Stories abound of humans brought up by wild animals, but often they are pure fiction. It's rare to find someone who re-entered society after living in the company of animals and is able to talk cogently about his experiences - including, apparently, sharing food with a family of wolves.
The first time Marcos Rodriguez Pantoja sat in front of a bowl of soup, he didn't know what to do. He looked carefully, cupped his hand and plunged it into the bowl. The contact with the boiling liquid made him jump and the plate ended up in little pieces on the floor.
It was 1965 and he was 19, but he hadn't sat down at a table to eat since he was a small child. He had been living for up to 12 years alone in the mountains with only wolves, goats, snakes and other animals for company.
When he was little - about six or seven, he estimates - his father sold him to a farmer, who took him to the Sierra Morena mountains, to help out an ageing goatherd.
Soon the old man died and Marcos was left alone.
Having suffered years of beatings from his stepmother, he preferred the solitude of the mountains to the thought of human company, and made no attempt to leave.
What little the goatherd had taught him before he died was enough for him not to go hungry. He learned to hunt rabbits and partridges with traps made of sticks and leaves.
"The animals guided me as to what to eat. Whatever they ate, I ate," he says. "The wild boars ate tubers buried under the soil. They found them because they smelled them. When they were digging the soil looking for them, I threw a stone at them - they would run away and then I would steal the tubers."
Marcos says he established a special bond with some animals. Many will find it hard to believe this story, about his relationship with a family of wolves:
"One day I went into a cave and started to play with wolf cubs that lived there and I fell asleep. Later, the mother brought food for them and I woke up.
"She saw me and looked fiercely at me. The wolf started to rip the meat apart. A cub got close to me and I tried to steal his food, because I was hungry as well. The mother pawed at me. I backed off.
"After feeding her pups she threw me a piece of meat. I didn't want to touch it because I thought she was going to attack me, but she was pushing the meat with her nose. I took it, ate it, and thought she was going to bite me, but she put her tongue out, and started to lick me. After that, I was one of the family."
Marcos also says he had a snake as a companion.
"She lived with me in a cave that was part of an abandoned mine. I made a nest for her and gave her milk from the goats. She followed me everywhere and protected me," he says.
These relationships kept loneliness at bay, Marcos says. He was only lonely when he could not hear animals - and in such cases he would imitate their call. He can still reproduce the sound of the deer, the fox, the aguililla (booted eagle) and other animals.
"Once they answered, I would be able to sleep because I knew they hadn't abandoned me," he says.
Bit by bit, sounds and growls replaced words. Marcos stopped speaking - until, one day, he was found by the Guardia Civil, and taken by force to the small village of Fuencaliente, at the foot of the mountains.
His father was brought to identify him.
"I felt nothing when I saw him," Marcos says.
"He only asked me one thing: 'Where is your jacket?' As if I would still be wearing the jacket I had when I left!"
Marcos is a great talker, a storyteller who knows exactly when to pause, when to make a noise, or hiss, to increase the dramatic tension of his tale.
But how true is it? Can men and wolves actually be "friends" or snakes "faithful guardians"?
"What happens is that Marcos does not tell us what happened, but what he believes happened," says Gabriel Janer Manila, Spanish writer and anthropologist at the University of the Balearic Islands, who wrote his thesis on Marcos's case, and 30 years later published a novel about his life.
"But that's what we all do - to present our take on the facts," he says.
"When Marcos sees a snake and gives her milk, and then the snake comes back, he says she's his friend. The snake is not his 'friend'. She is following him because he gives her milk. He says, 'She protects me' because that is what he believes has happened."
This way of interpreting the facts, his imagination and intelligence was what enabled him to survive in the solitude of the mountains, says Janer Manila.
It was thanks to Janer Manila that Marcos's story became widely known.
He listened to Marcos and filmed him 10 years after he had returned from the mountains.
"My first impression was one of amazement. He was a nice young man wanting to communicate with people, despite his limitations," Janer Manila recalls.
"But at first, when I heard it, I did not believe him. I thought, 'It cannot be.' But the story was so consistent and so well told, and also, every time I asked him about it he would tell me the story using the same words. So I said to myself, I will have to check all this."
Janer Manila travelled to the places he had named and talked to the people he had mentioned.
