Chapter 5: A Physical Examination

5. The Andamanese

A Physical Examination

by George Weber

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The two most immediately obvious physical characteristics of the Andamanese are their short stature and the intense blackness of their skin. They and the unrelated African Mbuti pygmies are the smallest human beings known. While the African pygmies tend to be squat with arms rather long in proportion to body height, compared to the average-sized human being the Andamanese look tiny but elegantly proportioned. No rule is complete without exception: the Sentineli seem to be taller than the other Andamanese groups. One has to say “seem” because they have never allowed anyone to measure them, their exceptional stature being merely an estimate from afar.

The Negritos in general have been described as having a brachycephalic (broad) skull, a broad face with full but not everted lips, a low alveolar index and shovel-shaped incisors. The long bones are typically small and slender. Steatopygia (“fat bottom”) is common, especially among women. Skeletal studies have revealed high orbits, prominent cheek bones with broad and flat nasal roots. Eyes are large and clear, ranging from brown to dark brown in colour with extremely acute vision. There is a high frequency of Mongoloid epiphantic eyefold (slanted eyes). Rather Australoid facial features with a broad, straight nose, relatively large teeth and a tendency towards prognathism (protruding jaw) are the norm.

Among the Andamanese negrito, body hair is generally scanty and limited to head and the pubic region. Hair on the head is of the so-called peppercorn variety, i.e. it grows in tightly curled spiral tufts that form into cones with naked skin visible between the cones. The only other people with that type of hair are the Khoisan of South Africa. What hair there is is evenly distributed over the head, ranging in colour from a shiny black to yellowish brown, with black the norm. Left to grow uncut, Negrito hair (if straightened from its naturally curly state) could grow up to 24 cm (10 inches) in length. Because of the curl, hair of this length would mat and become a health risk in the tropical climate. In the Andamans it was never left to grow that long: shaving their elders was an inescapable duty of Andamanese boys. There is rarely any other facial hair but the rare males who managed to grow a few isolated wisps of facial hair on their chin or sides were and still are inordinately proud of every one of them. Andamanese hair has been reported in its structure to be exactly like that of the Tasmanians.

The Andamanese skin said to be extraordinarily elastic and especially resilient to scratching. It is of a hue so dark that it sometimes takes on a bluish tinge. Again, the resemblance of their skin in both colour and scratch-resistance to that of the Tasmanians was said to be striking.

The Onge and Great Andamanese both show an exceptionally high incidence of blood group A in the ABO system and a very high incidence of M in the MN system. Dermatoglyphic pattern (finger-prints) show a high incidence of loops and an almost total absence of arches. For more details on this and other genetic information, also in comparison with other Negrito groups, possible relatives and neighbouring human groups please refer to the following chapter.

Andamanese and average physical characteristics.

Body height is one of the more changeable of human characteristics. Individuals of genetically homogenous populations can vary widely in height, as even a casual glance at passing pedestrians in a street of, say, the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik will confirm (the Icelanders are among the most genetically homogenous people of Europe). Body height can also change over an entire population in response to changes in the environment and living conditions. The average height of male recruits to the Swiss army in the four generations called up between 1887 and 1987 rose by no less than 14.5 cm (5.7 in). The change does not reflect a genetic mutation but increasing prosperity in what until the mid-19th century had been a poor country.

If the pressures selecting for a particular characteristic last long enough that characteristic eventually becomes genetically determined in the general population. This is what must have happened to the Negritos. Their remote ancestors need not have been short. It is more likely that dwarf groups acquire their short stature independently: what many such groups have in common is a long-term residence in a tropical deep-forest environment. The African pygmies, for example, are not genetically related to the Negritos beyond their common humanity but they, too, have been living in a heavily jungled tropical environment for hundreds of generations.

