#andamanese

[andreacurryjeidajeitafanfic]

sentinel island

seemingly uncontrollable tiny devic lives that form your thoughts giving rise to thinking in the brain called chitta the mind stuff need to be willfully restrained especially when you're having one migraine into a family that has its life in the skye where they present to you as god and protector of heaven which they'll explain is the construct when all things are possible

[ukfrislandembassy]

Ok like nobody seems to have noticed but Juliette Blevins has recently put out a case that Great Andamanese might actually have been Austroasiatic all along (to complement Jarawan possibly being an Austronesian relative). There's some stuff that's certainly suggestive, but it'll be a bit more work needed before I'm ready to accept these 32 proposed correspondences as anything more than chance, particularly after the Indo-Vasconic debacle. Still, below the cut I'm going to try and give this a fair review.

All of this is from 'Linguistic clues to Andamanese pre-history: Understanding the North-South divide', in The Language of Hunter Gatherers, edited by Tom Güldemann, Patrick McConvell and Richard Rhodes and published in 2020 (a free version of the chapter can be found on Google Scholar).

Looking through the data, it actually seems relatively rigorous as a set of comparisons; she's done a shallow reconstruction of a Proto-Great-Andamanese from wordlists (seemingly a relatively trivial exercise, though with caveats noted below) and is seemingly comparing these to reconstructions from the Mon-Khmer comparative dictionary.

Many of the correspondences are basically identical between the two reconstructions with at most minimal semantic differences, e.g. (in the order PGA~PAA respectively) *buə 'clay' ~ *buəh 'ash, powdery dust'; *muən 'pus, dirt' ~ *muən 'pimple'; *cuər 'current, flow' ~ *cuər 'flow, pour'; *cuəp 'fasten, adjoin' ~ *bcuup/bcuəp 'adjoin, adhere'. However, I wonder if the Proto-GA reconstructions here have been massaged a bit to fit the Austroasiatic correspondence more closely; in Aka-Kede for example, each of these words shows a different vowel; pua, mine, cor(ie), cup. It's not fatal by any means (in fact if the correspondences could be shown to be more complex than simple identity that would actually help the argument), but definitely annoying.

There's a couple of PGA items which are presented as having a straightforward sound correpondence in PAA where the semantics is close but doesn't quite match, but also alongside a semantic match that differs slightly in sound, e.g. by a slightly different initial consonant, e.g. *raic 'bale out' ~ *raac 'sprinkle' /*saac 'bale out'; *pila 'tusk, tooth' ~ *plaaʔ 'blade'/*mlaʔ 'tusk, ivory'; *luk 'channel' ~ *ru(u)ŋ 'channel'/*lu(u)k 'have a hole'. I think there's possibly a plausible development here, with perhaps one form taking on the other's semantics because of taboo, or maybe due to an actual semantic shift (she notes that the Andamanese use boar tusks as scrapers, which could explain a 'blade'~'tusk' correspondence in itself).

There's an item which seems dubious on the PAA side, e.g. she proposes a correspondence *wət ~ *wət for 'bat, flying fox' but I can't find a *wət reconstructed anywhere in the MKCD with that meaning, not even in Bahnaric where she claims it comes from (there is a *wət reconstructed but with a meaning 'turn, bend'). Meanwhile, *kut 'fishing net' ~ *kuut 'tie, knot' seems wrong at first, as search for *kuut by itself only brings up a reconstruction *kuut 'scrape, scratch', however there is also a reconstruction *[c]kuut which does mean 'tie, knot'.

There's an interesting set of correspondences where PGA has a final schwa that's absent from the proposed PAA cognates, e.g. *lakə 'digging stick' ~ *lak 'hoe (v.)'; *ɲipə 'sandfly' ~ *jɔɔp 'horsefly'; *loŋə 'neck' ~ *tlu(u)ŋ 'throat'.

