He is known in the media as “the world’s greatest loner” or “hole man”. He belongs to an indigenous tribe that was largely exterminated by breeders who expanded their territory in the western Brazilian state of Rondonia in the 1970s. The last six members were killed in 1995 in an attack by illegal miners. “The Man of the Holes” is the only survivor.

A rare video of a “hole man” chopping a tree with an axe.

While it’s not clear what language the dead man spoke or what ethnicity he came from, the tribe is nicknamed the “pit tribe” because of the holes the Indians dug while hunting in the jungle or as hiding places. According to Altair José Algayer, an employee of the National Foundation for Indians (Funai), who discovered the man’s body, the three-meter-high hermitage pit may have religious significance. Funai had been monitoring the area since 1996 for the man’s safety.

The man was last seen alive in 2018, when Funai workers caught him on camera chopping a tree with an axe. Since then, Funai had only found dozens of thatched huts he had built in the forest, but he had never seen the man.

Funai workers visited the house the man had built and then abandoned.

The uncontrolled colonization of the Amazon region in the 1980s claimed the lives of many indigenous tribal members there. According to Funai, there are about 70 isolated Indian tribes in Brazil living in the states of the Amazon, Acre, Amazonas, Mato Grosso, Roraima, Rondonia and Maranhao. However, so far not all of these strains have been seen. Worldwide, according to estimates by the British non-governmental organization Survival International, there are about a hundred isolated tribes, mainly in South America, South Asia and Oceania.