LOL; I guess I'm old; I would have expected a US tourist in the Indian Ocean to have a name like, "Joe Miller", or "Justin Vanderbilt". Is he part of the newly emerging Ukrainian diaspora, or a Russian who struck out from the old country to strike it rich in the good ol' USA?
He appears to be Ukrainian, but I can never tell the difference between a Ukrainian and a Russian.
One thing I like about Ukrainians/Russians in the San Fernando Valley is that they aren't that persnickety about you being able to tell them apart, unlike Ethiopians/Eritreans in the Uptown neighborhood in Chicago, who were highly insistent on my getting their ethnonym right.
It may sound like his opinions are vanilla but among Russians these opinions are now anything but vanilla. Just as everybody has come to around to "always knowing that [insert correct views about Covid]", Russians have largely come around to "always supporting the defensive war against the illegitimate government of Ukraine".
And Ukrainians, who 5 years ago scoffed at the idea of learning Ukranian or even regarding it as its own respectable language rather than as a backwater dialect, are now refusing to speak Russian while they crack their teeth on speaking Ukranian, mainly to insist that they are not Russian.
I am gratified to learn this. Turns out a bunch of Polish craftmen were recruited to Jamestown. It's funny how we all have a simplified unquestioning view of much of history. Sailer fans make a big deal about how the woke are trying to rewrite history and the culture and exaggerate the contributions of (fill in under represented group), but we aren't pure on this either. We tend to think of the history of the new world as entirely first the Spanish then the English and no one else came here or helped until the late 1800s.
As Rick in the movie Casablanca answered, when asked his nationality, "I'm a drunkard," so Mr Polyakov might answer the same question with "I'm a damn fool." As a drunkard, Rick was at home anywhere; as a damn fool, Mr Polyakov is likely to attract a crowd of enraged locals wherever he might take himself.
With the benefit of nearly a quarter of a century, two answers stand out:
Q: Are there other Pygmy Negritos in the world?
A: In the final analysis all humans are related -- we all originated in Africa.
Viewed in 2025, and with new scientific evidence this statement would appear to be a bit naive, simplistic and lacking in nuances.
Q: The protection of animal and plant biodiversity has become very popular in recent years. Should that be extended to human biodiversity?
A: That is a hard one. Human biodiversity hardly exists since genetic differences among all of us are minute (but still sufficient to trace ancient wanderings and group relationships).
"Genetic differences are minute"--are they really?
Again, these two statements would not have appeared to have aged very well. Almost as if he studied under Franz Boaz and Margaret Mead.
Steve? Any thoughts on the interview as a whole, especially with relation in 2025 as some progress has been made in what is currently known about DNA, genetics as a whole, etc since
Protection of human genetic diversity isn't really all that necessary given that human genetic diversity is both high* and accelerating, and shall only further accelerate as there grows to be more people. But we should be concerned for how to practically and ethically advance the tremendously backward peoples of the world all the same, particularly given that they tend to themselves be part of countries that are already third-world backwaters, infested with corrupt, incompetent, low-I.Q. officials. Nor do we want to needlessly murder a bunch of people with plagues that have become to us a minor nuisance.
Perhaps monitoring them with drones disguised as birds or insects will allow us to pick up enough information on them to communicate to the Sentinelese with language. It'd certainly be a better idea than asking field anthropologists to risk their lives for years in the most backward region of the world.
* Closer to that of dogs than that of cats, and look how many different types of cats there are.
But the point remains. Twenty some odd plus years ago, he didn’t believe that human genetic diversity was high at all, since, per his own words “we all came from Africa” and ipso facto, we’re all the same. This is more in alignment with Boaz, nurture running amok as a catch all explanation for how to account for human diversity, and of course back then for most anthropologists both nature and genetics were naughty words and not to be given much credence. The successive decades have not been kind to either of his statements.
Regarding various tribes still stuck in the Stone Age, one wonders if perhaps science should just adopt a more prudent position on a case by case basis, and just skip over studying those tribes that are steadfast against being studied, much less coming into contact with by the outside modern and more developed world.
There are also plenty of dog breeds so if that’s a comparison to human genetic development scientists should have ample time ahead for studying modern man and all their known ancestors (at those that permit them to be studied).
Sentinel first, their land for and only for themselves.
