1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
3.
Port Blair
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Port Blair is the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India situated in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division of the islands, the headquarters for the district of South Andaman and it houses the headquarters of the Andaman and Nicobar Police and the Andaman and Nicobar Command, the first integrated tri-command of the armed forces of India. It also serves as the point for visiting the Andaman. Port Blair is connected with mainland India by both air and sea, though it is a 2-hour flight from mainland India to Port Blair, but it takes 3–4 days by sea to reach Chennai, Kolkata or Vishakhapatnam. Air connectivity to Port Blair is available from Chennai, Kolkata, New Delhi, Bhubaneshwar, all flights bound to Andaman and Nicobar Islands land at the Veer Savarkar International Airport. Sea connectivity is available from Chennai, Kolkata and Vishakhapatnam are embarked in Haddo Wharf and it is home to several museums and a major naval base INS Jarawa of the Indian Navy, along with sea and air bases of the Indian Coast Guard and the Indian Air Force. Port Blair is also famous for the historic Cellular Jail and other islands like Ross. All major departments of the Local and Central Government function from there, Port Blair has been selected as one of the cities to be developed as a smart city under the Smart Cities Mission. In 1789 the Government of Bengal established a colony on Chatham Island in the southeast bay of Great Andaman. After two years, the moved to the northeast part of Great Andaman and was named Port Cornwallis after Admiral William Cornwallis. However, there was disease and death in the penal colony. In 1824 Port Cornwallis was the rendezvous of the carrying the army to the First Anglo-Burmese War. In the 1830s and 1840s, shipwrecked crews who landed on the Andamans were often attacked and killed by the natives, in 1855, the government proposed another settlement on the islands, including a convict establishment, but the Indian Rebellion forced a delay in its construction. However, since the rebellion provided the British with a lot of new prisoners, it made the new Andaman settlement and prison an urgent necessity. Construction began in November 1857 at the renovated Port Blair, avoiding the vicinity of a swamp which seemed to have been the source of many of the old colonys problems. The penal colony was originally on Viper Island, the convicts, mostly political prisoners, suffered life imprisonment at hard labor under cruel and degrading conditions. Many were hanged, while others died of disease and starvation, between 1864 and 1867 a penal establishment was also built with convict labor on the northern side of Ross Island. These structures are now lay in ruins, the Cellular Jail is also known as Kala Pani, a name given to it due to the torture and general ill-treatment towards its Indian convicts
4.
Devendra Kumar Joshi
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Admiral Devendra Kumar Joshi, PVSM, AVSM, YSM, NM, VSM, ADC, was the 21st Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy, having assumed office on 31 August 2012. He is a specialist in anti-submarine warfare and he resigned on 26 February 2014, taking responsibility for a series of accidents, thus becoming the first Indian Navy Chief to resign. Joshi was born in Almora, then in Uttarakhand, in an interview with Doordarshan, when asked why he had chosen to join the Navy, he replied, I think it was the lure of the seas, the pull of the unknown. we belonged to the hills. Of the land, the terrains, one had seen enough. As he also said in the same interview. from both my fathers side and my mothers side, for seven generations nobody had been in the services, therefore, they had not even thought of the armed forces as a career option. However, once I had made up my mind, they were fully supportive and he graduated from the naval academy, the Naval War College, USA, the College of Naval Warfare, Mumbai, and the National Defence College, New Delhi. He is married to Chitra Joshi and the couple has two daughters, Joshi has served in a variety of command, staff and instructional appointments. He subsequently commanded the Eastern Fleet, wherein he was awarded Ati Vishisht Seva Medal, after his elevation to Flag rank, Joshi served in the Integrated Headquarters in all nodal branches. He was awarded the Param Vishisht Seva Medal during this time, later, he served as the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff to Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee. Adm. Joshi was also the Defence Advisor in the Indian High Commission at Singapore from 1996 to 1999, adm. Joshi resigned following a fire aboard Kilo-class submarine INS Sindhuratna on 26 February 2014. The Times Of India wrote that Admiral D. K. Joshi and he was unforgiving as a commanding officer wherever he served, tightening screws wherever he went. Many naval officers felt that he had lived up to his own exacting standards by resigning
5.
Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha
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A Member of Parliament of Lok Sabha is the representative of the Indian people to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament of India. Members of Parliament of Lok Sabha are chosen by elections on the basis of the adult suffrage. Parliament of India is bicameral with two houses, Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha, the maximum permitted strength of Members of Parliament in the Lok Sabha is 552. The majority party in the Lok Sabha chooses the Prime Minister of India, the first instance of Member of Parliament equivalent in India dates back to 9 December 1946, the day Constituent Assembly of India was formed with the purpose of drafting a constitution for India. As opposed to be elected on the basis of adult suffrage, muslims and Sikhs were given special representation as minorities. The Constituent Assembly of India took 2 years,11 months and 17 days to draft the Constitution for Independent India and was dissolved in 1949, on 26 January 1950, the Indian Constitution came into force and the first general elections were held in 1951-1952. The 1st Lok Sabha was constituted on 17 April 1952 and had 489 constituencies, a person must satisfy all following conditions to be qualified to become a Member of Parliament of the Lok Sabha, Must be a citizen of India. Must not be less than 25 years of age, must be a voter for any parliamentary constituency in India. Candidate of a political party needs one proposer from his constituency for his nomination. An independent candidate needs ten proposers, candidates are required to make a security deposit of ₹10,000. A person would be ineligible for being a Member of the Lok Sabha if the person, has ceased to be a citizen of India. Is so disqualified by any law made by the Indian Parliament, is so disqualified on the ground of defection. Has been convicted, among other things, for promoting enmity between different groups, has been convicted for offence of bribery. Has been punished for preaching and practicing social crimes such as untouchability, dowry, has been convicted for an offence and sentenced to imprisonment. Has been dismissed for corruption or for disloyalty to the State, the term of a Member of Parliament of Lok Sabha is five years from the date appointment for its first meeting. During a state of emergency, the term however can be extended by the Parliament of India by law for a period not exceeding one year at a time, after the state of emergency ends, the extension cannot exceed beyond a period of six months. Broad responsibilities of the Members of parliament of Lok Sabha are, Legislative responsibility, oversight responsibility, To ensure that the executive performs its duties satisfactorily. Representative responsibility, To represent the views and aspirations of the people of their constituency in the Parliament of India, power of the purse responsibility, To approve and oversee the revenues and expenditures proposed by the government
6.
Bharatiya Janata Party
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The Bharatiya Janata Party is one of the two major political parties in India, along with the Indian National Congress. As of 2016, it is the countrys largest political party in terms of representation in the parliament and state assemblies. The BJP is a party, with close ideological and organisational links to the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The BJPs origins lie in the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, formed in 1951 by Syama Prasad Mookerjee, after the State of Emergency in 1977, the Jana Sangh merged with several other parties to form the Janata Party, it defeated the incumbent Congress party in the 1977 general election. After three years in power, the Janata party dissolved in 1980 with the members of the erstwhile Jana Sangh reconvening to form the BJP. Although initially unsuccessful, winning two seats in the 1984 general election, it grew in strength on the back of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. After the 1998 general election, the BJP-led coalition known as the National Democratic Alliance formed a government under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for a year. Following fresh elections, the NDA government, again headed by Vajpayee, lasted for a term in office. In the 2004 general election, the NDA suffered an unexpected defeat, long time Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi led it to a landslide victory in the 2014 general election. Since that election, Modi leads the NDA government as Prime Minister and as of March 2017, the official ideology of the BJP is integral humanism, first formulated by Deendayal Upadhyaya in 1965. The party expresses a commitment to Hindutva, and its policy has historically reflected Hindu nationalist positions, the BJP advocates social conservatism and a foreign policy centred on nationalist principles. Its key issues have included the abrogation of the status to Jammu and Kashmir, the building of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. However, the 1998–2004 NDA government did not pursue any of these controversial issues and it instead focused on a largely neoliberal economic policy prioritising globalisation and economic growth over social welfare. The BJPs origins lie in the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, popularly known as the Jana Sangh and it was founded in collaboration with the Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and was widely regarded as the political arm of the RSS. The RSS loaned several of its leading pracharaks, or full-time workers, prominent among these was Deendayal Upadhyaya, who was appointed General Secretary. The Jana Sangh won only three Lok Sabha seats in the first general elections in 1952 and it maintained a minor presence in parliament until 1967. The Jana Sanghs first major campaign, begun in early 1953, centred on a demand for the integration of Jammu. Mookerjee was arrested in May 1953 for violating orders from the state government restraining him from entering Kashmir and he died of a heart attack the following month, while still in jail
7.
