George Weber and Maria Eloi,
in 2004
The Andaman Association
The People of the Association
The People
Eloi and George Weber, Switzerland
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George Weber and Maria Eloi,
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The Andaman Association's main author, editor, president, founder-member and all-purpose temperamental engine driver, George H.J. Weber, was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1944. He has always been a tireless collector of facts and figures and his early interest in the Maya civilisation at age 12 had spread into collecting lists of rulers and dynasties which in turn expanded into active grown-up archaeology, mostly in the Far East and Southeast Asia as well as into cartography, the botany of ferns and mosses, history, prehistory, astronomy. If you want to make George really blow his top, just confuse astronomy with astrology. Among his other interests are meteorology, geology, palaeontology, evolutionary theory, the origins and migrations of the human race, linguistics, the history of writing, genetics and last but not least, good food. All this not neccessarily in this order.
As the president of our multi-cultural and multi-religious Association, George has to tread warily among the many religions present. His stock answer to the question on his own religious beliefs is that "there are so many religions, who am I to decide which are right?" To the tiresomely inevitable follow-up question whether he does "at least believe in God", his stock reply is "that depends on what your definition of God is". You won' t get much more than that out of him. His interest in what he feels are fundamentally unanswerable questions is definitively imited. He thinks that life is too short to lose sleep over unanswerable questions.
George's wife Eloi is his principal cooperator, advisor, wailing wall, lightening rod, nurse, fitness trainer, stress counsellor, and peace-maker. Maria Eloi da Cruz-Neta, is a Brazilian child psychologist of partly Amerindian (Yanomami) extraction. The two met in the early 1990s when George was looking for someone with a knowledge of an Amerindian language. Eloi then worked for the Governor of Minas Gerais at Belo Horizonte (later to become President of Brazil) and was recommended through an unlikely chain of contacts as the right person to approach. Contact was established but soon Eloi discovered to her own surprised pain that she had forgotten most of her childhood knowledge of Yanomami which she had last used at the age of four. She could not be of much help linguistically but by then the correspondence had become so interesting on all sorts of other subjects that it continued regardless. George went to Brazil to meet his lively correspondent face to face for the first time and later Eloi came to Switzerland to visit George. They married in 1993 and now live happily in Switzerland. They have been to the Andamans together in 1995 but Eloi also follows her own scientific interests, among which intercultural and geriatric psychology are foremost. Eloi and George Weber, Switzerland, July 2004.
George has worked in printing and publishing in Europe, Southeast Asia and the Far East and has travelled widely besides, formerly mostly in Southeast Asia and lately also in Brazil. Wherever he finds himself, he always makes a bee-line for the local history and natural history museums. His life-long habit of continuously acquiring ever more bits of useless knowledge and skills has made him, in his own words, "one of those people who know very little about an awful lot". Spotting outlandish connections that the specialists ("people who know an awful lot about very little") often miss, has become something of a specialty for him. In his function of President of the Andaman Association and Hon.Sec of the Nicobar Association, he sees himself not so much as a researcher (still less a campaigner) than a generalist who brings together scientists working in a wide variety of different fields. In both Associations and through this Web-site he has been able to do this to a degree that has come as a surprise to everyone, including himself.
How did George, in the late 1980s, help to re-invent the then virtually extinct field of Andamanology? It is a typical "George story". In the 1980s, encouraged by Judy and Geoffrey Kingscott of Nottingham, George wrote popular articles on a wide variety of languages and linguistic subjects for the British "Language Monthly" and its successor publications. The most successful of them is reprinted on this website under the title "The Top Languages". Another remarkably successful article (to judge by the number of readers and their reactions) has been "Toba Volcano and Human Evolution" also on this web-site.
It was during his search for the least-known but still living language family (characteristically, George insists that readers should note language family, not individual language!) that he stumbled accross the truly obscure Andamanese language family. That was in the early 1990s. George's interest was really roused when his research immediately ran into a solid brick wall - he charged head first, charged again and got a bad headache, but in the end the wall thought it wiser to crumble. When George discovered how unusual and how grossly under-researched and under-reported subject were the Andamanese and other Asian Negritos, he just could not help make a wider study of the field. As much of this web-site shows, he is still very much at it.
For an on-line interview with George on 30 April 2008 with Language International see Interview.