He was either lying, or misinformed and uncurious in correcting himself. The whole "humans are ~99.9% the same" discourse was, even in the post-Clinton Rosebowl era, never a robust enough idea to survive the smell test. The fact that it carried on for decades anyway in an indictment of the entirety of the social sciences. Particularly anthropology, seeing as how it's supposed to be about the study of the differences between humans, yet has an even worse and less coherent idea about humanity than 19th Century creationists.
Or he truly believed it, as that would've been the standard view for what his generation of anthropologists were taught in grad school--thank Franz Boas and Margaret Mead for that. And their viewpoint re: Nature vs Nurture persisted in universities for several decades post WW2. Hopefully in 2025 anthropology isn't still spouting forth these kinds of....idea.
I've always wondered about the Sentinelese motivation. Do they fear the light-skinned demons and their deviltry? Are they keeping their homeland pure from soulless, decadent outsiders? Or maybe they lack the cognition to handle even that rudimentary metaphysics. They bark and defend their territory because their brain tells them to.
I saw photographs on my feed showing that as recently as the 1890s, a lot of the Hopi tribe were still naked savages.
Also I seem to recall prior population estimates of 250 and now I read 100. Haven't they passed the point of no return for mutational load?
Their early encounters with outsiders did not go well. And those who willingly left to join the outsiders returned as western caricature unhealthy husks of themselves.
So the North Sentinelese developed a theology (about which we know nothing) to oppose outsiders onto death.
The "American" moron who just went there apparently left them some soda, attempting to recreate the movie, "The Gods Must Be Crazy".
Then again, I'm highly supportive of free living adventurers and I have no issue with the missionary who went there some time ago and got himself killed, so for all I know this fellow's intentions were pure as well. From the little I've read of him however it seems that's not the case. But I know enough about the stupidity and rascal nature of journalists not to form too certain an assumption against this fellow.
And I thought it was a North Sentinelese who pummeled that white kid in Tarrant County TX while the teachers ineffectually watched.
More seriously, what I find fascinating is how these people came to an island so far from a mainland when they seem to have little aptitude for water transportation. The North Sentinelese must have island-hopped throughout the Andaman Islands but how did the people of the Andamans get there? Thailand is two hundred miles away.
In relatively small populations, I would assume the number of people with the actual knowledge of how to build and navigate boats was pretty limited so if they died off without a sufficient number of successors deciding to master the same skills that's it. Perhaps the most experienced mariners were out in the their boats fishing, were overtaken by a storm, and that was it for seafaring. I have read that the aboriginals that ended up in Tasmania lost the ability to make fire, and I am sure that there are other examples of cultural regression.
Anyway, the "we're all highly related and differences are cultural" line really is pathetic. Dogs are all the same species, have highly varied traits, everyone recognizes this but when it comes to humans we have to pretend there are only the most superficial differences. However, it does seem to be less so these days, even on the left - there are some acknowledgements about human biodiversity, and I am cautiously optimistic that over the next 20 years or so it will just be quietly acknowledged.
I did a little geographic research since my post. The most northern of the Andaman islands is eighty or so miles off the coast of Burma. So 70,000 or so years ago, some of these Negritos figured out how to make some sort of log canoe and crossed the sea from Burma to the Andamans and slowly made their way down the chain of islands, of which there are over 500. The North Sentinelese became isolated.
That was during the last Ice Age; islands would have been bigger and ocean distances smaller, making island-hopping in dugout canoes more feasible, although it was still a formidable feat.
As recently as the 1960s people assumed the blank slate theory. They took 'all men are created equal' to mean something biological--anyone with the right environment and training had the same potential. You can see it all over the culture, in sitcoms in particular. I consider it the last gasp of religious feeling in a culture being overcome by post WWII (and numerous other horrors) existentialism (and related philosophies).
Over my lifetime people have begrudgingly accepted that we are far more determined and programmed that that. Not only do we not all have the same potential, we don't even have much in the way of free will. It sucks but we need to deal with it.
The tabula rasa theory has been around since"Pygmalion." It fueled a lot of missionary and imperial projects through the 19th century.
I watched a documentary on Guatemala that was kind of unintentionally hilarious. It was an indie project, and I was supposed to be shocked at how Guatemala is under the "grip" of gangs and paramilitaries. It's nothing but stupid, petty shakedowns and turf wars; it's like what if you gave a whole country to 14-yr old boys. The average suburban dad has more firepower than the average Guatemalan gangster or paramilitary. Honestly these people should be praying for the return of imperialism.
The hunter-gatherers are really adrift in modern civilization. Nobody knows what to do with them. We've run out of room for human zoos like Sentinel Island.
