Cholanaikkan
Overview
 
The Cholanaikkans are one of the most primitive tribes in South India
South India
South India is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area...

, numbering only 360 in 1991.They are one of the indigenous communities of Kerala state, India. They are one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...

 tribes of South India, living in the Silent Valley National Park
Silent Valley National Park
Silent Valley National Park , is located in the Nilgiri Hills, Palakkad District in Kerala, South India...

 (Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

). This tribe was first contacted in the 1960s, but since this first contact their lifestyle has been altered. Currently they have a 16% literacy rate. They speak the Cholanaikkan language, but around half of them have a basic knowledge of Malayalam
Malayalam language
Malayalam , is one of the four major Dravidian languages of southern India. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India with official language status in the state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry. It is spoken by 35.9 million people...

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