Native culture experts worried that the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004, may have wiped out many or all of the indigenous peoples of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands. This image of a belligerent Sentinel Island man taken on December 28, as well other photos shot by the Indian Coast Guard, reassured them that at least Sentinelese tribespeople survived.

The Sentinelese are among the world's most isolated people. They are thought to have descended directly from the first voyagers out of Africa. Experts think they have lived in the Andaman archipelago with little outside contact for some 60,000 years.