North Sentinel is only about 20 miles from a tourist hotel in the Andamans. The hard part is getting past the reefs on which more than a few ships have wrecked.
Yes. Easter Island is 2200 miles off the coast of Chile. Tiny Pitcairn is 1570 km west of Easter and 2170 km from Tahiti. Both are more remote than North Sentinel.
„Human biodiversity hardly exists since genetic differences among all of us are minute (but still sufficient to trace ancient wanderings and group relationships). What set us apart are cultural differences and I do not think these can be preserved artificially except in the most unusual circumstances.“
Yes, it's interesting how (as has been noted in these comments) there are a couple of statements in that interview that just leap out because of their on-message rigidity.
The rest of the interview is delightful, though; lively and fascinating.
"Indian police said on Thursday they had arrested a US tourist who sneaked on to a highly restricted island carrying a coconut and a can of Diet Coke to a tribe untouched by the industrial world.
Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, ..."
An "American" just like Mayorkas. The meddling asshole personality type. Some people somewhere have their own thing going on but these assholes just can not leave it alone.
They have to--just have to--stick their big nose in and try and eff it up.
The Indians have my permission to just execute this dickhead. We should do the same for Mayorkas, Biden and any pseudo-American who starts the "must have immigration" bleating. America--and the world--would be a better--much better--place.
> "We have recently started a section called "Relatives?" on Andaman.Org, and even though not complete yet (we are working hard at it), a visit there for those interested in these questions is recommended."
The website Andaman.org seems to have gone dark in the 20-teens, without any "Relatives?" page being completed: "last updated: 2009"
Stray info online has George H. J. Weber born in 1944.
(This makes him of age to be U.S. president today. --- see, Biden (elected at 77, served to 82); Trump-I (elected at 70, served to 74); Trump-II (elected at 78; to serve to 82); B.Sanders (ran plausible campaigns the years he turned 75 and 79; talked of as a leading contender for 2028, when he will be 87, would serve to 91). Too bad, if not for Herr Weber than for the Andaman Islanders' cause, about the natural-born-citizen clause...)
Thanks for this. It seems that the whole site has been archived. I went to the page on the Andamese languages and read these, among other fascinating nuggets. What follows is quotation.
Andamanese grammar reflects the aboriginal view that the universe is subordinate to and created for the benefit of humanity, i.e. the Negritos.
An oddity of the Andamanese numeric system was the fact, as E.H. Man has pointed out, that while there were only two precise numerals ("one" and "two"), ordinals went up to six. Perhaps this is a hint hint at the existence of a more extensive Andamanese numerical system that has since been lost.
A peculiar aspect of the Andamanese languages is the treatment of the words for "mother" and "father." They do not exist, at least not in the way we would expect them to exist... Children were dearly beloved but many were almost routinely adopted away by their biological parents between the age 5 to 7... Blood ties did not interest the Andamanese much and there was no clan system.
With regard to Luratut and Tar-cheker, birds may be meant, or men bearing the names of birds, for the Andamanese believe that, after the cataclysm (of the "big flood") when fresh fire had to be brought from somewhere, many of the Andamanese, who were of course really drowned, had been changed into birds and fishes.
Someone ought to revive the Andaman-Dot-Org site, based on the Archive version.
Such a person would do well to add in Steve Sailer's commentaries on the Andaman Islanders. These Andaman Islanders (and other "Negritos") are a vital link in understanding deep prehistory of Asia and the racial history of Mankind.
What is their relation to Australoids, and ultimately to the "Veddic" racial-stock associated with Dravidian India? It would seem the Australoids pushed out these Negritos all over the map, tens of thousands of years ago.
"Hats off to Mr iSteve for his new piece on the Sentinelese. It’s refreshing to read something intelligent that includes race, language, and culture without the writer feeling obliged to doff his cap, bow to the conventional wisdom, and profess that he’s a civilised chap really."
UPI in 2002 filed this story (Sailer interview with Andaman Islander expert George H, J. Weber, of Switzerland, b.1944) under "Odd News." It was delivered to those subscribing to the "UPI Odd Newsletter."
"If some woke meme causes the entire Internet-connected woke world to die off for some stupid reason, don't despair: the Earth will someday be repopulated by the Pygmy Negritos of North Sentinel Island." -- Steve Sailer, February 2023.
