The indigenous tribes of India's Andaman and Nicobar islands, whose origins still mystify anthropologists, are on the brink of disaster and some could die off within a generation, experts warn.
Two Stone Age tribes of the six aboriginal groups - the Jarawas and the Sentinelese - have lived in virtual seclusion from the outside world for millennia, unaffected by the onslaught of civilisation.
After the debunking of several claims in recent decades that tribes with no previous contact with outsiders were living in the jungles of the Amazon, Papua New Guinea or the Philippines, many researchers consider the Sentinelese to be the last truly undiscovered people on earth.
The hunter-gatherer societies on the Andamans are stuck in a time warp, scratching out a living with no help from electricity, metal tools, motorised transport or written communication. But now, the Sentinelese and others are under intense pressure from a prospective tourist boom, and encroachment by growing numbers of land-hungry Indian settlers bent on improving their own economic livelihood.
"I am not optimistic about (the tribals') chance for long-term survival," Swiss entrepreneur and independent researcher George Weber, who founded the Andaman Association research group, said.
And with no natural immunity against diseases that developed in the outside world, they could be wiped out by something as seemingly harmless as the common cold.
"The more (outside) contact there is, the more dangerous it is for them," said renowned conservationist and tribal expert Harry Andrews, founder of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Environmental Team (ANET), a powerful non-profit group.
"Any outside disease can wipe out 80 to 100 people," he said. "Whole communities are disappearing. They get a common cold, and the next thing is pneumonia and they die."
Genetic evidence suggests that the pygmy-like aborigines - of Negrito origin with dark skin and tightly curled hair that sets them apart from their Asian neighbours - have lived on the Andamans for as long as 60,000 years.
No one knows exactly how they arrived, though experts believe they likely travelled from Africa, either by boat or through present-day Myanmar to the north, when sea levels were lower.
Weber said the Negritos, small groups of whom also still live in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, "are likely to be the surviving remnants of the first modern humans migrating into Southeast Asia."
Some of today's visitors, eager to blaze their own Marco Polo-style trail, pay tour operators hefty sums to take them into restricted areas along the 340-kilometre (210-mile) Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) linking the administrative capital Port Blair to points north and running up against Jarawa tribal lands.
Justin Anstice, a researcher with the Andamans anthropology department, warns that tourism is the tribes' public enemy number one, and derides the practice of sneaking into tribal areas as "cultural pornography".
"Loopholes are everywhere. The impact is tremendous," he says of tourist encroachment.
The Jarawas, who today number about 400, have been deeply affected by tourism, and their exposure to the outside world has begun a spiral that may ultimately spell doom for the once-ferocious tribe.
They often stop vehicles on the trunk road and demand joy rides. When outsiders refuse to provide them gifts or staples like food, tensions rise. Some encounters ended in outright violence, and convoys are now protected by armed guards.
For many Indians on the northern islands, the road is a lifeline. For conservationists, it's a highway to oblivion.
"It's the worst I have seen it," Andrews told AFP of the conditions for the islands' indigenous groups. "Unless the road is closed, Jarawas don't stand a chance."
India's Supreme Court, under pressure from preservation lobbies, ordered the ATR closed in 2002, but it remains open amid legal squabbles.
"Our administration is taking various measures to ensure that tribal interests and tourism promotion do not clash," assured the Andamans' secretary for tourism and tribal areas, Anbarasu, who goes by one name.
Critics, however, say officials are eager to bring the tribes into the modern world.
"Indian authorities treat the Andamanese as poor primitives that must be 'lifted up' to the height of Indian civilisation," said Weber.
"The British felt the same about the Indians before Indian independence - to the justified and intense resentment of the Indians. Now the shoe is on the other foot."
For some groups, any protective action may be too little, too late.
The Great Andamanese, who numbered as many as 10,000 in the 18th century, were decimated by the colonial British who waged war against them when they refused to submit to crown rule.
By the 1970s just 19 survived, and while their numbers have crept up to 29, their ignominious end on tiny Strait island, where homes have been built for them, is all but certain.
"They're finished, they have no will to do anything," Andrews said.
Some of them have assimilated into Indian life in Port Blair, and a handful have taken up government jobs or posts on sea ferries, while a few can be seen wandering the streets of the city, homeless and dependent on handouts.
Andrews said small tribal groups could live on for the next 100 years, but as a viable people, their days were numbered.
The Sentinelese, he said, are the tribe best positioned to survive.
Their continued isolation - they still shoot arrows at nearly anyone who ventures too close - is a modern miracle given North Sentinel is merely 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Port Blair, a city of more than 150,000 people.
Yet a calamity may have already struck the tribe, which numbered about 250 by recent estimates. Fishermen who ply waters near the island routinely observed tribesmen on the shores, but for the past year they have reported no sightings.
"There is something gone wrong there as we have started to see less and less of them," Andrews said.
The island may have been stricken by disease, but there is also concern about an incident three years ago in which Myanmar poachers fleeing Indian war ships landed on North Sentinel and escaped into the thick jungle. No one has seen the poachers since, Andrews said, and research trips to the island have been banned.
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