Most of the Australian aborigine people had walked out of the desert by the 1960's, but in 1984 a family of 9 that had lived in the desert, finally also walked out to reunite with their relatives [1]. The relatives had already lived ca. 20 years in an Australian village nearby.

When they finally saw the comfortable lifestyle their relatives had enjoyed already for 20 years, they were quite angry [2] that they had been left living in the desert, and not contacted earlier:

"They told us there was plenty of food and water came out of pipes," Yardi said.

"The older ones were angry that their long-lost relatives – who they had not seen for nearly 20 years – had left them out in the desert eating lizards while they lived in what they saw as the lap of luxury,"

"I like this life," Yardi said. "I much prefer it to the old ways."

Warlinipirri said: "I wouldn't go back."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pintupi_Nine

[2] http://www.heraldsun.com.au/archive/news/lost-tribe-happy-in...

The Sentinelese people (of the article) are not the only indigenous people around there, they are just on the most distant island.

On nearby larger islands there live e.g. the Jarawa [1] and Onge [2] people and some others [3].

The Jawara inhabit jungle areas of a larger island, that has also for already very long time been settled by Indian farmers. The Jarawa used to stay in the jungle, and there were occasional violent encounter and conflicts. But in 1997 the Jarawa started to make peaceful visits to nearby villages, wanting food and gifts.

The farmers see the Jarawa as a nuisance. They don't want to escalate violence, but they also don't want the Jarawa to learn that they could walk in people's homes and steal whatever they want.

Apparently [4,5] the Jarawa and Onge languages are not very well studied, either.

So, whatever anthropological, cultural and humanitarian interest anyone might have toward the un-contacted people on the North Sentinel island, they could first direct their interest and charity toward these other nearby tribes who have already had some contact with civilization for last decades or centuries, but are apparently not faring very well at the moment.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarawa_people_%28Andaman_Island...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onge_people

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andaman_Islands#Indigenous_Anda...

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarawa_language_%28Andaman_Isla...

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onge_language

I never liked the prime directive in any case. Culture is not a tangible thing to be 'lost' nor something that need be preserved at the cost of the health and comfort of human beings.

Point taken. For now all we have are members of their community that made contact with external world and expressed an isolationist stance. Of course we may not like it and consider that (regardless whether they want or not) they should be exposed again and again until we'll finally get out of them the buyer's "yes". I also guess that only then we'll call their decision "right" and "informed". If we may somehow disable our influence as actors in their decision then yes, I agree with you that individuals that desire the freedom of making informed choice should have it. For those who chose (having peaceful reasons) to willingly get in contact with external world, there should be left a door somewhere in their reach.

"Culture is not a tangible thing to be 'lost' nor something that need be preserved"

Here I doubt that you got in contact with enough cultures to make for yourself an informed opinion.

On a more serious note, given some historic evidence how our contact with other tribes ended (pick any tribe, anytime, anywhere) I am both surprised and happy that they exist. I hope they stay the same for as long as possible and may we never learn anything about them.

Your serious argument is one of the little valid points raised so far. And I agree, we might not be in a position to help them now. But the statements that even if we could bring them to our society in a humane manner we still shouldn't, because they're clearly fine as they are... That just disgusts me.

More akin to a guy standing on a ledge of a cliff, albeit precarious but doing fine; if you try to help him, he'll probably fall and die fast. He knows this, and he's telling you to stay the he11 away.

That said, I am sympathetic with your basic view. Les Stroud's Beyond Survival was fascinating, but the recurring theme of "and this ancient people is about to die out or lose their culture" struck me as "well, if doing stupid things[1] isn't survivable then maybe those ways should change, and the consequences of sticking to them are natural." The Sentinese however seem to be holding it together pretty well; not advancing, but living on what is otherwise a stereotypical tropical paradise island (food growing on trees, good climate, water), methinks they've achieved some form of comfortable equilibrium and are doing pretty well (I'm sure some here on HN are thinking "I'd like to join them").

Someone mentioned above "your 100 kids will leave the island, move to India, and become call center employees". That vs. where & how they're living now, I'm not so sure "bring[ing] them to our society in a humane manner" really is. Someday it will happen, someday modern life will crash into their ancient and stable culture, someday they will have to deal with new diseases and cell phones and high-speed transport, and "someday" probably isn't very long from now.

"But the kids need to do X and Y and Z!" my wife declares. "They're content and playing nicely with their toys and crayons," I'll reply. "Let them enjoy it a little longer."

[1] - the clincher was a tribe that fishes by dangling bare hooks in the ocean for hours while sitting on poles. I'm amazed that culture lasted so long. Yeah, they need some help.

Some type of hidden observation as in the movie Insurrection might be worthwhile though? Someone should ask the NSA, are they really comfortable with these people NOT being monitored constantly? They could be a terrorist threat?

Or, you know, they could live a life that makes them happy.

I think you're unnecessarily conflating this with another topic entirely.

So "you should still respect her \"NO\"" - How is this relevant? He doesn't expand on why you should do this, so we can't link that logic to the situation and and, all we have is "You'd accept 'no' if you asked someone out, so you should also do so here", with no further reasoning on how the two are similar.

