The Man of the Hole - the last of his people

[TMF Jeff]

I found out about this from the "Today I Learned" section of Reddit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_the_Hole

"Man of the Hole is a nickname used by the media to describe a man who lives alone in the Amazon rain forest and is believed to be the last surviving member of his tribe.

People first became aware of the Man of the Hole's isolated existence in 1996. In 2007, the Brazilian government declared a 31-square-mile area around him off-limits to trespassing and development.

In 2009, the Man of the Hole was attacked by gunmen but is believed to have survived."

I guess what happens is that because indigenous people live on protected land in Brazil, ranchers who want to use it will basically just send out hunting parties to murder them. Some of them, like this guy's tribe, are undocumented because they reject any attempt to contact them, which makes it easy to kill them without being caught. They're not identified or tracked, so if some anonymous group of assholes kills them nobody will ever even know they existed. This guy lives on 50 sq. miles of land that's preserved for one person, so that he can live out his days in whatever manner he feels is his natural course, and if someone should happen to shoot him that land would no longer be protected.

Every few years the Brazilian government sends out people to attempt to make contact with these types of tribe, at a distance, to see if they're interested in learning about the outside world or being helped. In the case of the man of the hole (named for the holes he digs in huts that they've found after he abandons them,) when they try to contact him he hides and threatens them with spears, and in one case apparently shot a guy in the chest with an arrow.

It made me wonder what he must make of the world. A lot of these tribes are very friendly and passive, because the jungle is so fertile and it's not hard to find what you need to survive if you have the right skills. They're the ones you'll see where they're all fat and smiling, lounging around in hammocks.

But others are aggressive hunters, and have a legendary murderousness. I saw a documentary once about this group of anthropologists who were attempting to make contact with an uncontacted tribe like that. They got the tribe to cross their river and come talk to them, which was the first time that had happened. It was pretty funny at first, because the tribe couldn't believe one of the women was female because she was wearing pants and didn't have her boobs out, and they just pulled her pants open to look.

These tribes can be very dangerous and easily offended, and this one in particular was known to be casual about killing, so everyone just kept smiling and let it happen. Then the tribe stole one of their pots and left, and everything seemed fine. A couple of days later, one of the anthropologists disappeared and all they could get out of the tribe was an apologetic shrug and a few words to the effect that something unfortunate happened and there was an incident, and now he's dead so what can you do? So that was that, the surviving people got back on their raft and got the fuck out of there. That was at least ten years ago now, and I don't know if anyone ever tried again to make contact with them.

If his people were the second type, this probably feels relatively normal to him because in his experience people are always killing, and he just happens to be the last one standing. But if his people were the stay-in-one-place and build grass huts types, he must be completely out of his mind.

 

[Amnesiac]

This is one of the reasons that I'm a big proponent of Westphalian Sovereignty (also known in another form as the Prime Directive): a technologically advanced culture shall not interfere in the development of a primitive one.

Environment shapes perspective, which in turn, shapes behavior. And when the environment demands certain priorities, it's easy to adopt perspectives and behavior that can be extremely indifferent and dangerous to humans and other lifeforms. The benefit of Western and Eastern Civilizations is that it creates a level of organization that allows for better resource management that enables the experimentation with empathy that allows for better synchronicity with life and order in ways that are conducive to improved mental and social health.

But if you live in a part of the world where water and food are not plentiful, and the environment is harsh and unrelenting, it's easy to develop mercenary worldviews that make no allowances for such indulgences. Our mistake is that we judge them as "inferior" or "savage" in ways that exalt our own sense of superiority and condescend to points of view that are different to our own, but it doesn't eliminate the fact that integration is not universally possible, and that some societies will never advance beyond a certain stage, nor should we view them with a pitying naivete.

Best if they be left alone, while the rest of us merge together and form a kind of remote stewardship to protect their bubbles. But our own atavistic traditions and habits make this difficult.

 

[teamtickleguy]

This is fascinating to me, I've always been intrigued by and amazed at the fact that there are uncontacted tribes out there just getting on with their own daily lives, in stark contrast to our much bigger tribe of advanced humans, persistently pushing the boundaries of everything around them

As much as I'd love for us to discover more about these tribes, it would mean integration and therefore trespassing, the equivalent of perhaps landing on another planet and poking around in someone else's civilisation without invitation. I would never be optimistic that it could end well and would question the motives. They don't need us!
For once, we should just leave well alone and seek to protect such tribes as best we can without interference, rather than pursue them like potential trophies.
Rather like a listed building, or an untouched landscape, or the last remaining giant panda - they should be treated/protected as if sacred.

Thanks for posting that.

 

[Dussicar]

This is one of the reasons that I'm a big proponent of Westphalian Sovereignty (also known in another form as the Prime Directive): a technologically advanced culture shall not interfere in the development of a primitive one.

Environment shapes perspective, which in turn, shapes behavior. And when the environment demands certain priorities, it's easy to adopt perspectives and behavior that can be extremely indifferent and dangerous to humans and other lifeforms. The benefit of Western and Eastern Civilizations is that it creates a level of organization that allows for better resource management that enables the experimentation with empathy that allows for better synchronicity with life and order in ways that are conducive to improved mental and social health.

But if you live in a part of the world where water and food are not plentiful, and the environment is harsh and unrelenting, it's easy to develop mercenary worldviews that make no allowances for such indulgences. Our mistake is that we judge them as "inferior" or "savage" in ways that exalt our own sense of superiority and condescend to points of view that are different to our own, but it doesn't eliminate the fact that integration is not universally possible, and that some societies will never advance beyond a certain stage, nor should we view them with a pitying naivete.

Best if they be left alone, while the rest of us merge together and form a kind of remote stewardship to protect their bubbles. But our own atavistic traditions and habits make this difficult.

Heh. Post-Globalist earth.

A world filled with white, angry spear-chuckers that were told by the media that they will have a better life if they do what is trending.