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The Most Isolated Man on the Planet
- rokhayakebe 16y agoCan you truly imagine what his life is like if he believes he is the last man on earth? You must be really strong to live through it.
- oz 16y agoWhy would he believe that? They've tried to contact him before.
- sophacles 16y agoWhy would he necessarily think those who have tried to contact him are people? He could think only he and his tribe are people and the others are: 1. aliens 2. demons 3. spirits 4. some animal 5. lesser humans 6. and so on Numbers 2,3 and 5 are not too far fetched. Heck even in the 20th and 21st century there are modern cultures that think this way. Racism is really all about #5. Various fundamentalist religions have a tendency to think in terms of demons and spirits. It is a completely valid hypothesis that he believes he is the last man on earth or the last 'real man' or whatever.
- oz 16y agoHmmm, I never thought of that. Good point.
- whyenot 16y agoWhen I was working in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Waorani people, who had only recently been contacted, believed only other Waorani were human beings. This created several difficult situations because they saw nothing wrong with attacking and in some cases killing "non-humans" they came in contact with. My understanding is that many other native people in the Amazon used to share a similar view of their own unique human-ness
- ahi 16y agoMany peoples have held that view outside the Amazon, including a few in Europe and North America.
- gcheong 16y ago"You must be really strong to live through it." Why is that necessarily the case? Perhaps there are some aspects of this culture that make is psychologically easier for him. For example, maybe he believes that his people are with him just in another form.
- Twisol 16y agoFor some reason, I'm vividly reminded of I Am Legend. I can definitely see a couple parallels here.
- philwelch 16y agoI haven't read the novel or seen the comparatively recent film yet, but I saw both of the other film adaptations of the novel (The Last Man On Earth starring Vincent Price and The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston) and there may indeed be some parallels with how the eponymous man in either of those films views the strange, apparently subhuman creatures who roam the streets in the night. As other comments in this thread have noted, many indigenous people didn't recognize outsiders as quite human upon initial contact. This is all very speculative, though.
- rmorrison 16y agoLet's track him down. Give him a computer. And finally get an unbiased opinion: vim or emacs?
- FraaJad 16y agoif he replies, he is a vim user.
- jacquesm 16y agoThat's easy, emacs is the choice of hermits all over the world ;)
- Groxx 16y agoProbably cats to a file.
- LiveTheDream 16y agoProbably uses a magnetized needle and a steady hand.
- shughes 16y agoHe uses emacs because he likes the benefit of slime when he's programming with Clojure. But he's not opposed to using vim once a vim Clojure environment becomes more mature.
- DanielBMarkham 16y agoAnd yet we still wonder about the Fermi Paradox. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
- akkartik 16y agoI don't understand.
- ryanwaggoner 16y agoI'm imagining a mind report in the intergalactic ether about the most isolated species on earth: humans. Attempts at contact with other isolated civilizations by the intergalactic community have often resulted in disaster, so for now, they've decided to clear a wide path around earth and wait.
- akkartik 16y agoBut there are no such reports. Is the speculation that we are causing disasters without even knowing it? I suppose we may be isolated because we're still primitive. So it's one of those explanations of Fermi that relies on centralized planning rather than an eco-system. Cool.
- ljegou 16y agoPerhaps a scale could be useful on the zoomed map... It's isolation, so distance, that we are talking about. (A grumpy cartographer).
- whatwhatwhat 16y agoI disliked the way the reporter kept calling the man an Indian It almost made me want to stop reading, but the story is quite interesting. I wonder what the 5 foot deep pits he digs are really for. Pit fall traps for.... vehicles?
- WildUtah 16y agoThe word in Brazil for indigenous people is indio. It doesn't carry negative connotations and is often considered a contraction for indigenous. Each nation, culture, and language in the Americas has its own points of sensitivity. Don't describe "tribes" in Mexico and remember that the word is "first nations" in Canada while "native americans" works better in the USA. In Latin American "indian" is preferred when you don't actually know the specific nation in question and its native name. For differentiating between East Indians and American Indians, remember the the politically correct terms are "casino Indian" and "call center Indian."
- dalore 16y agoI'm guessing it's some sort of storage, or perhaps sleeping area?
