Great Andamanese

All you want to know about Great Andamanese

Great Andamanese अण्डमानी
Total population

approx. 50
Regions with significant populations
Strait Island (India)
Languages
Andamanese languages
Religion
indigenous beliefs

Great Andamanese (Hindi: अण्डमानी) is a collective term used to refer to related groups or tribes of indigenous peoples who lived throughout most of the Great Andaman archipelago, the main and closely-situated group of islands in the Andaman Islands. Their collective identity is put forward mainly on the basis of their cultural similarity and of linguistic analysis; the languages spoken by the different groups were (from what is known) clearly related, and formed one of the two identified families or subgroups of indigenous Andamanese languages (the Great Andamanese family).

Population decimation

By the time the British established a permanent settlement and penal colony in the Andaman Islands (the 1860s), there were 10 distinct linguistic/territorial groups of Great Andamanese, who had persisted on these islands for thousands of years largely untouched by external influences. They numbered an estimated 5,000 individuals. However, the British government made proactive attempts to pacify and coopt the tribes, recruiting them to capture escaped mainlander convicts and, even as tribal population went into sharp decline, contact was intensified.[1] They were rapidly introduced to the outside world and, in a short timespan, moved from a stone-age existence to extensive exposure to the industrial era.[2][3] The migration of mainland settlers to the islands accelerated this decline. By 1901, 600 were left.[4] By 1927 (about 20 years prior to Indian independence), only 100 survivors remained.[3] Around independence, the number had shrunk to 25.[5] Fourteen years after independence, in 1961, only 19 remained. The numbers have rebounded somewhat and today about 50 remain,[6] which is still far too small for a self-sustaining society. They now live on the small Strait island, and the cultural and linguistic identities of the individual groups have largely been lost.

Tribal divisions

Great Andamanese couple, in an 1876 photograph

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 and Rutland Island - as well as Little Andaman Island and North Sentinel Island, speak languages which are classified in a separate family of Andamanese languages, Ongan.

The 10 distinct Great Andamanese groups were generally distributed in territories which "partitioned off" segments ranging along the narrow archipelago of Great Andaman, which runs essentially in a north-south line for approximately 350 km, but is only some 50 km at its widest extent. This peculiar geography meant that groups typically had at most three sets of neighbouring tribes. Roughly arranged from north to south, the different Great Andamanese peoples were:

References

  1. ^ Richard B. Lee, Richard Heywood Daly (1999), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 052157109X, http://books.google.com/books?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 ..." 
  2. ^ Zarine Cooper (2002), Archaeology and History: Early Settlements in the Andaman Islands, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195657926, http://books.google.com/books?id=Bg5uAAAAMAAJ, "... iron implements, glass bottles, beads, and other objects were freely distributed by the British among the Great Andamanese ..." 
  3. ^ a b Madhusree Mukerjee (2003), The Land of Naked People, Houghton Mifflin Books, ISBN 0618197362, http://books.google.com/books?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." ..." 
  4. ^ Jayanta Sarkar (1990), The Jarawa, Anthropological Survey of India, ISBN 8170460808, http://books.google.com/books?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 ..." 
  5. ^ 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/books?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 ..." 
  6. ^ Anvita Abbi (2006), Endangered Languages of the Andaman Islands, Lincom Europa, http://books.google.com/books?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 ..." 
v • d • e
Negritos
Andaman Islands
Great Andamanese (Aka-Bea · Akar-Bale · A-Pucikwar · Aka-Kol · Oko-Juwoi · Aka-Kede · Aka-Jeru · Aka-Bo · Aka-Kora · Aka-Cari) · Jangil · Jarawa · Onge · Sentinelese
Malaysia
Philippines
Aeta · Ati · Batak · Mamanwa
Thailand
Italics indicate extinct groups
 This article about an Indian ethnicity or social group is a stub. See the WikiProject India for article coordination. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Andamanese"

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