Andamanese People

The Andamanese people are the various aboriginal inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, a district of India, located in the southeastern part of the Bay of Bengal.

The Andamanese are anthropologically classified as Negritos, together with a few other isolated groups in Asia. They have a hunter-gatherer style of living and appear to have lived in substantial isolation for thousands of years. This degree of isolation is unequaled, except perhaps by the aboriginal inhabitants of Tasmania. The Andamanese are believed to be descended from the migrations which, about 60,000 years ago, brought modern humans out of Africa to India and Southeast Asia.

By the end of the 18th century, when they first came into sustained contact with outsiders, there were estimated 7,000 Adamanese, divided into five major groups, with distinct cultures, separate domains and mutually unintelligible languages. In the next century they were decimated by diseases, colonial troops, and loss of territory. Today there remain only approximately 400–450 of them; one group has long been extinct, and only two of the remaining groups still maintain a steadfast independence, refusing most attempts at contact.