Nakkavaram Culture ID

The Nakkavaram culture belongs to the indigenous people of the Nicobar Islands, a remote archipelago in the eastern Indian Ocean. Isolated by the sea, they developed a distinctive island way of life.

Nicobarese communities lived by horticulture — above all the coconut, a mainstay of island life — together with fishing and the raising of pigs, drawing their living from sea and shore.

Society was organised around village and kin, and religious life centred on the spirits of the world around them and the warding-off of misfortune through ritual.

Remote and seafaring, the Nakkavaram people formed a singular island culture in the waters between South and Southeast Asia.