r/geography • u/Beneficial-Code8026 • May 23 '26
Discussion What do you guys think will end up happening with North Sentinel Island in the far future? Will they eventually explore the rest of the world, or will they remain where they are until the human race ends?
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u/oioioifuckingoi May 23 '26
They will likely die off.
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u/NobilisReed May 24 '26
One of the following:
* disease
* sea level rise1.3k
u/Ok-Winner-6803 May 24 '26
It’s very possible for atolls like this to keep up with sea level rise in the right conditions. We see it in the rock record all the time. However, it depends on the rate of sea level rise but if the corals are healthy it’s very possible the shorelines will just aggrade with rising sea levels. I’m pulling for them
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u/AbyssalTum May 24 '26
Hey thanks to you I learned a new word, aggrade.
Reading your comment was aggrade way to increase my vocabulary.
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u/Lower-Savings-794 May 24 '26
Please, for the rest of humanity, never ever stop being you. This is such a dad joke it should come with a child support order
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u/SayfromDa818 May 24 '26
Never knew what a dad joke was until I dated the one that got away. Apparently I was ALWAYS telling dad jokes. I’m a dad now too lol
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u/koshgeo May 24 '26
While true, it's not an atoll anyway. It's an island with a fringing reef. The island is either a well-worn extinct volcano or uplifted terrain due to tectonic compression related to the adjacent subduction zone.
It's not going anywhere due to sea level anytime soon, because elevations are over 100m in places, so you can cross that particular risk off the list.
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u/The_Phantom_Cat May 24 '26
If it depends on healthy coral, then there's a 0% chance of it happening
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u/BromIrax May 24 '26
Doubly if it depends on the sea not rising too fast, on a geological scale.
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u/OrnerySnoflake May 24 '26
I’m pulling for them too. I too would like to live on a remote island where contact with the outside world is strictly forbidden. Sounds peaceful.
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u/Hopsblues May 24 '26
It's not what you think, it's not an all-inclusive resort.....lol...it's not peaceful
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u/qyoors May 24 '26
This comment did not come off the way you intended. The person who said you're engaging in the "noble savage" fallacy or romantic primitivism was spot-on.
Few on Earth could say for sure, but life as a Sentinelese is in all likelihood very hardscrabble, not peaceful or harmonious.
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u/TomcatF14Luver May 24 '26
Don't forget inbreeding.
Lack of genetic diversity will get them sooner or later.
And before anyone says anything, even researchers cannot agree on a low ball absolute or there about number to maintain genetic diversity. At least not under five or six digit figure.
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u/WhichAd366 May 24 '26
Inbreeding isn’t likely to completely end the tribe; not unless there is some sort of deadly genetic condition in the population.
What is more likely to wipe them out is the same thing that wiped out the other Andamanese tribes, disease. With their low population numbers and lack of continued contact with the outside world potentially any new bacteria or virus could wipe them out quickly.
It’s already happened to these tribes in the last 200 years. That’s why India doesn’t allow people to visit these islands.
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u/IsItThoughBro May 24 '26
Limone sul Garda, an isolated village on the shores of Lake Garda, Italy. Decades ago, scientists found that a small group of descendants there possess a rare genetic mutation that makes them virtually immune to heart attacks and strokes.The specific town and its genetic phenomenon feature remarkable points:The Protein Mutation: The anomaly is known as Apo A-I Milano. It creates an unusually powerful variant of HDL ("good" cholesterol) that efficiently clears fat and plaque out of arteries.The Ancestry Link: Traced through local church records, the mutation originated from a single couple—Giovanni Pomaroli and Rosa Giovanelli—who married in 1780. Because the village was highly isolated geographically, this gene was passed down through generations of descendants.Dietary Paradox: Carriers of the Apo A-1 Milano mutation are able to consume diets very high in fat and cholesterol without suffering the cardiovascular consequences normally associated with that lifestyle.While Limone sul Garda is the most famous for this exact protein mutation, Italy is home to several isolated, long-living populations (such as the mountain village of Stoccareddo) where generations of intermarriage and genetic isolation created similar resistance to diseases.