Skin colour is less variable between individuals of a group than body height but is just as responsive to environmental pressures. The intensity of human pigmentation, i.e. the darkness of a person’s skin colour, is determined by a number of genes working together in complex ways that are not yet fully understood. Although the genetic details are unclear, what is clear from the geographic and historic evidence is that skin colour is largely but not exclusively determined by the long-term environment. The human race most likely came out of tropical Africa and was just as likely dark-skinned – as most of Africa still is today. Life in an environment with strong solar radiation inevitably selects for the survival of persons with an efficient protection against the sun; in other words, a dark skin. The dark-skinned Australian aborigines wandered from Africa through tropical Asia to Australia more than 2000 generations ago. Throughout their wanderings they never left the belt of intense solar radiation of the lower latitudes – and they are still dark. In Africa, the Khoikhoi and San people, unlike the African blacks, are relatively light-skinned. They have lived in the relatively high latitudes of southern Africa for a very long time, unlike the African blacks who are relatively recent immigrants there. The picture is even clearer in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere where there are only light-skinned populations to be found, all of long residence: from the Inuit (Eskimo), the “white” Caucasians to the “yellow” Mongolian groups. The Inuit took up residence around the American and Asian arctic “only” 400 or so generations ago and they already show distinct physical adaptations to their extreme environment: short stature and very light skin colour. If the evolutionary pressures are intense enough, the process of physical adaptation can speed up considerably. The Amerindians entered the Americas, probably starting very roughly 1000 generations ago. We do not know the skin-colour of the original Amerindians but coming from northern Asia it was likely to have been light. Today many Amerindian groups from Canada to Chile still have a fairly light skin colour, often described as “copper;” while some are brown but none are black or even truly dark. In India, the Dravidian-speaking people of the south are dark and are known to have been residents on the subcontinent for much longer than the lighter-skinned northern Indians. The latter are a mixture of light-skinned Aryan immigrants from central Asia around 150 generations ago with a dark-skinned aboriginal population (including Dravidians, Negritos and Veddoids) while the Dravidians themselves contain a larger admixture of Negrito and Veddoid traits acquired over a longer period. On all these groups, from the moment of their arrival, the sun has shone equally, steadily nudging everyone’s genetic defences against its rays in the direction of a darker skin. Tropical southeast Asia, on the other hand, is dominated today not by dark but by relatively light-skinned people of Malay and Mongolian ancestry. These groups arrived from the light-skinned north less than 100 or so generations ago and acquired their average light brown colour probably mostly by mixing with the dark-skinned aboriginal groups. Light-skinned Chinese have continued to migrate into the area until very recently in a continuation of this process.

The picture given here is of necessity grossly over-simplified, but it seems to hold for most populations with all but one exception accounted for by mixing and migration. The one exception may hint at other, as yet unidentified, factors in the genetic determination of skin colour. The Tasmanian people lived in a relatively chilly, non-tropical environment without strong solar radiation and they did so for more than 1400 generations, the last 300 or so in isolation. If solar radiation over many generations alone determined skin colour, the last Tasmanians (who died out in the 19th century) should have been fairly light-skinned. They were not. Instead they were nearly as dark as the Andamanese. We have no idea why. For a further discussion of the unusual Tasmanians and their possible relationship to the Andamanese see the chapter “Tasmanians” at the end of this book.

The Andamanese hold a little-known world record: they have the highest normal body temperature of any human population. Some Onge are known to have maintained normal body temperatures of 38°C (100.5°F) while feeling perfectly well and healthy.

Sickle-cell anaemia is a genetically inherited disease widespread in Africa and also known from other tropical and subtropical regions but unknown among Andamanese aborigines. In an evolutionary balance act between two evils, the disease provides a measure of defence against malaria. The Andamanese themselves enjoy a certain degree of immunity from that scourge of humanity but they can be carriers, i.e. they can pass it on. Since sickle-cell anaemia is unknown among Andamanese, the suspicion has arisen that the “permanent fever” might be some sort of alternative defence mechanism against malaria. The Shompen of Great Nicobar are also said to show similar signs of partial immunity to malaria. The threat of malaria has been growing during the last two decades of the 20th century and the disease is far from being under control, yet the alleged Andamanese evidence has not received more than cursory attention. The Onge on Little Andaman in the 1990s numbered still around 100 living and friendly people, i.e. they are not averse to being tested. One can only hope that the WHO and the Indian doctors will bestir themselves and look into the matter before the last Onge (or Shompen, for that matter) has departed from this world.

Some observers have noted that the sweat of the Andamanese (who perspire profusely) seems to repel ticks. If true, this would be a most useful adaptation to these omnipresent pests. Ticks are a scourge of the islands, they can be intolerable to those without protection and many are the visitors to the islands who have wished most fervently for even a little immunity. The Andamanese have yet another line of defence against ticks: their custom of decorating their bodies with multicoloured clay. Even new-born babies are treated in this way.