More generally, a substantial proportion of the proposed correspondences are nouns in Great Andamanese but verbs/adjective (stative verbs) in Austroasiatic, some of which are above, but also including e.g. *cuiɲ 'odour' ~ *ɟhuuɲ/ɟʔuuɲ 'smell, sniff'; *raic 'juice' ~ *raac 'sprinkle' (a separate correspondence to 'bale out' above); *mulə 'egg' ~ *muul 'round'; *ciəp 'belt, band' ~ *cuup/cuəp/ciəp 'wear, put on'. This also doesn't seem too much of an issue, given the general word-class flexibility in that part of the world, though there don't seem to be any correspondences going the other way, which could perhaps be a sign of loaning/relexification instead.

I mentioned that a lot of these seem to be exact matches, but of course what you really want to indicate relatedness are non-indentical but regular correspondences, and here is where I can see the issues probably starting to really arise. We've already noted some of the vowel issues, but we also have some messiness with some of the consonants, though at the very least the POA matches pretty much every time (including reasonable caveats like sibilants patterning with palatals and the like). However, that still leaves us with some messes.

The liquids and coronals especially are misaligned a fair bit in ways which could do with more correspondences to flesh out. Here's a list of the correspondences found in initial position in the examples given.

*l ~ *l: *lat ~ *[c]laat 'fear', *lakə 'digging stick' ~ *lak 'hoe'

*l ~ *r: *lap ~ *rap 'count' (*luk 'channel' ~ *ru(u)ŋ 'have a hole'/*lu(u)k 'channel' could be in either of these)

*r ~ *r: *raic 'juice' ~ *raac 'sprinkle'

*r ~ *ɗ: *rok ~ *ɗuk 'canoe'

*t ~ *ɗ: *tapə 'blind' ~ [ɟ]ɗaap 'pass hand along'

*t ~ *t: *ar-təm ~ *triəm 'old' (suggested that metathesis occurred, though to me there probably would need to be some reanalysis as well to make this work)

I invite any of my mutuals more experienced with the comparative method to have a look for yourselves and see what you make of the proposal as it currently stands. It would certainly be an interesting development if more actual correspondences could be set up, though I do have to wonder if more work would also be needed on Austroasiatic to double-check these reconstructions as well.

[stephensmithuk]

The Sign of the Four: The Statement of the Case

CW for the end of this as it includes discussions of child murder and detailed discussions of capital punishment.

Turbans have never been particularly common in the United Kingdom; these days, they are most likely to be worn by West African women or those who are undergoing chemotherapy.

It was the norm for a married woman to be referred to as "Mrs. [husband's name]", especially on something like a dinner invite. Historically, in the English common law system the United States also uses, a woman's legal identity was subsumed by her husband on marriage, in something called coverture. In some cases, a woman who ran her own business could be treated as legally single (a femme sole) and so sue someone - or be sued. This practice was gradually abolished, but did fully end until the 1970s.

@myemuisemo has excellently covered the reasons why Mary would have been sent back to the UK.

As you were looking at a rather long trip to and from India, even with the Suez Canal open by 1878, long leave like this would have been commonplace.

The Andaman Islands are an archipelago SW of what is now Myanmar and was then called Burma. The indigenous Andamanese lived pretty much an isolated experience until the late 19th century when the British showed up. The locals were pretty hostile to outsiders; shipwrecked crews were often attacked and killed in the 1830s and 1840s, the place getting a reputation for cannibalism.

The British eventually managed to conquer the place and combine its administration with the Nicobar Islands. Most of the native population would be wiped out via outside disease and loss of territory; they now number around 500 people. The Indian government, who took over the area on independence, now legally protect the remaining tribespeople, restricting or banning access to much of the area.

Of particular note are the Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island, who have made abundantly clear that they do not want outside contact. This is probably due to the British in the late 1800s, who kidnapped some of them and took them to Port Blair. The adults died of disease and the children were returned with gifts... possibly of the deadly sort. Various attempts by the Indian government (who legally claimed the island in 1970 via dropping a marker off) and anthropologists to contact them have generally not gone well, with the islanders' response frequently being of the arrow-firing variety. Eventually, via this and NGO pressure, most people got the hint and the Indian government outright banned visits to the island.

