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View Full Version : Here is a survivalist in his purest form.



Alan R McDaniel Jr
07-24-2018, 12:54 AM
You gotta survive the elements and hired guns to boot.

Alan


http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/07/23/amazing-amazon-sighting-worlds-loneliest-man-spotted-in-remarkable-video-footage.html


Extremely rare video footage captured in the Amazon shows the last surviving member of an uncontacted tribe that was massacred in 1995.

FUNAI, the Brazilian government’s Indian Affairs department, released the video of the man in Tanaru, a remote indigenous territory in Brazil’s Rondônia state. The territory covers just over 8,000 hectares.

The indigenous people of Tanaru have been forced from their land and subjected to a series of brutal attacks by gunmen likely hired by colonists and ranchers. “In the 1980s, disorderly colonization, the establishment of farms and illegal logging in Rondônia led to repeated attacks on the isolated indigenous peoples who had lived there,” explained FUNAI, in a statement.

By the mid-1990s, only six people were left in the man’s tribe, according to officials. The man caught on camera is the sole survivor of a vicious attack that killed the remaining five members of his tribe in 1995.

FUNAI confirmed the man’s presence in 1996, but has been respecting his desire to avoid contact with mainstream society. Nonetheless, officials have spent the last 22 years monitoring the survivor’s territory to ensure that it remains protected. The last attempt to contact the man occurred in 2005, they said. Since then, a few tools and seeds for planting have been left in locations that he often passes.

Dubbed “the world’s loneliest man,” the solitary figure is also known as “the Indian of the hole,” according to FUNAI, on account of the stave-filled holes he digs to trap animals.

The incredible and undated video quickly went viral.

“Footage like this is vital in the ongoing struggle to protect uncontacted peoples, who are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet,” said tribal advocacy group Survival International, in a statement.

Despite an attack by gunmen in 2009, Survival International says that the man in the video has survived thanks to FUNAI’s enforcement of the legal order protecting his territory.

However, this protection is under threat because FUNAI’s budget has been severely slashed, according to the advocacy group.

With Brazil’s presidential elections scheduled for October, the video’s release may well have been timed to keep the issue of the country’s indigenous people in the political spotlight.

Fiona Watson, Survival International’s advocacy director, joined a Brazilian government monitoring mission to Tanaru in 2005, “It was absolutely not to make contact,” she told Fox News.

Watson, however, she did see evidence of the man’s life in his “tiny pocket of rainforest.”

In addition to his huts, Watson saw the gardens that the man had built throughout the forest, where he was growing corn, bananas, papaya and manioc (cassava or yucca). She also saw the holes, up 6.5 feet deep, which he uses to catch animals. He also digs holes to hide in.

Given that indigenous people often hunt in groups, Watson thinks that the hunting holes highlight the resourceful nature of someone surviving on their own. “I think it does show that he has got tremendous resilience,” she said.

Watson described Tanaru as a “peaceful” stretch of forest. “You can hear the birds and the animals,” she said. “Clearly, he has managed to carve out his life there.”

Despite his lonely existence, the man in the video looks healthy. “One of the interesting things in the video is that he appears to be in good health,” she added. While very little is known about the man, Watson thinks that he may be in his early fifties.

Nonetheless, the man faces multiple threats to his existence. In addition to potential violence, uncontacted people lack immunity to common diseases such as influenza, which can devastate entire communities.

FUNAI says that it has evidence of 107 isolated Indian groups within the Amazon.

In 2016, incredible aerial images were released showing an uncontacted tribe that experts warn could be in danger of being wiped out.

The photos revealed a village in northern Brazil’s remote Yanomami indigenous territory that is estimated to be home to around 100 people.

In the same year, photos emerged of tribespeople living deep in the rainforest of the western Brazilian state of Acre.

1stimestar
07-24-2018, 01:39 PM
Wow, that's pretty interesting.

Alan R McDaniel Jr
07-24-2018, 04:46 PM
I remember reading about the Yanomami in Nat Geo when I was a kid in the 60s. I was amazed that wild people still existed. Today I am even more amazed that Indian Genocide still existed in the 90s.

Alan

hayshaker
07-24-2018, 11:26 PM
thanks for posting this story

davidgoldberg
07-25-2018, 11:13 AM
Another one survivalist in his purest form is Hirō "Hiroo" Onoda. He was an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who fought in World War II and was a Japanese holdout who did not surrender in August 1945. After the war ended Onoda spent 29 years holding out in the Philippines until his former commander traveled from Japan to informally relieve him from duty in 1974.

Rick
07-25-2018, 02:20 PM
Well, he wasn't a true survivalist. He stole whatever he needed from villagers.

highlo
04-22-2019, 11:36 PM
So did Bill Moreland, in the 1930's, in a MUCH tougher environment, Idaho, where he lived in the woods for 13 years, 11 of it with no gun. He had a single shot .22lr rifle and 50 rds for his last 2 years. He killed a deer a month with it, one shot each. He managed to get a bit of food and supplies from the park ranger cabins, but that was damned little. Once he looted one in the winter, you can bet that it didn't get re-supplied before springtime. He lived in hollow logs and trees. He had a wool blanket, a hunk of tarp, some line and hooks, a pocket knife, a skillet, a coffeepot, flint and steel, some oil of cloves for his tooth pain (he pulled his own teeth, eventually) and the clothes that he stood in! Maybe 15 lbs of gear, tops, before he got the 5 lb rifle. A real Hudson Bay wool blanket costs over $300 and weighs over 8 lbs. Doubt that he had such, but it's possible.