Thousands Once Spoke His Language in the Amazon. Now, He’s the Only One. - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/world/americas/peru-amazon-the-end.html
INTUTO, Peru — Amadeo García García rushed upriver in his canoe, slipping into the hidden, booby-trapped camp where his brother Juan lay dying.
Juan writhed in pain and shook uncontrollably as his fever rose, battling malaria. As Amadeo consoled him, the sick man muttered back in words that no one else on Earth still understood.
Je’intavea’, he said that sweltering day in 1999. I am so ill.
The words were Taushiro. A mystery to linguists and anthropologists alike, the language was spoken by a tribe that vanished into the jungles of the Amazon basin in Peru generations ago, hoping to save itself from the invaders whose weapons and diseases had brought it to the brink of extinction.