Bengali language
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Bengali, also known by its endonym Bangla, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in South Asia. With over 210 million speakers, Bengali is the seventh most spoken language in the world. Dominant in the last group was Persian, which was also the source of some grammatical forms, more recent studies suggest that the use of native and foreign words has been increasing, mainly because of the preference of Bengali speakers for the colloquial style. Today, Bengali is the language spoken in Bangladesh and the second most spoken language in India. Both the national anthems of Bangladesh and India were composed in Bengali, in 1952, the Bengali Language Movement successfully pushed for the languages official status in the Dominion of Pakistan. In 1999, UNESCO recognized 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the movement in East Pakistan. Language is an important element of Bengali identity and binds together a diverse region. Sanskrit was spoken in Bengal since the first millennium BCE, during the Gupta Empire, Bengal was a hub of Sanskrit literature. The Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were spoken in Bengal in the first millennium when the region was a part of the Magadha Realm and these dialects were called Magadhi Prakrit. They eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi, Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what are called Apabhraṃśa languages at the end of the first millennium. Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali evolved circa 1000–1200 AD from Sanskrit, for example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around the 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. Proto-Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty, during the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterized by the elision of word-final অ ô, the spread of compound verbs and Arabic and Persian influences. Bengali was a court language of the Sultanate of Bengal. Muslim rulers promoted the development of Bengali as part of efforts to Islamize. Bengali became the most spoken language in the Sultanate. This period saw borrowing of Perso-Arabic terms into Bengali vocabulary, major texts of Middle Bengali include Chandidas Shreekrishna Kirtana. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the dialect spoken in the Nadia region, a west-central Bengali dialect. Bengali presents a case of diglossia, with the literary
8.
Tamil language
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Tamil is a Dravidian language predominantly spoken by the Tamil people of India and Sri Lanka, and also by the Tamil diaspora, Sri Lankan Moors, Burghers, Douglas, and Chindians. Tamil is a language of two countries, Singapore and Sri Lanka. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and it is also used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia, along with English, Malay and Mandarin. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in the four other South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and it is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. Tamil is one of the classical languages in the world. Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions from 500 BC have been found on Adichanallur and 2 and it has been described as the only language of contemporary India which is recognizably continuous with a classical past. The variety and quality of classical Tamil literature has led to it being described as one of the classical traditions. A recorded Tamil literature has been documented for over 2000 years, the earliest period of Tamil literature, Sangam literature, is dated from ca.300 BC – AD300. It has the oldest extant literature among other Dravidian languages, the earliest epigraphic records found on rock edicts and hero stones date from around the 3rd century BC. More than 55% of the inscriptions found by the Archaeological Survey of India are in the Tamil language. Tamil language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in Sri Lanka, the two earliest manuscripts from India, acknowledged and registered by the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 1997 and 2005, were written in Tamil. In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamil prayer book in old Tamil script named Thambiraan Vanakkam, the Tamil Lexicon, published by the University of Madras, was one of the earliest dictionaries published in the Indian languages. According to a 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages, a family of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent. It is also classified as being part of a Tamil language family, the closest major relative of Tamil is Malayalam, the two began diverging around the 9th century CE. According to linguists like Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Tamil, as a Dravidian language, descends from Proto-Dravidian, linguistic reconstruction suggests that Proto-Dravidian was spoken around the third millennium BC, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin in peninsular India. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the associated with the Neolithic complexes of South India. The next phase in the reconstructed proto-history of Tamil is Proto-South Dravidian, the linguistic evidence suggests that Proto-South Dravidian was spoken around the middle of the second millennium BC, and that proto-Tamil emerged around the 3rd century BC. The earliest epigraphic attestations of Tamil are generally taken to have been shortly thereafter
9.
Nicobarese language
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The Nicobarese or Nicobaric languages form an isolated group of half a dozen closely related Austroasiatic languages, spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands of India. They have a total of about 30,000 speakers, the majority of Nicobarese speakers use the Car language. They appear to be at best distantly related to the Shompen languages of the inhabitants of the interior of Great Nicobar Island. The morphological similarities between Nicobarese and Austronesian languages have used to help support the Austric hypothesis. From north to south, Car Chaura–Teressa, Chaura, Teressa Central Nicobarese languages, Nancowry, Camorta, Katchal Southern Nicobarese or Sambelong Adams, systems of numeral classification in the Mon–Khmer, Nicobarese and Aslian subfamilies of Austroasiatic. Australia, Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, the Nancowry Word, Phonology, Affixal Morphology and Roots of a Nicobarese Language. Current Inquiry Into Language and Linguistics 37, box 5677, Station L, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6C 4G1
10.
Malayalam
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Malayalam /mʌləˈjɑːləm/ is a language spoken in India, predominantly in the state of Kerala. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and was designated as a Classical Language in India in 2013 and it was developed to the current form mainly by the influence of the poet Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan in the 16th century. Malayalam has official status in the state of Kerala and in the union territories of Lakshadweep. It belongs to the Dravidian family of languages and is spoken by some 38 million people, according to one theory, Malayalam originated from Middle Tamil in the 7th century. However, the current understanding proposes the separation of Malayalam from Proto-Dravidian in the pre-historic era, Malayalam incorporated many elements from Sanskrit through the ages. Before Malayalam came into being, Old Tamil was used in literature and courts of a region called Tamilakam, including present day Kerala state, silappatikaramit was written by Chera prince Ilango Adigal from Chunkaparra, and is considered a classic in Sangam literature. Modern Malayalam still preserves many words from the ancient Tamil vocabulary of Sangam literature, the earliest script used to write Malayalam was the Vatteluttu alphabet, and later the Kolezhuttu, which derived from it. As Malayalam began to borrow words as well as the rules of grammar from Sanskrit. This developed into the modern Malayalam script, many medieval liturgical texts were written in an admixture of Sanskrit and early Malayalam, called Manipravalam. The oldest literary work in Malayalam, distinct from the Tamil tradition, is dated from between the 9th and 11th centuries, the first travelogue in any Indian language is the Malayalam Varthamanappusthakam, written by Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar in 1785. Due to its lineage deriving from both Tamil and Sanskrit, the Malayalam script has the largest number of letters among the Indian language orthographies, the Malayalam script includes letters capable of representing almost all the sounds of all Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. Malayalam serves as a language on the islands including the Mahl-dominated Minicoy Island. The word Malayalam originated from the Sanskrit resp, Malayalam words malai or mala, meaning hill, and elam, meaning region. Malayalam thus translates as hill region and used to refer to the land of the Chera dynasty, the language Malayalam is alternatively called Alealum, Malayalani, Malayali, Malean, Maliyad, and Mallealle. The word Malayalam originally meant only for the name of the region, Malayanma or Malayayma represented the language. With the emergence of modern Malayalam language, the name of the language started to be known by the name of the region, hence now, the word Malayanma is considered by some to represent the olden Malayalam language. The language got the name Malayalam during the mid 19th century, the origin of Malayalam, an independent offshoot of the proto-Dravidian language, has been and continues to be an engaging pursuit among comparative historical linguists. Together with Tamil, Toda, Kannada and Tulu, Malayalam belongs to the group of Dravidian languages
11.
Telugu language
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Telugu is a Dravidian language native to India. It is also spoken by significant minorities in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and it is one of six languages designated a classical language of India by the Government of India. Telugu ranks third by the number of speakers in India. It is one of the scheduled languages of the Republic of India. Approximately 10,000 inscriptions exist in the Telugu language, the speakers of the language call it Telugu or Tenugu. The older forms of the name include Teluṅgu, Tenuṅgu and Teliṅga, the etymology of Telugu is not certain. Some historical scholars have suggested a derivation from Sanskrit triliṅgam, as in Trilinga Desa, tradition holds that Shiva descended as a lingam on three mountains, Kaleshwaram, Srisailam, and Bhimeswaram, which are said to have marked the boundaries of the Trilinga Desa. Atharvana Acharya in the 13th century wrote a grammar of Telugu, Appa Kavi in the 17th century explicitly wrote that Telugu was derived from Trilinga. Scholar Charles P. Brown comments that it was a strange notion as all the predecessors of Appa Kavi had no knowledge of such a derivation. George Abraham Grierson and other linguists doubt this derivation, holding rather that Telugu was the older term, another view holds that tenugu is derived from the proto-Dravidian word ten– south to mean the people who lived in the south/southern direction. The name telugu then, is a result of n -> l alternation established in Telugu, according to the natve tradition Telugu grammar has a hoary past. Sage Kanva was said to be the first grammarian of Telugu, a Rajeswara Sarma discussed the hisoricity and content of Kanvas grammar written in Sanskrit. He cited twenty grammatical aphorisms ascribed to Kanva, and concluded that Kanva wrote an ancient Telugu Grammar which was lost, according to the Russian linguist M. S. Andronov, Telugu split from the Proto-Dravidian languages between 1500 and 1000 BC. According to linguist Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Telugu, as a Dravidian language, descends from Proto-Dravidian, linguistic reconstruction suggests that Proto-Dravidian was spoken around the third millennium BC, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin in peninsular India. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the associated with the Neolithic societies of South India. A legend gives the Lepakshi town a significant place in the Ramayana — this was where the bird Jatayu fell, when Sri Rama reached the spot, he saw the bird and said compassionately, “Le Pakshi” — ‘rise, bird’ in Telugu. This indicates the presence of Telugu Language during Ramayana period, there is a mention of Telugu people or Telugu country in ancient Tamil literature as Telunka Nadu. Telugu words were found in Hebrew literature, inscriptions with Telugu words dating back to 400 BC to 100 BC have been discovered in Bhattiprolu in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh
12.
