Ancient Tribe Becomes Extinct As Last Member Dies

http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/5509

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/with-the-death-of-boa-sr-her-people...

With the death of Boa Sr, her people and their songs fall silent forever

Final survivor of ancient tribe spoke of the sadness of having no one left to talk to

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent

When Boa Sr sang in her own language, the result was gently hypnotic. "The earth is shaking as the tree falls, with a great thud," she sang, on a recording captured by linguists.

But the grey-haired, 85-year-old woman will not be heard again. And neither will her native tongue – Bo – aside from the recordings that have already been made. Campaigners revealed yesterday that the recent death of Boa Sr on India's remote Andaman Islands marked the end of the Bo tribe and the loss of a language.

"With the death of Boa Sr and the extinction of the Bo language, a unique part of human society is now just a memory," said Stephen Corry, director of the group Survival International. "Boa's loss is a bleak reminder that we must not allow this to happen to the other tribes of the Andaman Islands."

Boa Sr was the oldest member of the Great Andamanese, an indigenous group of the Andamans, a cluster of islands 700 miles east of the Indian mainland in the Bay of Bengal. The Great Andamanese once numbered more than 5,000 and were made up of 10 distinct groups each with their own language.

The Bo are believed to have lived on the islands for as long as 65,000 years, making them one of the oldest surviving human cultures. But today, after more than 150 years of contact with colonisers, the diseases they brought with them, and the disastrous impact of alcohol, the Great Andamanese number just 52.

Professor Anvita Abbi, a linguist at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, spent many years speaking with Boa Sr, usually in a version of Hindi spoken on Great Andaman. Her greatest sadness, said Professor Abbi, was that as the last of her kind she could not speak to anyone in her own language. "Boa was the last of the Bo tribe. That is what was so sad – that she had no one," she said.

According to Survival, when British colonial forces failed to pacify the tribes through violence in the 19th century, they sought to "civilise" them by capturing many and keeping them in an institution. But of some 150 children born in the so-called Andaman Home, none lived beyond the age of two.

Boa Sr, known for an infectious laugh, survived the Asian tsunami of December 2004. She told linguists: "We were all there when the earthquake came. The eldest told us 'the Earth would part, don't run away or move'. The elders told us, that's how we know."

The Great Andamanese are not alone in struggling for their survival. Another of the islands' tribes, the Onge, number no more than 100 after eight of their number died in late 2008 after drinking from bottles that had washed ashore.

The Jarawa tribe are threatened by a recently completed road that has joined several of the islands and brought in settlers, poachers and alcohol. Perhaps the most secure are the Sentinelese, who live on the island of North Sentinel and resist all efforts at communication by the outside world. In the aftermath of the tsunami, one of the tribe was famously photographed aiming a bow and arrow at an emergency helicopter. The Indian government's policy is to make no further contact with them.

Professor Abbi said that Boa Sr often told her how she envied the fact that the Jarawa and the Sentinelese had managed to avoid contact with outsiders. She recalled: "She used to say they were better off in the jungle."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/04/ancient-language-extinct-speaker-die...

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/02/05/india.extinct.tribe/c1main....

Ancient tribal language becomes extinct as last speaker dies

Death of Boa Sr, last person fluent in the Bo language of the Andaman Islands, breaks link with 65,000-year-old culture

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The last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000-year link to one of the world's oldest cultures.

Boa Sr, who lived through the 2004 tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo.

Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of south-east Asia.

Though the language has been closely studied by researchers of linguistic history, Boa Sr spent the last few years of her life unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue.

Even members of inter-related tribes were unable to comprehend the repertoire of Bo songs and stories uttered by the woman in her 80s, who also spoke Hindi and another local language.

"Her loss is not just the loss of the Great Andamanese community, it is a loss of several disciplines of studies put together, including anthropology, linguistics, history, psychology, and biology," Narayan Choudhary, a linguist of Jawaharlal Nehru University who was part of an Andaman research team, wrote on his webpage. "To me, Boa Sr epitomised a totality of humanity in all its hues and with a richness that is not to be found anywhere else."

The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are governed by India. The indigenous population has steadily collapsed since the island chain was colonised by British settlers in 1858 and used for most of the following 100 years as a colonial penal colony.

Tribes on some islands retained their distinct culture by dwelling deep in the forests and rebuffing would-be colonisers, missionaries and documentary makers with volleys of arrows. But the last vestiges of remoteness ended with the construction of trunk roads from the 1970s.

According to the NGO Survival International, the number of Great Andamanese has declined in the past 150 years from about 5,000 to 52. Alcoholism is rife among the survivors.

"The Great Andamanese were first massacred, then all but wiped out by paternalistic policies which left them ravaged by epidemics of disease, and robbed of their land and independence," said Survival International's director, Stephen Corry. "With the death of Boa Sr and the extinction of the Bo language, a unique part of human society is now just a memory. Boa's loss is a bleak reminder that we must not allow this to happen to the other tribes of the Andaman Islands."

Boa Sr appears to have been in good health until recently. During the Indian Ocean tsunami, she reportedly climbed a tree to escape the waves.

She told linguists afterwards that she had been forewarned. "We were all there when the earthquake came. The eldest told us the Earth would part, don't run away or move.

http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/dead-boa-sr-takes-great-andamanese-bo-ancient-l...

Dead Boa Sr Takes Great Andamanese Bo, Ancient Language, With Her
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by Tina Kells | February 5, 2010 at 12:52 pm

India's Adamans region is home to some of the world's most ancient languages, like the Bo language which is thought to be more than 70,000 years old. The four main tribes in the Andamanese region; the Great Andamanese, the Jarawa, the Onge and the Sentinelese all speak languages that date back to the pre-Neolithic era and their languages are dying at a startling rate.

The last Bo speaking person on earth, an 85-year old woman named Bo Sr, was pronounced dead in February 2010, and when she died she took her ancient language with her. The death of Boa Sr, and the subsequent end of the Bo language, marked the second ancient language to die since December 2009. Boa Sr was once quoted as saying she admired sister tribes, like the Sentinelese, who had shunned all contact with the modern world.

For more than three decades, after the death of her parents, Boa Sr was unable to relate to others in her one of her two ancient native tongues. To interact with others she had to learn an Andamanese version of Hindi. Along with Bo, Boa Sr was one of the few remaining Adamanese tribes people to speak another endangered language, Jeru. Boa Sr maintained a rich oral history through song and poetry that also died with her.

According to Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese (VOGA), a group dedicated to the preservation and protection of these ancient languages and their tribes, three of the four major tribes interact with the modern world, only the Sentinelese refuse to make contact with mainlanders and researchers. The Sentinelese actively, sometimes violently, fight off contact with the modern world.