There's a new wrinkle in Brazil's plan to build a $185 million undersea fiber-optic cable that would connect it to Portugal and help the country avoid surveillance by U.S. intelligence authorities, reports Bloomberg: The cable will be built without the help of any U.S. companies.

The best way to think about the remaining tribes in 2011 is to imagine a series of concentric circles, all of which interact on each boundary. There are the tribes that stay on their own homelands in the forest (or seek to do so), but who have regular relations with the outside. These retain a strong tribal identity, but they are coming to know the world all too well; they will travel to fight legal battles for their territories and their children will leave for the cities. Then there are a good number of tribes (or parts of tribes) who have been contacted, but who have very circumscribed dealings with the outside world; while no longer in isolation, these live (or try to live) as they always lived. Then, in the heart of the forest, there are these few remaining uncontacted peoples. They may have heard rumours from their grandparents, but they are among the handful of peoples left alive on the planet who have next to no idea of what the world has become. 

He's an Indian, and Brazilian officials have concluded that he's the last survivor of an uncontacted tribe. They first became aware of his existence nearly 15 years ago and for a decade launched numerous expeditions to track him, to ensure his safety, and to try to establish peaceful contact with him. In 2007, with ranching and logging closing in quickly on all sides, government officials declared a 31-square-mile area around him off-limits to trespassing and development. Advertisement

It's meant to be a safe zone. He's still in there. Alone.

History offers few examples of people who can rival his solitude in terms of duration and degree. The one that comes closest is the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas"—an Indian woman first spotted by an otter hunter in 1853, completely alone on an island off the coast of California. Catholic priests who sent a boat to fetch her determined that she had been alone for as long as 18 years, the last survivor of her tribe. But the details of her survival we