After over 30 years of avoiding human contact, the “loneliest man in the world” passes away.
The “Man of the Hole” and “World’s Loneliest Man” passed away in Brazil after nearly 30 years of shunning human contact.
According to reports, the unidentified man is the last known survivor of a Brazilian tribe from the Amazon.
The tribesman’s passing was reported by the FUNAI, Brazil’s National Indian Foundation.
The indigenous group known as the “Tanaru Indian” or “Hole Indian,” who lived in voluntary seclusion and was watched over and safeguarded by Funai through the Ethnoenvironmental Protection Front, passed away about 26 years ago in the state of Rondônia. The organisation stated in a press release that the indigenous man, who was of unknown ethnicity, was the lone survivor of his community.
According to FUNAI, the guy had been living in “voluntary isolation” in the isolated Tanaru Indigenous Territory in Rondônia state in the western Brazilian Amazon, when his body was discovered last Tuesday in his hammock inside a hut.
It’s estimated that the man was around 60 years old.
He was known as “The Man of the Hole” because of his propensity for digging deep, wide trenches to conceal himself and catch prey.
He appeared to have passed away naturally, and there were no indications of any fighting or violence.
The man’s body will be autopsied by the Federal Police of Brazil, who will then compile a report on their findings.
The “Man of the Hole” was the sole resident of Tanaru area, which the non-profit organisation Survival International described as “a little island of woodland in a sea of enormous cow farms.”
The group claimed that the last six members of the tribe were wiped out in 1995 after the remainder of the tribe had supposedly been slaughtered during the 1970s in a series of raids by land-hungry cattle ranchers.
“The Man of the Hole” was last captured on camera in 2018 attacking a tree with an instrument like an axe.
After that, the monitors had not seen him again, but they did come across his straw houses and the deep holes he had excavated with sharp spikes to trap animals or hide from the outside world.
There was evidence that the lone tribesman had planted papaya and corn to survive.
The director of research and campaigning for Survival International, Fiona Watson, claimed that no one outside of his tribe knew this man’s name or even very much about his tribe. With his passing, the genocide of his people was completed.
Because land and money-hungry cattle ranchers deliberately wiped out a whole population, this was in fact a genocide.
He refused all attempts at contact and made it apparent that all he wanted was to be left alone. “We can only picture the horrors he had witnessed in his life and the loneliness of his existence after the rest of his tribe were slain,” she said.
There are roughly 240 indigenous tribes in Brazil, and Survival International, a pressure group advocating for the rights of indigenous people, warns that many of them are in danger as illegal miners, loggers, and farmers encroach on their territory.