North Sentinel Island, home of the Sentinelese, as seen from above. The Sentinelese are believed to have lived on their island home for 60,000 years. Commonly described, for instance, as belonging to the ‘Stone Age’, they do in fact make tools and weapons from metal, which they recover from ships wrecked on the island’s reefs. This does not mean, however, that they live just as they did 60,000 years ago. The fact that their language is so different even from other Andaman islanders suggests that they have had little contact with other people for thousands of years. They are thought to be directly descended from the first human populations to emerge from Africa, and have probably lived in the Andaman Islands for up to 60,000 years. Perhaps no people on Earth remain more genuinely isolated than the Sentinelese. Alone of the tens of millions of people affected by the disaster, the Sentinelese needed no help from anyone. Yet when a helicopter flew low over the island, a Sentinelese man rushed out on to the beach, aiming his arrow at the pilot in a gesture that clearly said, ‘We don’t want you here’. The photo that told the world the Sentinelese had survived the 2004 tsunami. In the wake of the 2004 tsunami this member of the Sentinelese tribe was photographed firing arrows at a helicopter.

Drone north sentinel island