Achmed E. Newman, today, on the "North Sentinel Island News" post and the 2002 "Q&A: Pygmy Negritos of Andaman Islands":
"This reminds me why I keep reading. [...] No matter what else, Steve Sailer is a great writer! He’s entertaining, informative, and truthful. [...] Very sardonic, witty, whatever you want to call that. I like it. [...] He does seem to care about everybody. Not many writers, though, would include the proper terminology. Steve Sailer is not scared of being PIC [politically incorrect], now non-Woke."
(quote) "Although [the North Sentinel Islanders are] commonly described in the media as ‘Stone Age’ or 'Pre Neolithic', this is clearly not true. There is no reason to believe the Sentinelese have been living in the same way for the tens of thousands of years Indigenous peoples are likely to have been in the Andaman Islands. Their ways of life will have changed and adapted many times, like all peoples. For instance, they now use metal which has been washed up or which they have recovered from shipwrecks on the island reefs. The iron is sharpened and used to tip their arrows.
From what can be seen from a distance, the Sentinelese islanders are clearly extremely healthy and thriving, in contrast to the Great Andamanese peoples to whom British colonial officials attempted to bring ‘civilization’. The people who are seen on the shores of North Sentinel look proud, strong and healthy and at any one time observers have noted many children and pregnant women." (end quote, Survival International)
OF INTEREST ---- Survival International has a "top-twenty list" of the world’s most-threatened groups. Of potential interest to Sailer and readers. Of interest to any fans of human-biodiversity and anthropology (including physical-anthropology; a.k.a. racial-anthropology).
The list of "World's Most-Threatened Tribal Peoples":
It's definitely a less extreme example, but the US actually has its own island where the local native community lives in isolation from outsiders and keeps up aspects of a traditional lifestyle that has been lost by their relatives on neighboring islands: Ni'ihau, the "Forbidden Isle," the westernmost major island of Hawaii. A Scottish woman bought the island in the 1800s, and she and her descendants (who still own the island) decided that the native Hawaiians who lived on the island were allowed to stay but had to follow strict rules. They sometimes go to the next island over for various reasons, but if you leave for too long, you're not allowed to return. Talking to the media about the island is banned. No alcohol or tobacco allowed. There's no running water and limited electricity from solar panels. People still speak the Hawaiian language, and it's the only place left where it's the main language spoken. Tourists are allowed on the island for day trips but are banned from seeing or talking to any of the natives. Their traditional lifestyle is definitely less preserved than the Sentinelese, though. Various exotic game animals have been introduced to the island, so people eat that meat in addition to fishing. They get around on horses and bikes. There are a few radios and televisions, but they get almost no reception. It's hard to tell what's really going on there, but it sounds like either an attempt to make a human biodiversity nature preserve (as you mention in the interview) or a cult/kingdom where the ruling family can do whatever they like to an isolated community without the outside world finding out. Maybe both.
"Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24" "US tourist"
LOL; I guess I'm old; I would have expected a US tourist in the Indian Ocean to have a name like, "Joe Miller", or "Justin Vanderbilt". Is he part of the newly emerging Ukrainian diaspora, or a Russian who struck out from the old country to strike it rich in the good ol' USA?
He appears to be Ukrainian, but I can never tell the difference between a Ukrainian and a Russian.
One thing I like about Ukrainians/Russians in the San Fernando Valley is that they aren't that persnickety about you being able to tell them apart, unlike Ethiopians/Eritreans in the Uptown neighborhood in Chicago, who were highly insistent on my getting their ethnonym right.
That, my friend, has CHANGED.
Take it from someone who has met numerous Russians and Ukrainians in Mexico, the US, and Egypt over the past few years.
They very much DO care to be identified correctly these days....
Here's a video interview I recorded with a young Russia refugee in Egypt recently.
https://youtu.be/BoaW_SDToTE
It may sound like his opinions are vanilla but among Russians these opinions are now anything but vanilla. Just as everybody has come to around to "always knowing that [insert correct views about Covid]", Russians have largely come around to "always supporting the defensive war against the illegitimate government of Ukraine".
And Ukrainians, who 5 years ago scoffed at the idea of learning Ukranian or even regarding it as its own respectable language rather than as a backwater dialect, are now refusing to speak Russian while they crack their teeth on speaking Ukranian, mainly to insist that they are not Russian.
War has a way of doing that.
"The Jamestown Polyakovs,sir!:
One of Jamestown's original settlers was Jan Bogdan from what is now Ukraine.