Marathi language
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Marathi is an Indian language spoken predominantly by the Marathi people of Maharashtra. It is the language and co-official language in the Maharashtra and Goa states of Western India, respectively. There were 73 million speakers in 2001, Marathi ranks 19th in the list of most spoken languages in the world, Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India, after Hindi, Bengali and Telugu in that order. Marathi has some of the oldest literature of all modern Indo-Aryan languages, the major dialects of Marathi are Standard Marathi and the Varhadi dialect. Malvani Konkani has been influenced by Marathi varieties. Marathi has several features that set it aside from most other Indian languages, Marathi distinguishes inclusive and exclusive forms of we and possesses a three-way gender system that features the neuter in addition to the masculine and the feminine. In its phonology it contrasts apico-alveolar with alveopalatal affricates and, in common with Gujarati, Marathi is primarily spoken in Maharashtra and parts of neighbouring states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, union-territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The cities of Baroda, Surat, and Ahmedabad, Belgaum, Karwar, Nipani, Indore, Gwalior, Adoni, Hyderabad, Marathi is also spoken by Maharashtrian emigrants worldwide, especially in the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, Mauritius, and Canada. Marathi is the language of Maharashtra and co-official language in the union territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra. In Goa, Konkani is the official language, however. Marathi is included among the languages which stand a part of the Eight Schedule of the Constitution of India, the contemporary grammatical rules described by Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad and endorsed by the Government of Maharashtra are supposed to take precedence in standard written Marathi. Traditions of Marathi Linguistics and the rules give special status to tatsamas. This special status expects the rules for tatsamas to be followed as in Sanskrit and this practice provides Marathi with a large treasure of Sanskrit words to cope with demands of new technical words whenever needed. Jawaharlal Nehru University has announced plans to establish a department for Marathi. Marathi Day is celebrated on 27 February, the birthday of poet Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar, Indian languages, including Marathi, that belong to the Indo-Aryan language family are derived from early forms of Prakrit. Marathi is one of languages that further descend from Maharashtri Prakrit. Marathi literature began and grew owing to the rise of the Seuna dynasty of Devgiri, further growth and usage of the language was because of two religious sects – the Mahanubhava and Varkari panthans – who adopted Marathi as the medium for preaching their doctrines of devotion. Marathi had attained a place in court life by the time of the Seuna kings
13.
Human Development Index
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The Human Development Index is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores higher HDI when the lifespan is higher, the level is higher. The 2010 Human Development Report introduced an Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, while the simple HDI remains useful, it stated that the IHDI is the actual level of human development, and the HDI can be viewed as an index of potential human development. The origins of the HDI are found in the annual Human Development Reports produced by the Human Development Reports Office of the United Nations Development Programme, nobel laureate Amartya Sen, utilized Haqs work in his own work on human capabilities. The following three indices are used,1, Life Expectancy Index = LE −2085 −20 LEI is 1 when Life expectancy at birth is 85 and 0 when Life expectancy at birth is 20. Education Index = MYSI + EYSI22.1 Mean Years of Schooling Index = MYS15 Fifteen is the maximum of this indicator for 2025. 2.2 Expected Years of Schooling Index = EYS18 Eighteen is equivalent to achieving a degree in most countries. Income Index = ln − ln ln − ln II is 1 when GNI per capita is $75,000 and 0 when GNI per capita is $100. Finally, the HDI is the mean of the previous three normalized indices, HDI = LEI ⋅ EI ⋅ II3. Standard of living, as indicated by the logarithm of gross domestic product per capita at purchasing power parity. This methodology was used by the UNDP until their 2011 report, the formula defining the HDI is promulgated by the United Nations Development Programme. The 2016 Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme was released on March 21,2017, below is the list of the very high human development countries, = increase. The number in brackets represents the number of ranks the country has climbed relative to the ranking in the 2015 report, the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is a measure of the average level of human development of people in a society once inequality is taken into account. The rankings are not relative to the HDI list above due to the exclusion of countries which are missing IHDI data. Countries in the top quartile of HDI with a missing IHDI, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, Brunei, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Andorra, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait. The 2015 Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme was released on December 14,2015, below is the list of the very high human development countries, = increase. The number in brackets represents the number of ranks the country has climbed relative to the ranking in the 2014 report, the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is a measure of the average level of human development of people in a society once inequality is taken into account. Note, The green arrows, red arrows, and blue dashes represent changes in rank, the rankings are not relative to the HDI list above due to the exclusion of countries which are missing IHDI data
14.
Dugong
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The dugong is a medium-sized marine mammal. It is one of four living species of the order Sirenia and it is the only living representative of the once-diverse family Dugongidae, its closest modern relative, Stellers sea cow, was hunted to extinction in the 18th century. The dugong is the strictly marine herbivorous mammal. The dugong is the only sirenian in its range, which spans the waters of some 40 countries and territories throughout the Indo-West Pacific, the northern waters of Australia between Shark Bay and Moreton Bay are believed to be the dugongs contemporary stronghold. Like all modern sirenians, the dugong has a body with no dorsal fin or hind limbs. The forelimbs or flippers are paddle-like, the dugong is easily distinguished from the manatees by its fluked, dolphin-like tail, but also possesses a unique skull and teeth. Its snout is sharply downturned, an adaptation for feeding in benthic seagrass communities, the molar teeth are simple and peg-like unlike the more elaborate molar dentition of manatees. The dugong has been hunted for thousands of years for its meat, traditional hunting still has great cultural significance in several countries in its modern range, particularly northern Australia and the Pacific Islands. The dugongs current distribution is fragmented, and many populations are believed to be close to extinction, the IUCN lists the dugong as a species vulnerable to extinction, while the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species limits or bans the trade of derived products. Despite being legally protected in many countries, the causes of population decline remain anthropogenic and include fishing-related fatalities, habitat degradation. With its long lifespan of 70 years or more, and slow rate of reproduction, the word dugong derives from the Tagalog term dugong which was in turn adopted from the Malay duyung, both meaning lady of the sea. Other common local names include sea cow, sea pig and sea camel, Dugong dugon is the only extant species of the family Dugongidae, and one of only four extant species of the Sirenia order, the others forming the manatee family. It was first classified by Müller in 1776 as Trichechus dugon and it was later assigned as the type species of Dugong by Lacépède and further classified within its own family by Gray and subfamily by Simpson. Dugongs and other sirenians are not closely related to marine mammals. Dugongs and elephants share a group with hyraxes and the aardvark. The fossil record shows sirenians appearing in the Eocene, where they most likely lived in the Tethys Ocean, the Stellers sea cow became extinct in the 18th century. No fossils exist of other members of the Dugongidae, molecular studies have been made on dugong populations using mitochondrial DNA. The results have suggested that the population of Southeast Asia is distinct from the others, Australia has two distinct maternal lineages, one of which also contains the dugongs from Africa and Arabia
15.
Andaman wood pigeon
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The Andaman wood pigeon is a species of bird in the family Columbidae. It is endemic to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and its head is white with a red yellow-tipped beak. The rest of its body is black and it is threatened by habitat loss
16.
Pterocarpus dalbergioides
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Pterocarpus dalbergioides, the Andaman padauk, Andaman redwood or East Indian mahogany, is a species of legume in the Fabaceae family. It is sometimes called narra, but this is just a term used for any of several Pterocarpus species. It is found only in India,2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
17.
