The death of the American missionary John Allen Chau (26) in 2018, who visited the isolated island of North Sentinel on his own, drew the world's attention to the inhabitants of probably the most hostile island in the world, who are estimated to have lived in isolation from the rest of the world for the past 60.000 years.

The people who live on the island of North Sentinel are one of the rarest groups of people in the world who, despite all the evolution that has taken place in the world over the years, they have remained isolated from literally everything.

Over the years, their isolation has been due in part to geography - the North Sentinel is a small island off the main shipping lanes, surrounded by a shallow ridge with no natural harbors - in part because of Indian government protection laws - and in part because of their continued fierce defense. on its territory, home and privacy.

But when we talk about these isolated people, it must be noted that it is not as if they have not been contacted by the "rest" of humanity; For the past 200 years, "outsiders" have invaded North Sentinel Island to explore the island in multiple attempts, but almost always, the encounters ended badly for both sides.

Who are these people really? What do we know about them?

According to the 2011 census, and based on anthropologists' estimates of how many "lives" the island could support, probably between 80 and 150 people live in this isolated place. But it is noted that on the island there may be as many as 500 or even 15 people. The Sentinels are associated with other indigenous groups in the Andaman Islands, a chain of islands in the Indian Ocean of Bengal.

However, the people of the Northern Sentinel have been isolated for so long that other groups living in the Andaman Islands, such as Onge and Jarawa, cannot understand their language.

Based on the only visit so far to a Sentielin village in 1967, we know that they live in huts with curved roofs; The Indian priest who visited them described a group of huts, built so that they were facing each other, with a carefully placed fireplace in front of each of the huts. We also know that they build oars for small and light boats (canoes) that maneuver with long poles in the relatively shallow, calm waters inside the ridge.

With such light boats, people from the North Sentinel catch fish and shrimp. The locals are hunters, and their lifestyle is thought to be similar to, for them, the Andaman peoples - they probably live on a diet of fruit and wild growths found on the island, seagull or turtle eggs, and sometimes wild boar food, or birds.

Sentinels wear spears, knives, bows and arrows, and modern man, as an unwelcome visitor to this island over the years has learned it the hard way. Many of these tools and weapons are soaked in iron, which the Sentinelians probably came to shore, so they processed it to suit their needs.

The biggest mystery is the language these people communicate. Rescue crews near the island in the XNUMXs described the sight of the fire and the sounds coming from the island, but so far nothing the man has ever heard sounds familiar.

A very important factor for anthropologists is the knowledge of how these people call themselves aside the name that man has given to the island, North Sentinel, but until 2020, we still can not confirm that, ie how in fact the people who live on the island are call among themselves. The man has not yet managed to achieve a peaceful greeting with the population of this island, let alone realize a conversation and ask them about everyday life or their views on the world.

What we know for sure is that they do not want company and so far they have managed to capture it without the use of speech.

Why do people living on the North Sentinel not want company on the island? How do they react to "outsiders"?

One night in 1771, a ship of the former East India Company was sailing past the Sentinel when a crew spotted a light off the island. But the ship happened to pass by, that is, on a hydrographic mission, and had no reason to stop, so Sentinelli probably remained isolated for about a century, until the Indian merchant ship called Nineveh began exploring the reef. 86 passengers and 20 crew members managed to reach the beach on the island. They settled and were on the island for three days, when the locals decided to punish the "intruders" and intercepted them with bows and iron bars. This meeting is witnessed only by the side of the crew from Nineveh, because the people from there refuse any contact with "outsiders".

The crew and passengers of Nineveh responded to the iron arrows with stones, creating a dangerously tense barrier, until help arrived from the Royal Navy and rescued those who had survived the enemy's welcome. While "in the vicinity", the British decided to declare the North Sentinel their island, part of the British colony, a decision that was important only to the British until 1880.

Then, Maurice Vidal Portman, a young officer in the Royal Navy, takes the Andaman and Nicobar Colonies under his protection. At that time, the young officer Portman enthusiastically perceived himself as an anthropologist, and in 1880 he went to the North Sentinel with a large group of naval officers, convicts from the Andaman Island colony, and Andaman searchers.

During the visit, they found abandoned villages, probably because the locals noticed that a large number of people were present on the island, so they went to other islands to hide. However, an elderly couple and four children remained on the island. After being spotted by the young officer and his entourage, they were taken to the port of Blair, the colonial capital of South Andaman Island. Soon, the six abducted people from Seninel became "desperately ill" and died unexpectedly. After their deaths, the young officer Portman decided to leave the four children on the shores of Sentinel Island with gifts as food. That's all we know about this meeting, with no idea how the locals perceived it…

… However, it is assumed that the locals of the North Sentinel remembered very well what happened, judging by what happened 16 years later, in 1896. Then, a convict from the colony of South Andaman, fleeing the island ended up on the island of North Sentinel. His body was found on the shores of the colony, completely stabbed, and his neck was cut. The British then decided to leave the people of the North Sentinel "alone" until the next century.

Is there any possibility for communication at all?

Years after the Nineveh shipwreck, as well as the young officer Portman who accompanied the explorers on the island, another team of anthropologists, led by Trinok Nat Pandit, an Indian priest and anthropologist, when they found the same picture - abandoned settlements.

The locals fled so quickly that their hearths were still burning. Pandit and his entourage left gifts: textiles, sweets and tools. However, they also took spears, bows and arrows from them, which other anthropologists opposed, because it does not leave a good message for the "outside world".