In 2004, after the Asian tsunami that killed over 2,000 people in the archipelago, the Indian Coast Guard sent over a helicopter to check the inhabitants were OK. They made clear they were via - guess what - firing arrows at the helicopter. Most of the people killed were locals and tourists; the indigenous tribes knew "earthquake equals possible tsunami" and had headed for higher ground.

In 2006, an Indian crab harvesting boat drifted onto the island; both of the crew were killed and buried.

In 2018, an American evangelical missionary called John Allen Chau illegally went to the island, aiming to convert the locals to Christianity. He ended up as a Darwin Award winner and the Indians gave up attempts to recover his body.

The first British penal colony in the area was established in 1789 by the Bengalese but shut down in 1796 due to a high rate of disease and death. The second was set up in 1857 and remained in operation until 1947.

People poisoning children for the insurance money was a sadly rather common occurrence in the Victorian era to the point that people cracked jokes about it if a child was enrolled in a burial society i.e. where people paid in money to cover funeral expenses and to pay out on someone's death.

The most infamous of these was Mary Ann Cotton from Durham, who is believed to have murdered 21 people, including three of her four husbands and 11 of her 13 children so she could get the payouts. She was arrested in July 1872 and charged with the murder of her stepson, Charles Edward Cotton, who had been exhumed after his attending doctor kept bodily samples and found traces of arsenic. After a delay for her to give birth to her final child in prison and a row in London over the choice the Attorney General (legally responsible for the prosecution of poisoning cases) had made for the prosecuting counsel, she was convicted in March 1973 of the murder and sentenced to death, the jury coming back after just 90 minutes. The standard Victorian practice was for any further legal action to be dropped after a capital conviction, as hanging would come pretty quickly.

Cotton was hanged at Durham County Goal that same month. Instead of her neck being broken, she slowly strangled to death as the rope had been made too short, possibly deliberately.

Then again, the hangman was William Calcraft, who had started off flogging juvenille offenders at Newgate Prison. Calcraft hanged an estimated 450 people over a 45-year career and developed quite a reputation for incompetence or sadism (historians debate this) due to his use of short drops. On several occasions, he would have to go down into the pit and pull on the condemned person's legs to speed up their death. In a triple hanging in 1867 of three Fenian who had murdered a police officer, one died instantly but the other two didn't. Calcraft went down and finished one of them off to the horror of officiating priest Father Gadd, who refused to let him do the same to the third and held the man's hand for 45 minutes until it was over. There was also his very public 1856 botch that led to the pinioning of the condemned's legs to become standard practice.

Calcraft also engaged in the then-common and legal practice of selling off the rope and the condemned person's clothing to make extra money. The latter would got straight to Madame Tussaud's for the latest addition to the Chamber of Horrors. Eventually, he would be pensioned off in 1874 aged 73 after increasingly negative press comment.

The Martyrdom of Man was a secular "universal" history of the Western World, published in 1872.

[bestiarium]

The Embekete [Onge mythology; Andamanese mythology]

In the religion of the Onge people – native to Little Andaman Island in the Indian Ocean – the Embekete are small humanoid supernatural creatures. Despite their diminutive stature, they play a large role in the system of rebirth. In Onge religion, the nature and manner of one’s death determine what happens to the soul: if you die from illness, your spirit will become a malevolent Eaka, a resident of the world directly below ours. Similarly, if you meet your end at sea, your soul will transform into an ocean spirit, and if you kick the bucket while within the confines of a forest, you will transcend to the world above ours and become an Onkoboykwe spirit.

But the Embekete are a special case. The soul of every Onge person who dies from disease will rise from the corpse to become an Eaka spirit, but one day before this happens, a strange creature climbs out of the dead body. This entity, resembling a tiny humanoid creature, is an Embekete. The Embekete will then try to find the shore and jump in the sea. These strange creatures can tirelessly swim enormous distances, and so the Embekete will keep swimming until it reaches the land of the Inene, which is the Onge term for Caucasian people. It will then live among the white-skinned people and will eventually transform into an Inene itself.