Bay of Bengal
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The Bay of Bengal, the largest bay in the world, forms the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. Roughly triangular, it is bordered mostly by India and Sri Lanka to the west, Bangladesh to the north, and Myanmar, the Bay of Bengal occupies an area of 2,172,000 square kilometres. Among the important ports are Chennai, Chittagong, Colombo, Kolkata, Mongla, Paradip, Tuticorin, Visakhapatnam, on the south, Adams Bridge and from the southern extreme of Dondra Head to the north point of Poeloe Bras. The bay gets its name from the historical Bengal region, in ancient Hindu scriptures, this water body is referred to as Mahodadhi while it appears as Sinus Gangeticus or Gangeticus Sinus, meaning Gulf of the Ganges, in ancient maps. The other Sanskrit names for Bay of Bengal are Vangopasagara, also called as Vangasagara. Even today in Bengali, it is known as Bongoposagor, many major rivers of the Indian subcontinent flow west to east before draining into the Bay of Bengal. The Ganga is the northernmost of these and its main channel enters and flows through Bangladesh, where it is known as the Padma River, before joining the Meghna River. However, the Brahmaputra River flows from east to west in Assam before turning south and this joins the Padma whereupon the Padma joins the Meghna River that finally drains into Bay of Bengal. The Sundarbans mangrove forest at the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers lies partly in West Bengal, the Brahmaputra at 2,948 km is the 28th longest River in the world. The Hooghly River, another channel of the Ganga that flows through Calcutta drains into Bay of Bengal in India itself, the Ganga–Brahmaputra rivers deposits nearly 1000 million tons of sediment per year. The Bay of Bengal used to be deeper than the Mariana Trench, the fan has buried organic carbon at a rate of nearly 1.1 trillion mol/yr since the early Miocene period. The two rivers currently contribute nearly 8% of the organic carbon deposited in the worlds oceans. Due to high TOC accumulation in the sea bed of the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh can reclaim land substantially and economically from the sea area by constructing sea dikes, bunds, causeways and by trapping the sediment from its rivers. Further south of Bengal, the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri Rivers are the rivers that flow from west to east in the Indian subcontinent. Many small rivers drain directly into the Bay of Bengal. The Irrawaddy River in Myanmar flows into the Andaman Sea of the Bay of Bengal, some of the biggest ports in the world — Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Paradip, Kolkata in India as well as Chittagong and Mongla in Bangladesh — are on the bay. Other Indian ports on the bay include Kakinada, Pondicherry, Dhamra, the islands in the bay are numerous, including the Andaman Islands, Nicobar and Mergui groups of India
18.
Andaman Sea
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The sea has been traditionally used for fishery and transportation of goods between the coastal countries and its coral reefs and islands are popular tourist destinations. The fishery and tourist infrastructure was damaged by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. At its southeastern reaches, the Andaman Sea narrows to form the Straits of Malacca, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Andaman or Burma Sea as follows, On the Southwest. The Eastern limit of the Bay of Bengal, a line joining Lem Voalan in Siam, and Pedropunt in Sumatra. The average depth of the sea is about 1,000 meters, the northern and eastern parts are shallower than 180 meters due to the silt deposited by the Irrawaddy River. This major river flows into the sea from the north through Myanmar, the western and central areas are 900–3,000 meters deep. Less than 5% of the sea is deeper than 3,000 meters, and in a system of submarine valleys east of the Andaman-Nicobar Ridge, the sea floor is covered with pebbles, gravel and sand. Running in a rough north–south line on the seabed of the Andaman Sea is the boundary between two plates, the Burma Plate and the Sunda Plate. As a result, a basin center was created, which began to form the marginal basin which would become the Andaman Sea. The boundary between two tectonic plates results in high seismic activity in the region. Numerous earthquakes have been recorded, and at least six, in 1797,1833,1861,2004,2005 and 2007, had the magnitude of 8.4 or higher. On December 26,2004, a portion of the boundary between the Burma Plate and the Indo-Australian Plate slipped, causing the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. This megathrust earthquake had a magnitude of 9.3, between 1300 and 1600 kilometers of the boundary underwent thrust faulting and shifted by about 20 meters, with the sea floor being uplifted several meters. This rise in the sea floor generated a tsunami with an estimated height of 28 meters that killed approximately 280,000 people along the coast of the Indian Ocean. The initial quake was followed by a series of aftershocks along the arc of the Andaman, the entire event severely damaged the fishing infrastructure. Within the sea, to the east of the main Great Andaman island group, lies Barren Island and this island-volcano is 3 km in diameter and rises 354 meters above the sea level. Its recent activity resumed in 1991 after a period of almost 200 years. It is caused by the subduction of the India Plate beneath the Andaman island arc
19.
Aceh
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Aceh, is a special region of Indonesia. The territory is located at the end of Sumatra. It is close to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India, there are 10 indigenous ethnic groups in this region, the largest being the Acehnese people, accounting for approximately 80% to 90% of the regions population. Aceh is thought to have been the place where the spread of Islam in Indonesia began, Islam reached Aceh around 1250 AD. In the early seventeenth century the Sultanate of Aceh was the most wealthy, powerful, Aceh has a history of political independence and resistance to control by outsiders, including the former Dutch colonists and the Indonesian government. Aceh has substantial natural resources, including oil and natural gas, relative to most of Indonesia, it is a religiously conservative area. It has the highest proportion of Muslims in Indonesia, who live according to Sharia customs. Aceh was the closest point of land to the epicenter of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, approximately 170,000 Indonesians were killed or went missing in the disaster. The disaster helped precipitate the peace agreement between the government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement, Aceh was first known as Aceh Darussalam and then later as the Daerah Istimewa Aceh, Nanggroë Aceh Darussalam and Aceh. Past spellings of Aceh include Acheh, Atjeh, and Achin, according to several archaeological findings, the first evidence of human habitation in Aceh is from a site near the Tamiang River where shell middens are present. Stone tools and faunal remains were found on the site. Archeologists believe the site was first occupied around 10,000 BC, historic names such as Indrapurba, Indrapurwa, Indrapatra, and Indrapuri gave some hint of Indian influence on this region. However, there are no archaeological findings that link this region with Hinduism, evidence concerning the initial coming and subsequent establishment of Islam in Southeast Asia is thin and inconclusive. The historian Anthony Reid has argued that the region of the Cham people on the south-central coast of Vietnam was one of the earliest Islamic centers in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, as the Cham people fled the Vietnamese, one of the earliest locations that they established a relationship with was Aceh, furthermore, it is thought that one of the earliest centers of Islam was in the Aceh region. When Venetian traveller Marco Polo passed by Sumatra on his way home from China in 1292 he found that Peureulak was a Muslim town while nearby Basma, Basma and Samara are often said to be Pasai and Samudra but evidence is inconclusive. The gravestone of Sultan Malik as-Salih, the first Muslim ruler of Samudra, has found and is dated AH696. This is the earliest clear evidence of a Muslim dynasty in the Indonesia-Malay area, ibn Batutah, a Moroccan traveller, passing through on his way to China in 1345 and 1346, found that the ruler of Samudra was a follower of the Shafii school of Islam
20.
Indonesia
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Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a unitary sovereign state and transcontinental country located mainly in Southeast Asia with some territories in Oceania. Situated between the Indian and Pacific oceans, it is the worlds largest island country, with more than seventeen thousand islands. At 1,904,569 square kilometres, Indonesia is the worlds 14th-largest country in terms of area and worlds 7th-largest country in terms of combined sea. It has an population of over 260 million people and is the worlds fourth most populous country. The worlds most populous island, Java, contains more than half of the countrys population, Indonesias republican form of government includes an elected legislature and president. Indonesia has 34 provinces, of which five have Special Administrative status and its capital and countrys most populous city is Jakarta, which is also the most populous city in Southeast Asia and the second in Asia. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, other neighbouring countries include Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, Palau, and the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Despite its large population and densely populated regions, Indonesia has vast areas of wilderness that support the second highest level of biodiversity. The country has abundant natural resources like oil and natural gas, tin, copper, agriculture mainly produces rice, palm oil, tea, coffee, cacao, medicinal plants, spices and rubber. Indonesias major trading partners are Japan, United States, China, the Indonesian archipelago has been an important region for trade since at least the 7th century, when Srivijaya and then later Majapahit traded with China and India. Local rulers gradually absorbed foreign cultural, religious and political models from the early centuries CE, Indonesian history has been influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources. Indonesia consists of hundreds of native ethnic and linguistic groups. The largest – and politically dominant – ethnic group are the Javanese, a shared identity has developed, defined by a national language, ethnic diversity, religious pluralism within a Muslim-majority population, and a history of colonialism and rebellion against it. Indonesias national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, articulates the diversity that shapes the country, Indonesias economy is the worlds 16th largest by nominal GDP and the 8th largest by GDP at PPP, the largest in Southeast Asia, and is considered an emerging market and newly industrialised country. Indonesia has been a member of the United Nations since 1950, Indonesia is a member of the G20 major economies and World Trade Organization. The name Indonesia derives from the Greek name of the Indós, the name dates to the 18th century, far predating the formation of independent Indonesia. In 1850, George Windsor Earl, an English ethnologist, proposed the terms Indunesians—and, his preference, in the same publication, one of his students, James Richardson Logan, used Indonesia as a synonym for Indian Archipelago. However, Dutch academics writing in East Indies publications were reluctant to use Indonesia, they preferred Malay Archipelago, the Netherlands East Indies, popularly Indië, the East, and Insulinde
21.