I am gratified to learn this. Turns out a bunch of Polish craftmen were recruited to Jamestown. It's funny how we all have a simplified unquestioning view of much of history. Sailer fans make a big deal about how the woke are trying to rewrite history and the culture and exaggerate the contributions of (fill in under represented group), but we aren't pure on this either. We tend to think of the history of the new world as entirely first the Spanish then the English and no one else came here or helped until the late 1800s.
Sounds like the name of one of Karla’s mid- level KGB flunkys from a LeCarre novel.
As Rick in the movie Casablanca answered, when asked his nationality, "I'm a drunkard," so Mr Polyakov might answer the same question with "I'm a damn fool." As a drunkard, Rick was at home anywhere; as a damn fool, Mr Polyakov is likely to attract a crowd of enraged locals wherever he might take himself.
But he had a coconut! And a diet coke!
Mykhailo is West-Ukrainian. The Russian-East Ukrainian name counterpart is Mikhai:l with long 2nd i (eeeeee).
No mention of The Sign of Four?
I read that Sherlock Holmes story when I was about 11. I can't remember: is the villain an Andamanese in general or a North Sentinelese in particular?
I believe he was from where the British prison was.
It amazes me that ancient peoples could find remote islands and then find their way back to bring more people, assuming that's how they settled them.
Too bad that after a Utah Mormon and an Andaman Islander Conan Doyle didn’t have Sherlock Holmes fight a Greenland Eskimo in the third novel.
Yeah, Conan Doyle went to the dog(s).
With the benefit of nearly a quarter of a century, two answers stand out:
Q: Are there other Pygmy Negritos in the world?
A: In the final analysis all humans are related -- we all originated in Africa.
Viewed in 2025, and with new scientific evidence this statement would appear to be a bit naive, simplistic and lacking in nuances.
Q: The protection of animal and plant biodiversity has become very popular in recent years. Should that be extended to human biodiversity?
A: That is a hard one. Human biodiversity hardly exists since genetic differences among all of us are minute (but still sufficient to trace ancient wanderings and group relationships).
"Genetic differences are minute"--are they really?
Again, these two statements would not have appeared to have aged very well. Almost as if he studied under Franz Boaz and Margaret Mead.
Steve? Any thoughts on the interview as a whole, especially with relation in 2025 as some progress has been made in what is currently known about DNA, genetics as a whole, etc since
2002.
Protection of human genetic diversity isn't really all that necessary given that human genetic diversity is both high* and accelerating, and shall only further accelerate as there grows to be more people. But we should be concerned for how to practically and ethically advance the tremendously backward peoples of the world all the same, particularly given that they tend to themselves be part of countries that are already third-world backwaters, infested with corrupt, incompetent, low-I.Q. officials. Nor do we want to needlessly murder a bunch of people with plagues that have become to us a minor nuisance.
Perhaps monitoring them with drones disguised as birds or insects will allow us to pick up enough information on them to communicate to the Sentinelese with language. It'd certainly be a better idea than asking field anthropologists to risk their lives for years in the most backward region of the world.
* Closer to that of dogs than that of cats, and look how many different types of cats there are.
But the point remains. Twenty some odd plus years ago, he didn’t believe that human genetic diversity was high at all, since, per his own words “we all came from Africa” and ipso facto, we’re all the same. This is more in alignment with Boaz, nurture running amok as a catch all explanation for how to account for human diversity, and of course back then for most anthropologists both nature and genetics were naughty words and not to be given much credence. The successive decades have not been kind to either of his statements.
Regarding various tribes still stuck in the Stone Age, one wonders if perhaps science should just adopt a more prudent position on a case by case basis, and just skip over studying those tribes that are steadfast against being studied, much less coming into contact with by the outside modern and more developed world.
There are also plenty of dog breeds so if that’s a comparison to human genetic development scientists should have ample time ahead for studying modern man and all their known ancestors (at those that permit them to be studied).
Sentinel first, their land for and only for themselves.
What a novel concept.
He was either lying, or misinformed and uncurious in correcting himself. The whole "humans are ~99.9% the same" discourse was, even in the post-Clinton Rosebowl era, never a robust enough idea to survive the smell test. The fact that it carried on for decades anyway in an indictment of the entirety of the social sciences. Particularly anthropology, seeing as how it's supposed to be about the study of the differences between humans, yet has an even worse and less coherent idea about humanity than 19th Century creationists.
Or he truly believed it, as that would've been the standard view for what his generation of anthropologists were taught in grad school--thank Franz Boas and Margaret Mead for that. And their viewpoint re: Nature vs Nurture persisted in universities for several decades post WW2. Hopefully in 2025 anthropology isn't still spouting forth these kinds of....idea.
