'I'm privileged to have this contact with the tribesmen,' said Mr Pandit, a director of the Anthropological Survey of India. 'Before, it was worse. They shot arrows when we tried to land.' 
 
 The Sentinelese, as the islanders are known, live on North Sentinel, one of a chain of islands in the Bay of Bengal. Their skin is ash-black and their faces moon- shaped with negroid features. 
 
 They can husk coconuts with their teeth, and use fire, which they hide and guard jealously because they do not know how to make it. With long bows and arrows tipped with iron salvaged from shipwrecks, they are superb marksmen. Farming is unknown to them. They survive on fish and turtles, and hunt wild pig and the huge monitor lizards that abound on their island, an area of a mere 30 square miles. 
 
 Sentinelese songs contain just two notes, and they can only count up to two, above which they call everything else many. Their only form of art is body painting, which consists of wavy smears of white or ochre. 
 
 More than 100 of the Sentinelese live in palm-built lean-tos around the island, yet they have no community structure, no chiefs and no witchdoctors. Their way of life is comparable to that of humans 15,000 years ago; it is possible that they have not evolved any further because they simply have not been required to do so. 
 
 It took Indian anthropologists 24 years to befriend the islanders with gifts of coconut and iron chunks. But now that they have succeeded, Mr Pandit and his team are hesitant about how - or whether - these tribesmen should be 'civilised'. 
 
 'Permanent isolation isn't practical,' he said. 'They're surrounded by 200,000 people living in these islands. But the government has to make sure they're not harmed, and that they don't die from imported diseases.' 
 
 The Sentinelese are not the only aboriginals left in Andaman, a chain of 361 islands stretching between India and Burma. Other aboriginals are hidden in the jungles, such as the Andamanese, the Onge and the Jarawa. But the Sentinelese have resisted contact the longest. 
 
 When the British set up penal colonies in the Andaman Islands in the 1850s, the tribal population was estimated at about 5,000. The aboriginals resented the foreign intruders and fought back with their puny weapons. The British responded by slaughtering many of them, and today, fewer than 400 aboriginals are left. 
 
 For many centuries, sailors viewed the Andaman Islands with dread: tales drifted back of shipwrecked survivors being eaten by cannibals. Mr Pandit claims, however, that the Andaman islanders never dined on their victims. They do, however, like to hang the jawbone of a favourite relative around their necks. 
 
 Despite the many arrows shot at him, Mr Pandit insists the reputation of the Sentinelese for hostility is unfair. 'They're cautious, that's all. They want to defend themselves against outsiders.' 
 
 The islanders cannot be oblivious to the forms of civilisation that surround them; freighters pass by on the horizon and planes across their skies. They make occasional forays in dugout canoes to hunt turtles or fish, but they don't seem to sail far out of sight of North Sentinel. 
 
 Their aggressive isolation seems self-imposed. 'I'd give my right arm to know what they're thinking,' said Mr Pandit, 'but we just haven't learned enough about them yet.' 
 
 When the first anthropological expedition reached the island in 1967, the Sentinelese hid in the jungle. When teams returned in 1970 and again in 1973, the scientists were greeted with a hail of arrows. Then in 1974, the anthropologists tried a different tack: they brought gifts of coconuts, pots and pans, and a live pig, and left them on the beach. 
 
 But the Sentinelese were not so easily bought. Warriors with bows, arrows and spears lined the shore, posturing in defiance, and Mr Pandit recounted in a report: 'Sometimes they would turn their backs to us and sit on their haunches as if to defecate. This was meant to insult us and to say we were not welcome.' 
 
 Unruffled, the anthropologists kept dropping gifts on the island, and the Sentinelese progressively grew less hostile and more playful. They love coconuts, which do not grow on North Sentinel. 
 
 Finally, on 4 January 1991, Mr Pandit and his colleagues were met on the beach by a party of 28 men, women and children, for once unarmed. 'They may not have chiefs, but a decision had obviously been taken by the Sentinelese to be friendly towards us,' Mr Pandit said. 'We still don't know how or why.' 
 
 Now, the anthropologists have learned to remove most of their clothes, watches and spectacles before visiting the Sentinelese and the Jarawa, another isolated tribe. 'I've lost half a dozen pairs of glasses,' lamented Mr Pandit, who has been stripped naked by the islanders on several occasions. 'Clothing doesn't make much sense to them,' he said. 'They're curious about what we're trying to hide underneath.' 
 
 The anthropologists now practise the traditional Sentinelese greeting, which is to sit in a friend's lap and slap your right buttock vigorously. 
 