Dr. Geoffrey Kingscott, England
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In the 1980s Judy and Geoffrey Kingscott of Nottingham of the Language Monthly and its successor publications encouraged Georgeto write a series of popular articles on a wide variety of languages and linguistic subjects. The most successful and most widely quoted even today remains "The Top Languages"mentioned above. |
Ursula and Thomas Weber-Capaul, Switzerland
Dr. Phillip Endicott, England and France
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Dr. Phillip Endicott is a British molecular geneticist who has been closely allied with the Andaman Association for many years. We have reprinted a number of his articles on this web-site and note with approval that he has quite a few exciting plans for the future. The photographs dates to 2004 and was made at a conference in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, by George Weber - a few days before the Andaman islands were hit by the tsunami. |
Yves Balmer, Switzerland - videomaster
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Psychologist Yves Balmer is responsible for our Video section and joined us a few years ago. |
Other notable Benefactors, Contributors and Cooperators
Among the many additional people who have supplied us with valuable information or helped in many other was are
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Prof.A. Abbi, India Prof. R.K. Bhattacharya, India Dr. Z. Cooper, India Prof. K. Ebert, Switzerland Mr. J. Falconer, England Mr. D. Giles, A&N Islands, India Dr. E. Hagelberg, Norway Prof. L. Icke-Schwalbe, Germany |
Dr. V.K. Kashyap, India Mrs. B. Lehmann, England Dr. H. Leigh-Theisen, Austria Mrs. B. de Machula, The Netherlands Prof. T. N. Pandit, India Mr. Gil Reeser, USA Prof. S. Sen, USA Prof. S. Venkateswar, New Zealand and India U.and Th. Weber-Capaul, Switzerland |
Prince Rashid of the Nicobar's Birthday Party, Calcutta 2004
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Left: Prince Rashid's birthday was celebrated justbefore the ICAES Conference started: Seated left: Prince Rashid of the Nicobars, seated right Samir Acharya of the Society of Andaman and Nicobar Ecology (SANE), standing left George Weber of the Andaman Association, standing right Denis Giles who was then a student and photographer and who now runs the newspaper Andaman Chronicle
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Left: Prince Rashid with Dr. Phillip Endicott, geneticist, then University of Oxford, since 2008 Ethnological Museum, Paris
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Prince Rashid of the Nicobars(middle), Dr. Simron Jit Singh (left) and Dr. Heide Leigh-Theisen of Austria (right). |
Fringe activities around the IUAES Conference, Calcutta 2004
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Dr. Anek R. Sankhyan, palaeoanthropologist at the Anthropological Survey of India, Calcutta, studies the trepanated Burzahom skull with George Weber, December 2004. Both were joint authors in 2001 of a study of this skull published (and reprinted on this web-site) as "Evidence of Surgery in Ancient India: Trepanation at Burzahom (Kashmir) over 4,000 Years Ago" in International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 11:375-380, 2001 - see Reprints on this site. |
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Geneticists only (except for George who in view of his layman status and venerable age is allowed to sit). Dr. Phillip Endicott standing at the back and student geneticists at the Calcutta Police Forensic Laboratory |
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Dr. Kashyap, geneticist and head of the Calcutta Police Forensic Laboratory, with George Weber and an unidentified mutual friend |
After IUAES: in Lucknow with Simron's parents and friends
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Seated to the left Mr. B.S. Arora, father of Dr. Simron Jit Singh, Lucknow, India, in late December 2004 (only days before the tsunami shattered the peace) Seated right Mr. Baldav Singh, retired Deputy Supterintendent of Police and Executive Member of Sarogini Nagar Sikh Temple, Lucknow, India - he has just presented the book to George that he is displaying |
The first-ever Nicobari delegation outside India, 2005
Austria is the one of only three countries in Europe able to claim a "special relationship" with the Nicobar islands. Great Britain was the ruling colonial power in the islands for almost 80 years (1869 to 1947) and is definitively but perhaps not over-fondly remembered even today. There were, however, two other Europeans colonial powers in the Nicobars before the British and both are barely remembered: Denmark tried to rule the islands intermittently between 1756 and 1848 and Austria briefly had a colony with settlers there there 1778-1783 (for details see Austria in the Nicobars). None of these former powers retained much, or any, memory of it at home. Austria, too, forgot its colonial adventure.
Dr. Simron Jit Singh, born 1969 in Monghyr, India, has been a student of human ecology in Sweden and Austria for some years. He gained his doctorate from the University of Lundin 2004. He is still pursing his post-doctoral Nicobarese studies from his base in Austria. His research effort and publications have revived the long-lost memory of this first and only Austrian colony. Most Austrians were astonished and fascinated to hear that their country had once actually held a "tropical possession", however shortlived. Lead by the researchers of the University of Klagenfurt under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Marina Fischer Kowalski, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and other groupings, organized an exchange visit of Nicobari leaders to Austria.
The high point of this visit was when the President of the Republic of Austria, Heinz Fischer, presented the visitors with a beautifully prepared and lavishly illustrated volume of 230 bi-lingual pages in German and English: The Nicobar Islands - cultural choices in the aftermath of the tsunami, by Dr. S.J. Singh, published by Oliver Lehmann, Czernin Verlag, Vienna, 2005, ISBN 3-7076-0078-5 (for reviews and details see Review).