The often childlike Andamanese faces lead most observers to underestimate their age, sometimes grossly so. The Andamanese themselves have never had and still do not have any sense of the passing of time, do not count years and are indifferent to their own age. Males are reported to mature at 15, attain full growth at 18, marry at 26 and live to an old age at around 55 to 65. Of the Onges in the 1950s it has been reported that none reached an age above 60, that they were old by 45 and that most died before age 50. The menopause of the women sets in at age 38. Estimates on the average life expectancy vary greatly, starting at 22 and peaking in the mid-thirties. Women married a few years younger than the men but lived longer. The child-bearing years lasted from 16 to 35 and children were not generally weaned before age 3 or 4. It is interesting to find women longer-lived than men in an isolated hunting-gathering society. The phenomenon is a well-known one in the industrialized world but has popularly been blamed on the greater working stress of males. It rather looks as if the longevity of females was a general trait of homo sapiens and not culturally or environmentally determined. All in all, even the lower estimates give quite respectable life expectancies when one considers that the expected life span at birth in North American and northern Europe of the late 18th century was only 35 to 40 years and around 70 in the 1980s.

The muscular strength of the Andamanese was and is considerable but what has been called their “vitality” less so. This means that even apparently robust and healthy people can quite suddenly sicken and die. Resistance to all forms of stress is low: the Andamanese differ widely as individuals but in general can bear, briefly, bodily discomforts such as thirst, hunger, fatigue or lack of sleep cheerfully enough. What they do not have was endurance over longer periods. They are specially susceptible to cold, draught, direct sunlight and the absence of the psychologically comforting fire. Much of this must be the result of a life in the jungle where temperature and humidity are permanently high and where there is little wind or direct sunlight. To be taken from their normal environment, even when the move is voluntary and the absence from home brief, can still lead to sickness and death.

A major source of sickness among the Great Andamanese was the British Victorian and later Indian insistence on “decent” clothes. This became “necessary” when the sophisticated memsahibs of Port Blair could no longer tolerate the sight of naked savages strutting down the streets of their capital. Traditional Andamanese were used to a life without clothes, their bodies washed by dew when walking through their jungles, by rain and by the sea. The Jarawas and Sentinelis today still live in this way. They had no concept of personal hygiene, nor the need for one, beyond painting themselves with protective clays. When the authorities forced them into more or less fashionable apparel from head to toe after 1876, the Great Andamanese allowed their new possessions to turn into unspeakably filthy rags, breeding grounds for agents of disease, especially of pulmonary diseases. Once they had got used to wearing clothes, they never took them off again and never washed them, wearing them soaking wet after rains and swimming. The safe use of clothes has to be learnt. It took far too long before the British authorities made the connection between clothes and disease and still longer before any action was taken. The sensible compromise eventually adopted clothed the Andamanese in shorts and nothing else. Unfortunately, by the time common sense had beaten prudery, many Great Andamanese had fallen victim to disease brought on in part by an alien horror of nudity. The Indians shared the British prudery and in the 1950s had forgotten the lessons the British had to learn more than half a century earlier: soon after taking over responsibility for Little Andaman on independence, they tried to force the Onge into decent clothes. Happily, the Indians were much faster to notice the deleterious results of their policy than the British had been and the attempt was soon abandoned. Today, some Onge wear light western or Indian-style clothes while others wear their traditional minimal dress, according to individual whim and taste, without outside compulsion. Some women in the 1990s wore their bulgy brush-like aprons under western-style skirts, making them look quite ludicrous, though not to themselves.

As should be expected in a people who survived exclusively on their hunting and gathering skills, the Andamanese acuteness of vision and hearing, their agility and dexterity were remarkable. The Onges on Little Andaman had no trouble spotting tiny frogs sitting immobile and well-camouflaged high up in trees, completely invisible to anyone but the Onge hunter. Among the Aryoto of Great Andaman, turtle was often hunted in complete darkness, the animal being located by the slight sound it makes when surfacing to breathe. The Aryotos of all tribes and both sexes were excellent swimmers and divers. Their children learnt to swim as soon as they could walk and spent much of their time on the beach and in the water close to it.