The significance of this bizarre system of rebirth is that supposedly, all Caucasian folks are reincarnated Onge people: they were all Onge in their past life. I don't know if people who are neither Onge nor Caucasian are also supposed to be reincarnated Onge. But if they are, the story then implies that since the very first Onge people grew from trees planted by the Onkoboykwe spirits, all human life originated at Little Andaman Island.

The traditional Onge religion is fascinating and refreshingly unique. Unfortunately, the Onge people are nearly extinct as current estimations place their numbers at about a hundred.

Sources: Ganguly, P., 1975, The Negritos of Little Andaman Island: A Primitive People Facing Extinction, Indian Museum Bulletin, 10(1), pp. 7-27. Ganguly, P., 1987, Negrito Religions: Negritos of the Andaman Islands, in Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, Lindsay Jones (editor), Volume 10, pp. 6455-6456. (image: Onge women engaging in a traditional dance. Image source: Ganguly, P., 1975)

[max1461]

I think the problem with Plotinus shit is that "emanation" does not seem to mean anything coherent. Of course I won't know until I read Plotinus in the original Proto-Andamanese.

[myemuisemo]

Parts 6-8 of Letters from Watson's handling of The Sign of the Four hit at a time when I was swamped with work, so circumstances have made a fool of my assumption about that tiny footprint before I had a chance to thoroughly embarrass myself in public.

My first thought for the footprint was "monkey" -- I apparently really, really want a monkey, and there are certain macaques whose faces would be absolutely terrifying if seen pressed against a dark window. The problem is, the footprints of monkeys, apes, gorillas, and other such don't look like human footprints. They're all much more like hands. Gorillas come closest to having a human-like foot, but there's still a big thumb-like finger. And, of course, gorillas are too big anyway.

My venture into simian podiatry at least explains why Dr. Watson doesn't think "monkey." Victorians would have been better informed on this topic than I am, as monkeys were a common household pet in England. Little Jacko was, unsurprisingly, usually clever but mischievous. The blog from which I got monkey-lore also gets into monkey-fighting, which is even more appalling than how monkeys were treated as pets.

In part 8, we discover that the footprint does not, after all, belong to a monkey, ape, or other animal. Oh no, Doyle has in mind a situation much worse, and he's even foreshadowed it with two Indian servants. The colonial occupiers of India absolutely brought home people for their convenience.

The mysterious Jonathan Small brought home an indigenous Andaman Islander, who would be totally justified in wanting to kill anyone associated with the British Army. About 30-40 years before the time of the story, British settlement on the island had brought diseases that nearly wiped out the indigenous peoples. Efforts to help them existed -- one such would have been in the news in 1888 -- but it's still entirely a shameful episode.

(If you recall the 2018 story of the missionary who was determined to land on an island of indigenous peoples who were known for not allowing visitors... these were Andamanese, specifically Sentinelese. He was killed by the locals.)

Now, then, listen to this. ‘They are naturally hideous, having large, misshapen heads, small, fierce eyes, and distorted features. Their feet and hands, however, are remarkably small. So intractable and fierce are they that all the efforts of the British official have failed to win them over in any degree. They have always been a terror to shipwrecked crews, braining the survivors with their stone-headed clubs, or shooting them with their poisoned arrows. These massacres are invariably concluded by a cannibal feast.’

There's still a lot of "exotification of the savage" here -- the images of today's Andaman Islanders just look like people, very dark-skinned, with textured hair. Cannibalism felt like one of those charges levied against any group one doesn't like, and sure enough! Every source I can find today says the people of the Andaman Islands never practiced cannibalism. History Today also says "no poisoned darts," but the article's partly paywalled.

