YOUR friends and family are gone. Everyone else you have ever known has vanished. Forever. The loneliness seems unimaginable. But this is reality for one solitary native Brazilian Indian living on a small island of Amazon rainforest amid a sea of cattle ranches and soya plantations.
Virtually nothing is known about him, except that he seems to be the last survivor of his group or people. He has been nicknamed the Man of the Hole because he digs holes a metre wide and 3 metres deep inside little houses that he builds from palm leaves. No one quite knows why he does this. Could they be bolt holes? He also builds huge holes lined with spikes in the nearby forest to trap large animals.
Nor is anyone sure how long the man has been alone. In 1995, the , investigated after hearing rumours of a solitary forest dweller. The ranchers denied he existed 鈥� possibly because they were the ones that had bulldozed his home. FUNAI official Marcelo dos Santos found bits of corn and other remnants of an Indian home among the rubble.
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The man鈥檚 existence was confirmed in 1997 when FUNAI stumbled on a house and holes he had built. Among the few to have clapped eyes on him is Brazilian film-maker Vincent Carelli. It鈥檚 unclear what happened to the rest of the man鈥檚 people, but FUNAI reckons 鈥渉e is the sole survivor of at least two successive massacres鈥�, although these massacres have never been proved.
What does the future hold for the Man of the Hole? The last time FUNAI tried to contact him in 2005, the man shot its field worker in the chest with an arrow, fortunately not fatally. Since then FUNAI has decided to leave him be. The Rio Tanaru indigenous area where he lives is legally protected, and last year FUNAI enlarged this territory by 3000 hectares to include more areas of forest they know he uses. He leaves a very singular trail by peeling the bark off trees in his territory up to roughly head height.
The Man of the Hole is not alone in his plight: he鈥檚 one of an estimated 40,000 isolated people worldwide, about whom we know very little. Sadly, one thing we do know is that many of them are constantly threatened by loggers and oil companies, who want to commercialise the land they live on, or harassed by paramilitary groups, missionaries, drug traffickers and foreign tourists who want to make contact (New 杏吧原创, 16 June, p 37).
Can anything be done to help? This month, the tribal peoples鈥� support organisation Survival International is launching a campaign to help protect tribes that have never been contacted. But for the Man of the Hole, it鈥檚 too late. He is condemned to a life of silence and fear.
