Picture all your friends and family brutally murdered or coldly displaced by illegal loggers, daring gold miners, brutal drug traffickers, cattle ranchers or land speculators — threats from all sides at virtually all times. Some get old and die, and your population dwindles until it’s just you left.

That’s the harrowing existence of one solitary native Brazilian Indian known to anthropologists as the “Man of the Hole.” Very little is known about him, but he’s believed to be the last survivor of his tribe. We don’t know his name, we don’t know his tribe’s name, and we know very little about how he lives, except that he must be very lonely. He digs out large holes — more than 6 feet deep — to either trap animals or avoid threats himself in the vast Amazonian jungle, near the Tanaru River in the state of Rondonia in western Brazil.

“It’s almost certain that the rest of his tribe died from a combination of disease, full-on violence and getting simply pushed out of where they used to live,” Rob Walker, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri, told The Post. “Just bulldozing the habitat, basically. It’s pretty sad.”

“This guy’s the last of his tribe. It must be terrifying.” - Smithsonian senior staff scientist Fernando Santos-Granero

Walker, who has searched for the man using satellite imagery, said he most likely uses simple tools like bows and arrows to hunt animals like monkeys, peccaries, deer, armadillos and pacas. He might fish a little bit as well and probably has a garden, although maintaining it could be tough all by himself, Walker said.

Among anthropologists, one of the key questions regarding uncontacted or isolated tribes — of which there are an estimated 50 to 100 worldwide, primarily in Brazil — is whether to make contact with them. Most uncontacted Indians are likely aware of outsiders and possibly have had limited interactions with some, but choose to remain hidden and isolated. The “Man of the Hole” has rejected attempts at contact, sometimes violently — but more on that later.

“The problem here is he sees the outside world as the enemy,” Walker said. “And then when teams do make contact, he thinks it’s going to end poorly for him. But if he had better information, he would know that people do actually care for indigenous people’s rights. I think he’d be much more open to making contact.”

Walker and Arizona State University anthropology professor Kim Hill argued in an editorial in Science magazine last year that the “leave them alone” strategy supported by Brazil, Peru and the United Nations is misguided. In 2007, Brazilian government officials declared a 31-square-mile safe zone around the man, ideally making him immune to ranchers and creeping development. Brazil later decided to enlarge that territory by 11.5 square miles and to not contact the “Man of the Hole.”

Walker and Hill claimed that approach makes two implicit assumptions: that isolated populations are viable in the long term, and that they would choose isolation if they knew contact would not lead to massacre or enslavement.

“Controlled contact with isolated peoples is a better option than a no-contact policy,” Walker and Hill wrote. “This means that governments should initiate contact only after conceiving a well-organized plan.”

Walker told The Post his rationale for that editorial was simple: With modern medicine, the “Man of the Hole” will likely live longer than if left entirely alone. Besides, good actors like anthropologists are surely better than the cadre of others who might not have such altruistic intentions.

“That might sound good in a perfect world,” Walker said of no-contact policies. “But in reality, there’s all sorts of contacts going on. They’re just not peaceful ones.”

Stephen Corry, director of Survivor International, a London-based advocacy group for tribal peoples, blasted the editorial as “dangerous and misleading,” claiming examples of contact it referenced left many of the isolated people dead.

“Walker and Hill play straight into the hands of those who want to open Amazonia up for resource extraction and ‘investment,’” Corry said in a statement. “That they claim this is for tribes’ own benefit is dangerous and misleading nonsense.”

Corry insisted isolated tribes are “perfectly viable” as long as their lands are protected.

“To think we have the right to invade their territories and make contact with them, whether they want it or not, with all the likely consequences, is pernicious and arrogant,” Corry’s statement continued. “The decision as to whether to make contact or not has to be one for the people themselves, not for outsiders who think they know what’s in the Indians’ best interests.”

In 2009, gunmen believed to be ranchers who opposed Brazil’s efforts to protect the “Man of the Hole” reportedly attacked him in Tanaru, an indigenous territory in Rondonia, Brazil. Officials from FUNAI, Brazil’s indigenous affairs department, said its protection post nearby was ransacked and spent shotgun shells littered the forest. The lonely tribesman somehow survived the ruthless, seemingly unprovoked attack.

Scott Wallace, an expert on isolated tribes and author of “The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes,” said Walker’s idea of controlled contact usually ends in failure.

“The ideal condition of having a great deal of resources and personnel and the wherewithal that one would need to prevent an epidemic, or to provide all the best Western medicine has to offer these people … they are never going to get that,” Wallace told The Post. “They’re just not going to get those things and most of them are going to end up dying. In many cases, the mortality rate is up to 90 percent after contact.”

Wallace, whose book is an account of a three-month Amazon expedition in 2002 with Brazilian explorer Sydney Possuelo, acknowledged there’s no easy answer.

“It’s a difficult issue because clearly time is running out for these groups,” Wallace said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s still not our responsibility to try to protect their land and to protect them.”

Despite the reported close call and likely more that went undocumented, the plan to protect him seems to be working. The “Man of the Hole” is indeed alive — thriving, perhaps.

Marcelo dos Santos, a former FUNAI official who personally made contact with the “Man of the Hole” in a 2009 documentary by filmmaker Vincent Carelli, confirmed to The Post that the man planted a small garden as recently as a week ago and that he’s still able to hunt for food.

“He is in good health, apparently because he was walking in the woods,” Santos wrote The Post in an email translated from Portuguese. “Farmers have respected the untouchability of his land.”

A spokesperson for FUNAI told The Post that officials from the agency last confirmed he’s alive in June.

“He is alive,” read an email from a FUNAI official to The Post, translated from Portuguese. “The monitoring activities consist of field expeditions aimed at observing and recording conclusive traces of the presence of isolated indigenous peoples, characterize their use of processes and occupation, without any contact.”

Fernando Santos-Granero, a senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, told The Post he believes humanity must respect the will of isolated peoples.

“And their will is not to be contacted, so don’t contact them,” he said during a recent interview. “Unfortunately, economic factors always have a lot of weight in the political decisions of governments and often they decide to open these protected areas for oil exploration and mining instead of protecting people who are considered wild and arrogant. Should we extract a lot of oil so the entire country can get richer, or do we protect the lives of 35 people?”

Santos-Granero said he imagines the “Man of the Hole” lives a frightening, extremely vulnerable existence, one that could end in seconds due to any number of threats, including but not limited to disease, violence and shrinking habitat.

“He represents something that has, unfortunately, become increasingly common: human beings depleting nature and pushing other species to extinction,” he said. “This guy’s the last of his tribe. It must be terrifying.”