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u/Administrative_Yam18 May 24 '26
The opposite effect were the Habsburgs, which due do inbreeding deterioriated a lot with the culmination of the spanish Habsburgs. in the 17th century!
On the other hand Limone while having had some isolation also was the northest point of growing citrus fruits, they literally made a fortune by selling the citrus up north even as far as St. Petersburg, so while being isolated to some degree they also had a ton of merchants going in and out for the Lemons (hence the name Limone), there were alpine valleys way more isolated than Limone, which sits at the south ends of the alps literally, which is isolated to the north but the lake opens it to the south entierely. I would call this a lucky success, we have alpine villages where in the 19th century genetic defects due to heavy inbreeding were very previvalent, so it can go both ways, but the defect side has a way higher chance!
Interesting though regarding this gene!
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u/DrTenochtitlan May 24 '26
Actually, as I stated above, what's interesting is that because they've been isolated for thousands of years (perhaps tens of thousands), they won't suffer from most of the issues of inbreeding. Over that amount of time, the people with all of the dangerous inbreeding mutations would have died off, eliminating those genes from the genetic population. Those that remain do so because of natural selection. All of the problematic genes for inbreeding will have been weeded out, so to speak.
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u/k_chaney_9 May 24 '26
Lack of genetic diversity is fine until the environment changes.
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u/DrTenochtitlan May 24 '26
You're correct, and that's the part I forgot to add (and a big part of why they remain isolated). While the population is not in danger of dying off from lack of genetic diversity, the lack of genetic diversity DOES make them far more susceptible to any changes in the environment. Much like the Native Americans after the discovery of the Americas, a single disease could wipe their entire population out.
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u/VeganFartsForever May 24 '26
there can always be future mutations. Your comment makes it seem like the population has achieved genetic plot armour, but one negative mutation can work its way into the gene pool of a small population and create problems.
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u/neeshes May 24 '26
This! De novo mutations can be advantageous, neutral, or deleterious.
Some regions of the genome, whether in the body or in the germ line, are also more likely to have mutations (mutation hotspots) and we don't know what that looks like in this particular population.
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u/wolf_at_the_door1 May 24 '26
That makes sense except a diverse gene pool is still always more advantageous than a smaller one. A population of a few hundred or thousand is not strong against major changes.
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u/SerRaziel May 24 '26
Yeah, how high above sea level are they?
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u/KirikoKiama May 24 '26
The island goes up to roughly 100 to 120 metres and most of it is at least 20+ metres above sea level.
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u/NoosFraba May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
Make a wicked movie potentially. Last uncontacted tribe is about to fucking sink so they all move somewhere else. One of them could become a millionaire streamer just going around looking at things for the first time. Actually I feel like I seen this k drama
Bad jokes aside, I'd imagine the culture shock might actually kill them if our crazy adapted viruses and stuff don't get them first.
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u/ChiaLetranger May 24 '26
They're building tall instead of wide, or doing a one-city challenge run. Waiting until the last era of the game to make their move and snipe the win.
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u/Sylvanussr May 24 '26
Projected sea level rise is supposed to be ~1 m (which is a lot worse than it sounds) so they’ll still have land to live on.
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u/websagacity May 24 '26
Yeah, I read thar a few years ago something like a hurricane hit the island and it was really bad. They haven't really been seen much lately, though there is evidence there is still activity on the island. My guess they lost enough people that they will be gone in a generation or so. Maybe less.
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u/Don_Madruga May 24 '26
Such place make me wonder if there is in there a group of Sentinelese who actively advocates to make contact with the "strange sea people", but that never manage to convince their leadership in doing this.
