Last member of 65,000-year-old tribe dies, taking one of world's earliest languages to the grave

Mail Online ^ | 5 Feb 2010 | Anny Shaw

[SkyPilot]

The last member of a 65,000-year-old tribe has died, taking one of the world's earliest languages to the grave.

Boa Sr, who died last week aged about 85, was the last native of the Andaman Islands who was fluent in Bo. Named after the tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to the pre-Neolithic period when the earliest humans walked out of Africa.

Boa Sr, who died last week aged about 85, was the last native of the Andaman Islands who was fluent in Bo

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1248754/Last-member-65-000-year-old-tribe-dies-taking-worlds-earliest-languages-grave.html#ixzz0ekwV08rT

Boa was the oldest member of the Great Andamanese, a group of tribes that are the the first descendants of early humans who migrated from Africa about 70,000 years ago and who arrived on the islands around 65,000. Other groups went on to colonise Indonesia and Australia.

She lived through the horrors and hardships of the 2004 Asian tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by colonisers in the 19th century.

[silverleaf]

65,000 years of emigration and it ends with one old woman’s dying in a govt-provided tin hut with an uncashed govt check for 6.8 pounds

Let’s hope the last English speaker fares better

[dennisw]

Some primitive cultures I respect and some I don’t. This one is the latter

[Ditter]

“GO WHERE THE FOOD IS!”

I miss Sam Kinnison too.

[firebrand]

Also, where do they get the “earliest languages” bit? It might be the oldest one we know of, but earliest I strongly doubt. No proof, in any case.

[firebrand]

stand-up comedy material

[antisocial]

I can’t help but wonder if much of that “evidence” is as reliable as the global warming science.

[bert]

This article is a report on Darwinian natural selection acting on the human species and natural selection in action.

The weak Adamans have succumbed to stronger and more adaptable individuals.

[muawiyah]

The 5600 year thing has to do with writing. That means that since writing was invented we have both written and archaeological “evidence”. Before that we have only archaeological evidence (regarding culture, etc.).

[Squidpup]

Bo knows Bo ?

[Hot Tabasco]

Boa Sr, who died last week aged about 85, was the last native of the Andaman Islands who was fluent in Bo

Wow, imagine not having anyone to talk to......but still surrounded by people.

[nitzy]

Poor guy. He could only talk to himself.

Whats even worse, I think he may have been a woman.

[muawiyah]

All of which is quite easy to say but still depends on a strong belief that people walked around Way Back When.

Once you toss in boats, and there's now evidence that even Homo Habilis had rafts, all bets are off. The human genome studies reflect little more than permanent settlement areas, not human routes of migration provided people could sail on down, or up the coast to better hunting grounds.

We also have the advances and retreats of great sheets of ice and massive glaciers to consider. Remember, DURING an ice age (that 100,000 year long period of maximum glaciation) there are INTERSTADIALS. These are relatively ice free periods where the ice sheets in the Temperate zones melt back and both people and animals move in.

Since interstadials are only 10,000 years long AT MOST, you could have dozen of these things and find little trace of them. The American Midwest appears to have had 4 different glacial advances during the last Ice Age ~ which would mean there were 3 interstadials of varying lengths.

Humanity would have had a very difficult time of it both during, before, and after an insterstadial.

[SkyPilot]

65,000 years of emigration and it ends with one old woman’s dying in a govt-provided tin hut with an uncashed govt check for 6.8 pounds

LOL.

Don't forget about the alcholism that helped destroyed her tribe (per the article).

[MortMan]

That was my first thought, too. The last speaker of a language, over time, is likely to corrupt the language from disuse, or from one-sided use.

May he rest in peace.

[SkyPilot]

Thanks for the link. It is interesting.

Then there is the account of Lot, who got drunk after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. His daughters had sex with him.

Lot left Zoar and retired with his two daughters to a cave in an adjacent mountain. In Genesis 19:30-38, Lot's daughter who in their mind were taking responsibility to bear children to preserve Lot's family line, got their father drunk enough to have sexual intercourse with them on two consecutive nights, with each becoming pregnant. The first son was named Moab (Hebrew, lit., "from the father" [meh-Av]). He was the patriarch of the nation known as Moab. The second son was named Ammon or Ben-Ammi (Hebrew, lit., "Son of my people"). He became the patriarch of the nation of Ammon.

The Moabites and the Ammonites went on to become HUGE enemies of Israel, and were responsible for war, rape, terrorism, and a host of other crimes against the Jews.

Booze sure does lead to some bad ends.

[whd23]

And yet no anthropologist cared enough to learn the language. If the professionals whose passion is ancient people and languages don’t care, why should I?

[Spudx7]

A local radio show compared the recording of her speaking in Bo with a song by Lady Gaga. Uncanny similarity.

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks Cailleach! Ancient dialect extinct after last speaker dies Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
·Dogpile · Archaeologica · LiveScience · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[Cvengr]

When I’ve reviewed the math behind Carbon 12 dating procedures, I don;t find the reliance on exponentials in the logic to be more veritable than Scripture.

I can see giving credence to relative placement in a dateline, but I haven’t seen good science proving the absolute dating proposed by those other methods.

Likewise regarding phase shift in astronomical distancing. IMHO, there are quite a few assumptions made with the logic, which rarely, if ever, are consolidated in the expression of those datelines, revealing all the assumptions being made when faith in placed on their accuracy.

If you have a good reference which argues otherwise, from founding principles, I’d enjoy reading it, but also am amazed by the number of ‘scientists’ who fail to account for their assumptions when they accredit ages more than about 5600 yrs to anything.