This is North Sentinel Island, one of many islands in the Bay of Bengal, not far from the coast of India. It's about 28 square miles in area, and is inhabited by an indigenous tribe of people. This tribe has a population anywhere between 25 to 500 individuals- nobody has any idea how many. We don't know what language they speak, either, or anything about their culture, because they are one of the last populations that has never made contact with the outside world.
You may be asking yourself, why haven't they made contact with the outside world? After all, they've been isolated for at least 60,000 years, and now we have things like metalworking and the ability to create fire (two things the Sentinelese seem to lack). The answer is simple:
They kill everybody who comes knocking. And, if the stories are true, eat them too.
The first description of this strange and violent little community appears to be a passage from Marco Polo's journals, in which he described the islands of the Bay of Bengal as being the home to "a most brutish, savage race" and "cruel cannibals who ate human flesh raw, and devoured everyone on whom they could lay their hands". While the claims of cannibalism have yet to be actually observed, it's clear that the Sentinelese had already built something of a reputation by the 13th Century, when Marco was knocking around in China and India.
The first recorded attempt at contacting the Sentinelese people occurred in 1867, when a small Indian vessel was beached on the island during a storm. The natives swarmed the unsuspecting crewmen, killing several of them- the sailors were only able to escape after fighting off the Sentinelese with swords.
Almost no contact was made with the island at all after that, until 1975, when National Geographic sent a film crew in to try and make what would certainly have been a compelling documentary, if the Sentinelese hadn't turned up to the welcoming party fully armed. They were able to escape relatively unscathed- the director of film was shot in the leg with an arrow- and the tribesmen simply laughed as the documentary crew beat a hasty retreat.
In 1981, a Hong Kong freighter called the MV Primrose was reefed just north of the island. The vessel sent a distress signal which wouldn't seem out of place in a high-stakes horror movie: "Wild men, estimate more than 50, carrying various homemade weapons... they will board us at sunset. All crew members’ lives not guaranteed."
The crew of the Primrose managed to fight off the zombie movie-esque horde of Sentinelese for several days, using only flare guns and fire axes, before they were finally saved by the Indian Navy. Since then, the Sentinelese have made good use of the wreck of the freighter- despite having no previous experience with metallurgy, they've been observed chipping pieces off of the hull to create steel-tipped arrows, making them even more dangerous.
Since then, the Sentinelese have maintained their firm anti-immigration policy, mostly by slaughtering poachers who stray to close to their fishing grounds, and leaving their mutilated corpses on the beach to serve as a warning to other intruders. There was some concern over their safety following the 2004 Tsunami, as their entire island is rather low in elevation, so the Indian Coast Guard sent helicopters to the island to provide relief and supplies.
That's one of the Sentinelese, attacking the relief helicopter with a bow and arrow.
The next year, in 2005, the Indian Government declared that North Sentinel Island was a protected zone, and the local Andaman and Nicobar Administration declared that no further attempts to contact the natives of the island would be allowed.
This is probably for the best.