- philwelch 16y agoEdit: Now with citations! Many indigenous Americans prefer "Indian" to "Native American". "Native American" is a term invented by white people to make themselves feel better, by and large. "American Indian" is the preferred term if you need to distinguish from the people of India. "Charles C. Mann noted in his 2005 book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus that "every native person whom I have met (I think without exception) has used 'Indian' rather than 'Native American'."[17] Russell Means, an activist in the American Indian Movement, said in 1998, "I abhor the term Native American...I prefer the term American Indian because I know its origins."[4][17]" "Many of those who are covered by the term strongly prefer "American Indian" over "Native American".[21][22] According to the US Census Bureau, as of 1995 50% preferred "American Indian", 37% "Native American", and the remainder preferred other terms or had no preference.[23]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_name_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_name_controvers...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- wallflower 16y ago"City life is millions of people being lonesome together" -Henry David Thoreau "Is Urban Loneliness a Myth?" http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/ http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/
- quickpost 16y agoThis dude had a pretty impressive run of self imposed isolation: An Island to Oneself http://www.janesoceania.com/suvarov_tom_neale/ http://www.janesoceania.com/suvarov_tom_neale/
- jcl 16y agoIt's also reminiscent of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier in WWII who was commanded to carry out guerrilla tactics in the Philippine jungle. Believing reports of the war's end to be an Allied deception, he continued to attack and raid the locals for thirty years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda
- Mz 16y agoKudos to the Brazilian government: Advanced societies invariably have subsumed whatever indigenous populations they've encountered, determining those tribes' fates for them. But Brazil is in the middle of an experiment. If peaceful contact is established with the lone Indian, they want it to be his choice. They've dubbed this the "Policy of No Contact." After years of often-tragic attempts to assimilate into modern life the people who still inhabit the few remaining wild places on the planet, the policy is a step in a totally different direction. The case of the lone Indian represents its most challenging test.
- LiveTheDream 16y agoSounds like the Prime Directive
- philwelch 16y agoPerhaps not quite as extreme. I'm sure this guy can venture to the edges of the territory preserved to him and observe the outside world, or at least see airplanes flying above him. In fact, it sounds less like the Prime Directive and more like a type of basic respect--if the man wants to be left alone and seems to be leaving us alone, then live and let live.
- bingaman 16y agoI don't know if 'subsumed' is the word I'd go with.
- sprout 16y agoThe curious thing about the Amazonian peoples is that a lot of them are refugees on the run. We don't really know a lot about what the continent looked like before the European conquest because most of the indigenous peoples were slaughtered or integrated into Spanish/Portuguese society as slaves. So there's actually a lot of evidence that these hyper-insular tribes are products of the conquest, and did not have this extreme a society before Europeans arrived. In some ways, this man might be the last remnant of a hodgepodge guerrilla army of sorts that has been fighting a losing battle for centuries.
- jseliger 16y agoDo you have any evidence / citations for this idea? I've never heard of it, even in articles like 1491 from the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/03/mann.htm http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/03/mann.htm .
- philwelch 16y agoThe same author has a book, also titled 1491, which apparently goes into many of these issues. It's been on my to-read list for awhile.
- sprout 16y agoIn addition I'd just say read up on Latin American history in general. Slavers and missionaries worked all over the continent for centuries. It's hard to imagine that any society survived unchanged in that environment, especially as new societies were built up. And when I say guerrilla army I'm being more figurative than literal. It seems fairly obvious there wasn't a serious power structure in place outside of the Andes, but I think that it's definitely true that the cultures we see today do not look much at all like the pre-colonial Amazonian culture.
- alabut 16y agoI've heard similar descriptions of the aboriginal people of Australia - they only have their tribal grounds in the bush because the prime real estate they used to inhabit is taken.
- ggchappell 16y agoFYI: The story of the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas", mentioned in the 5th paragraph of the article, is dramatized in the novel Island of the Blue Dolphins.
- bootload 16y ago"... The story of the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas", mentioned in the 5th paragraph of the article, is dramatized in the novel Island of the Blue Dolphins. ..." Saw this film as a kid, pretty powerful as I remember quite a bit ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_the_Blue_Dolphins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_the_Blue_Dolphins
- iterationx 16y agoI doubt this is the case from my Wikipedia reading, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_people http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_people On January 18, 2007, FUNAI reported that it had confirmed the presence of 67 uncontacted tribes So in the last three years they contacted everybody in those 67 tribes but this one guy? Possible, but it seems unlikely.
- ahi 16y agoPresumably the 67 tribes have more than one person in them.
- steve19 16y agoSome documentary makers briefly filmed him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOdCiuf5tvY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOdCiuf5tvY
- whatwhatwhat 16y agohere is some video of the guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOdCiuf5tvY&feature=channel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOdCiuf5tvY&feature=chann...
- cetico 16y agoFYI, related story with video footage: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2007/07/man-of-hole.html http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2007/07/m...
- lecha 16y agoWait. You mean the guy is NOT on Facebook?