This was the first time a woman was a part of a contact expedition with the Sentinelese, and they put their guard down. Given the hostile nature of the Sentinelese, the contact parties would avoid approaching the tribe directly and watch them from the safety of their ships or leave gifts in remote part of the island. ![]() There have been many attempts previously to establish contact with the Sentinelese, which however failed with contact parties being received with arrows, some even finding their mark. Their antiquity, traced to the Palaeolithic age, makes them the first inhabitants of India. Perhaps no people on earth remain more genuinely isolated than the Sentinelese, one of the few un-contacted people in the world, who have lived in the North Sentinel Islands of the Andamans for the last estimated 60,000 years, shunning any contact with the outside world. On 4 January, 1991, more than 1,200 kms from the Indian mainland in the Bay of Bengal, a young Indian woman anthropologist waded waist-deep into the coral reefs to hand over a coconut to a man from the Sentinelese tribe. This was the first-ever friendly contact with this hostile tribe of the Andamans. ![]() Anthropologist to friend – the journey of Madhumala Chattopadhyay who first contacted the Sentinelese and Jarawas in Andamans.
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