 A debate is raging among scientists and Indian officials about how the Sentinelese should be treated. Some want them drawn into civilisation as rapidly as possible. But other Andaman tribes have been cruelly exploited: their women have been inveigled into brothels as exotica, the men coaxed away by opium and alcohol to trade in the edible birds' nests that the Chinese consider to be a delicacy. 
 
 So far, the Indian government has banned all visitors to the island and forest areas where the aboriginals live. 'We can't leave them forever,' said Mr Pandit. 
 
 'But the government must ensure that, when they do come into contact with the outside world, the Sentinelese won't be uprooted or hurt. The question is: how?' 
 
 (Photograph omitted) ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Who are the Sentinelese? 
 
 The family of a US man reportedly killed by arrows fired by members of an endangered tribe in India's Andaman and Nicobar islands have said they forgive those who killed him. 
 
 In a statement, they said John Allen Chau "loved God, life, helping those in need, and had nothing but love for the Sentinelese people". 
 
 Seven people who helped him reach North Sentinel island have been arrested. 
 
 The Indian authorities say it may take "some days" to recover Mr Chau's body. 
 
 A missionary who was in contact with Mr Chau in the last days of his trip says his aim was to bring the gospel to the island's tribesmen. 
 
 Outsiders are banned from even approaching the island to protect the people who live there, and their way of life. 
 
 The complete isolation of the Sentinelese people means contact with the outside world could put them at risk, as they are likely to have no immunity to even common illnesses such as flu and measles. 
 
 Mr Chau's family released a statement on Instagram, saying he had gone to the island of "his own free will". 
 
 "We also ask for the release of those friends he had in the Andaman Islands. He ventured out of his own free will and his local contacts need not be persecuted for his own actions," the statement said. 
 
 A murder case has been registered against unknown persons, and seven people, including at least five fishermen, have been arrested for helping Mr Chau reach the island, police say. 
 
 The authorities have sent a helicopter and a ship to the area to identify where the incident took place. 
 
 "We maintained a distance from the island and have not yet been able to spot the body. It may take some more days and... [reconnaissance] of the area," Dependra Pathak, director-general of police on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, told the AFP news agency. 
 
 Police have roped in field experts, including Indian anthropologists and tribal welfare and forest officers, to help them tackle the situation. 
 
 "We have to take care that we must not disturb them or their habitat by any means. It is a highly sensitive zone and it will take some time," he said. 
 
 On his last visit to the island, Mr Chau had taken a boat with local fishermen towards the remote North Sentinel island. He then ventured alone in a canoe to the beach. 
 
 As soon as he set foot on the island, he was attacked with bows and arrows, according to the fishermen. 
 
 Image copyright Survival International Image caption Few images of the endangered tribe exist 
 
 According to extracts of a journal published in the Washington Post, on a previous visit, he had shouted at them: "My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you." 
 
 One of the tribesmen shot at him with an arrow, which pierced his waterproof Bible, he wrote. 
 
 In a last note to his family, he wrote: "You guys might think I'm crazy in all this but I think it's worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people. 
 
 "God, I don't want to die." 
 
 He had taken scissors, safety pins and a football as gifts to the tribe, according to a source quoted by Reuters news agency who had access to his notes and asked not to be named. 
 
 He wrote he was "doing this to establish the kingdom of Jesus on the island... Do not blame the natives if I am killed," the source said. 
 
 'Dream gone wrong' 
 
 Jeff King is president of International Christian Concern, the organisation with which Mr Chau was aligned, and was in contact with him during his visit. 
 
 "John went there to bring the gospel to these people... He had talked about it... planned it for a while, so it wasn't a whim, it wasn't a lark," he told the BBC's Newsday programme. 
 
 "He'd been in the islands before, to this particular island... there were three or four visits on that day, and what happened was on the first visit he was turned back by arrows; the second visit, he came with two big fish as a gift. 
 
 "My understanding was the men accepted the gift; they sat together for an hour; he said they were menacing and they actually shot him. He went back to the boat, and then gradually went back a third time. That's when the fishermen who were looking through binoculars saw that they'd killed him and were taking him apart. 
 
 "This was not a job he was doing - this was a dream he had that unfortunately went wrong." 
 
 The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a chain of small islands hundreds of kilometres east of India in the Indian Ocean. 
 
 Contact with several tribes on the islands is illegal to protect their indigenous way of life. 
 
 In 2017, the Indian government also said taking photographs or making videos of the aboriginal Andaman tribes would be punishable with imprisonment of up to three years. 
 
 Two Indian fishermen fishing illegally off North Sentinel Island were killed by the tribe in 2006. 
 
 Image copyright Christian Caron - Creative Commons A-NC-SA Image caption The Sentinelese stand guard on an island beach in 2005 
 
 The Sentinelese are totally cut off from the rest of the world. 
 