So who does? You? Western society? Don't you find that thinking a bit arrogant?

/s

But these people don't live in a western society. They don't share our cultural beliefs of what is good or civilized. They live by a whole different set of rules and conventions. We can't just go there, impose our vastly superior beliefs upon them with the argument that it's for their best because WE believe that.

Have you ever travelled to another continent? If you're American or from Western Europe, try going to Japan. Or somewhere in Africa, off the beaten path. You're likely to experience a culture shock, right? You can do two things. You can think 'I can't believe these fucktards, why the hell would they want to live like this, now where's the nearest Motel 6' or you can accept the fact that their culture is just different. I'm not speaking in terms of better or worse, just different.

They don't need our help and they don't want our help. We have showed time after time that 'helping savages' does not work. Native Americans? Unless you think the inabriated guy with the poncho selling roadside flatbread is actually happier than his ancestors, it's hard to argue we did a good job helping them. Numerous tribes in South America now have to deal with alcoholism, crime, murder. The ones that don't are just smart enough to evade us.

Ask yourself this: should we contact these people if we were certain that our contacting them would lead to their loss of culture, and most likely would wipe them away? Do you think that, despite ALL the times where we screwed up entire tribes, this time it will be different? Why is it our responsibility anyway to 'help' them, even against their will?

People can negotiate how much an outside culture influences them. Even in cases where campaigns are made to stamp out culture (e.g. W. Africa, wherein anyone in schooling was given Western names and forbidden to speak their native language in school), the old mores still prevail if people where were willing to fight for it.

And how can you measure that the parts of the culture that are lost, are more important than the practical benefit of say.... modern medicine dropping the early childhood mortality rate by 90%?

If you wanted to give them the quality of life enjoyed in the nicer parts of the US or Europe you would have to provide all those amenities for them, and it is in any case unlikely that they would appreciate them the same way that you do.

The only likely benefit that "we" could provide would be medical care for infections or easily treated disorders. That would have to be balanced with the high likelihood that contacting and attempting to integrate them would actually kill most of them. Anything else is a egocentric view of what is good for mankind.

http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/...

I'd agree with you that they probably have a more enjoyable day to day experience, however I also would bet that they have an infant mortality rate that is astronomical even by 3rd world standards. And that they have an average life expectancy which isn't hard to beat in the 3rd world. I'm not saying that these 2 things justify us forcing contact with them, just that it is hard for someone to justify that lower infant mortality and higher life expectancy are always positive things for our species to strive for. Its not just an issue of culture.

It would be mistaken, therefore, to assume that the same conditions would prevail in isolated places like North Sentinel Island, where the people are apparently well nourished. So the infant mortality rate there may be above the best found elsewhere, but it is probably lower than many other places.

Is ~400 people a large enough population to support most diseases, or is it possible that they essentially (infectious) disease free by virtue of their tiny population?

I'm also curious what the genetics of a 400-person island look like. I always assumed that the minimum viable population was larger than that -- somewhere in the thousands -- but if the population estimate is correct, and has been for tens of thousands of years, then that's pretty concrete evidence that it's no more than 400.

Several studies, two on the genetics of the Andamanese [1,2] and the other on their linguistics [3] suggest that they have been isolated for 50-70,000 yr. The genetics studies also showed a very low population diversity, so in common parlance they are "inbred". Oddly enough, if they have been isolated for long enough, they will therefore be free of most genetic diseases, since the rare ones will be manifested early on in their isolation due to inbreeding, and then selected against. Genetic conditions that don't affect reproductive fitness could be common, though. Genetic isolation can also result in increased susceptibility to pathogens later introduced from outside said population.

[1]Kashyap, V. K., et al. "Molecular relatedness of the aboriginal groups of Andaman and Nicobar Islands with similar ethnic populations." International Journal of Human Genetics 3 (2003): 5-11.

[2] Thangaraj, Kumarasamy, et al. "Genetic affinities of the Andaman Islanders, a vanishing human population." Current Biology 13.2 (2003): 86-93.

[3]Abbi, Anvita. "Is Great Andamanese genealogically and typologically distinct from Onge and Jarawa?." Language Sciences 31.6 (2009): 791-812.

What if the tribe decided our children were being severely mistreated with glowing distraction screens, processed corn sugar, helicopter parenting, etc.? Surely you'd let them take our kids away.

We could send William Shatner to fool around with their women...

They are a self-sufficient people that don't seem to be screwing up the world nearly as much as we are... why would we even assume we're superior? Maybe we're just jealous?

Or die. Because, you know, a lot of them die.

However, if the greener grass turns out to be a Mumbai slum or an e-waste site in China, or one of many other terrible but more realistic fates, maybe you'd pass on that opportunity... because, you know, a lot of people die there too.

People in the first world romanticize ancient ways of life, but the reality is that life without basic technology is nasty, brutish, and short.

Another blind spot is that there are degrees of bad. Living in a village in northern Afghanistan is better in a lot of ways than living in Darfur, which is better than Somalia. Honestly, people didn't choose to live in cities and work long hours in factories because we tricked them. They do it because it's better than their previous existence.

