Andamanese people

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58000 BCE to 2057 CE

The Andamanese people are the various aboriginal inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, a district of India located in the southeastern part of the Bay of Bengal.The Andamanese resemble other Negrito groups in Asia.

They are pygmies, and are the only modern people outside of certain parts of Africa with steatopygia.

They lead a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and appear to have lived in substantial isolation for thousands of years.

This degree of isolation is unequaled, except perhaps by the aboriginal inhabitants of Tasmania.

The Andamanese are believed to be descended from the migrations which, about sixty thousand years ago, brought the first modern humans out of Africa to the Andaman Islands.

Unlike some Negrito populations of Southeast Asia, Andaman Islanders have been found to have no Denisovan ancestry.By the end of the eighteenth century, when they first come into sustained contact with outsiders, there are an estimated seven thousand Andamanese divided into five major groups.

Each group has distinct cultures, separate domains, and mutually unintelligible languages.

In the next century they are largely wiped out by diseases, violence, and loss of territory.

Today, there remain only approximately 400–450 Andamanese.

One group has long been extinct, and only two of the remaining groups still maintain a steadfast independence, refusing most attempts at contact by outsiders.

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