'Man of the hole', the last known member of one of the last uncontacted tribes, dies in Brazil

Straw hut in the Brazilian jungle
Image: New York Post

The huts like the one pictured above were abodes of the tribe that was "uncontacted", or, in other words, existed autonomously, outside of the global network of connections, communications, concepts, agreements, etc. It existed this way for a long time. Until it encountered the modern world - mostly, through some of the least moral of its representatives, like the criminal gangs and corrupt officials connected to the exploration, or, should I say, colonisation of the Brazilian jungle. Many members of his tribe were murdered by these representatives of our modern world. His civilization had lost - its time was up, it was too far behind technologically to compete and just had to yield.

Of course, politically correct ideologues of the West would not find time to express much outrage over this episode of colonial expansion. After all, this is happening in the backwaters of Brazil, and there are likely precious few White people to blame for this. And, even though brutal conquest of this kind is far more often perpetrated by non-Europeans, you are not likely to hear much about that - whether it is pygmies in the South Africa being violently displaced by other Black tribes, or whether it is indigenous people of the Amazon being violently displaced by Brazilian ranchers and gangs affiliated with them.

So after the violence of the 1970's through the 1990's during which most of the tribe in question vanished some semblance of peace was imposed by a Brazilian federal agency overseeing the affairs of the indigenous people. That allowed the last remaining member of the tribe to survive until recently. He was known as the "Man of the hole" because he liked to not only stay in huts but also dig holes for protection from the elements. He held out for decades. Personally, I am very impressed by the will power of that individual - few people can survive this long in solitude. And that was voluntary solitude - he had an option to join the "larger society" but chose not to. And recently he was found dead. It is believed he died peacefully, of natural causes - unlike so many of his compatriots.

What was his motivation? We may never know. Was it fear? Was i disgust and rejection of the other, the xenophobia so common amongst tribal societies? It could be. It could also be high confidence in his own abilities and knowledge that the "larger society" had on many occasions come to his people with nothing much to offer save for wholesale murder.

Throughout my life tribes like his were a fact of life. But we are passing another milestone, thanks to the global reach of technology - we will soon have no one not connected to the global human and technological grid. And before we celebrate how advanced we are, and how knowledgeable we are - we may want to consider the fact that in terms of our genetics and innate intelligence we are likely only as advanced, or perhaps as backwards, as "Man of the hole" was. And we now face a real danger that we no longer have separation of information networks, we no longer have separate societies with their own myths - and thus myths as absurd as those of primitive societies can now be implanted globally, with potentially devastating consequences.

So rest in peace, Man of the hole. You were a true patriot of your society. It is too bad we never really got to meet you.

References

‘Man of the Hole’: Last known member of uncontacted Amazon tribe dies
Snejana Farberov, New York Post, 29 August 2022