Ancient tribe becomes extinct as last member dies.

[anonymaus]

Ancient tribe becomes extinct as last member dies



The last member of an ancient tribe that has inhabited an Indian island chain for around 65,000 years has died, a group that campaigns for the protection of indigenous peoples has said.

Boa Sr, who was around 85 years of age, died last week in the Andaman islands, about 750 miles off India's eastern coast, Survival International said in a statement.

The London-based group, which works to protect indigenous peoples, said she was the last member of one of ten distinct Great Andamanese tribes, the Bo.

"The Bo are thought to have lived in the Andaman islands for as long as 65,000 years, making them the descendants of one of the oldest human cultures on earth," it noted.

With her passing at a hospital, India also lost one of its most endangered languages, also called Bo, linguists say.

"She was the last speaker of (the) Bo language. It pains to see how one by one we are losing speakers of Great Andamanese and (their) language is getting extinct. (It is) A very fast erosion of (the) indigenous knowledge base, that we all are helplessly witnessing," read an obituary in Boa Sr's honor posted on the Web site of the Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese (VOGA) project.

source

[Beorn]

As any Dr. Who fan knows, this is not the last face of Bo...this one is.

[Hrimskegg]

I'm going to call shenanigans. If the researchers and bleeding hearts out there where so unhappy about losing this last bastion of that particular gene pool they would have learned the language and got on with adopting the damn culture. Sometimes I think Anthropologists are just a big bunch of cry babies.

[anonymaus]

I'm going to call shenanigans. If the researchers and bleeding hearts out there where so unhappy about losing this last bastion of that particular gene pool they would have learned the language and got on with adopting the damn culture. Sometimes I think Anthropologists are just a big bunch of cry babies.

wha?

[Hrimskegg]

I apologize for being so gruff about it. At the particular academic institution I attend there a good amount of talk about this sort of thing and its all very dramatic and, frankly, a waste of time. I retract my previous comment as it concerns the main researcher of the project in mention, otherwise, for the rest of Anthropology, especially American Anthropology, it's still enforce. They lean toward the "woe is me and the world, these people are going extinct and you aren't doing anything about it." All of the people I have heard that from personally, aren't doing anything to stop that, but they point the finger at the people around them. Perhaps they're projecting, probably. Forgive me for letting my perspective become clouded.