The Sentinelese people are an indigenous people of the Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, an essentially hunter-gatherer society subsisting through hunting, fishing. There is no evidence of either agricultural practices or methods of producing fire.
Does such uncontacted people have potential to undergo peripatric speciation? This link says
.......to the fact that the Sentinelese have lived in isolation for 60,000 years: genetically, therefore, there is a direct line between them and their pre-Neolithic ancestors.
Factors:
Geographical and Reproductive Isolation
They live in a highly isolated and heavily forested Island in the Andaman sea.Any contacts with any other nearby Island has never been reported.
Differences with Mordern Humans
Wikipedia says that:
Behavioral modernity — a suite of changes in Homo sapiens behavior and cognition including abstract thinking, deep planning, symbolic behavior (e.g. art, ornamentation, music), exploitation of large game, and blade technology — is evident from around 40,000–50,000 years ago, and may have emerged abruptly then or may have arisen through gradual steps.
While Sentinels have been isolated for more than 60,000 years.
The Late Upper Paleolithic Model, refers to the idea that, though anatomically modern humans first appear around 150,000 years ago, they were not cognitively or behaviorally "modern" until around 50,000 years ago. These authors note that traits used as a metric for behavioral modernity do not appear as a package until around 40–50,000 years ago. Klein (1995) specifically describes evidence of fishing, bone shaped as a tool, hearths, significant artifact diversity, and elaborate graves are all absent before this point.
Hints of Mutation:
This tribe miraculously survived 2004 Tsunami despite having small population.
Close to 150,000 people have been confirmed dead (due to Tsunami)... Sentinalese who live in the archipelago escaped unscathed because they took to the forests and higher ground well in time.
Scientists believe that because of the extreme isolation of the Sentinalese, this tribe has become biomedically valuable...... could be targeted by bio-prospectors for valuable genetic traits that may have long ago vanished in other ethnic or racial groups.
Strange courtship ritual
......this moment, a strange thing happened — a woman paired off with a warrior and sat on the sand in a passionate embrace. This act was being repeated by other women, each claiming a warrior for herself, a sort of community mating, as it were. Thus did the militant group diminish. This continued for quite some time and when the tempo of this frenzied dance of desire abated, the couples retired into the shade of the jungle....