The economic basis of hunter-gatherers tends to be rather inflexible and their technology is not easily adapted to rapidly changing circumstances. Moreover, the Andamanese lived on a small and isolated group of islands which magnified the problem: in times of famine they could not emigrate to fresh hunting grounds. The population density of the Andamans before 1858 has been estimated as being close to, if not actually over, the theoretical maximum. Clearly, the efficient hunters and gatherers made the most of what they had within their technological limitations. The only means available to prevent too many people burdening too narrow an economic base was a low birth rate. The population had to be kept stable at all costs and such stability seems to have been successfully accomplished partly by biological and partly by socio-cultural means. One specific social adaptation is noteworthy: old men had first choice of the young women who often did not conceive until they had been widowed and married again at an age when much of their child-bearing age had passed. Although the custom of old-men-first did not affect all young women, it did cause a reduction in the birth rate. Other cultural restraints operated in the same direction, such as a strong prejudice against women marrying men younger than themselves. The birth rate could have been reduced further, especially in times of famine, by the use of herbal means. The Andamanese had a very extensive knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants but we do not know whether they ever actually used plants to this purpose. Whatever the precise combination of methods used and physiological adaptations evolved, the population density in the Andamans had to be, and quite obviously was, kept stable over long periods of time.

What had been a necessary defensive mechanism to prevent overpopulation turned against the Andamanese when they were faced with the entirely new threat of large numbers of outsiders and their infectious diseases. Today, with modern medicine available most diseases are no longer the threat to the survival of the Onge that they used to be, but an infertility not amenable to treatment as well as an inexplicably high infant mortality rate still lead the downward spiral to extinction.

Immediately after the arrival of outsiders in 1858, diseases new to the Andamanese began to spread. Within 10 years they had developed into increasingly virulent killer epidemics: pneumonia (first large epidemic 1868), syphilis (before 1876), Ophthalmia and smallpox (both 1876), measles (1877), mumps (1886), influenza and gonorrhoea (both 1892) all brought misery and death. The big measles epidemic of 1877 was by far the worst; it left the entire west coast of Great Andaman deserted and brought the Great Andamanese tribes to the point of no return on their way to extinction. The same pattern repeated itself with somewhat reduced virulence among the Onge on Little Andaman after 1950. If the Jarawas and Sentinelis ever make close contact with the outside world, they will suffer the same fate. The Indians are aware of the problem and visitors to the Jarawa territories and North Sentineli island have to undergo a medical check before getting their permit. Official contacts, once opened, will inevitably open illegal and unofficial contact. This has already happened in the 1990s with the two friendly Jarawa groups; tourists can and do visit them illegally, guided by retired officials who know the ropes and are not averse to improve their meagre pensions. It will be only a matter of time before some unauthorized visitor infects the first Jarawa.

Infectious diseases are not the only reason for the decline in Andamanese numbers. It is a well-known, if largely unexplained, fact that cultures under threat from overwhelmingly powerful outside forces react with a drop in the birth rate; it is as if they lost the will to procreate and live. As the example of Germany’s unification after 1990 shows, the health of a large people can be adversely affected by cultural shock even though the shock experienced by the East Germans was a relatively minor one compared to hit the Great Andamanese after 1858 and the Onge in the early 1950s. Despite the enormous medical resources available in the Germany of the early 1990s, health changes and the drop in the birth rate observed in the wake of unification remain baffling.

There is another explanation for the decline in numbers. An Indian scientist wrote in 1990 that there were pitched encounters between colonisers equipped with guns, and young able-bodied tribals [an Indian term for primitive people] who resisted the advance with bows and arrows till they were shot. Their deaths resulted in a decline in population as they constituted the entirety of the reproductive age group. This and the consequences thereof had a long-lasting impact on the population of the Andamanese, who could never make up the loss.”

The picture of a whole generation heroically dying at war in numbers large enough to affect the birth rate does not ring true. Losses of young men there certainly were but not to the extent claimed here. Moreover, males at a reproductive age constitute only around 50% of the reproducing population. Andamanese women were not normally involved in warfare. There is today, rather an excess of males and a shortage of women of marriageable age. The author’s anti-colonialist sentiments appear to have overwhelmed his reasoning power in this case. Disease and infertility were and still are the main contributory agents of the Andamanese extinction. The Onges have been friendly to outsiders throughout the 20th century but they are still approaching extinction albeit today at a reduced rate. The Jarawas on the other hand were hunted mercilessly throughout the first half of the 20th century. Many Jarawas were killed in skirmishes – but they are still around, if not going strong. The difference between the Great Andamanese/Onge and the Jarawas is that the former had friendly contact with the British and Indians while the latter did not.

