On Friday, Boa Sr, the last surviving member of the Bo tribe of the Andaman Islands, died.
The Bo language, of which she was the last surviving speaker, died with her. The Bo tribe is believed to have inhabited the islands for over 65,000 years.
Boa Sr was born in the northern Andamans, when her tribe still lived traditionally in the jungle. However, in the 1970’s, the Indian government forced all of the Greater Andamanese tribes to give up their traditional way of life and move to a single island. There, the Bo tribe’s’ numbers dwindled due to alcoholism...