Posted on 02/05/2010 1:17:19 AM PST by cold start
Death of Boa Sr, last person fluent in the Bo language of the Andaman Islands, breaks link with 65,000-year-old culture
The last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000-year link to one of the world's oldest cultures.
Boa Sr, who lived through the 2004 tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo.
Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of south-east Asia.
Though the language has been closely studied by researchers of linguistic history, Boa Sr spent the last few years of her life unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue.
Even members of inter-related tribes were unable to comprehend the repertoire of Bo songs and stories uttered by the woman in her 80s, who also spoke Hindi and another local language.
"Her loss is not just the loss of the Great Andamanese community, it is a loss of several disciplines of studies put together, including anthropology, linguistics, history, psychology, and biology," Narayan Choudhary, a linguist of Jawaharlal Nehru University who was part of an Andaman research team, wrote on his webpage. "To me, Boa Sr epitomised a totality of humanity in all its hues and with a richness that is not to be found anywhere else."
The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are governed by India. The indigenous population has steadily collapsed since the island chain was colonised by British settlers in 1858 and used for most of the following 100 years as a colonial penal colony.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Congratulations - that was the shortest, most contemptuous, biased, dismissive and ignorant reference to a tribal population I've ever read.
Ah, that’s what I love about FR... you can usually get both
sides of a story.
Your remarks are addressed to the wrong person. That was not my post and those aren’t my comments.
It’s true.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4144405.stm
Tribe shoots arrows at aid flight
By Jonathan Charles
BBC News, Andaman Islands
An Indian helicopter dropping food and water over the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands has been attacked by tribesmen using bows and arrows.
There were fears that the endangered tribal groups had been wiped out when massive waves struck their islands.
But the authorities say the attack is a sign that they have survived.
More than 6,000 people there are confirmed as either dead or missing, but thousands of others are still unaccounted for.
The Indian coastguard helicopter was flying low over Sentinel Island to drop aid when it came under attack.
A senior police officer said the crew were not hurt and the authorities are taking it as a sign that the tribes have not been wiped out by the earthquake and sea surges as many had feared.
The Andaman and Nicobar archipelago is home to several tribes, some extremely isolated.
Officials believe they survived the devastation by using age-old early warning systems.
They might have run to high ground for safety after noticing changes in the behaviour of birds and marine wildlife.
Scientists are examining the possibility to see whether it can be used to predict earth tremors in future.
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/places/gallery/tribe-gallery_sentinelese-man.html
National Geographic
Native culture experts worried that the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004, may have wiped out many or all of the indigenous peoples of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This image of a belligerent Sentinel Island man taken on December 28, as well other photos shot by the Indian Coast Guard, reassured them that at least Sentinelese tribespeople survived.
The Sentinelese are among the world's most isolated people. They are thought to have descended directly from the first voyagers out of Africa. Experts think they have lived in the Andaman archipelago with little outside contact for some 60,000 years.
My apologies cold start, I clicked on the wrong name.
My post #3 was directed at James C. Bennett, not you.
No problem, we still have ebonics
Does this interest you?
George W. Bush’s fault?
Perhaps she should have taught the language to some of the children on the island...
Even members of inter-related tribes were unable to comprehend the repertoire of Bo songs and stories uttered by the woman in her 80s
On the other hand, if it was only during the last few years of her life that no one could "comprehend" her "stories", then perhaps her "language" was nothing more than senile gibberish.
---------------------------------------------------------
Like the ramblings of Grandpa Simpson...
...We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say... ...Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
;-)
“Congratulations - that was the shortest, most contemptuous, biased, dismissive and ignorant reference to a tribal population I’ve ever read. “
Talisker, your response to a true and factual statement was the only comteptuous, biased, dismissive and ignorant item posted.
The worship in the article really doesn’t show just how isolated and primitive these people are.
“On the other hand, if it was only during the last few years of her life that no one could “comprehend” her “stories”, then perhaps her “language” was nothing more than senile gibberish.”
That occurred to me as well. The great tragedy for these ‘scientists’ is a potential source of obtaining government grant money to go spend a few months on a tropical island.
So I take it there is no Boa Jr?
65000 Years?? I mean, are you talking about this language being spoken by Neanderthals, Homo Erectus, or what exactly??
The reason that no one could comprehend her stories in the last few years was because the others who could understand the Bo language also died. This article was not very clear on that aspect. More details in the article below;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7015540.ece
The last member of a unique tribe that inhabited the Andaman Islands for as long as 65,000 years has died of old age — taking to the grave with her one of the country’s many endangered languages.
