Great Andamanese people

Great Andamanese अण्डमानी
Total population
52 individuals including 2-3 full bloods (as of Feb. 2010)[1]
Regions with significant populations
Strait Island (India)
Languages

Great Andamanese languages

Religion

Hindu[2]

Great Andamanese (Hindi: अण्डमानी Aṇḍamāmā) is a collective term used to refer to related indigenous peoples who lived throughout most of the Great Andaman archipelago, the main and closely situated group of islands in the Andaman Islands. Numbering between 200 and 700, each of the Great Andamanese peoples maintained a distinct language.[3] Their collective identity is based on cultural similarity and of linguistic analysis; their languages were closely related, and formed one of the two identified families of indigenous Andamanese languages, the Great Andamanese family. Once the most numerous people in the Andaman Islands, with an estimated population of 10,000 in 1789, as of February 2010 there are only 52.

Contents

Origin

The Great Andamanese, along with the Negrito Onge, Jarawa, Jangil, Sentinelese, and the Shompen of Great Nicobar Island to the south, are thought to be the original inhabitants of the islands, having emigrated from the mainland tens of thousands of years ago.[4]

Population decimation

When the British established a permanent settlement and penal colony on Great Andaman in the 1860s, there were perhaps 5000 Great Andamanese. The government made proactive attempts to pacify and coopt the tribes, recruiting them to capture escaped convicts. Populations went into sharp decline as contact intensified.[5] They were rapidly introduced to the outside world and quickly moved from a stone-age existence to exposure to the industrial era.[6][7] The migration of mainland settlers to the islands accelerated this decline. By 1901, 600 were left,[8] and by 1927, 20 years prior to Indian independence, only 100 survived.[7] At independence, that had shrunk to about 25.[9] After dipping to 19 in 1961, their numbers rebounded somewhat to about 50 today,[10] still far too small for a self-sustaining society. They currently live on Strait island, and the cultural and linguistic identities of the individual groups have largely been lost.

The population of Great Andamanese stood at 52 individuals in January 2010 following the death of Boa Sr, the oldest living Great Andamanese elder and last known with some knowledge of the Aka-Bo language.[1]

Ethnic divisions

The Great Andamanese peoples are collectively distinguished from other indigenous Andamanese groups by culture, geography and language. The peoples that originally lived in the southern part of Great Andaman, some areas of South Andaman Island, Rutland Island, and Little Andaman Island speak languages which are classified in a separate language family, Ongan.

The ten Great Andamanese groups were generally distributed in distinct territories running along the narrow geography of Great Andaman, which runs in a north–south line for some 350 km but is only some 50 km wide at its widest extent. This peculiar geography meant that groups typically had at most three neighbours. Arranged roughly from north to south, the different Great Andamanese peoples were:

References

  1. ^ a b "Language lost as last member of Andaman tribe dies". The Telegraph (London). 2010-02-05. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7161422/Language-lost-as-last-member-of-Andaman-tribe-dies.html. Retrieved 2010-02-22. 
  2. ^ ST-14, Census of India 2001
  3. ^ Jarawa: The Great Andamanese - Survival International, http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/jarawa/greatandamanese, "The Great Andamanese were originally ten distinct tribes, including the Jeru, Bea, Bo, Khora and Pucikwar. Each had its own distinct language, and numbered between about 200 and 700 people. They are now collectively known as the Great Andamanese." 
  4. ^ "Members of Ancient Tribe Escape", CBS News, 2005-01-14, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/14/world/main667171.shtml, "Anthropologists believe five tribes of the southern Indian archipelago — including the Jarawas, Shompens, Onges and Sentinelese — date back 70,000 years." 
  5. ^ Richard B. Lee, Richard Heywood Daly (1999), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 052157109X, http://books.google.com/?id=5eEASHGLg3MC, "... Over time, the Great Andamanese, who occupied the forests around Port Blair, were pacified. Beginning to cooperate with British authorities, they helped recapture escaped convicts. By 1875, when these peoples were perilously close to extinction, the Andaman cultures came under scientific scrutiny ..." 
  6. ^ Zarine Cooper (2002), Archaeology and History: Early Settlements in the Andaman Islands, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195657926, http://books.google.com/?id=Bg5uAAAAMAAJ, "... iron implements, glass bottles, beads, and other objects were freely distributed by the British among the Great Andamanese ..." 
  7. ^ a b Madhusree Mukerjee (2003), The Land of Naked People, Houghton Mifflin Books, ISBN 0618197362, http://books.google.com/?id=u6373dOvGFgC, "... In 1927 Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt, a German anthropologist, found that around one hundred Great Andamanese survived, "in dirty, half-closed huts, which primarily contain cheap European household effects." ..." 
  8. ^ Jayanta Sarkar (1990), The Jarawa, Anthropological Survey of India, ISBN 8170460808, http://books.google.com/?id=HxBuAAAAMAAJ, "... The Great Andamanese population was large till 1858 when it started declining ... In 1901, their number was reduced to only 600 and in 1961 to a mere 19 ..." 
  9. ^ George van Driem (2001), Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region : Containing an Introduction to the Symbiotic Theory of Language, BRILL, ISBN 9004120629, http://books.google.com/?id=fiavPYCz4dYC, "... The Aka-Kol tribe of Middle Andaman went extinct by 1921. The Oko-Juwoi of Middle Andaman and the Aka-Bea of South Andaman and Rutland Island were extinct by 1931. The Akar-Bale of Ritchie's Archipelago, the Aka-Kede of Middle Andaman and the A-Pucikwar of South Andaman Island soon followed. By 1951, the census counted a total of only 23 Greater Andamanese and 10 Sentinelese. That means that just ten men, twelve women and one child remained of the Aka-Kora, Aka-Cari and Aka-Jeru tribes of Greater Andaman and only ten natives of North Sentinel Island ..." 
  10. ^ Anvita Abbi (2006), Endangered Languages of the Andaman Islands, Lincom Europa, http://books.google.com/?id=VWVkAAAAMAAJ, "... to Myanmar by a land bridge during the ice ages, and it is possible that the ancestors of the Andamanese reached the islands without crossing the sea ... The latest figure in 2005 is 50 in all ..." 

External links

:: VOGA :: Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese