Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
northern islands have managed to stay isolated. The tribe living on North
Sentinel Island in particular has fi ercely rejected all attempts at contact from
the outside, including fi ghting of intruders with spears. In view of the Anda-
mans' history this seems like a sensible attitude.
The Andaman Islanders were clearly part of the Great Migration. Analy-
sis of their mitochondrial DNA has uncovered sequences with deep roots,
like some of those carried by the tribal populations of India's southernmost
tip. These roots can also be traced back to Africa.
The islanders probably did not originate from India's southern tip, but
from later migrants and settlers who continued to move slowly up the east-
ern Indian coast and through the vast swampy delta of the Ganges-Brahma-
putra, fi nally reaching the Irrawaddy. These new arrivals probably did not
settle the islands immediately, for there was plenty of room on the mainland
and there would have been 400 kilometers of open ocean to cross.
About 20,000 years ago, during the most severe of the recent ice ages,
it might have been possible to walk most of the way to the islands along
the now-submerged Coco Island ridge. But there was no point at which the
islands were linked to the mainland by a continuous land bridge. The islands
were probably colonized by people in small coastal boats, some of which
may have been blown out to the islands by storms.
The saga continues
Bands of hardy hunter-gatherers and fi shermen continued to spread, across
the delta of the Irrawaddy and down the extensive coastal marshes of pen-
insular Southeast Asia. Beyond the end of the present-day peninsula it was
easy to traverse most of the islands of the Sunda Arc, because 50,000 years
ago sea levels were so low that they were joined together. Sumatra, Borneo,
Sulawesi, and Java were all linked by the Sunda Shelf, a great expanse of fl at
and friendly land that must have had abundant fi sh, game, and water. But in
order to reach New Guinea and Australia these migrants still had to make
their way across relatively narrow, deep ocean channels that were swept by
strong north-to-south currents.