I've always wondered about the Sentinelese motivation. Do they fear the light-skinned demons and their deviltry? Are they keeping their homeland pure from soulless, decadent outsiders? Or maybe they lack the cognition to handle even that rudimentary metaphysics. They bark and defend their territory because their brain tells them to.
I saw photographs on my feed showing that as recently as the 1890s, a lot of the Hopi tribe were still naked savages.
Also I seem to recall prior population estimates of 250 and now I read 100. Haven't they passed the point of no return for mutational load?
Their early encounters with outsiders did not go well. And those who willingly left to join the outsiders returned as western caricature unhealthy husks of themselves.
So the North Sentinelese developed a theology (about which we know nothing) to oppose outsiders onto death.
The "American" moron who just went there apparently left them some soda, attempting to recreate the movie, "The Gods Must Be Crazy".
Then again, I'm highly supportive of free living adventurers and I have no issue with the missionary who went there some time ago and got himself killed, so for all I know this fellow's intentions were pure as well. From the little I've read of him however it seems that's not the case. But I know enough about the stupidity and rascal nature of journalists not to form too certain an assumption against this fellow.
No Jews!
I'm not sure, but I think your joke is that their motivation is to keep the Jews out? If so, that's hilarious (to be clear, I am not being sarcastic).
.What's "mein kampf" in Sentinelese?
I've seen estimates from 40 to 400. Almost like precinct totals in west Philadelphia.
And I thought it was a North Sentinelese who pummeled that white kid in Tarrant County TX while the teachers ineffectually watched.
More seriously, what I find fascinating is how these people came to an island so far from a mainland when they seem to have little aptitude for water transportation. The North Sentinelese must have island-hopped throughout the Andaman Islands but how did the people of the Andamans get there? Thailand is two hundred miles away.
In relatively small populations, I would assume the number of people with the actual knowledge of how to build and navigate boats was pretty limited so if they died off without a sufficient number of successors deciding to master the same skills that's it. Perhaps the most experienced mariners were out in the their boats fishing, were overtaken by a storm, and that was it for seafaring. I have read that the aboriginals that ended up in Tasmania lost the ability to make fire, and I am sure that there are other examples of cultural regression.
Anyway, the "we're all highly related and differences are cultural" line really is pathetic. Dogs are all the same species, have highly varied traits, everyone recognizes this but when it comes to humans we have to pretend there are only the most superficial differences. However, it does seem to be less so these days, even on the left - there are some acknowledgements about human biodiversity, and I am cautiously optimistic that over the next 20 years or so it will just be quietly acknowledged.
I did a little geographic research since my post. The most northern of the Andaman islands is eighty or so miles off the coast of Burma. So 70,000 or so years ago, some of these Negritos figured out how to make some sort of log canoe and crossed the sea from Burma to the Andamans and slowly made their way down the chain of islands, of which there are over 500. The North Sentinelese became isolated.
That was during the last Ice Age; islands would have been bigger and ocean distances smaller, making island-hopping in dugout canoes more feasible, although it was still a formidable feat.
Excellent point and thanks for making it.
Humans got across the deepwater Wallace gap in Indonesia all the way to Australia around 50,000 years ago.
How did they know they'd reach land, or was it a 3 hour tour gone wrong?
When did the animals get there?
I've always wondered about that, too.
Funny how a genius like the Professor couldn't figure out a way to get off Gilligan's Island.
As recently as the 1960s people assumed the blank slate theory. They took 'all men are created equal' to mean something biological--anyone with the right environment and training had the same potential. You can see it all over the culture, in sitcoms in particular. I consider it the last gasp of religious feeling in a culture being overcome by post WWII (and numerous other horrors) existentialism (and related philosophies).
Over my lifetime people have begrudgingly accepted that we are far more determined and programmed that that. Not only do we not all have the same potential, we don't even have much in the way of free will. It sucks but we need to deal with it.
The tabula rasa theory has been around since"Pygmalion." It fueled a lot of missionary and imperial projects through the 19th century.
I watched a documentary on Guatemala that was kind of unintentionally hilarious. It was an indie project, and I was supposed to be shocked at how Guatemala is under the "grip" of gangs and paramilitaries. It's nothing but stupid, petty shakedowns and turf wars; it's like what if you gave a whole country to 14-yr old boys. The average suburban dad has more firepower than the average Guatemalan gangster or paramilitary. Honestly these people should be praying for the return of imperialism.
