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Tsunami take a lesson from a remote tribe
Recently, I had an opportunity to view a documentary on television, made on the life of a Tribe, living in one of the remote islands in Andaman, India. This tribe was one among those who escaped the tsunami that struck the Andaman and Nicobar Island on the 26th of December 2004.
They were left unscathed by the giant waves, as they moved farther inland, sensing the tsunami in advance. I was amazed to see their story and how they sensed the danger of the tsunami, without the aid of any modern equipment that we badly need to sense natural disasters well in advance.
Most of the South East Asian countries are now desperately working onto put a Tsunami Alert System in place before 2008, to protect the people living in the coastal areas of this region, from yet another disaster.
However, tribes who live in a distant world far away from the modern civilization were able to predict the tsunami without the help of any Tsunami Alert Systems. The leader of the tribe explained in the documentary how they sensed the tsunami and moved inland to the safety of the mountains to escape the ferocity of the tsunami.
Tribes living in Andaman and Nicobar Islands are among the most primitive tribes, who continue to exist in this world today. They believe in spirits and not in gods (just like the ‘Incans’ of Peru and ‘Mayans’ of Brazil).
They believe that life is a struggle between the good and the evil spirits and good spirits always saves its believers from the evil spirits. Even here, when the men in this tribe noticed the sea retracting just before the Tsunami, they believed that evil spirits were pushing the sea back and the good spirits would soon defeat the evil ones and push the sea back to its shores. When they realized this, they started moving inland, as they feared that the good spirits would push the sea back with a lot of force and this force could devastate the shores of the island.
This made them travel farther inland and watch the struggle between the ‘Good and the Evil’ from the safety of the mountains. They were eventually saved by their beliefs, while in the case of civilized men; we ran towards the sea, after seeing it retract, fascinated by the sudden change and eventually got drowned when the sea came back. I wonder how we could call these people uncivilized. They seem to have a better knowledge on ‘Nature’, than we do.
Modern humans think that they have a better understanding of life and nature. They seek the help of Religion, Gods and Holy men to enlighten their knowledge on the above. They try to relate themselves with religions and sects to gain more insights into life. But here are a few people, living in isolation, with a better understanding on life than us. We must have heard people calling such tribes, as ‘uncivilized’ group of people who are extremely superstitious, but their beliefs seems to be more realistic than ours.
These fantastic people are vanishing fast from the face of this planet, endangered by modern civilization. Habitat loss is killing their natural way of life and forcing them to adapt to modern civilization, to survive. People all over the world are speaking about conserving endangered animal and plant species, but none are bothered about preserving this unique class of people. If they vanish from this planet, along with them, they would take valuable lessons from nature that might be of great use to humans.
A.K.Siva
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