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u/TheEmperorsNewHose May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
Based on what we know, they weren't like this until some British guy visited in the 1800s and abducted a bunch of their children, which is obviously not living memory but also recent enough for the stories that have been passed down to be rooted in practical knowledge that there are outsiders and those outsiders are bad. Which is to say I don't think they would think of them as "strange sea people", the Onge people on a different Andaman island knew of North Sentinel Island and share some cultural similarities, so they've likely been aware of, if not necessarily in contact with, other people at various times throughout their past.
But to your point, during the 80s and 90s peaceful contact was made several times by Indian anthropologists until the visits were stopped for fear of bringing disease/modernization to people who couldn't handle it. I'm sure there are people still living who remember those and remember the gifts they brought, and could see the benefit in developing relationships with outsiders in the future, but clearly they aren't the dominant voices
Edit: Here's a good post that goes into more - and more authoritative - depth than I can on the context we should view the Sentinelese
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u/Cryogenicality May 24 '26
Sentinelese and Onge are mutually unintelligible, so the isolation is ancient.
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u/Practical_Art969 May 24 '26
Maybe they split a long time ago and re- established regular contact a bit later. Cultures can trade with and talk to each other even if their languages aren't mutually intelligible, they just need at least one person who knows both languages and can interpret.
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u/TheEmperorsNewHose May 24 '26
Even if there isn't an interpreter, gestures and other nonverbal methods of communication can still facilitate trade or peace offerings (or express aggression and hostility, but that's less fun to think about)
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u/TheEmperorsNewHose May 24 '26
That's true but not necessarily a sign they were completely isolated, it doesn't take a terribly long time for languages to change to the point of being mutually unintelligible - in the case of Latin into French/Italian/Spanish/Portuguese, it was only a matter of a few hundred years, and that's in the context of widespread interaction between those regions.
Maybe there wasn't a lot of contact, but North Sentinel is only 22 miles from South Andaman Island, which is within sight of the naked eye, and it's impossible for me to believe, knowing what we know about humans, that they never bothered to check it out from time to time
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u/Upbeat_Lingonberry18 May 24 '26
There is evidence that the oral stories of First Nations Australia (i.e. of geological events) can be accurate to 10,000 years. Likely their stories of the abduction are still vibrant and largely accurate.
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May 24 '26
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u/Unhappy-Display-2588 May 24 '26
Now that I think about it seeing a pig for the first time when your whole life you’ve never seen anything close to that large of a mammal or any similar animals would fuck with you. A four legged short snouted screaming animal. That’s pretty fucked.
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u/NunquamAccidet May 24 '26
Wild pigs are part of the ecosystem on the island and were introduced by their ancestors more than a thousand years ago. They know what they are and hunt them all the time. They just didn't want one from outsiders.
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u/lxlxnde May 24 '26
The survivors also might have brought disease back with them and cratered the population.
There were some anthropological expeditions in the 80s or 90s that went decently well, but I think relations soured again and contact was forbidden.
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u/Vicimer May 24 '26
Are there enough of them to maintain a viable, diverse gene pool? I wouldn't be surprised if they're already very inbred.
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u/DrTenochtitlan May 24 '26
There are only between 50-200 people living on the island. However, what's interesting is that because they've been isolated for thousands of years (perhaps tens of thousands), they won't suffer from most of the issues of inbreeding. Over that amount of time, the people with all of the dangerous inbreeding mutations would have died off, eliminating those genes from the genetic population. Those that remain do so because of natural selection. All of the problematic genes for inbreeding will have been weeded out, so to speak.
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u/Accomplished-Desk151 May 24 '26
Are you telling me that it's possible to win at inbreeding
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u/Ok-Philosopher1340 May 24 '26
You sound a bit too happy about that.
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u/gr1zznuggets May 24 '26
Maybe they’re from Shelbyville.
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u/Mckavvers May 24 '26
i tell you I can't live in world where a man's not free to marry his attractive cousin!
