Ever heard of Andamanese?

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Originally posted by wikipedia

The Andamanese is a collective term to describe the peoples who are the aboriginal inhabitants of the Andaman Islands and Nicobar Islands, located in the Bay of Bengal. Anthropologically they are usually classified as Negritos, represented also by the Semang of Malaysia and the Aeta of the Philippines. They have lived on the Andaman Islands for at least 14,000 years and had very little contact with external societies for nearly all this period. This comparatively long-lasting isolation and separation from external influences is perhaps unequalled, except perhaps by the aboriginal inhabitants of Tasmania.
However, this changed in the mid-1800s after the British established penal colonies. Increasing numbers of Indian and Karen settlers arrived, encroaching on former territories of the Andamanese. Today only the Sentinelese, who live exclusively on North Sentinel Island, have been able to completely maintain their independent state, resisting attempts to contact them. The Jarawa have also managed to remain substantially apart from the later colonisers and settlers; other Andamanese groups have had more extensive contacts, resulting in drastic reductions in territory and numbers, with several peoples becoming extinct altogether.
Until the 19th century, their habit of killing all shipwrecked foreigners and the remoteness of their islands prevented modification of their culture or language. Cultivation was unknown to them, and they lived off of hunting indigenous pigs, fishing, and gathering. Their only weapons were the bow, fishing nets and harpoons. Besides the aboriginal people of Tasmania [1], the Andamanese were the only people who in the 19th century knew no method of making fire, carefully preserving embers in hollowed-out trees from fires caused by lightning strikes.

And their interesting history, sad indeed:

The indigenous Andamanese peoples have lived on the islands for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years, and for the great majority of this period their societies and languages have remained quite undisturbed by external influences. Although the existence of the islands and their inhabitants was long known to maritime powers and traders of the South� and Southeast�Asia region, contact with these peoples was highly sporadic and very often hostile; as a result, almost nothing is recorded of them or their languages until the mid-18th century. From the 1860s onwards, the setting up of a permanent British penal colony and the subsequent arrival of immigrant settlers and indentured labourers mainly from the Indian subcontinent brought the first sustained impacts upon these societies, particularly among the Great Andamanese groups.

By the turn of the 20th century most of these populations were greatly reduced in numbers, and the various linguistic and tribal divisions among the Great Andamanese effectively ceased to exist, despite a census of the time still classifying the groups as separate. Their linguistic diversity also suffered as the surviving populations intermingled with one another, and some also intermarried with Karen (Burmese) and Indian settlers.
By the latter part of the 20th century the majority of Great Andamanese languages had become extinct, as the multi-lingual knowledge of the older generations was not replaced in succeeding ones.
At the start of the 21st century only about 50 or so individuals of Great Andamanese descent remained, resettled to a single small island (Strait I.); about half of these speak what may be considered a modified version (or creole) of Great Andamanese, based mainly on Aka-Jeru as well as A-Pucikwar, but also incorporating elements of Hindi and Burmese. This modified version has been called "Present Great Andamanese" by some scholars[1], but also may be referred to simply as "Jero" or "Great Andamanese". Hindi increasingly serves as their primary language, and is the only language for around half of them.
The South Andamanese (Onge-Jarawa) languages survive mainly because of the greater isolation of the peoples who speak them. This isolation has been reinforced by an extreme reluctance against outside contact and outright hostility towards outsiders by South Andamanese tribes, particularly the Sentinelese and Jarawa. The Sentinelese have been so resistant that their language remains entirely unknown to outsiders to this day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andamanese