Thailand
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Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand, formerly known as Siam, is a country at the centre of the Indochinese peninsula in Southeast Asia. With a total area of approximately 513,000 km2, Thailand is the worlds 51st-largest country and it is the 20th-most-populous country in the world, with around 66 million people. The capital and largest city is Bangkok, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and has switched between parliamentary democracy and military junta for decades, the latest coup being in May 2014 by the National Council for Peace and Order. Its capital and most populous city is Bangkok and its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast, and Indonesia and India on the Andaman Sea to the southwest. The Thai economy is the worlds 20th largest by GDP at PPP and it became a newly industrialised country and a major exporter in the 1990s. Manufacturing, agriculture, and tourism are leading sectors of the economy and it is considered a middle power in the region and around the world. The country has always been called Mueang Thai by its citizens, by outsiders prior to 1949, it was usually known by the exonym Siam. The word Siam has been identified with the Sanskrit Śyāma, the names Shan and A-hom seem to be variants of the same word. The word Śyâma is possibly not its origin, but a learned, another theory is the name derives from Chinese, Ayutthaya emerged as a dominant centre in the late fourteenth century. The Chinese called this region Xian, which the Portuguese converted into Siam, the signature of King Mongkut reads SPPM Mongkut King of the Siamese, giving the name Siam official status until 24 June 1939 when it was changed to Thailand. Thailand was renamed Siam from 1945 to 11 May 1949, after which it reverted to Thailand. According to George Cœdès, the word Thai means free man in the Thai language, ratcha Anachak Thai means kingdom of Thailand or kingdom of Thai. Etymologically, its components are, ratcha, -ana- -chak, the Thai National Anthem, written by Luang Saranupraphan during the extremely patriotic 1930s, refers to the Thai nation as, prathet Thai. The first line of the anthem is, prathet thai ruam lueat nuea chat chuea thai, Thailand is the unity of Thai flesh. There is evidence of habitation in Thailand that has been dated at 40,000 years before the present. Similar to other regions in Southeast Asia, Thailand was heavily influenced by the culture and religions of India, Thailand in its earliest days was under the rule of the Khmer Empire, which had strong Hindu roots, and the influence among Thais remains even today. Voretzsch believes that Buddhism must have been flowing into Siam from India in the time of the Indian Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire, later Thailand was influenced by the south Indian Pallava dynasty and north Indian Gupta Empire. The Menam Basin was originally populated by the Mons, and the location of Dvaravati in the 7th century, the History of the Yuan mentions an embassy from the kingdom of Sukhothai in 1282
22.
Myanmar
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Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and also known as Burma, is a sovereign state in South East Asia bordered by Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. About one third of Myanmars total perimeter of 5,876 km, forms an uninterrupted coastline of 1,930 km along the Bay of Bengal, the countrys 2014 census revealed a much lower population than expected, with 51 million people recorded. Myanmar is 676,578 square kilometres in size and its capital city is Naypyidaw and its largest city and former capital city is Yangon. Early civilizations in Myanmar included the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu city-states in Upper Burma, the Pagan Kingdom fell due to the Mongol invasions and several warring states emerged. In the 16th century, reunified by the Taungoo Dynasty, the country was for a period the largest empire in the history of Mainland Southeast Asia. The early 19th century Konbaung Dynasty ruled over an area included modern Myanmar and briefly controlled Manipur. The British invaded Myanmar after three Anglo-Burmese Wars in the 19th century and the became a British colony. Myanmar became an independent nation in 1948, initially as a nation and then, following a coup détat in 1962. For most of its independent years, the country has been engrossed in rampant ethnic strife, during this time, the United Nations and several other organisations have reported consistent and systematic human rights violations in the country. In 2011, the junta was officially dissolved following a 2010 general election. While former military leaders still wield enormous power in the country, there is, however, continuing criticism of the governments treatment of the Muslim Rohingya minority and its poor response to the religious clashes. In the landmark 2015 election, Aung San Suu Kyis party won a majority in both houses, Myanmar is a country rich in jade and gems, oil, natural gas and other mineral resources. In 2013, its GDP stood at US$56.7 billion, the income gap in Myanmar is among the widest in the world, as a large proportion of the economy is controlled by supporters of the former military government. As of 2016, according to the Human Development Index, Myanmar had a level of human development. The renaming remains a contested issue, many political and ethnic opposition groups and countries continue to use Burma because they do not recognise the legitimacy of the ruling military government or its authority to rename the country. The countrys official name is the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. Countries that do not officially recognise that name use the long form Union of Burma instead, in English, the country is popularly known as either Burma or Myanmar /ˈmjɑːnˌmɑːr/. Both these names are derived from the name of the majority Burmese Bamar ethnic group, Myanmar is considered to be the literary form of the name of the group, while Burma is derived from Bamar, the colloquial form of the groups name
23.
Andaman Islands
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The Andaman Islands form an archipelago in the Bay of Bengal between India, to the west, and Myanmar, to the north and east. Most are part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Union Territory of India, while a number in the north of the archipelago, including the Coco Islands. The Andaman Islands are home to the Sentinelese, who have had no contact with any other people, the name of the Andaman Islands is ancient. A theory that became prevalent in the late 19th century is that it derives from Andoman, a form of Hanuman, another Italian traveller, Niccolò de Conti, mentioned the islands and said that the name means Island of Gold. The Andaman islands have been inhabited for several years, at the very least. The indigenous Andamanese people appear to have lived on the islands in substantial isolation from that time until the 18th century CE, from 800 to 1200 CE, the Tamil Chola dynasty created an empire that eventually extended from southeastern peninsular India to parts of Malaysia. Rajendra Chola I took over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and maintained them as a naval base to launch a naval expedition against the Srivijaya empire. In 1789, Bengal Presidency established a base and penal colony on Chatham Island in the southeast bay of Great Andaman. The settlement is now known as Port Blair, after two years, the colony was moved to the northeast part of Great Andaman and was named Port Cornwallis after Admiral William Cornwallis. However, there was disease and death in the penal colony. In 1824, Port Cornwallis was the rendezvous of the carrying the army to the First Burmese War. In the 1830s and 1840s, shipwrecked crews who landed on the Andamans were often attacked and killed by the natives, in 1855, the government proposed another settlement on the islands, including a convict establishment, but the Indian Rebellion of 1857 forced a delay in its construction. However, because the rebellion gave the British so many prisoners, it made the new Andaman settlement and prison urgently necessary. Construction began in November 1857 at Port Blair using inmates labour,17 May 1859 was another major day for Andaman. The Battle of Aberdeen was fought between the Great Andamanese Tribe and the British, today, a memorial stands in Andaman Water sports complex as a tribute to the people who lost their life. Fearing foreign invasion and with help from a convict from Cellular Jail, the great Andamanese tribe stormed the British post. Later, it was identified that a convict named Doodnath had changed sides. Today, the tribe has been reduced to some 50 people, the government of Andaman Islands is making efforts to increase the headcount of this tribe
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Nicobar Islands
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The Nicobar Islands are an archipelagic island chain in the eastern Indian Ocean and one of the most isolated in the world. They are located in Southeast Asia,150 km north of Aceh on Sumatra, located 1,300 km southeast of the Indian subcontinent, across the Bay of Bengal, they form part of the Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. UNESCO has declared the Great Nicobar Island as one of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves, the Nicobar Islands cover a land area of 1,648.13 km2 and had a population of 36,844 at the 2011 Census. The Nicobar Islands are part of an island arc created by the collision of the Indo-Australian Plate with Eurasia. The climate is warm and tropical, with temperatures ranging from 22 to 30 °C, rainfall is heavy due to annual monsoons and measures around 3000 to 3800 mm each year. The vegetation of the Nicobars is typically divided into the mangrove forests. Additionally, several islands contain extensive inland grasslands, though these are thought to result from human intervention, the Nicobar Islands are recognised as a distinct terrestrial ecoregion, the Nicobar Islands rain forests, with many endemic species. The Nicobar Islands are believed to have inhabited for thousands of years. An indigenous tribe living at the tip of Great Nicobar, called the Shompen. The modern name is derived from the Chola dynasty name for the islands. Marco Polo also referred to this island as Necuverann, the history of organised European colonisation on the islands began with the Danish East India Company in 1754/56. Between 1778 and 1783, William Bolts attempted to establish an Austrian colony on the islands on the assumption that Denmark–Norway had abandoned its claims to the islands. Italy made an attempt at buying the Nicobar Islands from Denmark between 1864 and 1868, the Italian Minister of Agriculture and Commerce Luigi Torelli started a negotiation that looked promising, but failed due to the unexpected end of his Office and the first La Marmora Cabinet. The negotiations were interrupted and never brought up again, denmarks presence in the islands ended formally on 16 October 1868 when it sold the rights to the Nicobar Islands to Britain, which in 1869 made them part of British India. During World War II, the islands were occupied by Japan between 1942 and 1945, India occupied the Island after that, as its Territory. Together with the Andaman Islands, they became a territory of India in 1950. On 26 December 2004, the coast of the Nicobar Islands was devastated by a 10–15 m high tsunami following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. At least 6,000 people were killed on the Andaman, several islands were heavily damaged with initial reports of islands broken in two or three pieces and coral reefs moved above water
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Latitude
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In geography, latitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the north–south position of a point on the Earths surface. Latitude is an angle which ranges from 0° at the Equator to 90° at the poles, lines of constant latitude, or parallels, run east–west as circles parallel to the equator. Latitude is used together with longitude to specify the location of features on the surface of the Earth. Without qualification the term latitude should be taken to be the latitude as defined in the following sections. Also defined are six auxiliary latitudes which are used in special applications, there is a separate article on the History of latitude measurements. Two levels of abstraction are employed in the definition of latitude and longitude, in the first step the physical surface is modelled by the geoid, a surface which approximates the mean sea level over the oceans and its continuation under the land masses. The second step is to approximate the geoid by a mathematically simpler reference surface, the simplest choice for the reference surface is a sphere, but the geoid is more accurately modelled by an ellipsoid. The definitions of latitude and longitude on such surfaces are detailed in the following sections. Lines of constant latitude and longitude together constitute a graticule on the reference surface, latitude and longitude together with some specification of height constitute a geographic coordinate system as defined in the specification of the ISO19111 standard. This is of importance in accurate applications, such as a Global Positioning System, but in common usage, where high accuracy is not required. In English texts the latitude angle, defined below, is denoted by the Greek lower-case letter phi. It is measured in degrees, minutes and seconds or decimal degrees, the precise measurement of latitude requires an understanding of the gravitational field of the Earth, either to set up theodolites or to determine GPS satellite orbits. The study of the figure of the Earth together with its field is the science of geodesy. These topics are not discussed in this article and this article relates to coordinate systems for the Earth, it may be extended to cover the Moon, planets and other celestial objects by a simple change of nomenclature. The primary reference points are the poles where the axis of rotation of the Earth intersects the reference surface, the plane through the centre of the Earth and perpendicular to the rotation axis intersects the surface at a great circle called the Equator. Planes parallel to the plane intersect the surface in circles of constant latitude. The Equator has a latitude of 0°, the North Pole has a latitude of 90° North, the latitude of an arbitrary point is the angle between the equatorial plane and the radius to that point. The latitude, as defined in this way for the sphere, is termed the spherical latitude
26.
