Who among us, in idle moments might give a thought to what it might be like to be someone living in a primitive environment, never having been exposed to modern civilization, suddenly coming face to face with a future that is represented by the great world majority, and which excludes tribes whose geographical placement ensured their solitary and hermetic evolution?

We've heard of the Kalahari, people who live in remote, isolated tribal communities who may harbour knowledge and dread of modern influences, far preferring to remain isolated, entrenched in their ancient ways of living. Most of the communities that exist do so in the far reaches of Africa, but there are and were other regions of the world where communication and knowledge of the existence of tribal communities were non-existent, particularly the polar regions of the world.
The photo that told the world the Sentinelese had survived the 2004 tsunami.

Imagine, in the late 1500s, the last quarter of the 14th Century, when explorers like Martin Frobisher felt the frozen North to be the final outpost as yet unexplored when during the Elizabethan era, he and others like him, allied with the British Royal Navy were drawn to a search for a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, convinced it could be found along the Northern Coast of North America.

In their travels they came across Inuit people, living in the most inhospitable places on Earth. Exploration at that time was polarized between the unknown reaches of the Dark Continent and the Frozen North, with its Iceberg-crowded Polar Sea. Where immense frozen mountains of ice, sculpted by an unknown hand in brilliant white that caught the incandescent colours of the sun shimmering within them, took away the breath of those who witnessed their coruscating majestic yet brutal way, driven by the ocean's currents.

The great historic populariser, Pierre Berton (*), wrote of an early 19th Century encounter between 'an unknown Eskimo culture', and one of the Royal British Navy's expeditionary forces into the Arctic under Lieutenant William Edward Parry. At their first encounter, these isolated natives were thunderstruck by the appearance of strange creatures of whose presence they had never before dreamed into existence.

"The scene that followed was pure farce. The natives on the shore hung back, obviously terrified at the strange apparitions on the ships. It was decided that one of Parry's officers should go forward bearing a white flag on which was painted the civilized emblem for peace - a hand holding an olive branch. The natives, of course, had no idea what an olive branch was, or what it was supposed to mean. On these bleak shores no olive trees grew - actually, no trees at all. Yet none of the white men seemed to appreciate the absurdity of the gesture. Ross made a more practical move. He put up a flag on a pole and tied a bag full of presents to it. that worked marvellously.
"These Eskimos had had no contact with the world beyond their desolate domain. They were astonished at the presence of Sacheuse, (a 'civilized' Inuit interpreter hired for his skills by the British) for it had not occurred to them that there might be others like themselves in the world. As for the men with sickly looking skins, they were convinced they had come from the sky. They knew nothing of boats, had never seen one; even the native word "kayak" had no meaning for them. They spoke to the ships as if they were living things. "We have seen them move their wings", they said. When Sacheuse tried to explain that ships were floating houses, they had difficulty believing him.
"They were startled by their first glimpse of a mirror and tried to discover the monster they believed was hiding behind it. They laughed at the metal frames of the eye-glasses worn by some of the seamen, spit out in disgust the biscuit that was offered, wondered what kind of ice the window panes were made of and what kind of animal produced the strange "skins" the officers were wearing. They were shown a watch, thought it was alive, and asked if it was good to eat. The sight of a little pig terrified them; a demonstration of hammer and nails charmed them; the ships' furniture baffled them for the only wood they'd ever known came from a dwarf shrub whose stem was no thicker than a finger...."

* The Arctic Grail; The quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole. 1818 - 1909.