Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: RIP Man of the Hole

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

The Man of the Hole has died and we're pretty sad to hear it. Listen in to our tribute to this solitary hero today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca. Right, so this is a bit of a recap and for sure a lot of tribute to a gentleman named

the man of the hole is what he was called, he lived by himself in total isolation for 26 years on his indigenous land in the Amazon rainforest, the Tanaru indigenous land and very sad to say the man of the hole has passed away. Yeah, and they think roughly at mid 50s maybe age 60 tops. He was discovered by a FUNAI agent, FUNAI is Brazil's indigenous protection agency. And FUNAI had been basically tracking him quietly for the last 26 years. And the reason that they call him the man of the hole is because that's what FUNAI calls him.

He digs holes or used to dig holes. Certainly some were for animal traps, but they think some sadly were for protection from attack from other people, I should say. But the reason they called them the man of the hole is because no one literally no human being on earth aside from that man knew what that man's name was. That's right, he lived on about 20,000 acres of forest that eventually became protected and thus he was protected. He at one point had his people.

We don't know what tribe he was from, we don't know what language he spoke. We do know that his people were likely killed by invaders. I think the last people that they think he had was about six people with him. They were all killed, leaving him alone. And finally that land and his lifestyle was protected. As much as I don't even, we'll get to sort of the ins and outs of even peeking in on somebody like this and whether or not that's the right thing to do. Because that is sort of a thorny issue.

But he passed away on August 27th, no signs of struggle. They believe he died of natural causes. This is another sort of thorny thing. They are going to do a forensic examination of his body, which I get. I think there could be some value there to see what someone who lived in isolation might die of. Obviously, there are genetic things that can still happen, but in any sort of man influenced death is probably not the likely cause.

But my favorite part about this story is that he died in his hammock and he had covered himself with bird feathers, with macaw feathers, because he knew he was dying. That just sounds like a really peaceful, lovely way to go. Yeah, it is. But again, if he was 60 and this guy was living about as healthy a life as a human being can live, you would think that it seems really young. But yeah, the fact that he was covered in macaw feathers, and there wasn't any sign that anyone else had been around him, definitely certainly does point to the idea that he was

awaiting death and a new death was coming. So should we take a quick break? Let's do that. And we'll come back and dig some more into this. Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the

backyard guest house over childhood home. Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear, and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep.

We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step, not another one, kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. Radio will never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

you listen to podcasts. All right, so you mentioned a 2018 video, uh, which was probably around the time we did our first episode on the man of the hole. This was in July of that year on Facebook, a survival international posted a video of him from a distance, uh, chopping down a tree, uh, but this is from 2011, uh, they sat on this, uh, footage for seven years and, um, you know, they found out some things about him over his life, which is that, uh, and some of it since he has, has left us, um, abandoned camp sites.

So it was the 53rd thatch hut that he had built, at least over the past 26 years. Holes everywhere, holes inside these huts, uh, so they're getting little clues on how he lived his life a little bit now that he's passed. Yeah. He was, um, not just a hunter-gatherer. He was also a farmer too. He farmed corn, manioc root, papaya, bananas, um, and he also was a great hunter apparently with his bow and arrow and also those holes that he, uh, put stakes in.

What are they called? Like tiger, tiger traps? No, no, no, that sounds, that sounds good, but he used those to like catch wild boar. Um, so this is how this guy was living, um, again, by himself for 26 years, he did not, as far as we know, have any contact with anybody, despite, um, Funai trying to make contact with them after he became the last surviving member of his tribe, um, because when they tried to initiate contact, they brought him some gifts and they basically went and visited him at his home and he apparently flipped out.

They said he was terrified and very aggressive and was clearly not at all happy that they were there. So from that moment on, Funai said, we're never contacting this man again. We're going to track him. We're going to make sure that he's okay, uh, but we're going to keep our distance both for, um, his own comfort, but also for his safety too, because one of the problems is people from outside of the Amazon coming into contact with an uncontacted tribe, bring a lot of germs that the uncontacted tribe has no defenses against whatsoever.

Yeah. And that sort of brings up a little bit of what I mentioned before, which is what, what do you do in a situation like this? Do you go in and try and, um, vaccinate people to try and keep them safe? Do you try and completely leave them alone? Do you give them these gifts like they would, they would give them seeds apparently and small tools occasionally, which apparently he rejected. He never, or at least rarely took the gifts.

