The land of naked people : encounters with Stone Age islanders

the Natives Of The Andaman Islands In The Bay Of Bengal Have Long Been Reputed To Be Naked Cannibals. Indian Native Mukerjee, Formerly Affiliated With scientific American , Sympathetically Describes Their Customs And How The Isolated Tribes She Visited In The 1990s Are Coping With Civilized Outsiders. Includes A Map. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, Or publishers Weekly the Andaman Islands, A Remote Archipelago In The Bay Of Bengal And Now A Territory Of India, Is Home To Four Dwindling Tribes: The Great Andamanese, The Onge, The Jarawa And The Sentinelese. Mukerjee, A Former Editor At Scientific American And A Native Of India, Explores Firsthand The Devastating Effects Colonization And Modernization Have Had On The Island Chain. Written Alternately As Travelogue And Historical And Anthropological Reportage, The Book Moves Loosely From The Great Andamanese (the Most Assimilated Tribe) To The Sentinelese (the Least), Illustrating How The Encroachments (first British, Later Indian) Made By Timber Harvesting; Extrinsic Diseases, Such As Measles And Influenza; And Global Pollution Have Left The 500 Remaining Islanders Destitute, Dispossessed Of Land And, In Some Cases, Miserably Assimilated. While The Author's Arguments On Imperialism Are Stale, Her Timing-as A Witness To A Dominant Culture Subsum[ing] A Marginal One-provides An Important Case Study. Mukerjee's Heavy Reliance On Third-party Historical And Anthropological Accounts Is At Times Cumbersome, And She Willingly Admits That Even Her Encounters With Tribal Members Create A Synthetic Situation In Which [the Islanders Cannot] Be Observed Living Their Day-to-day Lives. Red Tape And Safety Concerns Prevent Her From Performing Meticulous Anthropology, And She Devotes Only A Few Pages To Recent Studies Of Andaman Language And Dna, Which May Make Significant Contributions To Global Genetic Research. In Her Defense, Mukerjee Is Neither A Biologist Nor An Anthropologist (she Has A Ph.d. In Physics), And Her Personal Chronicle Of The Andamanese Is An Impassioned Portrait At An Ancient Culture On The Brink Of Vanishing. Photos Not Seen By Pw; 1 Map. (aug. 1) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. On a lush, remote island, modern civilization has recently made contact with what may be the last group of Stone Age people. The Sentinelese wear no clothes, do not know how to start a fire, and have fervently rejected the intrusion of outsiders. But that is changing, writes Madhusree Mukerjee, who has had exceptional access to that island and the others that make up the Andaman chain in the Bay of Bengal. Over seven years, Mukerjee found that other aboriginals on the islands have abandoned their ancient ways for enticements such as motorcycles and plastic toys. The price: outsiders have taken critical land, introduced serious diseases, and left the natives with a broken sense of self. This book offers unprecedented insights into the processes of colonization and modernization, the persistence of harmful myths about savages, and the perennially fraught relationship between light- and dark-skinned peoples. Mukerjee gives us a fascinating look at a world nearly gone. Combining anthropological findings with historical accounts and personal travel stories, she lets us glimpse a primeval, disappearing humanity. First brush -- Great Andamanese. Savage -- Uprooted -- Pacification -- Native morals -- Civilized vices -- Death -- Life after death – Onge. A fiery arrival -- Sugar and starch -- Gifts, traps -- Cultural exchange -- Outsiders and other ghosts -- Falling apart -- Assimilation – Jarawa. Hunted -- Visions of control -- With the enemy -- State of war -- Where worlds touch -- The taming of tigers -- On full modernization -- End of the road – Sentinelese. Small earth -- Afterword : origins. A look at the Sentinelese, a group of Stone Age people living on a remote island in the Andaman chain of the Bay of Bengal, details their primitive civilization and reflects on the influence of modern culture on their vanishing lifestyle