World's loneliest man dead, Covered himself with colourful feathers
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The Amazonian tribesman who is popularly known as the 'loneliest man in the world' has passed away.
Brazil's Indigenous Affairs Agency (Funai) revealed that his body was found on August 23 in a hammock outside his hut. Officials think he passed away in peace as there were no signs of violence.
The indigenous man had placed bright coloured feathers around his body which indicates that he prepared for his death, reported The Guardian.
The Brazilian government has been monitoring his well-being from a distance for a long time. He was referred to as the "man of the hole" because he spent a lot of time hiding or sheltering in pits he dug.
He is estimated to be around 60 years old and was the last member of an indigenous group living in the Tanaru area in the state of Rondonia. He is believed to be the only inhabitant of the Tanaru territory, reported BBC.
According to the NGO Survival International, his tribe was massacred by cattle ranchers in a series of attacks in the 1970s. The last few members were killed in 1995. Even the last few surviving members of the tribe resisted attempts of contact. Hence, very little is known about the tribe's culture.
He lived in voluntary exile in a section of the Amazon rainforest and fled if he saw anyone approaching. He also shot arrows at anyone who came closer. Retired explorer Marcel dos Santos said the man never trusted anyone because he had several traumatising experiences. Funai officials often left strategically placed gifts of tools, seeds, and food for him. But he always rejected them.
The Amazon Basin, the biggest belt of the jungle on the planet, is home to at least 114 indigenous people who are living solitary lives.
Sarah Shenker, a campaigner at Survival International, told The Guardian his best chance of survival was rejecting contact with outsiders because he has endured atrocious massacres and land invasions. Speaking about the extinction of his tribe, she said the tribe has not disappeared as some people say. "It is a much more active and genocidal process than disappearing."
The Observatory for the Human Rights of Isolated and Recent Contact Indigenous Peoples (OPI) wrote that the man died without revealing which ethnicity he belonged to. No one knows the motivations behind the holes he dug inside his house or his indigenous community.
Brazil's Federal Police will now be performing an autopsy.
