We tend to experience as much as we possibly can during our life but there are some who lead what you might call a sheltered life. This includes a man who was adopted and raised in Greece by Orthodox monks.
It’s amazing to think that somebody could live on earth for their entire life and miss out on some of the most common things that we take for granted. This man spent his entire life at the monastery, and he never saw a woman.
Despite the fact that Mihailio Totolos had lived to the age of 89, he was in seclusion the entire time so he was never able to see a woman in real life. He also never knew a life outside of the monastery, which is surprising.
Although the man, who was from Greece knew that women existed because of conversations he had with others, he was only aware of what they looked like because of descriptions he may have seen in a book. It’s also understood that he never knew his mother when he was born in 1856.
His mother left him orphaned after she died shortly after giving birth. He was without any immediate family, so that is when he was adopted by a group of Orthodox monks.
Immediately after being adopted, he was taken to a monastery on Mount Athos. During his years living at the monastery, he had to live according to some very strict rules. This included the fact that women were not allowed on the property under any circumstances.
This wasn’t a new rule but rather, it was in place for hundreds of years before came to live at the monastery. Tolotos could venture out into the world if he wanted, but he never left the monastery by choice.
In other words, aside from what he had seen or learned in a book or in a conversation, he never saw a woman in real life. He had to imagine what half of the population on the earth looked like, acted like, and sounded like.
According to the monks, Tolotos was the only human in existence who had never seen a woman. It seems as if he was also never curious about going outside of the monastery and he lived there until 1938, when he died at the age of 82.
After he died, he was given a special burial by the monks who lived at the monastery with him. They feel that he is the only man who ever died without knowing what a woman looks like.
His death was also recorded in a newspaper article in later years, which noted that there were other things that he had never seen as well. This includes seeing a movie on the silver screen, riding in a car, or seeing an airplane.
This would be a difficult feat to ever duplicate, considering the fact that we live in a very connected and technical world. Undoubtedly, Mihailo Tolotos was a very unique man and there will never be another like him.