Andaman and Nicobar Command
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The Andaman and Nicobar Command is the only Tri-service theater command of the Indian Armed Forces, based at Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a Union Territory of India. It was created in 2001 to safeguard Indias strategic interests in Southeast Asia, as of 2014, the command includes 15 ships of the Indian Navy, two Navy Sea bases, four Air Force and Naval Air bases and two Army brigades. Previously there was a consideration to replace Fortress Commander, Andaman, the previous plan to set up FENC was set in motion in 1995 following a closed-door meeting in Washington between then Indian Prime Minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao, and then US president, Bill Clinton. At the time, Pentagon officials made a formal request to the United Front coalition government in New Delhi to open a base in the islands. The 750-km long Andaman and Nicobar archipelago comprise a chain of 572 islands, and is located about 1200 km from mainland India, the A&NC would also be in a position to assist the multinational Malacca Straits Security Initiative, aimed at curbing threats in the Malacca Straits. The GoM had recommended that the Commander of this Joint Command would report to the proposed Chief of Defence Staff, the Andaman and Nicobar Command was in place by the end of September 2001. The Andaman and Nicobar Command is commanded by an officer who reports directly to the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee in New Delhi. The Chief of Staff of the command is a two-star officer, Vice Admiral Arun Prakash was the first Commander–in–Chief of the Andaman & Nicobar Command. The command is headed by Vice Admiral Bimal Verma, who took command on 29 February 2016. As of May 2015, there are 20 surface warships of the navy based at INS Jarawa, Port Blair under the A&N Command, up from 15 ships in 2014 and 13 ships in 2011. Naval vessels include Trinkat-class patrol vessel, Mk.3 LCU vessels, Polnochny-C/D class amphibious warfare vessels, the port bases amphibious platforms, offshore patrol vessels and fast attack crafts. Since 2013, two Saryu-class patrol vessels have been home-ported at Port Blair, the command provides logistical and administrative support to naval ships which are sent on deployment to East Asia and the Pacific Ocean. On 6 April 2016 INS Karmuk, a missile Corvette ship was re-based to Port Blair from eastern naval command, for short duration, an 800-men battalion could also be carried. The vessel also has a medium LST, apart from several Landing Craft Utility with capacity to carry, the 108 Infantry Brigade of the Indian Army, comprising three battalions, which includes the 21 Bihar, is deployed to the A&N Command. Dornier Do 228 maritime patrol craft and Mi 8 helicopters, operating from airfields at Port Blair, Car Nicobar, Campbell Bay and Diglipur maintain surveillance over the sea areas, the Andaman & Nicobar region of the Indian Coast Guard also falls under the purview of the command. In July 2012, the navy commissioned INS Baaz, an air station which is located 300 nautical miles south of Port Blair and is the southernmost air station of the Indian Armed Forces. The Air Force also maintains an Air Defense Wing fielding a squadron of S-75 Dvina Long-Range SAMs, the armys single brigade is planned to be increased by deploying a division size force under the command. The number of vessels based in the island chain will increase to 32 before 2022
27.
Indian Armed Forces
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The Indian Armed Forces are the military forces of the Republic of India. It consists of three professional uniformed services, the Indian Army, Indian Navy, and Indian Air Force, the President of India is the Supreme Commander of the Indian Armed Forces. The Indian Armed Forces are under the management of the Ministry of Defence of the Government of India, with strength of over 1.4 million active personnel, it is worlds 3rd largest military force and has the worlds largest volunteer army. India honours its armed forces and military personnel annually on Armed Forces Flag Day,7 December, Armed with nuclear triad, the Indian armed forces are steadily undergoing modernisation, with investments in areas such as futuristic soldier systems and missile defence system. The Department of Defence Production of the Ministry of Defence is responsible for the production of equipment used by the Indian Armed Forces. It comprises the 41 Indian Ordnance Factories under control of the Ordnance Factories Board and 8 Defence PSUs namely, HAL, BEL, BEML, BDL, MDL, GSL, GRSE and Midhani. India was the largest importer of defence equipment in 2014 with Russia, Israel, France, the Government of India has launched Make in India initiative to indigenise manufacturing and reduce dependence on imports, including defence imports and procurement. India has one of the longest military histories, dating back several millennia, the first reference of armies is found in the Vedas as well as the epics Ramayana and Mahabaratha. Classical Indian texts on archery in particular, and martial arts in general are known as Dhanurveda, Indian maritime history dates back 5,000 years. The first tidal dock is believed to have built at Lothal around 2300 BC during the Indus Valley Civilisation. The Rig Veda written around 1500 BC, credits Varuna with knowledge of the routes and describes naval expeditions. There is reference to the wings of a vessel called Plava. A compass, Matsya yantra was used for navigation in the fourth and fifth century AD, the earliest known reference to an organisation devoted to ships in ancient India is to the Mauryan Empire from the 4th century BC. Powerful militaries included those of the Maurya, Satavahana, Chola, Vijayanagara, Mughal, emperor Chandragupta Mauryas mentor and advisor Chanakyas Arthashastra devotes a full chapter on the state department of waterways under navadhyaksha. The term, nava dvipantaragamanam appears in book in addition to appearing in the Buddhist text, Baudhayana Dharmasastra as the interpretation of the term. Sea lanes between India and neighbouring lands were the form of trade for many centuries, and are responsible for the widespread influence of Indian Culture on other societies. The Cholas excelled in trade and maritime activity, extending their influence overseas to China. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Maratha and Kerala fleets were expanded, the fleet review of the Maratha navy took place at the Ratnagiri fort in which the ships Pal and Qalbat participated
28.
