A Road to Extinction: Can Palaeolithic Africans Survive in the Andaman Islands?

The Jarawa, one of the oldest tribes of human beings in the world, may go extinct because of a road that runs through pristine forests in the Indian-administered Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, and no one seems to care. Tourists take the road each day to try and get selfies with the tribespeople, who came from what is now Botswana over 60,000 years ago. Once proud of their independence, the Jarawa are now tempted with biscuits and trinkets, as if they were exotic animals in a human safari park. They can’t survive like this. In this astonishing book, Jonathan Lawley returns to what was once a penal colony built by the British to house Indian mutineers. He asks what responsibility colonial administrators like his grandfather may have had for the sad plight of these palaeolithic hunter- gatherers, and what the Indian government should now be doing to protect them.

Jonathan Lawley was born in N.E. India (now Pakistan) with family links going back five generations to the East India Company. After Indian independence, he moved with his parents to Africa, becoming the last white district commissioner in Zambia. He went on to work for Rio Tinto, setting up Africa’s first management training programme for black employees. He has been a director of the Royal African Society, and has campaigned energetically on African interests.