 Global organisations like London-based Survival International have been campaigning to protect the indigenous tribes living in the Andamans. 
 
 The tribe live on their own island, roughly the size of Manhattan, but most of what is known about them comes from viewing them from a distance. 
 
 Read more on uncontacted tribes: ||||| The Sentinelese, thought to number between 50 and 200, have rebuffed all contact with the modern world, firing a shower of arrows at anyone who comes within range. 
 
 They are believed to be the last pre-Neolithic tribe in the world to remain isolated and appear to have survived the 2004 Asian tsunami. 
 
 The two men killed, Sunder Raj, 48, and Pandit Tiwari, 52, were fishing illegally for mud crabs off North Sentinel Island, a speck of land in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands archipelago. 
 
 Fellow fishermen said they dropped anchor for the night on Jan 25 but fell into a deep sleep, probably helped by large amounts of alcohol. 
 
 During the night their anchor, a rock tied to a rope, failed to hold their open-topped boat against the currents and they drifted towards the island. 
 
 "As day broke, fellow fishermen say they tried to shout at the men and warn them they were in danger," said Samir Acharya, the head of the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology, an environmental organisation. 
 
 "However they did not respond - they were probably drunk - and the boat drifted into the shallows where they were attacked and killed." 
 
 After the fishermen's families raised the alarm, the Indian coastguard tried to recover the bodies using a helicopter but was met by the customary hail of arrows. 
 
 Photographs shot from the helicopter show the near-naked tribesmen rushing to fire. But the downdraught from its rotors exposed the two fisherman buried in shallow graves and not roasted and eaten, as local rumour suggested. 
 
 Mr Acharya said the erroneous belief in the tribe's cannibalism grew from the practice of another tribe, the Onge, who would cut up and burn their dead to avoid them returning as evil spirits. 
 
 "People saw the flesh cooking on the fire and thought they must be cannibals but this incident clearly contradicts that belief," he said. 
 
 Attempts to recover the bodies of the two men have been suspended, although the Andaman Islands police chief, Dharmendra Kumar, said an operation might be mounted later. 
 
 "Right now, there will be casualties on both sides," he said from Port Blair. "The tribesmen are out in large numbers. We shall let things cool down and once these tribals move to the island's other end we will sneak in and bring back the bodies." 
 
 Environmental groups urged the authorities to leave the bodies and respect the three-mile exclusion zone thrown around the island. 
 
 In the 1980s and early 1990s many Sentinelese were killed in skirmishes with armed salvage operators who visited the island after a shipwreck. Since then the tribesmen have remained virtually undisturbed. 
 
 DNA analysis of another tribe, the Jarawa, whose members made first contact with the outside world in 1997, suggest that the tribesmen migrated from Africa around 60,000 years ago. 
 
 However, the experience of the Jarawa since their emergence - sexual exploitation, alcoholism and a measles epidemic - has encouraged efforts to protect the Sentinelese from a similar fate.
– Sometimes paradise is better off lost: Off the coast of India in the Bay of Bengal, a Manhattan-size island called North Sentinel Island boasts a deep green canopy of trees, stretches of sandy beaches, coral reef barriers—and a population that's decidedly hostile to outsiders, who aren't likely to live long. As Wackulus explains, the isolated indigenous tribe, one of the last of its kind on Earth, almost always attacks visitors. A little digging uncovered this story: After a night of drinking in 2006, two fishermen drifted too close to the island and were killed by the Sentinelese, who've lived there for 60,000 years. A helicopter sent to recover their bodies was halted by tribesmen's arrows, the Telegraph reported at the time; the air generated by the copter's rotors revealed their bodies in shallow graves. One of the earliest known encounters a century earlier ended when a convict who'd escaped from the neighboring Andaman Islands ended up on the island with his throat slit, the New York Times reported in 2012. In 1967, the Sentinelese—a Stone Age people but for the metal-tipped arrows carved from wrecked ships—hid from an Indian government expedition, during which a marker was placed on the island, declaring it part of India. Indian anthropologist TN Pandit's visits in the late 1980s and early 1990s proved more exciting. He left gifts of coconuts, knives, cloth, mirrors, and once a live pig. The native hunter-gatherers—believed to number between 50 and 400—killed the pig and buried it in the sand, but only insulted Pandit's group. "They would turn their backs to us and sit on their haunches as if to defecate," he told the Independent. India has since established a 3-mile exclusion zone around the island to protect both outsiders and the natives from disease. Survival International argues it's all for the best as the natives are "extremely healthy, alert, and thriving." They have fire and are believed to dine on fish, fruits, tubers, wild pigs, lizards, and honey. (This video reportedly shows the first contact with an isolated tribe.)