North Sentinel Island, meanwhile, has been under legal uncertainty since India declared its independence in 1947. In 1970, India declared the small isolated island its own, and Pandit and his colleagues tried to capture it through a clay plaque they left on shore, to which there was no response from locals in the North Sentinel.

Pandit and a team of anthropologists continued to try to make contact, often by leaving gifts on the shore, such as coconuts and animals.

The locals did not care at all about the live pigs, which they killed, then buried them on the beach, much less the plastic buckets. But they were pleased with the gifts as metal pots and pans, and they began to like the coconut, which does not grow on their island.

Pandit and the team delivered the gifts to the island in the form of packed bags, usually greeted with pointed arrows and spears at them, until they left.

Thus, for 25 years, without any direct contact, Pandit and the team through "empty" visits managed to establish some foundation for building trust.

The visits were unstable until 1981. During a visit to Pandit in 1974, a National Geographic crew joined the North Sentinel Island when the director earned an arrow in the thigh from locals.

In 1975 the ousted king Leopold III of Belgium was on tour near the island of North Sentinel when the locals attacked him with spears.

For some reason, Leopold was thrilled to receive such a welcome. In 1981, a cargo ship called Primrose and a crew of 28 people were forced to land on the island after a navigational problem, and sailors were rescued by helicopter. People who have visited the island in the following years say that the locals of the North Sentinel used the metal from the ship to make tools and weapons. For people who collect iron when it accidentally appears on shore, the boat material may have been perceived as a gift.

That same year, Pandit and his team made frequent contact attempts, passing through the island every other month.

A decade later, it turned out that the consistency of contactless visits over the years paid off when it came to advancing mutual communication.

Thus, one in 1991, a group of locals from the North Sentinel came to receive the gifts without weapons, only with baskets and tools that they used to open the coconuts (these tools later proved to be only useful in self-defense). At that moment, the locals came closest to the "outsiders", ie to humanity outside the island. Later in the day, when the anthropologists returned to bring them more presents, they noticed about twenty locals standing on the beach, when an interesting scene occurred.

A man set his bow and arrow to aim at visitors when a woman lowered her arrow. Then the man buried his bow and arrow in the sand. It is still unknown whether anthropologists have made progress in terms of mutual communication or ritual. In any case, the locals happily collected the expected coconuts in their baskets.

But the hospitality of the locals from the North Sentinel had its limits. On another visit, a man signaled to Pandit that it was time for the guests to leave - by drawing with a knife and gesturing to cut with him.

"If we tried to stay on their territory without respecting their wishes or we got too close, they would turn their backs, which meant they were offended. "If our visits were not quick, that is, if we just left the presents and left quickly, they would attack us with weapons, spears or arrows," Pandit told the Indian Express.

However, despite the progress, the relationship between the locals and the anthropologists has never turned into anything more than the gift of coconuts by anthropologists.

The Sentinel locals never offered their gifts to Pandit and his team who had been giving them presents for two decades, and they never invited them inland, and neither side learned how to communicate orally, because during all those years, all communication was limited to facial expressions and gestures.

This is one of the few recordings available from Pandit's visits to the island:

What has been happening in recent years on the mysterious island?

When the Indian Coast Guard flew helicopters over the island after the 2004 tsunami, they found locals in the North Sentinel in great shape, but they were not happy about the visit at all, so they started attacking the helicopters with arrows.

In 2006, a crab boat stopped off the coast of the island when locals killed the crew and buried their remains on the shore.

Given the entire history of the island, it is not surprising that after the North Sentinel locals saw the American John Allen Chau, they were not friendly to him.

John Allen Chau (26) was a Christian missionary who wanted to "show the Lord to all" and at the same time the last known victim killed by the people of the island on the North Sentinel. On November 15, 2018, he first landed on the island with another man who took him there. John then thought that if he took off his clothes, the locals would perceive him as close. As they approached, the locals with colored yellow faces began to scream and gather.

"I'm John!" He shouted from the kayak, "I love you and God loves you."

The locals aimed their arrows at him, after which he was very upset and scared to give them the presents. As he writes in his diary, he has never run away from something like that before in his life, writes the Guardian.

After he went to the boat to get more presents, he returned and left them to the group that attacked him, after which the locals started shouting something in their language. John tried to repeat what they were saying, after which they laughed at him. "They were probably telling me something bad," he said in his diary. Then he began to sing Christian songs.

For a moment, the locals tolerated his presence on the shore…

Soon, a boy was struck with an arrow, which got stuck in the waterproof Bible he was holding. John pulled out the arrow, returned it to the boy, and withdrew. The locals took his kayak, after which John had to swim to the person who took him there by boat.

"I'm scared," he wrote in his diary that night. "You may think I'm crazy, but I think it's worth it for these people to get to know God," he wrote to his loved ones.

A few days before he disappeared, the diary states that John did not want to die, but that he was fully aware of the risk he was taking.

He tried again, for the third time, to approach the locals of the North Sentinel. He then asked the sailor to leave him away to swim to them, thinking that if the ship was not in sight, the locals would have more confidence in him and would accept him more easily. That day, John Allen Chau (26) he was last seen alive.

His death sparked a debate over protection from isolated groups of people such as locals on North Sentinel Island. Pandit, who is the only person who managed to communicate in some way with these people, publicly suggested that they be left alone. According to the now retired anthropologist, the locals on this small isolated island have repeatedly found out that they do not want company and that as such they function quite well.

According to the latest information from 2018, Indian official troops last visited the island in 2011.

Check out these two videos from rare shots taken on the island below: