The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Discussion of Julian Jaynes's second hypothesis - the bicameral mind, specifically the subtopic of the mentality of preliterate societies, theories of primitive religion, and vestiges of bicameral mind in preliterate societies.
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The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by Moderator »

Several very primitive societies such as the Sentinelese and the Jarawa still populate the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean and continue to this day to live in a "Stone Age existence."

"It is not certain whether, outside the Andaman Islands, there still exists any community that has had as little contact with civilization as the Sentinelese. Pandit and his colleagues say there is none. Several American anthropologists I have spoken to agree with them" (Goodheart).

They have thus far aggressively resisted all attempts at contact by modern people and explorers (killing several people with arrows). The tsunami in 2004 once again focused attention on them.

Could these be the last semi-bicameral societies?

I use the term loosely as similar pre-modern tribes discussed by Lévy-Bruhl seem to have developed consciousness, or at least certain aspects of it, but still relied to a great degree on auditory hallucination.

Perhaps we will never know, as no one understands the culture or language of the Sentinelese or the Jarawa.

For more see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarawa_%28 ... Islands%29

The Last Island of the Savages by Adam Goodheart

George Weber's "Lonely Islands"
Swamy
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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by Swamy »

I got this from a forum and thought it may be relevant to what's discussed here.

Swamy

Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese, is an unique project being led by Dr. Anvita Abbi, Professor of Linguistics at the Jawaharlal Nehru
University to study the language of this threatened community. It has been suggested that the Andamanese languages might be the last representative of South East Asia's ancient pre-Neolithic languages.

Dr. Abbiâ's project has created considerably new understanding of the Great Andamanese community "giving us a descriptive grammar of the
language, a socio-linguistic description, an archive of their folklore, oral texts and video recordings and also a trilingual dictionary. "The
biggest breakthrough," says Dr. Abbi, “is that we been able to identify the Great Andamanse as the Sixth language family of India while Onge and Jarawa (the other two indigenous communities of the Andamans) constitute a different family altogether. No other Indian language has even a
slight resemblance to the verb structures of the Great Andamanese langauge."

Another aspect of the language that fascinates Dr. Abbi is its terminology of the body. "The body," she explains, "is divided into four
basic zones. These are (1) the mouth and its semantic extension (2) the major external body parts (3) the extreme ends of the body like toe and
fingernails etc and (4) the bodily products. A detailed study of the possessive constructions in Great Andamanese shows that ethnoanatomy and
kinship share the same level of categorization and there is a parallel between certain body parts and kin relations."

In the language therefore there is a parallel between major body parts of an individual and his/her spouse. Similarly parents and younger
siblings are compared to one's mouth cavity whereas a child and sweat are both considered products from the body.

Time is categorized as the honey calendar which is itself based on the name of the blooming flowers at that particular time. Honey,
significantly occupies a special place in the pattern of subsistence and movement of the Great Andamanese and also the other communities like the Onge of Little Andaman Island.

An excellent benchmark of the status of a people is the status of their language; the converse is just as true and we get an excellent
illustration of this when we look at the Great Andamanese people. "Only four of the original Great Andamanese languages are spoken today," says
Dr. Abbi and "there are only a handful of these people who can speak their ancestral language today." The number was eight a few months ago
and is now down to six with the passing away of two of them. The language and the people are both on the brink.

You can hear sound recordings of more than 40 songs of the Great Andamanese online at http://www.andamanese.net/
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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by Moderator »

This is quite interesting, thank you. I will look up Dr. Abbi's research. This is really one of the last chances we'll have to study a group that is perhaps still much earlier in the transition process.
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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by rheiman »

Swamy, your song link does not seem to work. Have you got a working link?

Thanks!
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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by WS1 »

rheiman wrote:Swamy, your song link does not seem to work. Have you got a working link?

Thanks!
The URL address was just off, a forward slash instead of a dot. I went to the site and fetched the correct link:

URL: Songs of the Great Andamanese
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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by rheiman »

Winston Smith wrote:
rheiman wrote:Swamy, your song link does not seem to work. Have you got a working link?

Thanks!
The URL address was just off, a forward slash instead of a dot. I went to the site and fetched the correct link:

URL: Songs of the Great Andamanese
Thanks!
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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by Swamy »

Im sorry Reihman, was away and thanks Winston for sorting out the link.

Swamy
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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by clivedurdle »

Isn't there a tribe in the amazon with no concept of future and past?
rheiman
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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by rheiman »

clivedurdle wrote:Isn't there a tribe in the amazon with no concept of future and past?
I think you mean Detroit - but there might be a tribe like that in the Amazon too. :lol:

But seriously, how would it be possible to test such a thing? It seems to me that the testing alone would alter their perceptions - much like subatomic particles in quantum physics. Observation is enough to skew the results. If there are bicameral people in our day and age, this state of mind would be a fragile affair indeed. As has been said about the Amazon natives, "light a match in front of him and you've ruined his world view" or something to that effect.
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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by clivedurdle »

Rather, it bring up the fact that the Pirahãs lack temporal organization - and pretty much live in the present (according to Everett, they also have "no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art or drawing, and no words for “all,” “each,” “every,” “most,” or “few”—terms of quantification believed by some linguists to be among the common building blocks of human cognition"):
http://sciencereligionnews.blogspot.com ... tribe.html
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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by rheiman »

clivedurdle wrote:
Rather, it bring up the fact that the Pirahãs lack temporal organization - and pretty much live in the present (according to Everett, they also have "no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art or drawing, and no words for “all,” “each,” “every,” “most,” or “few”—terms of quantification believed by some linguists to be among the common building blocks of human cognition"):
http://sciencereligionnews.blogspot.com ... tribe.html
The tribesman is sitting in a boat. Is it his boat? If so, how did he acquire it and why? He's wearing shorts. How and why did he acquire those? The article states that some in the tribe were conspiring to kill the missionary. I don't understand how a conspiracy is possible without an understanding of "future", nor do I understand the motivation for such a conspiracy without an understanding of "past".
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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by Swamy »

Folks,

The last member of the Bo tribe (Great Andamanese) died wiping out the language and an entire tribe from the face of the earth. In this news clip, there's mention of her hearing (voices?) 'the eldest of us' during the Asian tsunami of 2004 which she survived. Dr. Abbi had close contacts with her and can be contacted for more details.

http://www.andamanese.net/Image/TOIPadmaShree.jpg

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldn ... -dies.html

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Re: The Sentinelese: The Last Semi-Bicameral Society?

Post by Moderator »

That's interesting. It's not entirely clear if the elders were alive or dead (voices).
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