Noble or savage?

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10278703 ^ | 12/19/2007 | not stated

[dirtboy]

The era of the hunter-gatherer was not the social and environmental Eden that some suggest

HUMAN beings have spent most of their time on the planet as hunter-gatherers. From at least 85,000 years ago to the birth of agriculture around 73,000 years later, they combined hunted meat with gathered veg. Some people, such as those on North Sentinel Island in the Andaman Sea, still do. The Sentinelese are the only hunter-gatherers who still resist contact with the outside world. Fine-looking specimens—strong, slim, fit, black and stark naked except for a small plant-fibre belt round the waist—they are the very model of the noble savage. Genetics suggests that indigenous Andaman islanders have been isolated since the very first expansion out of Africa more than 60,000 years ago.

About 12,000 years ago people embarked on an experiment called agriculture and some say that they, and their planet, have never recovered. Farming brought a population explosion, protein and vitamin deficiency, new diseases and deforestation. Human height actually shrank by nearly six inches after the first adoption of crops in the Near East. So was agriculture “the worst mistake in the history of the human race”, as Jared Diamond, evolutionary biologist and professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, once called it?

[SunkenCiv]

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[Cali Redneck]

Great article. It gives a great perspective on the development of the human race. A refreshing read amongst all the chicken little global warming BS that we’re inundated with these days.

[CarrotAndStick]

Stone Age tribe kills castaways

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/stone-age-tribe-kills-castaways/2006/02/09/1139379613195.html

 

February 9, 2006 - 1:14PM

Police on India's Andamans are planning to sneak onto a forbidden island to retrieve the bodies of two castaways killed by members of an isolated tribe, officials said today.

Fishermen Sunder Raj and Pandit Tiwari fell asleep in their row boat which drifted to the shores of North Sentinal island, 40 kilometres from the Andaman's administrative capital of Port Blair, Dharmendra Kumar, police chief of the Indian Ocean archipelago.

They were killed with bows and arrows by Sentinalese tribespeople when they arrived on the shores of the island, which is out of bounds even to Indian authorities.

The attack occurred some 10 days ago and the "Stone Age" aborigines have buried the pair in separate shallow graves next to their boat from where police hope to retrieve the bodies.

"Right now, it is impossible. There'll be casualties on both sides," said Kumar.

"Right now, they are coming out in large numbers and so let things cool down and once these tribals move to the island's other end we'll try and sneak in and bring back the bodies," the police chief told AFP by telephone from Port Blair.

Relatives of the slain fishermen were taken by government boats and shown the two graves through binoculars, said B S Negi, Andaman's chief civilian administrator, adding the area was still surrounded by 20 naked Sentinalese.

Kumar's plan if executed is likely to be criticised by environmental groups who accuse the authorities of failing to protect the archipelago's five aboriginal groups who have lived on the island cluster for 60,000 years.

"It will be crazy if the police land on the island. They will be condemned by the whole world," warned Samir Achorya, founder of Society of Andaman and Nicobar Ecology environmental group.

Achorya said the two slain men were poaching lobsters and crabs in the off-limit waters of Sentinal.

"These two were petty criminals and have been imprisoned many times so we don't know what the police will gain by retrieving their rotting corpses from the island, which is the legal exclusive preserve of the aborigines," he said.

Survival International, an international pressure forum for near-extinct tribes, accused the archipelago's administration of not doing enough to prevent fishing boats entering the island's waters, which are even forbidden to naval ships.

"These tragic deaths could have been avoided if authorities had been enforcing the law," forum director Stephen Corry said in a statement.

Beside the Sentinalese, four other Stone Age tribes -- the 99-member Onge, 350-member Shompens, 39 of the almost extinct Andamanese and 350 Jarawas --- live on the Andamans.

Only a handful died in the tsunami waves which lashed the archipelago on December 26, 2004, killing some 3,500 people in the Andamans. Another 5,000 are still listed as missing.

 

A military reconnaissance helicopter surveying a tsunami shipwreck near the island strayed too close to its shores last year and received a volley of arrows, one of which pierced the cockpit glass narrowly missing its startled pilot.

AFP

 

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

Voyeur asks. voyeur gets.

http://www2.db.dk/pe/images/Andaman/andaman-2.jpg

[Cali Redneck]

Bet she cleans up nice

[Greg67]

So was agriculture “the worst mistake in the history of the human race”, as Jared Diamond, evolutionary biologist and professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, once called it? Yes ....the bigest mistake, without agriculture we could have invented "The Tenured University Professor" much, much earlier.

[ASOC]

“Farming brought a population explosion, protein and vitamin deficiency, new diseases and deforestation. “

Maybe, maybe not. But for sure it brought —

BEER.

[NewJerseyJoe]

> How am I supposed to arrive at an accurate assessment with no pics?