Um, uh, you know, it is sort of a moral question that, uh, I don't think is super easily answered. Um, I think leaving someone alone like that is, is for sure probably the best route, but what does leave someone alone really mean? Like does, is even spying in and tracking them, uh, too much. Well, so yeah, you could definitely argue that like his, his privacy was being invaded, whether he was aware of it or not in that, in and of itself, like Robson of some of his dignity. But the reason FUNAI was doing this wasn't just for their own jollies or anything like

that. Right. The way that Brazil's government set up protection of indigenous lands was you had to verify through a, a siding, uh, that an uncontacted tribe existed and I guess they, FUNAI thinks there's about 113, 114 uncontacted tribes living in the Amazon still, but they're only aware of something like 23. They've only confirmed 23. So only 23 are protected and that protection has only continued, uh, when there's a siding

within a certain amount of time, every like say three years they have to be cited. So that's why they were tracking them like that. Yeah. And you know, the idea of protection is not just here, take this vaccine to help protect you from sickness. Um, one of the articles I read was talking about the fact that these, uh, parts of the jungle are not just free of people. There are bad people in there.

There are drug dealers and poachers and people use this place for cover. So it's not like they're completely alone. They're just living, uh, you know, their indigenous lifestyle, ideally away from the bad people. Yeah. So those bad people apparently are the reason why, uh, he was living alone for 26 years. Um, and FUNAI pieced together probably what happened to his tribe from, um, local residents in the area around where he lived.

And they said that in the seventies, they believed that most of the tribe was killed because they were given poisoned sugar, probably by ranching interests that were invading the area, um, which would explain why he would accept zero gifts from anybody, um, when they tried to give them to him in the nineties. And then in 1996, the other six, I think he was, um, one of seven survivors. And in like 1995 or six, the six others were gunned down. And from that moment on for the next, what, 26 years he lived by himself. Yeah.

It kind of cracks me up when I think of all the survival shows alone and all the shows where they're like, Right. We made it a hundred days. Right. What an experience, even with our, you know, modern tools and, uh, this guy's like, what? A hundred days? Right.

I've been, that's what he said. He went, what? I've been out here for 26 years. Right. You cracked the code. His language was not lost after all. Um, so the thing is Chuck is in addition to those tools, not just making it, being alone, having no one to talk to, no one to interact with.

Like how would you not crack up in that sense, even though you have an area that's almost as big as the entire Disney world resort, bigger than the entire island of Manhattan to wander around, you're still wandering around it by yourself on your own. That would be the hardest thing of all, I think. Yeah. And, you know, as far as leaving people alone, like as a curious individual, part of my brain says, Oh, I would love to have seen a, a documentary on this guy's day to day life because it's so fascinating to me.

But the other part of my brain says, No, Chuck, that's the wrong instinct. Like leave him alone. So Brazil officially did say we will leave these people alone when we discover an unkind, contacted tribe. We will cordon off their, um, indigenous lands and just leave them alone. Um, the problem is they have a president right now called Bolsonaro, President Bolsonaro. And he has done everything he can to roll back every protection that he can find that protect indigenous lands and indigenous people and instead open the Amazon up to ranchers

and loggers and miners and just basically chew through the Amazon at an even faster rate that it was being chewed through before. So they think that I should say FUNAI believes that, um, probably more and more uncontacted tribes are going to go extinct, including some that we will have never confirmed and never even knew about. And by extinct, we're saying like they're being massacred, they're genocides that are being carried out day to day, um, year to year in the Amazon so that people can grow plants or, um, graze their cattle there instead for progress.

That's what makes this whole thing so heartbreaking to me. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, hats off to you, sir, man of the whole, not you, Josh. RIP. My hat's always off to you. But, uh, RIP and just, uh, very interesting story. I want, I mean, does that mean this 20,000 acres is now a program?

So the protection runs out in 2025. It's not clear whether they'll try to roll it back before then, but FUNAI is trying to say, no, let's just make this particular preserve permanently protected and who knows what'll happen. Right. Depends on who's president, I think. All right. Well, good, good, yet sad follow up to this story.

Agreed, Chuck. Good idea. And I guess that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. All podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.