Last links: Nicobarese people in Port Blair

The last passenger pigeon, Martha, died in 1911 in a Cincinnati zoo. Six billion of them once existed, darkening the sky for days when they flew over. There are six billion of us now. We don?t expect to be extinct soon. Nevertheless, pockets of us die due to poisoning from an overgrown culture luring an oversized bait. For the indigenous peoples everywhere, days fill up with the speed of fleeing game, nights get ravaged by newly-formed pools of stagnant water that attract malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Sadly, these people belong so close to home. But even as the last true living links with the earliest members of the human family, they are poised to disappear like the quagga, the odd zebra that lived only a century ago. Ironically, once extinct, they?ll haunt us like the thylacines, the Tasmanian tigers whose apparent sightings in western Australia still demonstrate how much we long for the fallen.

Researchers have lately undertaken efforts to preserve DNA samples of these disappearing peoples, and fundraising efforts underway will cost millions. Regretfully, these efforts seem too little too late. There is a staggering number to sample: the South African bushmen, New Guinea hill people, African pygmies, Andaman islanders, Spanish Basques, the Yanomami of the Amazon and countless others. Their populations, because of relative isolation from other cultures, are humanity?s last links to the past.

Awareness is the only key to success. Until the world is prepared to listen, our past is destined to disappear. Studies suggest that over half of all indigenous societies will become extinct before the end of this century. The numbers comprising some are downright depressing: less than a hundred speakers are left of Yukaghir, the language of Siberian people, with all speakers aged over 50.

Then there are the odd acts of God. Natural disasters, such as the recent tsunami, could possibly hasten doom for many. In the Andaman and Nicobar islands are the Sentinelese, a hunter-gatherer society which many anthropologists have called the last undiscovered people. This Stone-Age tribe?s population is estimated at about a hundred, dwindling towards extinction. Little is known about such lingering Negrito tribes ? peoples more African than Indian ? who remain hostile to outside interference.

Other shrinking tribes like the Nicobarese and the Shompens are from the Mongoloid stock, living primarily in the Nicobar chain. They are victims of ethnocide (a word coined to describe the destruction of minority culture), often most evident from vanishing languages.

Indeed, over half of all tongues may also disappear before this century is out, at a rate of two every week. When that happens, whether we take responsibility or not, we?ll be there to witness the ordeal as helpless spectators. The future would be an approach towards the hegemonistic garbage of a single culture and language.