what they think, no matter how curious you think you are.
Leave them alone.
For the physics-minded, think of them as a sample of humanity in Schrödinger's box. It's not a cat, but people. Except in this experiment, any direct observation will absolutely kill the people. Any exposure to disease, customs, or technology without their explicit choice will kill them. Maybe they don't physically die, but their lineage will end.