The Andaman Islander has kind of harshed my buzz vis-a-vis fun elements like the many ways Holmes demonstrates he's a man of class flexibility, the "never tired when working" line (he has got to be neurospicy), the omnipresence of creosote (used as a wood preservative, toxic af to the workers and anyone who recklessly burned all creosote-treated wood), and the humor of the newspaper report fronting for more localized police stations, along with the running joke of Athelney Jones arresting everyone indiscriminately.

At least there was a badger (at the house where Toby was obtained).

[no-passaran]

Video transcription: warning racism & discrimination. Indian settlers dressed as Indigenous Jarawa in blackface dance at the official opening of Andaman airport. The Indian government's racist attitude to Andaman and Nicobar Islands' tribes is a threat to their lands and survival - like the uncontacted Shompen people, who won't survive the Indian government's plan to turn their island into the "Hong Kong of India".

From Survival International:

The indigenous peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India —including the Great Andamanese, Jarawa, Sentinelese and Shompen— have endured centuries of racism that has justified the theft of their land and their near-total annihilation. Indigenous peoples of India are still often treated with contempt, as racist displays like this video of Indian settlers wearing blackface shows. These attitudes continue to fuel land thefts today.

For example, the Indian government is set on using Indigenous land for development without consent. The Shompen who live on Great Nicobar Island are at risk of being wiped out if their forest is used for a mega-development project, which aims to settle over 650,000 people on the island— the equivalent of an 8,000% increase in population.

Without their forest, the Shompen, most of whom are uncontacted, could be totally wiped out.

More information on the Shompen, the Indian Government's mega-project for turning their island into a military, commercial and touristic base through ecocide and genocide, and a link to easily send a pre-written email to the government officials and companies involved here:

Some context to understand why Indian settlers are caricaturely dressed up as Jarawa people in this airport:

The Jarawa are a nomadic cultural group indigenous to the Andaman Islands, where nowadays indigenous peoples are outnumbered by settlers from India. Still, like most tribal peoples who live self-sufficiently on their ancestral lands, the Jarawa people thrive and their numbers are steadily growing. Research on their nutrition and health found that their nutrition is "optimal", in large part thanks to their deep knowledge of their natural surroundings (they have detailed knowledge of more than 150 plant and 350 animal species) and the well-being of the forests.

In the 1990s, the local Indian settler authorities revealed their long-term ‘master plan’ to settle the Jarawa in two villages with an economy based on fishery, suggesting that hunting and gathering could be their ‘sports’. This meant forcing the Jarawa, who are nomadic and get their food from hunting and gathering, to abandon their way of living. The plan was so prescriptive it even detailed what style of clothes the Jarawa should wear.

Forced settlement had been fatal for other tribes in the Andaman Islands, but a vigorous campaign brought success and in 2004 the authorities announced that the Jarawa would be able to choose their own future with minimal intervention. However, in the next years (most notably 2010), Indian settler authorities have again tried to force the Jarawa to abandon their way of life and become part of India's mainstream society. This pressure continues, including Indian MPs asking for residential schools to be created to take away Jarawa children from their families and strip them from their culture.

Indian government officials repeatedly refer to the Jarawa people as "primitive", "backwards" and "uncivilized".

Tribal peoples like the Jarawa are used as a tourist claim by Indian settlers, who organize "human safaris" for tourists to go see Jarawa people. Even though in 2002 India's Supreme Court ordered closing the highway that runs through Jarawa land, it's still open and used by thousands of outsiders who go watch them like they're wild animals in human safaris.

Outsiders, both local settlers and international poachers enter their rich forest reserve to steal the game the tribe needs to survive. Although in recent years many poachers have been arrested, none have been sentenced by the courts, despite the offence carrying a prison term of up to seven years.

Jarawa girls and women are sexually abused by poachers, settlers, bus drivers and others. Jarawa people report outsiders who get drunk on alcohol and high on marijuana going in Jarawa villages to rape Jarawa girls and women.

Vehicles queue to enter the Jarawa reserve along the Andaman Trunk Road © G Chamberlain/ Survival

Source: Survival International.