The hunter-gatherers are really adrift in modern civilization. Nobody knows what to do with them. We've run out of room for human zoos like Sentinel Island.
North Sentinel is only about 20 miles from a tourist hotel in the Andamans. The hard part is getting past the reefs on which more than a few ships have wrecked.
Isn’t Easter Island more remote?
Yes. Easter Island is 2200 miles off the coast of Chile. Tiny Pitcairn is 1570 km west of Easter and 2170 km from Tahiti. Both are more remote than North Sentinel.
„Human biodiversity hardly exists since genetic differences among all of us are minute (but still sufficient to trace ancient wanderings and group relationships). What set us apart are cultural differences and I do not think these can be preserved artificially except in the most unusual circumstances.“
These guys are really good at message discipline.
Yes, it's interesting how (as has been noted in these comments) there are a couple of statements in that interview that just leap out because of their on-message rigidity.
The rest of the interview is delightful, though; lively and fascinating.
"Indian police said on Thursday they had arrested a US tourist who sneaked on to a highly restricted island carrying a coconut and a can of Diet Coke to a tribe untouched by the industrial world.
Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, ..."
An "American" just like Mayorkas. The meddling asshole personality type. Some people somewhere have their own thing going on but these assholes just can not leave it alone.
They have to--just have to--stick their big nose in and try and eff it up.
The Indians have my permission to just execute this dickhead. We should do the same for Mayorkas, Biden and any pseudo-American who starts the "must have immigration" bleating. America--and the world--would be a better--much better--place.
Nice to you commenting on Substack, AD
--those do-gooders who would "bring them into the mainstream of Indian society," as the nationalist phrase has it.--
That's my Friday morning chuckle, thanks!
Worst...do-gooders...ever!
> "We have recently started a section called "Relatives?" on Andaman.Org, and even though not complete yet (we are working hard at it), a visit there for those interested in these questions is recommended."
The website Andaman.org seems to have gone dark in the 20-teens, without any "Relatives?" page being completed: "last updated: 2009"
No news of the DNA analysis ever being published.
Where is George H. J. Weber, the Andaman expert?
Maybe he retired or died?
Stray info online has George H. J. Weber born in 1944.
(This makes him of age to be U.S. president today. --- see, Biden (elected at 77, served to 82); Trump-I (elected at 70, served to 74); Trump-II (elected at 78; to serve to 82); B.Sanders (ran plausible campaigns the years he turned 75 and 79; talked of as a leading contender for 2028, when he will be 87, would serve to 91). Too bad, if not for Herr Weber than for the Andaman Islanders' cause, about the natural-born-citizen clause...)
He became a Maytag repairman.
Thanks for this. It seems that the whole site has been archived. I went to the page on the Andamese languages and read these, among other fascinating nuggets. What follows is quotation.
Andamanese grammar reflects the aboriginal view that the universe is subordinate to and created for the benefit of humanity, i.e. the Negritos.
An oddity of the Andamanese numeric system was the fact, as E.H. Man has pointed out, that while there were only two precise numerals ("one" and "two"), ordinals went up to six. Perhaps this is a hint hint at the existence of a more extensive Andamanese numerical system that has since been lost.
A peculiar aspect of the Andamanese languages is the treatment of the words for "mother" and "father." They do not exist, at least not in the way we would expect them to exist... Children were dearly beloved but many were almost routinely adopted away by their biological parents between the age 5 to 7... Blood ties did not interest the Andamanese much and there was no clan system.
With regard to Luratut and Tar-cheker, birds may be meant, or men bearing the names of birds, for the Andamanese believe that, after the cataclysm (of the "big flood") when fresh fire had to be brought from somewhere, many of the Andamanese, who were of course really drowned, had been changed into birds and fishes.
Oops. I meant this as a reply to E.H.Hail.
Someone ought to revive the Andaman-Dot-Org site, based on the Archive version.
Such a person would do well to add in Steve Sailer's commentaries on the Andaman Islanders. These Andaman Islanders (and other "Negritos") are a vital link in understanding deep prehistory of Asia and the racial history of Mankind.
What is their relation to Australoids, and ultimately to the "Veddic" racial-stock associated with Dravidian India? It would seem the Australoids pushed out these Negritos all over the map, tens of thousands of years ago.