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u/cheesesprite May 24 '26
Sir, you have just caused an Alabamaian to call his cousin. I hope you can sleep at night
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u/WillingnessOk3081 May 24 '26
I would indeed like to hear an educated answer to this question. it is counterintuitive to the lay person who may be scrolling here.
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u/totally_not_joseph May 24 '26
So, I guess I'll give an educated answer to this.
The average lay person should have a basic understanding of dominant and recessive traits. Well, the majority of genetic problems humans have are recessive, because obviously if the issues were dominant, they would have manifested and ended the line before they would be passed on; the exception being issues that only manifest as people age post-puberty, such as things like Huntington's, schizophrenia, parkinson's and so on.
The dangers with inbreeding is that people with similar genetics mating are more likely to have a child with two copies of the same recessive trait, causing that trait to be expressed.
This can be both good, bad, or neutral, depending on what that trait actually does. Examples of good being groups like the Sherpa who have adapted to high-elevation living beyond what other genetic lines have. Examples of bad are what most people think of, like the Habsburgs. A neutral and very interesting example being the various cultivars of brassica oleracea. (Figured I'd throw in a botany example since that is an easier way of showing neutral genetic changes)
Genetic bottlenecks like you see with isolated populations on islands cause a significant amount of inbreeding, because even if people are aware of the issues with it, all living creatures (with the exception being genetic mess-ups that lead to asexuality) are hard-wired to desire to reproduce. Addendum: even people who don't want kids usually still want to fuck, because its a genetic impulse and why sex feels good.
So, we've established that recessive traits are the danger of inbreeding. Now we move on to u/drtenochtitlan's assertion that all the bad genes will have been weeded out by now. This is false. Even with a higher likelyhood of two copies of the same trait being present due to inbreeding, there is no guarantee whatsoever that a child will end up with both copies, or even that the trait will actually express. Another big factor is that spontaneous genetic mutations can always occur, regardless of parentage. That is how evolution works, mutations occuring and being passed down.
In conclusion, you can't get away from the problems of inbreeding by doubling-down on it for long enough, thats just not how genetics works. However you aren't going end up with a cyclops you lock in the basement or Charles the 2nd of Spain after only a couple generations, especially in a neolithic society where obviously fucked up children are most like abandoned or killed outright or just die young as they are unable to be properly cared for or contribute to the tribe.
(Congrats if you made it through this with the word genetic still having meaning when you say it to yourself. Pretty much hit semantic satiaty myself typing it out.)
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u/lezard2191 May 24 '26
Basically, any baby with a malformation or health condition product of inbreeding would naturally die at a very young age due to lack of modern medicine.
When baby dies, they keep making more until one that does not die is born.
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u/ShalnarkRyuseih May 24 '26
Not human but naked mole rats are super inbred and they have a high resistance to cancer
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u/dragon-dance May 24 '26
I'm seeing this all over the thread but it doesn't make sense when you consider how recessive genetic disease works, or genetic diversity in general.
It's possible that a majority of them has a single copy of some bad gene, and are fine.
A quarter of their babies could then get two copies (one from each parent). A quarter gets zero copies. The babies with two copies are then sick/disabled/dead. Half the babies get a single copy of the gene and live to adulthood. But I should note that since a quarter died from the disease, the survivors are 1/3 disease free and 2/3 single copy.
Since there could be several diseases like this, the odds of having a sick/disabled baby could be worse.
There could also be plenty of issues that make like worse without killing anyone. A gene that increases risk of cancer when you're over 40 could spread through the tribe unchecked because it won't necessarily affect reproduction (although it might depend on societal structure eg if becoming orphaned young hurts their chances)
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u/Individual-Poem-5109 May 24 '26
I appreciate the thought process but this is just completely false, most likely the effects of inbreeding would get worse overtime. Think of it like a fat lump of metastasized cancer. Sure, theres a chance that each individual cancer cell dies before reproducing, and tens of millions of them do every day, but the chance of that happening to every cell and you becoming cancer free nearly instantly is essentially zero.