[midnightactual]

I'm debating trying to recategorize Yoruichi's ethnicity into something more accurate than her Profile's listing of “Indo-Japanese” (Indian, Okinawan, Japanese) because that sort of... isn't really correct. The trouble is it's hard to briefly specify what would be correct...

So starting with Yoruichi's Beast Transformation, you have to understand that Yoruichi's ancestry covers, in 21 generations (or less), the last 80,000ish years... which for normal humans, has instead taken around 3,000 generations. In other words, in addition to some supernatural ancestry, she's somewhat representing peoples whom have not existed for millennia, and only have limited descendant successors.

She would have roughly 60,000 years of ancestry from India, but these would largely be the original inhabitants of the subcontinent from the first human immigration out of Africa, long predating the arrival of the Old Indo-Europeans; the closest living relatives of these would be the Vedda of Sri Lanka, or (maybe?) the Andamanese of the Andaman Islands.

She would then have roughly 22,000 years of ancestry from Japan, but 19,000 years of this would be the Jōmon people, who are not really the main ancestors of modern Japanese, with only about 5–20% of the majority of contemporary Japanese genetics coming from them; the closest living descendants of these would be the Ainu people, followed by the Ryukyuan people. She then has something like 3,000 years of Yayoi people, who are the major ancestors of modern Japanese.

Because the last three or so generations (inclusive of her) had a major infusion of Yayoi genetics (50% [1/2] two ancestors ago, 75% [3/4] one ancestor ago with her father, and 87.5% [7/8] with herself), those are strongly represented and her facial structure looks broadly contemporarily Japanese (with some foreign quirks).

So it would be more correct to say she represents a mixture of Ancestral South Indian, Jōmon, and Japanese, and I guess you can still call that "Indo-Japanese" in quotes and just change what's in the brackets for clarity? Does that make sense?

[realjaysumlin]

A Century Before the Residents of a Remote Island Killed a Christian Missionary, Their Predecessors Resisted the British Empire | Smithsonian

A small group of Black Indigenous People wiped out an entire British Army who tried to colonize their island and to enslave them; however this resilient tribe stopped the Christian Colonizers dead in their tracks.

For more than 60,000 years this group is still isolated from the rest of the world and they are labeled as the most dangerous tribe on earth.

[barbariankingdom]

Hypothetical reconstruction of a man from the #IndusValleyCivilization with higher levels of AASI ancestry. The Bronze Age population of the Indus was a mix of indigenous AASI (Andamanese-like) and Neolithic Iranian ancestry, to varying degrees. 

[haggishlyhagging]

In contrast to the Andamanese, the Bellacoola (of the northwest coast of North America) were confronted with very real threats to survival: famine and warfare. Famine is a central theme in Bellacoola catastrophic stories. In these stories, famine is preceded by signs of disorder in the cosmos. For example, in one story it is said: "One winter, long ago, the sun, instead of stopping at its usual place, continued far beyond its proper course." This event was followed by a prolonged famine five years later, in which the berries flowered but did not ripen and few fish entered the river.

Before the establishment of British rule, there was considerable warfare among the Northwest Indian tribes. It appears probable that at least several villages of the Bellacoola were engaged in warfare every few years, before 1860. Scarcity of food seems to have been the most frequent cause for warfare, and the tribe that had accumulated the greatest food supply was the object of attack. The abundant supplies of salmon available to the Bellacoola made them tempting victims for less fortunate and more belligerent neighbors. Attack meant that a revenge attack had to be carried out. There was no assurance that the latter would be successful, because the Bellacoola had no organized mechanism for mounting a warfare expedition. If somebody's relative had been slain, revenge would motivate him to join in the expedition. Otherwise, only the influence of the expedition's leader would entice men to join. This so-called leader had little authority over his men, who could desert at any time. This lack of martial ability sometimes led the Bellacoola to place themselves under the protection of other groups, which could only have enhanced their sense of insecurity.

