Featured Image Credit: Madhumala Chattopadhyay
Topics: World News
Callum Jones
The last official contact with 'uncontacted' islanders was caught on camera, and it is possibly the most heartwarming thing you will see today.
As shown in a video on the RealLifeLore YouTube channel, things didn't exactly go to plan to start with in 1974 as a team of camera crew from National Geographic and some anthropologists tried to make contact with the indigenous people.
These people are found at the North Sentinel Island, one of the Andaman Islands and an Indian archipelago.
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The camera crew had planned to go around the island and deposit presents to the Sentinelese in order to try and gain their trust.
But once the boat got to shore, a Sentinelese launched an arrow at it and ended up hitting one of the crew members in the thigh.
The group were seen laughing hysterically on the shore, and National Geographic withdrew to avoid the situation escalating any further.
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But Trilokinath Pandit, a director of the Anthropological Survey of India, hadn't given up on the idea so continued to deposit presents on the island.
By 1988, he seemed to be making some progress as the Sentinelese appeared to be 'dancing with joy' on a visit. And just a month later, when Pandit was dropping off some coconuts to the islanders, they got within ten yards of contact.
But the true breakthrough came in 1991 when Pandit sent one of his junior anthropologists to lead a routine gift drop instead of himself.
Madhumala Chattopadhyay was the only woman on the team at the time, and she said that the Sentinelese came right out to the boat to accept the gifts.
The heartwarming exchange of gifts was a truly heartwarming moment and saw a true breakthrough in the anthologists gaining the Sentinelese's trust.
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She suggested that her presence as a woman signaled to the tribe that the determined crew didn't have any bad intentions.
Both Chattopadhyay and Pandit went together to the island a month later and were greeted by the indigenous people right there in the water.
Chattopadhyay recalled the breakthrough in an interview with National Geographic back in 2018.
She recalled: "A young man aged about 19 or 20 stood along with a woman on the beach. He suddenly raised his bow.
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"I called out to them to come and collect the coconuts using tribal words I had picked up while working with the other tribes in the region.
"The woman gave the boy a nudge and his arrow fell to the water. At the woman’s urging, he too came into the water and started picking coconuts.
"Later some of the tribesmen came and touched the boat. The gesture, we felt, indicated that they were not scared of us now."