It seems the Andaman-Dot-Org website has continued to be cited in the 2020s, except needing to use the Archived version. For example:
https://web.archive.org/web/20100613042105/http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter12/text12.htm
Commenter "dearieme" writes today:
"Hats off to Mr iSteve for his new piece on the Sentinelese. It’s refreshing to read something intelligent that includes race, language, and culture without the writer feeling obliged to doff his cap, bow to the conventional wisdom, and profess that he’s a civilised chap really."
UPI in 2002 filed this story (Sailer interview with Andaman Islander expert George H, J. Weber, of Switzerland, b.1944) under "Odd News." It was delivered to those subscribing to the "UPI Odd Newsletter."
"If some woke meme causes the entire Internet-connected woke world to die off for some stupid reason, don't despair: the Earth will someday be repopulated by the Pygmy Negritos of North Sentinel Island." -- Steve Sailer, February 2023.
Achmed E. Newman, today, on the "North Sentinel Island News" post and the 2002 "Q&A: Pygmy Negritos of Andaman Islands":
"This reminds me why I keep reading. [...] No matter what else, Steve Sailer is a great writer! He’s entertaining, informative, and truthful. [...] Very sardonic, witty, whatever you want to call that. I like it. [...] He does seem to care about everybody. Not many writers, though, would include the proper terminology. Steve Sailer is not scared of being PIC [politically incorrect], now non-Woke."
From Survival International:
(quote) "Although [the North Sentinel Islanders are] commonly described in the media as ‘Stone Age’ or 'Pre Neolithic', this is clearly not true. There is no reason to believe the Sentinelese have been living in the same way for the tens of thousands of years Indigenous peoples are likely to have been in the Andaman Islands. Their ways of life will have changed and adapted many times, like all peoples. For instance, they now use metal which has been washed up or which they have recovered from shipwrecks on the island reefs. The iron is sharpened and used to tip their arrows.
From what can be seen from a distance, the Sentinelese islanders are clearly extremely healthy and thriving, in contrast to the Great Andamanese peoples to whom British colonial officials attempted to bring ‘civilization’. The people who are seen on the shores of North Sentinel look proud, strong and healthy and at any one time observers have noted many children and pregnant women." (end quote, Survival International)
https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/sentinelese
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OF INTEREST ---- Survival International has a "top-twenty list" of the world’s most-threatened groups. Of potential interest to Sailer and readers. Of interest to any fans of human-biodiversity and anthropology (including physical-anthropology; a.k.a. racial-anthropology).
The list of "World's Most-Threatened Tribal Peoples":
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THE AMERICAS
- Awá, Brazil
- Ayoreo, Paraguay
- Guarani, Brazil
- Kawahiva, Brazil
- Mashco Piro, Peru
- The Uncontacted Frontier, Peru
- Yanomami, Brazil
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AFRICA
- Baka, Republic of Congo
- Bushmen, Botswana
- Congo Basin tribes, Republic of Congo
- Maasai, Tanzania
- Omo Valley Tribes, Ethiopia
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ASIA & AUSTRALASIA
- Dongria Kondh, India
- Hongana Manyawa, Indonesia
- Jarawa, India
- Jenu Kuruba, India
- Sentinelese, India
- Shompen, India
- Tiger Reserve tribes India
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https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes
It's definitely a less extreme example, but the US actually has its own island where the local native community lives in isolation from outsiders and keeps up aspects of a traditional lifestyle that has been lost by their relatives on neighboring islands: Ni'ihau, the "Forbidden Isle," the westernmost major island of Hawaii. A Scottish woman bought the island in the 1800s, and she and her descendants (who still own the island) decided that the native Hawaiians who lived on the island were allowed to stay but had to follow strict rules. They sometimes go to the next island over for various reasons, but if you leave for too long, you're not allowed to return. Talking to the media about the island is banned. No alcohol or tobacco allowed. There's no running water and limited electricity from solar panels. People still speak the Hawaiian language, and it's the only place left where it's the main language spoken. Tourists are allowed on the island for day trips but are banned from seeing or talking to any of the natives. Their traditional lifestyle is definitely less preserved than the Sentinelese, though. Various exotic game animals have been introduced to the island, so people eat that meat in addition to fishing. They get around on horses and bikes. There are a few radios and televisions, but they get almost no reception. It's hard to tell what's really going on there, but it sounds like either an attempt to make a human biodiversity nature preserve (as you mention in the interview) or a cult/kingdom where the ruling family can do whatever they like to an isolated community without the outside world finding out. Maybe both.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau
https://www.messynessychic.com/2021/08/25/hawaiis-forbidden-island-and-the-real-life-swiss-family-robinson-who-controls-it/