Origins
The Andamanese are classified as Negritos (sometimes also called Proto-Australoids), together with the Semang of Malaysia and the Aeta of the Philippines. Their ancestors are thought to have arrived in the islands 60,000 years ago from coastal India (or crossed over a land bridge from Burma on what is now the Continental shelf of the northern Indian Ocean, during a glacial period when the sea levels were substantially lower than they are today.
It is assumed that those ancestors were part of the initial Great Coastal Migration that was the first expansion of humanity out of Africa, via the Arabian peninsula, along the coastal regions of the Indian mainland and towards Southeast Asia, Japan and Oceania.
Some anthropologists postulate that Southern India and Southeast Asia was once populated largely by Negritos similar to those of the Andamans, and that some tribal populations in the south of India, such as the Irulas are remnants of that period.
Until the late 18th century, the Andamanese culture, language and genetics were preserved from outside influences by their fierce reaction to visitors, which included killing any shipwrecked foreigners, and by the remoteness of the islands. The various tribes and their mutually unintelligible languages are thus believed to have evolved on their own over millennia.
Read more about this topic: Andamanese People
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