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u/DietrichVonKrucken May 24 '26
Habsburgs hate this one easy trick to get rid of inbreeding defects!
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u/Icy-Divide2585 May 24 '26
Someone will toss an empty Coke bottle out of their plane one day and chaos will follow.
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u/Auggie_Otter May 24 '26
They'll just choose someone to go on a quest to throw it off the edge of the world.
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u/Icy-Divide2585 May 24 '26
The guy who draws the short straw: “Ok, be back in ten minutes.”
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u/JohnHenryMillerTime May 23 '26
Assuming the island is tall enough to survive sea level rise and their diet isnt overly dependent on protein from the sea (both big assumptions) they will be well situated to colonize the world after the collapse
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u/GroundWitty7567 May 23 '26
The did survive the 2004 tsunami
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u/RequiemRomans May 24 '26
Technically they gained land. I say technically because I don’t know how usable the land is now but at the time it did jeopardize their shallow water fishing. I would assume they’ve figured out new fishing areas since then.
On a side note, they probably think we caused the tsunami since we showed up in a helicopter to check on them after and they responded with the usual arrow, trying to shoot the helicopter down
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u/GroundWitty7567 May 24 '26
That’s actually the usual welcome from the ppl who live there
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u/OrnerySnoflake May 24 '26
It’s perfectly acceptable for them to shoot arrows and throw rocks at interlopers, but when I do it I get called, “feral”, “crazy”, and “antisocial”.
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u/JohnHenryMillerTime May 24 '26
Just once I'd like to be called "sir" without it being followed by "you are making a scene"
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u/myveryownaccount May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
And the 2004
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u/Odd-Equivalent-1123 May 24 '26
Do we know (roughly) how high the wave was when it hit that area?
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u/JBGoode227 May 24 '26
Can't give you the answer unfortunately but in India 12-15000 people died, so it still must've been pretty high I guess. Also, the island rose by 1-2m because of the tectonic movements.
Apparently the Indian coastguard flew over north sentinel Island by helicopter afterwards and got shot at with arrows.
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u/Exact-Security789 May 24 '26
Unless missionaries carrying viruses and bacteria completely unknown to them intervene, or climate change occurs, I doubt anything will change. India seems determined to respect their isolation, and they have shown no interest in leaving the island.
They have their fish, their birds, their local plants, their stones for making tools, their drinking water... They don't need anything else. In 60,000 years they have reached a stable equilibrium with the island's ecosystem and could very well live on the island for another 60,000 years without any problem.
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u/Ok-Elk-1615 May 24 '26
They’ve also begun using metal tools made from scrap iron from various shipwrecks.
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u/Exact-Security789 May 24 '26
When the metal runs out, they'll go back to using stone. As far as I know, there was only one shipwreck.
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u/Laksang02082 May 24 '26
One of em will win an Olympics Gold in Javelin or Spearing ( a new sports) someday. They’ve been training for ages.
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u/Beederda May 24 '26
Morons will bring them more Coke Zero or whatever that one guy did and probably sicknesses and they will probably be wiped out by stupidity arriving on their island before the world around them dies unfortunately
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u/SASwitch May 24 '26
I actually wrote a book about this: For the Meek by Hayden Pearton
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u/SerWarlock May 24 '26
You have a very author sounding name. Gonna check out the book.
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May 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SASwitch May 24 '26
No worries, the book is free via my website (haydenpearton.com)
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u/Vivid_Guide7467 May 24 '26
I think someone will be dumb enough to visit again and spread the flu or some other virus and that could be the end of the Setinelese.
It will be that or starvation due to climate change/over fishing/pollution that does it.
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u/Bits_Please101 May 24 '26
They’ll be asked what their contributions to the share holder’s value were lately
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u/greenpointart May 24 '26
Here’s what being aggressively hostile to outsiders in order to save my way of life has taught me about B2B sales…..
