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The Indian islands are often considered to be part of southern India. One of the Indian island groups is the Andaman Islands with a colorful history and a stone age native population. The Andaman Islands are located between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. They are commonly associated with the Nicobar Islands to the south. Both island groups look like a northern projection inton the Indian Ocean of Sumatra and the Indonesian archipelago. The three principal islands are North Andaman, Middle Andaman, and South Andaman. To the east is a cluster of small islands known as the Ritchie’s Archipelago. A smaller island is Little Andaman to the south. Port Blair main Andanan town and administrative capital. The topography is hilly and heavily forested. The economy is based on timber, coconuts, hemp, tea, coffee, and rubber. The population is now mostly Indian. The native Ananamese are Negritos have been reduced to a fee hundred. The islands are described by tourist promotions as tiny, unspoiled emerald jewels in the Indian Ocean, This is true, but the most interesting asoect of the islands are a fascinating history. The Andamanese until very recently, and a few still do, lived a stone age hunter-gathering life style. The history of the Adamanese is only recently being revealed as a result of DNA work. This has inhibited by Indian Government restrictions on foreign scientists why their own scientists and historians pay very little attention to the subject. It appears that the Andaman Islands are not just an intertesting, isolated group of vacation islands, but an window on the very beginnings of human history. The Anamanese natives called the Jarawa are a remnant of the first fully human migration out of Africa which followed the southern coast of Asia east to the islands of New Guinea and Australia. And the limited data available suggest that vthe Andamanese have the smallest admixture with other groups compared to other surviving populations like the New Guinea natives and the Audtralian aboriginees. [Cavalli-Sforza] And their more easterly location helps to confirm the costal route of this earliest human migration. Interestingly, the islands were known to the ancient world. Claudius Ptolemaeus referred to the isalnds (2nd century AD). The islands were known to Hindu and Arab traders. The Portuguese attempted to Christinize the population. The British arrived (18th century) and the islands became a part of the British Raj. Brititish authorities used the Viper Chain Gang Jail on Viper Island was reserved for difficult prisoners during the colonial era. Because of its isolation, it was used to jail important independence activists. movement. The Japanese after launching the Pacific War with the attack on Pearl Harbor seized the islands (March 1942). They used the Andamans for propaganda, claiming to turn the islands over to Indian nationalists as a beginning of a free, indepedent India. In actuality they perpetrated terrible atrocities on the population. The British adfter the Jaoanese surrender, liberated the Islands and starving Jaoanese occupiers and local population (October 1945). The Andamans becamne part of India when the British granted independence (1947).
Cavalli-Sforza, L. The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton University Press, 1994).
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