Uncontacted peoples
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Few peoples have remained totally uncontacted by global civilization. Indigenous rights activists call for such groups to be left alone, in 2013 it was estimated that there were more than 100 uncontacted tribes around the world, mostly in the densely forested areas of South America, Central Africa, and New Guinea. Knowledge of the existence of these groups comes mostly from infrequent and sometimes violent encounters with neighboring tribes, Isolated tribes may lack immunity to common diseases, which can kill a large percentage of their people after contact. A BBC Four documentary in 2006 documented a controversial American tour operator who specializes in escorted tours to discover uncontacted people in West Papua. In 1971 the BBC made a documentary A Blank on the Map in which the first contact in over a decade was made with the Biami people of Papua New Guinea, two tribes of the Andaman Islands, in India, have sought to avoid contact with the outside world. The Sentinelese continue to actively and violently reject contact and they live on North Sentinel Island, a small and remote island which lies to the west of the southern part of South Andaman Island in the Bay of Bengal. Their language is different even from other languages on the Andamans. They are thus considered the most isolated people in the world, during Indian Census 2001, the joint expedition was conducted during 23–24 February 2001 in two batches. The first batch could identify 31 Sentinelese, the second batch could count altogether 39 Sentinelese consisting of male and females adults, children and infants. Helicopter surveys after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami indicate the Sentinelese survived, the local Andaman and Nicobar Administration has adopted an eyes-on and hands-off policy to ensure that no poachers enter into the island. A protocol of Circumnavigation of the North Sentinel Island has been made, another Andamanese tribe, the Jarawas, live on the main islands. They rejected all contact, but following the completion of a road traversing their territory in 1997. They are thought to number 300 people, the Bangru people, living in the same general location, were not recognized until later. The Rục people, when first encountered by North Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War, were hunting-gathering tribes, since then, the government has made many attempts to relocate them. In 1984, a group of Pintupi people who were living a traditional hunter-gatherer life were tracked down in the Gibson Desert in Western Australia, for the first time, they encountered people from the Australian society. They are believed to have been the last uncontacted tribe in Australia, large areas of New Guinea are unexplored by scientists and anthropologists due to extensive forestation and mountainous terrain. Known indigenous tribes in Papua New Guinea have very little contact with local authorities aside from the authorities knowing who they are, many remain pre-literate, etc. and at the national or international level, the names of tribes and information about them is extremely hard to obtain. The Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua on the island of New Guinea are home to an estimated 44 uncontacted tribal groups, Isolated tribes have been reported also in the eastern Indonesian islands
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Paleolithic
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It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools, probably by Homo habilis initially,2.6 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BP. The Paleolithic era is followed by the Mesolithic, the date of the Paleolithic–Mesolithic boundary may vary by locality as much as several thousand years. During the Paleolithic period, humans grouped together in small societies such as bands, the Paleolithic is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools, although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools. Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools, including leather and vegetable fibers, however, due to their nature, surviving artifacts of the Paleolithic era are known as paleoliths. About 50,000 years ago, there was a increase in the diversity of artifacts. For the first time in Africa, bone artifacts and the first art appear in the archaeological record, the first evidence of human fishing is also noted, from artifacts in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa. The new technology generated an explosion of modern humans which is believed to have led to the extinction of the Neanderthals. Humankind gradually evolved from members of the genus Homo—such as Homo habilis. The climate during the Paleolithic consisted of a set of glacial and interglacial periods in which the climate periodically fluctuated between warm and cool temperatures, by c. 50,000 – c. 40,000 BP, the first humans set foot in Australia. By c. 45,000 BP, humans lived at 61°N latitude in Europe, by c. 30,000 BP, Japan was reached, and by c. 27,000 BP humans were present in Siberia, above the Arctic Circle. At the end of the Upper Paleolithic, a group of humans crossed Beringia, the term Paleolithic was coined by archaeologist John Lubbock in 1865. It derives from Greek, παλαιός, palaios, old, and λίθος, lithos, stone, human evolution is the part of biological evolution concerning the emergence of anatomically modern humans as a distinct species. The Paleolithic Period coincides almost exactly with the Pleistocene epoch of geologic time and this epoch experienced important geographic and climatic changes that affected human societies. During the preceding Pliocene, continents had continued to drift from possibly as far as 250 km from their present locations to positions only 70 km from their current location. South America became linked to North America through the Isthmus of Panama, most of Central America formed during the Pliocene to connect the continents of North and South America, allowing fauna from these continents to leave their native habitats and colonize new areas. Africas collision with Asia created the Mediterranean Sea, cutting off the remnants of the Tethys Ocean, climates during the Pliocene became cooler and drier, and seasonal, similar to modern climates. The formation of an Arctic ice cap around 3 million years ago is signaled by a shift in oxygen isotope ratios and ice-rafted cobbles in the North Atlantic. Mid-latitude glaciation probably began before the end of the epoch, the global cooling that occurred during the Pliocene may have spurred on the disappearance of forests and the spread of grasslands and savannas
30.
Archaeology
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Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. In North America, archaeology is considered a sub-field of anthropology, archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology as a field is distinct from the discipline of palaeontology, Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world, Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time. The discipline involves surveying, excavation and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past, in broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Nonetheless, today, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, the science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts. Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, in Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Antiquarians, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, one of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other monuments in southern England. He was also ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings and he attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture, costume, and shield-shapes. Excavations were also carried out in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and even human shapes, however, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard, the importance of concepts such as stratification and context were overlooked. The father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington and he undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798, funded by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Cunnington made meticulous recordings of neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, one of the major achievements of 19th century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy. The idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton, the application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites
31.
Genetics
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Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in living organisms. It is generally considered a field of biology, but intersects frequently with other life sciences and is strongly linked with the study of information systems. The father of genetics is Gregor Mendel, a late 19th-century scientist, Mendel studied trait inheritance, patterns in the way traits are handed down from parents to offspring. He observed that organisms inherit traits by way of discrete units of inheritance and this term, still used today, is a somewhat ambiguous definition of what is referred to as a gene. Gene structure and function, variation, and distribution are studied within the context of the cell, the organism, genetics has given rise to a number of subfields, including epigenetics and population genetics. Organisms studied within the broad field span the domain of life, including bacteria, plants, animals, genetic processes work in combination with an organisms environment and experiences to influence development and behavior, often referred to as nature versus nurture. The intracellular or extracellular environment of a cell or organism may switch gene transcription on or off, a classic example is two seeds of genetically identical corn, one placed in a temperate climate and one in an arid climate. The word genetics stems from the ancient Greek γενετικός genetikos meaning genitive/generative, the observation that living things inherit traits from their parents has been used since prehistoric times to improve crop plants and animals through selective breeding. The modern science of genetics, seeking to understand this process, prior to Mendel, Imre Festetics, a Hungarian noble, who lived in Kőszeg before Mendel, was the first who used the word genetics. He described several rules of inheritance in his work The genetic law of the Nature. His second law is the same as what Mendel published, in his third law, he developed the basic principles of mutation. Other theories of inheritance preceded his work, a popular theory during Mendels time was the concept of blending inheritance, the idea that individuals inherit a smooth blend of traits from their parents. Mendels work provided examples where traits were not blended after hybridization. Blending of traits in the progeny is now explained by the action of genes with quantitative effects. Another theory that had some support at that time was the inheritance of acquired characteristics, other theories included the pangenesis of Charles Darwin and Francis Galtons reformulation of pangenesis as both particulate and inherited. Modern genetics started with Gregor Johann Mendel, a scientist and Augustinian friar who studied the nature of inheritance in plants, the importance of Mendels work did not gain wide understanding until the 1890s, after his death, when other scientists working on similar problems re-discovered his research. William Bateson, a proponent of Mendels work, coined the word genetics in 1905, Bateson popularized the usage of the word genetics to describe the study of inheritance in his inaugural address to the Third International Conference on Plant Hybridization in London in 1906. After the rediscovery of Mendels work, scientists tried to determine which molecules in the cell were responsible for inheritance, in 1911, Thomas Hunt Morgan argued that genes are on chromosomes, based on observations of a sex-linked white eye mutation in fruit flies
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Culture
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Culture can be defined in numerous ways. In the words of anthropologist E. B, Tylor, it is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is the way of life, especially the customs and beliefs. As a defining aspect of what it means to be human, culture is a concept in anthropology. The word is used in a sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes seen to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of culture that emerged in the 20th century. When used as a count noun, a culture is the set of customs, traditions, in this sense, multiculturalism is a concept that values the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes culture is used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in a context, meaning something similar. His use, and that of many writers after him, refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human. To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensive to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, thus a contrast between culture and civilization is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. Cultural invention has come to any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior. Humanity is in a global accelerating culture change period, driven by the expansion of commerce, the mass media, and above all. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change, Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change, for example, the U. S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors, Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices
33.
Andamanese
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The Andamanese are the various indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands, part of Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands union territory in the southeastern part of the Bay of Bengal. The Andamanese peoples are among the groups considered Negritos owing to their dark skin, all Andamanese traditionally lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and appear to have lived in substantial isolation for thousands of years. The Andamanese arrived at the Andaman Islands around the latest Glacial Maximum, at the end of the 18th century, when they first came into sustained contact with outsiders, there were an estimated 7,000 Andamanese. In the next century they were wiped out by diseases, violence. Today, there remain only approximately 400–450 Andamanese, with the Jangil being extinct, only the Jarawa and the Sentinelese maintain a steadfast independence, refusing most attempts at contact by outsiders. The Andamanese are a designated Scheduled Tribe, the various tribes and their mutually unintelligible languages thus are believed to have evolved on their own over millennia. According to Chaubey and Endicott, the Andaman Islands were settled less than 26,000 years ago, the Andamese were considered to be a pristine example of a hypothesized Negrito population, which showed similar physical characteristics, and was supposed to have existed throughout southeast Asia. The existence of a specific Negrito-population is nowadays doubted and their commonalities could be the result of evolutionary convergence and/or a shared history. The Andamaneses protective isolation changed with the first British colonial presence and subsequent settlements, epidemics of pneumonia, measles and influenza spread rapidly and exacted heavy tolls, as did alcoholism. By 1875, the Andamanese were already close to extinction, yet attempts to contact, subdue. In 1888, the British government set in place a policy of organized gift giving that continued in varying forms until well into the 20th century, there is evidence that some sections of the British Indian administration were working deliberately to annihilate the tribes. This accelerated the decline of the tribes, many Andamanese succumbed to British expeditions to avenge the killing of shipwrecked sailors. In the 1940s, the Jarawa were bombed by Japanese forces for their hostility, in 1974, a film crew and anthropologist Triloknath Pandit attempted friendly contact by leaving a tethered pig, some pots and pans, some fruit and toys on the beach at North Sentinel Island. One of the shot the film director in the thigh with an arrow. The following year, European visitors were repulsed with arrows, on 2 August 1981, the Hong Kong freighter ship Primrose grounded on the North Sentinel Island reef. A few days later, crewmen on the immobile vessel observed that small black men were carrying spears and arrows, the captain of the Primrose radioed for an urgent airdrop of firearms so the crew could defend themselves but did not receive them. Heavy seas kept the islanders away from the ship, after a week, the crew were rescued by an Indian navy helicopter. On 4 January 1991, Triloknath Pandit made the first known contact with the Sentinelese
34.