All this is not merely an academic debating point but has a direct bearing on present-day Indian attempts to befriend the hostile Jarawas and Sentinelis. It is physical and cultural contact that kills.

Thus is repeated in the Andamans a tragedy that had taken place on a very much larger scale in the Americas. When Columbus stepped ashore on San Salvador in 1492 an estimated 50 million Amerindians inhabited the continent. A few hundred years later their number had dwindled, mostly through disease, to 4% of the earlier population. Conventional wisdom has it that the susceptibility of the Amerindians to new diseases was due to the fact that the new microbes had never before been encountered by their immune systems. While this remains true up to a point, it is now realized that it cannot be the whole truth. Early explorers carrying new diseases also visited sub-Saharan Africa, the Indonesian islands and Australia without causing similarly lethal epidemics. The difference between the Amerindians and the peoples of the less affected territories was the greater genetic diversity of the latter. New microbes introduced from the outside world into a genetically uniform population do not have to overcome a great many defences, instead they need only to crash through only a few defences before getting a free run through the entire population.

The Andamanese in their small numbers have lived isolated lives on their islands for thousands of years. Genetic drift and a number of genetic bottlenecks massively reduced their original genetic diversity. Today the Andamanese aboriginals form one of the world’s most genetically homogeneous populations. The Onge are the only Andamanese group to have been investigated genetically in any detail. It can be taken for granted that the other Andamanese groups that are still genetic terra incognito will show a similarly picture if and when they can be tested. The Amerindians were in a similar situation despite their enormously larger numbers. Genetic and linguistic evidence indicates that their ancestors arrived in only two waves, each involving such small numbers as to amount to a genetic bottle neck: a first wave sometime between 1400 and 600 generations ago brought the ancestors of a majority of modern Amerindians to North, Central and South America while a second wave between 500 and 160 generations ago brought the Na-Dene Amerindians to North America. A third wave involving the Inuit (Eskimos) and Aleut people need not concern us here. The limited genetic variety among Amerindians is shown most clearly by the unique dominance of blood group O in the ABO system. Among some South American Amerindians the percentage of O approaches 100% and is above 90% everywhere from Mexico southwards and still 80% in most Amerindian groups north of Mexico.

In the Andamans, infertility seems today to be a problem more of the men than of the women. Andamanese women conceive easier with non-Andamanese men than with their own menfolk. Moreover, the children of mixed parents had and still have a better chance of reaching adulthood than children of unmixed Andamanese descent. It is no coincidence that all of the few dozen remaining Great Andamanese on Strait island reservation are of mixed ancestry. As we have seen, limited fertility may have been part of a complex adaptive survival strategy. After 1858 when disease reduced the number of Great Andamanese, it was not the obvious epidemics that led to their virtual extinction but the high infant mortality that did not allow recovery. Year after year the number of children surviving their first year was smaller than the number of newborn. The Victorian medical profession who, in all seriousness, blamed the widespread cuddling of infants for the high mortality rates, obviously was of limited help to a race in terminal distress.

The reproductive lives of 100 Andamanese women, 1893/1894.

With population control a matter of survival for traditional Andamanese society, children could never have been very numerous. A devastating aspect then and now for the survival of the race is the discrepancy between male and female births. Together with the slightly higher death rate of female children over time this must lead to a steadily worsening situation.

The figures given above might make one suspect that female infanticide or at least a much lower level of care and attention towards female children was being practiced. Such is indeed the case in some groups even of modern India. However, none of those who had direct contact with the Andamanese ever had any such suspicion. Mr. Man himself was quite emphatic when he ruled out infanticide. He stressed, as did many others in a position to know, that the birth of a girl was quite as gratifying to her Andamanese parents as that of a boy and that girls were cuddled and loved as sincerely and exuberantly as boys. This has not changed to the present day. No convincing explanation for the high infant mortality or for the discrepancy in infant survival rates between the sexes has as yet been offered.

Last change 3 August 2005