Something to consider is that if some members of a society choose the new existence (provided by the new outsiders), then it can undermine the rest of the society.

Also, with advanced technology comes advanced ways of self destruction. Maybe we don't poses the cultural requirements for being accepted in that club?

I would argue the same for the Sentinese (there are good historical examples for this[1]). Maybe if we give them weapons, they will kill themselves, or end up in constant warring state or something else.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Tahiti

At that moment, we aren't the world-conquering successful species we love and proclaim to be. We're the little tribe living on the little island that's quietly being protected by the corrupt government of a minor power in the universal state of nations and empires that we just are now learning about. There's a lot of euphemisms in my last few sentences. Figure them out.

Leave these people alone.

This is kind of in response to your second point. Think about the scale of what we're talking about. We have a massively global, interconnected society of both economy and knowledge comprising billions of people. Even the poorest person in the most desolate parts of the world can, with some inconvenience, get on to the Internet. The people on this island, 400-1000 souls that they be, don't even have the understanding of modern society that the poorest person in the modern world has. Where do you start with that?

So suppose your friendly aliens show up and say "Hi!". What then? We're the people that struggle to maintain ONE space station. We have no extra-terrestrial colonies or establishments. Aliens decide to claim Mars? What are we going to do? The Moon? Its theirs. Pretty much anything outside of our little island Earth is open for claim, and not by us necessarily. The fucked up part is that if you traveled tens or hundreds of light years to get here, Earth itself is probably not the main goal. Its just the natural resources of the system. And what happens in a few hundred years when we decide to get off our asses and go into space? Nothing's left, because fucking Zork claimed it all.

So when you think about all of this together, what options do you present to these people even if they were interested? Medicine, food? Sure. Maybe we can get them vaccinated before the common cold or bird flu wipes them out. Education? Here's some books representing external human history from the perspective of the people supplying the money. Oh, check out our religion too! By the way, did you know that your island is one of several others claimed by India? Its a big island (not really) with over 1 billion people. Too many to count? Don't worry, once your 100 kids have moved to Bangalore to become tech support reps and within 20 years your entire culture has died they'll be able to explain.

I know this is a bit rambly, but hopefully you can see where I'm going. There is no benefit to the people in question to be contacted by us. It only changes and hurts them.

You can romanticize how much better their situation will be all you want, but there's plenty of evidence it won't be.

I read an article years ago on feral surfers who were basically turning indigenous peoples into diseased addicts, sex workers, and slaves. Not because they intended to, but it just happened to be convenient. I'll try and dig it up.

I don' think they need our medicine, housing or plumbing.

Uh, we have.

You're assuming that they've lived for 65,000 years with no social or cultural or technological upheaval within their own little sub-civilization. While at that same time drawing arbitrary end-points in ours.

At this point, they're only surviving because of the benign interests of outsiders. Do you really think they could survive a hypothetical contest of "what society can survive the longest?". If our culture hadn't evolved to accept and respect indigenous people like this, or if there was any economic value on that island, they'd be dead or subjugated by now. So how can you claim that they've figured out better civilization survival instincts than the rest of the world?

By that measure, should western governments be liberating various cultures who don't live in a manner consistent with western ideals?

Individuals might want to get out and wonder as you say, but some makes a choice for them - their leaders. For one reason or another good or bad.

Just like people make choices for you and you have bare minimum say. They way your government, state government, mayor they all make choices that impact your life one way or another, some highly, some to a low degree.

>I guess all I'm saying is that not establishing contact is also a choice that we're making on their behalf. Is deciding that they can't parttake in modern society any more OK than deciding they must? Can we not contact them in a way where they get to choose?

so NO!

it's therefore easy to see other cultural views as falling into these categories: odd/silly, needlessly restrictive (possibly also immoral), or downright immoral [1].

that's a mental trap, though, much like believing yourself to live at the center of the universe.

once you remove the "superior culture" argument, it becomes quite hard to formulating a reason to touch this island.

for instance: we have medicine! but we only value it because we fear death, etc.

[1] examples come to mind: some cultures believe using birth control is like murder (silly). some cultures believe a woman should not exposition her shoulders in public (no rights). some cultures believe infanticide is acceptable, others find it natural for men to have romantic relationships with boys (immoral). these are all examples from a western perspective, of course.

I could understand that argument when considering prolonging of life when you're already really old and pretty much falling apart, but for completely preventable deaths?

I remember reading somewhere that a cult of death is considered a pretty universal value.

It's also a choice that they are making for themselves. It may or may not be a fully informed choice, but they are making their opinions pretty clear. They certainly aren't coming across as a group of people looking desperately to some outside group to save them from anything.

Assimilating a culture is an irreversible action. Once it's assimilated, there is no going back. Once we assimilate everyone on the planet, there will be no enclaves. Nothing to learn or wonder about. Is it not scary? To be a complete monoculture?

If everyone on Earth could join advanced aliens any time, could Earth be considered an independent society?

I feel that this is a choice of theirs that should be respected rather than considered as an inconvenient obstacle. True, it's an ignorant choice, but nothing is preventing them taking a more curious stance.