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From left to right: Adkinson Hillary Rasheed Yussuf (Prince Rasheed) Mercy Thomas (Ms) Dr. Simron Jit Singh Joseph Portifer Francis Thomas Tong Kumar George Weber |
The Beginning
The original idea for an Andaman Association goes back to a suggestion made to George by Judy and Geoffrey Kingscott in England in the 1980s. However, the Association was not formally set up until Spring 1997 in Switzerland by Maria and George Weber-da Cruz with the active assistance of Ursula and Thomas Weber-Capaul. Later but no less importantly is
Membership
Anyone with an interest in the subjects treated (or mistreated) in this web-site is welcome to join as a member - just apply to our president George Weber, giving your reasons for wanting to join. Membership fees (or joining donations) are different for each member and depend on your ability to pay smaller or larger amounts.
Answering Questions
Members of the Andaman Association have the right to get the best possible reply to any questions on the subjects treated by the Association's web-site. Questions from non-members that are of interest to us may also be answered whenever possible. But we must point out, that answering requests and queries from people we have never before heard of is not one of our overriding priorities. We also tend to balk at doing the homework for go-getting young scholars.
Aims
The Andaman Association aims to document, explain and further the scientific study of all aspects of the Negrito and other remnant people in Asia and elsewhere in the world, their ethnology, anthropology, genetics, archaeology, prehistory and history, their outside relationships to other populations and (if not extinct) their present situation - and last but not least their place in the origins and history of the human race.For more details see our introductory chapter The Subjects of this Web-site.
The Andaman Association tries to foster contacts between individual scientists, institutions and lay people of all walks of life working and interested in the subjects treated on this web-site (see in all conceivable fields. In return the Association collects and distributes information on any results, ongoing research, new publications and future projects to its members. It also runs this web-site to publicise the scientific and humaniatrian aspects of the situation.
Membership of the Association is on an individual basis. Any financial support would be most welcome since our work is all done unpaid.
For questions or for other reasons you can contact us.
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Those readers who worry about the term "Negrito" please refer to our Frequently Asked Questions ("Are the terms 'Negrito' and 'Pygmies' acceptable"?). |
Projects
What the Andaman Association is trying to do with this web-site is first and foremost to attempt to raise world-wide awareness of the Andamanese and their unique humanitarian as well as scientific position. What does this mean?
It means that the Andamanese are Indian citizens - on paper at least, in real life they have no concept of a nation state and would not have the slightest idea of what citizenship meant. India is unquestionably responsible for them, their welfare and their survival. In addition, however, the Andamanese are also of the greatest importance to humanity in general. They are no less than the nearest living relatives to our common human ancestors of 50,000 to 100,000 or more years ago. They are not just dry bones from an excavation to be studied in a laboratory, but are living, human beings. That such a culture should be still be alive (if only just) in our world of data highways, space probes and genetic engineering is nothing short of miraculous. The Andamanese are not just awkward people to be discreetly pacified, social-workered and acculturized - not even with the best of intentions - into Indian society. Their decline and extinction may be inevitable but we have no excuse for not trying to make their survival possible in their own present culture.
The focus of our projects is on the data-gathering, scientific side. None of us here is of the placard-carrying, tomato-throwing, slogan-shouting, demonstrating kind (although some activities of the Indian authorities do tempt even us sometimes...). There are plenty of people who can demonstrate and pressurize politicians better than we can.
What we do is collect information, correlate data, and then try to make sense of it. As regards the Andamanese, collecting information is not easy - the Indian authorities with their (justified) feeling of guilt , do their best to cover up what they are doing and have done. In the Andamans, our focus is on the Andamanese aborigines. The refugees, settlers and other people of mostly India origin are mentioned only insofar as theyinteract with the Andamanese.
Consequently, the terminology used here is one that reflects history and the aboriginal point of view. The term "native" is not used outside direct quotations because of its vagueness and ambiguity in the Andamanese context. The term "Andamanese" always denotes the aboriginal people - the sole inhabitants of the islands until 1858. "Outsider" means anybody who is not Andamanese. Among outsiders, "British" is any person of British origin. "Indian" are all people from the Indian mainland (sometimes on historical grounds taken to include Burma) as well as the institutions and authorities of the Union of India. The latter has exercised full sovereignty over the islands since independence 1947.
We started in the mid-1990s with essentially only one project: anything to do with the Andaman islands. The prehistoric affilations of the Andamanese and their close relatives on the Asian mainland have long been suspected, but they have only very recently been confirmed by genetic data. Much more datai n this direction is expected to be produced in the near future. With anew information flooding in and even such remote people as the Fuegians of South America being suspected of a relationship with the Negrito, we have to spread outselves ever further afield. Intersting, fascinating - but demanding and time-consuming. We have to reorganize ourselves almost on Maoist principles of the "permanent revolution".
We hope and trust you will have at the very least a good read on our web site and that you will find the information you are looking for. If not, why not become a member of the Association or sponsor us and be on the inside track of the race for knowledge. Anyone can become a member of the Association on payment of a donation. For details contact George Weber.
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