India, March 23 -- O
f the approximately 8,500 people who now inhabit Great Nicobar Island, about 200 are uncontacted Shompen, most of whom live deep in the evergreen forests.
About 1,200 people are the various Nicobarese tribes, the other indigenous community on the island. The remaining 7,000 or so are servicemen, ex-servicemen and their families, living in settlements built here since the 1970s and '80s.
The hunter-gatherer Shompen have traditionally emerged from their settlements to barter with their coastal Nicobarese neighbours. Since the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, a few individuals emerge from time to time, to pick up government-sanctioned rations of rice.
They are resolutely uncontacted. They have thrown spears at government ...