The insecurity faced by the Bellacoola is reflected in attitudes regarding menstrual blood and female sexual fluids. The avoidance of female sexuality as well as menstrual blood seems to have been one of the ways the Bellacoola adapted to uncertainty. In 1880 (the period on which the following description is based), the Bellacoola depended mainly on fish. During certain times of the year the river teemed with salmon, enabling the country to support its relatively large population. Throughout the year salmon was the principal article of diet. This dependence was reflected in the rigidly enforced restrictions concerning the river and its fish. Most important, no menstruating woman could bathe in the river, lest a speck of her blood blind the fish. When the fish were running in the river, women were not allowed on the bank nor to repair the nets. After the year's first salmon catch, the men had a feast and brought what was left home for the women to eat. It was believed that the salmon would not be offended if the women ate only the leftovers.

The Bellacoola concept of menstrual blood reflected the powers of nature. Both the blood and nature were endowed with the capacity to destroy and to protect. At first menses the adolescent girl was subject to many restrictions. She could not go near the river lest the salmon be offended and avoid the Bellacoola. Neither could she pick berries, because no more would grow in the valley; she could not touch anyone nor allow anyone to touch her; she could not pass in front of any man; she went to bed before everyone else and was the last to arise. If she disobeyed these and other restrictions, she would die. She was "both feared and respected, possessed of supernatural power, and yet baneful." Many Bellacoola stories describe how girls during their first menses were able to vanquish supernatural beings; one tells of how they "once saved mankind when the sun came too close to the earth." First menstrual blood was the most dangerous, but all menstrual blood carried some danger because it was considered a powerful human substance, and, therefore, a potent protection against supernatural beings. It was valuable as a defense against evil monsters, but it was equally deadly to shamans and other human beings with supernatural powers.

Shamans had the power to cure and ask assistance of any supernatural being when this was believed necessary. Like a menstruating woman, a shaman's power was internal, involuntary, and had to be controlled. Because power was concentrated in both, they had to observe strict taboos so as not to endanger themselves and others. However, a shaman had to be particularly careful to avoid a menstruating woman, whereas the reverse did not seem to be the case. The death of a shaman was frequently accompanied by some convulsion of nature. Because of the personal danger involved, many people took certain precautions to avoid becoming shamans. A man would hold "intercourse with his wife from below, so that her flesh, impure through its liability to menses, can form a barrier to the coming of supernatural power." If a man wanted to become a shaman, he signified his wish by sleeping on the right side of his wife. Thus, there was a close connection between the supernatural powers bestowed on shamans and the powers inherent in menstrual blood.

-Peggy Reeves Sanday, Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality

[arkipelagic]

“Phylogenetic tree analyses show that Negritos are basal to other East and Southeast Asians, and that they diverged from West Eurasians at least 38,000 years ago. We also found relatively high traces of Denisovan admixture in the Philippine Negritos, but not in the Malaysian and Andamanese groups, suggesting independent introgression and/or parallel losses involving Denisovan introgressed regions.”

“We did not observe any direct links between the different Negrito groups and the African Pygmies (Biaka). This is in agreement with previous results (…) and suggests that observed morphological similarities among the Negritos and African pygmies are more likely due to convergent evolution.”

I always end up rereading this 2017 study (open access!) because it is so fascinating and breaks down so many misconceptions about the peopling of Southeast Asia and surrounding areas. This and the 2021 Larena et al. paper - although the methods to obtaining information for the latter were dubious - shed quite a lot of light on the pre-Austronesian and Austronesian ancestry of Philippine ethnicities.

[kierrasreads]

The Sign of Four (Sherlock Holmes #2) by Arthur Conan Doyle Review

Plot

As a dense yellow fog swirls through the streets of London, a deep melancholy has descended on Sherlock Holmes, who sits in a cocaine-induced haze at 221B Baker Street. His mood is only lifted by a visit from a beautiful but distressed young woman - Mary Morstan, whose father vanished ten years before. Four years later she began to receive an exquisite gift every year: a large, lustrous pearl. Now she has had an intriguing invitation to meet her unknown benefactor and urges Holmes and Watson to accompany her. And in the ensuing investigation - which involves a wronged woman, a stolen hoard of Indian treasure, a wooden-legged ruffian, a helpful dog and a love affair - even the jaded Holmes is moved to exclaim, 'Isn't it gorgeous!'

