[citation needed] They were once the most numerous of the five major groups in the Andaman Islands with an estimated population between 2,000 and 6,600, before they were killed or died out due to diseases, alcohol, colonial warfare and loss of hunting territory.

The tribal and linguistic distinctions have largely disappeared, so they may now be considered a single Great Andamanese ethnic group with mixed Burmese, Hindi and aboriginal descent.

[4][5][6] The Great Andamanese are classified by anthropologists as one of the Negrito peoples, which also include the other four aboriginal groups of the Andaman islands (Onge, Jarawa, Jangil and Sentinelese) and five other isolated populations of Southeast Asia.

The Andaman Negritos are thought to be the first inhabitants of the islands, having emigrated from the mainland tens of thousands of years ago.

[7] Until the late 18th century, the Andamanese peoples were preserved from outside influences by their fierce rejection of contacts (which included killing any shipwrecked foreigners) and by the remoteness of the islands.

[8] Except for the Bea and Bale, who had intense and friendly relations and whose languages were mutually intelligible to some extent, there was little interaction between the tribes at the time of first European contacts.

[8] Estimates of the Great Andamanese population by the time of the establishment of a British colonial presence (1789–1796) vary between 2000 and 6600 individuals.

[13] In 1949, the surviving Great Andamanese were relocated to a reservation on Bluff Island (1.14 km2) in an attempt to protect them from diseases and other threats.

[5] However, the cultural and linguistic identities of the individual tribes have largely been lost; their members now speak mostly Hindustani[19][20] or a mixed language, a Great Andamanese creole.

Indian officials announced on 27 August 2020 that 10 out of 59 surviving members had contracted the COVID-19 disease during the pandemic in the union territory, but six of them had recovered and been taken into home quarantine.