Boa Sr, who died last week aged about 85, was the last member of the Bo — one of the ten Great Andamanese tribes that are considered indigenous inhabitants of the islands, which lie 750 miles off the east coast of India.
She was the oldest of all the Great Andamanese tribespeople, who now number only 52 among the archipelago’s total population of about 300,000, the vast majority of whom are recent immigrants from mainland India.
She was also the last speaker of the Bo language, which is distinct from those of the other Great Andamanese tribes, according to Anvita Abbi, a professor of linguistics at Jawaharlal National University in Delhi.
Professor Abbi, who had known Boa since 2005, said that she had been losing her sight in recent years and was unable to converse with anyone in her own language since the other surviving Bo speaker died several years ago.
“She was the only person left who spoke Bo,” Professor Abbi told The Times. “At times, she felt very isolated and lonely as she had no one to talk to in her own language.” Boa had no children, and her husband died several years ago.
She could, however, communicate with others in a local version of Hindi and in Great Andamanese, which is an amalgam of all the ten tribal languages, according to Professor Abbi.
“We had an odd relationship, but also a very intense one,” she said.
“I spent a long time with her in the jungle and shared many moments with her. She was very proud to be the last member of the Bo.”
The loss of Boa and her mother tongue highlights the plight of the indigenous people on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a key Indian naval outpost that foreigners can visit only with a special permit.
The only indigenous tribe that is relatively intact is the Sentinelese, who ban any contact with outsiders and were famously photographed firing arrows at an Indian helicopter after the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004.
Genetic studies suggest that the islands’ indigenous tribes are the descendants of early humans who migrated from Africa to the sub-continent and then to South East Asia about 70,000 years ago.
There were about 5,000 Great Andamanese living on the islands when the British colonised them in 1858. Many were either killed, or died of diseases carried by the colonists.
Initially, the British used the islands as penal colonies where they imprisoned leaders of the 1857 Indian Mutiny and other Indian freedom fighters, many of them in the infamous Cellular Jail in Port Blair.
They also tried to “civilise” the tribes by moving many of them to one island and forcing them to live in an “Andaman Home”.
Of the 150 children born in the home, none lived beyond the age of 2, according to Survival International, a group that campaigns for the rights of indigenous people.
Boa was born in the jungle of the northern Andamans and grew up in traditional society, learning to gather wild potatoes and hunt for wild pigs, turtles and fish.
In the mid-1970s, the Indian Government moved the Great Andamanese tribes to a single island near Port Blair. She then lived in a government-provided hut with concrete walls and a tin roof, surviving on state food rations and a pension of about 500 rupees (£6.80) a month.
“She always said she wanted to go back to the place where she was born,” Professor Abbi said. “Alcohol was a big problem. It was killing them one by one.” She said that Boa also told her she felt the neighbouring Jarawa tribe, which is still relatively numerous, was lucky to live in the forest away from the settlers.
Boa survived the tsunami of December 2004, which killed 3,513 people on the islands, and told linguists afterwards: “We were all there when the earthquake came. The eldest told us ‘the Earth would part, don’t run away or move’.”
The king of the Bo tribe died in 2005, leaving only a handful of elderly members who also died over the next five years.
Stephen Corry, director of Survival International, urged the Indian Government not to resettle any the Jawara or other indigenous tribes, and to allow them more say in their own lives. “With the death of Boa Sr and the extinction of the Bo language, a unique part of human society is now just a memory,” he said.
“Boa’s loss is a bleak reminder that we must not allow this to happen to the other tribes of the Andaman Islands.”
Plight of the Andamanese
• The Andamanese tribes had little contact with the outside world until the mid-19th century because of their reputation for hostility
• Their small height, dark pigmentation and unusual hair categorise them as part of the “Negrito” peoples of Africa and Asia.
• The Great Andamanese, once ten linked tribes, now number 52. They were moved to the tiny Strait Island in 1970 by India; many suffer from alcoholism
• Of the other Andaman tribes, the Jarawa are one of the most endangered. Their 200-300 strong population has had some contact with the outside world since 1998. They live in nomadic bands and hunt pigs and lizards
• The Sentinelese live on their own island, North Sentinel, and have no contact with outsiders, attacking any who come near. After the 2004 tsunami they were photographed and shown around the world firing arrows at a helicopter
• The Onge of Little Andaman Island call themselves En-iregale, meaning “perfect person”, and now number about 100
Sources: Survival International, International Journal of Human Genetics, American Journal of Human Genetics
My goodness, I’m definitely one of those people who descends from the first guys to leave Africa. I think there about 4 billion of us!
Interesting, finally something that wasn’t Bush’s fault.
All sarcasm aside the decline of these tribes has not been a secret. They just can’t compete in the modern world.
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