Discussion

This one was a wild ride. And just...yikes. I was a bit uncomfortable reading this one, especially with the portrayal of the Indian characters and Tonga, described as "a small Andamanese accomplice." Jonathan Small's story was a bit confusing, so I had to look it up, and wow. I definitely have to learn more about the 1857 rebellion- the things that they don't teach you in history class!

Also, Sherlock is a regular user of cocaine. I don't know what to do with this bit of information.

Rating

3/5

[audible-smiles]

I'm not very familiar with Conan Doyle's biography in general or the Edalji case in particular, but I do want to remind everyone that the Sherlock Holmes canon contains some of the most overtly racist prose in the English language. For example, take this description of an Andamanese man, which I listened to just the other night in an audiobook of 'The Sign of the Four':

At the sound of his strident, angry cries there was movement in the huddled bundle upon the deck. It straightened itself into a little black man—the smallest I have ever seen—with a great, misshapen head and a shock of tangled, dishevelled hair. Holmes had already drawn his revolver, and I whipped out mine at the sight of this savage, distorted creature. He was wrapped in some sort of dark ulster or blanket, which left only his face exposed; but that face was enough to give a man a sleepless night. Never have I seen features so deeply marked with all bestiality and cruelty. His small eyes glowed and burned with a sombre light, and his thick lips were writhed back from his teeth, which grinned and chattered at us with a half animal fury.

He wrote another story with a sympathetic portrayal of interracial marriage, yes; I would argue that white people often process their contradictory feelings about race out loud in real time, without a lot of real critical thought put into it. Anyway, I would be as cautious valorizing him as you would with any other old-timey white Englishman.

[bestiarium]

The Onkoboykwe [Onge religion; Andamanese mythology]

Little Andaman Island – or Gaubolambe, as it is called by the native Onge people – in the Indian Ocean is the centre of the universe. Above it, 6 layers of worlds exist, and 6 additional worlds exist below the island. Above these 13 worlds is an immaterial void, and below it lies the primordial ocean, Kwatannange, which is filled with turtles (note: I don’t entirely understand the religious significance of the turtles). This is, though a bit oversimplified, the universe of the native Onge religion.

Each of these world layers is inhabited by a kind of spirits. Though they are usually translated as ‘spirits’, it would be more accurate to call them otherworldly beings: they are not human, but they eat, work, reproduce and die of old age, just like humans. Nor are they immaterial or intangible.

The first layer above the island is the world of the Onkoboykwe, which are the most important of these beings. They created the shining disk that we call the sun, and they created the moon and stars as well. Onkoboykwe are considered to be kind and benevolent, and these spirits harbour no ill will towards humanity. Sadly, I found no description on what these beings look like.

It is important to note that in the Onge creation story, humanity descended from the Onkoboykwe: the first inhabitants of Little Andaman Island, Engigegi and his wife, had come from this strange world above ours. They built a house on the island and planted rows of trees. It is from these trees that the first humans grew.

Interestingly, it is said that if a human dies within the confines of a forest, his spirit will ascend to the world of the Onkoboykwe and become one of them. This is because in Onge religion, the circumstances of one’s death would determine what happened to the spirit.

Sources: Ganguly, P., 1975, The Negritos of Little Andaman Island: A Primitive People Facing Extinction, Indian Museum Bulletin, 10(1), pp. 7-27. Ganguly, P., 1987, Negrito Religions: Negritos of the Andaman Islands, in Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, Lindsay Jones (editor), Volume 10, pp. 6455-6456. (image: native Onge people posing for a photo. I couldn’t find the original image source, sorry.)

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great andamanese body part noun class : trilobite mineralized eyes