Middle Paleolithic
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The Middle Paleolithic is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleolithic in African archeology, the Middle Paleolithic broadly spanned from 300,000 to 30,000 years ago. There are considerable dating differences between regions, the Middle Paleolithic was succeeded by the Upper Paleolithic subdivision which first began between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago. Activities such as catching fish and hunting large game animals with specialized tools connote increased group-wide cooperation. Both Neandertal and modern human societies took care of the members of their societies during the Middle Paleolithic. Typically, it has assumed that women gathered plants and firewood. Anthropologists such as Tim D. Cannibalism in the Middle Paleolithic may have occurred because of food shortages, around 200,000 BP Middle Paleolithic Stone tool manufacturing spawned a tool-making technique known as the prepared-core technique, that was more elaborate than previous Acheulean techniques. Wallace and Shea split the core artifacts into two different types, formal cores and expedient cores, formal cores are designed to extract the maximum amount from the raw material while expedient cores are more based on function need. This method increased efficiency by permitting the creation of more controlled and this method allowed Middle Paleolithic humans correspondingly to create stone-tipped spears, which were the earliest composite tools, by hafting sharp, pointy stone flakes onto wooden shafts. The use of fire became widespread for the first time in human prehistory during the Middle Paleolithic, some scientists have hypothesized that hominids began cooking food to defrost frozen meat which would help ensure their survival in cold regions
35.
Nicobarese
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The Nicobarese people are a Mon–Khmer-speaking people of the Nicobar Islands, a chain of 19 islands in the southeastern Bay of Bengal. Only 12 of the 19 islands are inhabited, the largest and main island is Great Nicobar. The term Nicobarese refers to the dominant tribes of the Nicobar Islands, on each island, the people have specific names, but together they are the Nicobarese. They call themselves Holchu, which means friend, the Nicobarese are a designated Scheduled Tribe. The Nicobarese may not have been the first people to live in the islands, the islands have been under the power of various Asian empires in the 16th century, Great Britain from 1869–1947, and India from 1947. Today they are administered by India as part of the Union Territory of the Andaman, the Nicobarese language is part of the Austroasiatic language family. All of the different islands speak different dialects of the Nicobarese language, the separate islands are categorized into four groups, although most of the people understand the Car Nicobar dialect. Most of the people of the islands are of the Christian religion, besides Christianity, other Nicobarese follow the traditional religion of the islands, which is animistic in nature. They believe in spirits, ghosts, and the existence of the soul, a person becomes a ghost after their death when their soul leaves their body and the ghosts of all the Nicobarese are all around the islands. They believe that the spirits are responsible for all of the occurrences on the islands. The Nicobarese are headed by a chief called Rani or queen, the first Rani of the Nicobarese was Islon who married Mewalal, tahsildar of Nancowry in 1941–42, and became the most influential person in the Nicobar Islands. On the Nicobar Islands, men and women have equal status. The women have a lot to do with their own choice of husbands, the Nicobarese men value the women economically because they not only take care of household duties, but also tend to the plantations and gardens. The villages on the islands consist of sporadically placed huts strewn about in designated areas, the huts are normally round with dome-shaped roofs. They are typically raised above the ground and have ladders that the pull up after they climb into the huts at night. The Nicobarese have a traditionally horticultural economy, they base their monetary existence on the growing of coconuts, pandanus, areca nut palms, bananas, mangoes and they also hunt, fish, raise pigs, make pottery, and make canoes. Many of the older Nicobarese are illiterate, however today the younger Nicobarese receive free education through the government, Nicobarese are becoming educated over time and they are seen in multiple government jobs as Doctors, teachers, policemen, and clerks, among other occupations. Shompen people Nicobar Islands Nicobarese languages Notes Sources Saini, Ajay, the Indian Journal of Social Work
36.
Mon-Khmer
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The name Austroasiatic comes from the Latin words for south and Asia, hence South Asia. Of these languages, only Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon have a recorded history. On the subnational level, Khasi has official status in Meghalaya while Santali, Ho, in Myanmar, the Wa language is the de facto official language of Wa State. The rest of the languages are spoken by minority groups and have no official status and these form thirteen established families, which have traditionally been grouped into two, as Mon–Khmer and Munda. However, one recent classification posits three groups while another has abandoned Mon–Khmer as a taxon altogether, making it synonymous with the larger family, Austroasiatic languages have a disjunct distribution across India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Southeast Asia, separated by regions where other languages are spoken. They appear to be the languages of Southeast Asia, with the neighboring Indo-Aryan, Tai–Kadai, Dravidian, Austronesian. The Austroasiatic languages are known for having a sesquisyllabic pattern, with basic nouns. Many of them also have infixes, languages in the Pearic branch and some in the Vietic branch can have a three- or even four-way voicing contrast. However, some Austroasiatic languages have lost the register contrast by evolving more diphthongs or in a few cases, such as Vietnamese, much work has been done on the reconstruction of Proto-Mon–Khmer in Harry L. Shortos Mon–Khmer Comparative Dictionary. Little work has been done on the Munda languages, which are not well documented, with their demotion from a primary branch, Proto-Mon–Khmer becomes synonymous with Proto-Austroasiatic. Paul Sidwell reconstructs the consonant inventory of Proto-Mon–Khmer as follows, This is identical to earlier reconstructions except for *ʄ, *ʄ is better preserved in the Katuic languages, which Sidwell has specialized in. However, no evidence for classification has ever been published. Each of the families that is written in boldface type below is accepted as a valid clade, by contrast, the relationships between these families within Austroasiatic is debated. In addition to the classification, two recent proposals are given, neither of which accept traditional Mon–Khmer as a valid unit. However, little of the used for competing classifications has ever been published. He therefore takes the view that the thirteen branches of Austroasiatic should be treated as equidistant on current evidence. Sidwell & Blench discuss this proposal in detail, and note that there is good evidence for a Khasi–Palaungic node. If this would the case, Sidwell & Blench suggest that Khasic may have been an offshoot of Palaungic that had spread westward
37.
Shompen
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The Shompen or Shom Pen are the indigenous people of the interior of Great Nicobar Island, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Shompen are a designated Scheduled Tribe, Shompen is possibly an English mispronunciation of Shamhap, the Nicobarese name for the tribe. The Shompens living on the side of the island call themselves Kalay. A suggestion from 1886 that the Shompen call themselves Shab Dawa has not been confirmed by modern research, prior to the first outside contact with the Shompen in the 1840s, there is no reliable information about these peoples. A polling station was set up in their area for election of 2014, Shompen people for the first time participated in democratic process. In 2001, the population was estimated at approximately 300, Shompen Village-A and Shompen Village-B are home to most Shompens. Before the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, the villages were home to 103 and 106 Shompens respectively, however, by the time of 2011 census, only 10 and 44 people were left in these villages respectively. They practice a hunter-gatherer subsistence economy, in keeping with the tropical climate of the islands, traditional attire includes only clothing below the waist. The traditional attire for men is a short, thin loincloth made of bark cloth, decoration is limited for men, consisting of bead necklaces and armbands. Women wear a skirt of bark cloth, occasionally with a shawl of bark cloth covering the shoulders. Decorations include bamboo ear plugs, bead necklaces and armbands of bamboo, the Shompen probably learned to make and use bows from the Nicobaris. The main weapons are the bow and arrow and they do not use quivers but carry arrows by hand. Numerous types of spears, spear throwers, fire drills and a hatchet are the main tools, a man usually carried a bow and arrows, a spear and through his loincloth belt, a hatchet, knife and fire drill. The Shompen are a hunter-gatherer subsistence people, hunting game such as pigs, birds and small animals while foraging for fruits. They also keep pigs and farm yams, roots, vegetables, Shompen huts are built to house 4 people, and villages are made up of 4 to 5 families. Once a child is enough, he makes his own hut. The lowland Shompen build their huts on stilts and the walls are made of material on a wood frame and the roof of thatched palm fronds. The highland Shompen build their houses on the ground, and the houses are made of the materials as the raised houses
India
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Andaman and Nicobar Islands travel guide from Wikivoyage