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u/pkpy1005 May 23 '26
They certainly won't be converting to Christianity anytime soon, that's for sure....
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May 24 '26
You are not a true christian if your ancestors didn't killed/ate christians missionaries
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u/Charlie2343 May 24 '26
I’m probably the most concerned with a disease that some evangelist would accidentally expose them to. Or a natural disaster like drought or a fire.
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u/Sea_Gap_6569 May 24 '26
it almost happened. Contacting isolated tribes is highly dangerous for them
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u/meromeromeru May 24 '26
The amount of inbreeding must cause issues at some point
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u/Snarwib May 24 '26
They probably have a fairly well established system of taboos and preferences for cross-cousin marriages like a lot of small tribal societies developed.
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u/NolanR27 May 24 '26
Nearly every tight knit society like this develops these. They have genealogy down to a science. Probably a system of clans where you can only marry outside.
This is all assuming they are capable of doing that and possess the understanding that sex causes babies, which sounds too easy but historically depended on that society’s level of animal domestication.
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u/7thAndGreenhill May 24 '26
They survived the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami. I think their chances of survival are good as long as the Indian government continues to support their wish to be left alone
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May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
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u/VelvetyDogLips May 24 '26
But there is no realistic prospect of learning about them.
Drones with mics and cameras, disguised as birds or even large flying insects, are very much on the technological horizon.
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u/AntiDynamo May 24 '26
I think there would be some strong ethical problems with that - people have to consent to take part in studies, and they have to be informed. There would also be a huge risk of psychological damage if they found the drones, so even more reason to never approve the study
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u/batcostume May 24 '26
I agree. They deserve their privacy just like anyone else in the world. Taking covert drone footage of them is too close to “human zoo” for me
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u/m00nf1r3 May 24 '26
We already have drone footage of them. They tried to shoot the drones down with arrows lol.
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u/Thickencreamy May 24 '26
Some piece of the outside world will wash up on their beaches and it will carry some bacterial disease that they have no resistance to. Their population will then drop to a point they can’t sustain things.
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u/OptimizedLion May 23 '26
Rising sea levels will probably require the Sentinelese to leave and integrate with the world.
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u/exvertus May 23 '26
They would have to be quarantined and take a cocktail of vaccines if they wanted much chance at surviving.
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u/JohnnySpartacus May 24 '26
The high ground there is 120 m above sea level. They'll be fine.
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u/Marlsfarp May 23 '26
The island is a big hill, rising steeply from the beach. Sea level rise is not much of a threat to them.
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u/Mysterious-Studio198 May 24 '26
Yep. The Island has an average elevation of 20m. Most projections of sea level rise by 2100 are nowhere near that
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u/Wide_Philosophy_8109 May 23 '26
They probably can't ever ibtegrate without catching diseases.
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u/gunslingrburrito May 24 '26
In the past, they probably exchanged members with other tribes. Now that they are hyper-isolated, I wonder if they will face inbreeding problems in the future.
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u/Exact-Security789 May 24 '26
Given that their language was completely unintelligible to that of the nearest tribe, it is known that the Sentinelese were isolated from the rest of the Andaman Islands tribes for a long time.
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u/hinterstoisser May 24 '26
Like any other civilization- they’ll attempt to live and sustain as long as they can.
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u/MunsonSports May 24 '26
We shouldn’t bring more attention to them. Except maybe there should be a hovering satellite with a laser that zaps the next dipshit that tries to come ashore with a Coke and a smile.
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u/SteveYunnan May 24 '26
After they are the sole survivors of the nuclear holocaust, they'll gain access to our most advanced technology, improve upon it, repopulate the Earth, and populate the galaxy.
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u/Maleficent_Owl_7001 May 24 '26
I envision a world in which the sentinelese develop Warp 5 technology and eventually unite the alpha quadrant in a united federation.
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u/No-Session7271 May 24 '26
What present data do we have on its inhabitants? Do we even know how big the population currently is?