Footage Emerges of Isolated Amazon Survivor

The other members of his tribe were killed in 1996
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 20, 2018 2:58 AM CDT

He's one of the most isolated people on the planet—but video of him has been shared on Facebook and viewed thousands of times. Funai, the Brazilian government's agency for indigenous people, recently released video of an indigenous man who has lived a solitary life in a patch of rainforest in Rondonia state for at least 22 years, the Guardian reports. The man is believed to be the only survivor from a group of six members of a formerly uncontacted tribe who were attacked by farmers in 1996. The video, filmed from a distance, shows the man, who is thought to be in his 50s, felling a tree with an ax. He is know as "the man in the hole" because he digs holes to trap animals and to shelter in.

"He is very well, hunting, maintaining some plantations of papaya, corn," says Funai official Altair Algayer. "He has good health and a good physical shape doing all those exercises." Algayer says authorities leave seeds and tools like axes and machetes for the man, but he wants nothing to do with the outside world. "I understand his decision," Algayer says. "It is his sign of resistance, and a little repudiation, hate, knowing the story he went through." In a Facebook post, Funai says that a protected area of 31 square miles has been created around the man. Loggers and other intruders have not entered the zone for at least five years, the agency says. (Satellites have spotted scores of lost Amazon settlements.)

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