Only last night, I was discussing James Fenimore Cooper’s classic, “The Last of the Mohicans,” (as well as the surprisingly tepid film adaption from Michael Mann). As a less-than-eager Cooper fan, I was waxing poetic about the validity of Mark Twain’s side-splittingly hilarious critique of Cooper’s works, particularly Cooper’s “high talent for inaccurate observation.” Demanding rigorous accuracy from someone like Cooper, whose works’ “flat-out toothy adventureawesomeness” is a large part of their particular appeal, might not be entirely fair. But a base-line of reality seems like it could have been a good thing.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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Imagine my surprise, then, to happen across this story:
Bao Sr was 85, as best she knew, when she died last week. She was the oldest surviving member of the Bo, an ancient, indigenous people who, together with nine other tribes, made up the Great Andamanese people of the Indian archipelagos.
They are believed to have lived on the Andaman Islands for as many as 65,000 years, with a family tree that traces its history to one of the oldest human cultures on earth.
There are now only 52 Bo remaining but none who speak the original language. Boa Sr was the last member fluent in the tribe’s mother tongue.
Over at The Daily Mail (UK), the story’s comment section is bubbling with arguments about whether or not the Great Andamanese people could actually be 65,000 years old, particularly if one has a “literal” view of the Bible. (It never ceases to amaze me how frequently this particular argument comes up.)
No matter what one’s views on that particular issue, the complete extinction of a language seems like a true loss. Nor is it the first (or even the most severe) tribulation the Bo have experienced in the past:
In swiftly dwindling numbers, the remnants of the amalgamated tribe continued to live their way of life as much as possible in the archipelagos. At one point, the British forcibly resettled the Great Andamanese to a single island in order to “civilize” them. The tribe was moved into an “Andaman home” during which time 150 children were born. None of them lived beyond the age of 2.
Sadly, Cooper’s account of Chingachgook’s predicament appears to have been more realistic than I would have hoped.