Some people corroborated parts of the story.
"I talked to people who had engaged with him when he was found, with people who welcomed him in their homes, with the employee who bathed him for the first time, with a seminarian who took care of him... All these people highlighted his wild character, his ignorance of the social world and his inability to follow the rules of a game. The account matched what Marcos had told me," says Janer Manila.
"And when I saw him telling his story later," he says in reference to the interviews Marcos gave after the 2010 premiere of a film in inspired by his life, "it hadn't changed."
Marcos describes his return to society as the scariest moment in his life.
"I didn't know where to go; I just wanted to escape to the mountains," he says.
Everything was traumatic, from his first visit to the barbershop - when he thought the barber would cut his throat with his razor - to the fights he had with nuns in Madrid, who tried to make him sleep in a bed.
This habit took him a long time to acquire.
"Once he rented a small apartment and he showed it to me," says Janer Manila. "The bedroom had no bed or furniture, there were blankets all over the floor along with lots of wrinkled sheets of magazine and newspapers, as if there had been an animal there. When I saw that, I asked him if he wouldn't be better sleeping in a bed? And he said: 'No.'"
What most disturbed Marcos most of all was the noise and the hustle and bustle of human communities.
"I could not cope with so much noise… the cars… and people going back and forwards like ants. But at least ants all go in the same direction! People went everywhere! I was scared of crossing the road!" he says.
The nuns of Madrid taught him some lessons.
"They taught me to eat properly and they put a piece of wood in my back to help me walk straight because I was all crooked from walking in the mountains," he says. Also, he remembers, they put him in a wheelchair for a while, because he couldn't walk after they cut all the calluses on his feet.
What followed was a journey from one job to another, and a brief stint in the military.
People regularly took advantage of Marcos's naivety, and he ended up living in miserable conditions in Malaga, until a chance encounter with a retired police officer, who invited him to live in Rante, a small village near Orense in Spain's north-western region of Galicia.
Now in his late 60s, Marcos bears few grudges, but he does wonder why, after forcing him to come down from the mountains, the state didn't prepare him properly for life in society.
"When I got out of there, the first thing they should have done is send me to a school, teach me to talk and how to behave in the world," he says. "What was the point of making me first do communion and military service? So I could learn to shoot and kill people?" he asks, with a rare note of anger in his voice.
In Rante, where Marcos has been living for about 15 years, everyone knows him and treats him with respect.
His home is a small house, with slightly cave-like low ceilings, packed with memorabilia - photos of his moments of fame, drawings and a curious collection of cigarette lighters. The tiny patio is full of flowers and plants.
In the corner of the room there is a piano and a guitar. Marcos learned how to play them by ear and he doesn't play badly at all.
He tells me he had a few girlfriends in the past, but nowadays he is single. He has many friends, though, and people who love him and help him.
He no longer works. He gets a half-pension for an injury he sustained while working on a building site - but whenever he can, he lends a hand at Rante's only bar.
"Marcos is a very good person, a bit childish but a very nice guy. He is always here," says Maite, the owner.
Does he ever contemplate returning to the Sierra Morena?
"I thought about it many times. But I'm used to this life now and there are so many things that I didn't have there, like music for instance, or women. Women are one good reason to stay here," he says.
"Now I am accustomed to it, I'll remain where I am."
动物哺育人类幼童的传奇故事想必我们都耳熟能详，但是在动物陪伴下长大的人类如何再度融入社会，想必了解的人少之又少。据英国广播公司11月27日报道，西班牙男子马科斯•罗德里格斯•潘托哈童年时被遗弃在深山老林，在狼、蛇等动物的陪伴守护下长大成人。他再度融入人类社会的历程并非一帆风顺，以至于一度想要重返山林，好在如今他已经在一个小村庄里找到了安宁和归属。
***狼口夺食
大约六、七岁时，马科斯被父亲卖给了一个农夫，几经辗转被送到了塞拉利昂莫雷纳山去帮助一个上了年纪的牧羊人。不久牧羊人过世，留下孤苦无依的马科斯。他没有尝试离开，相比于忍受继母的殴打虐待，幼小的马科斯宁愿孤独地守着深山老林。
靠着老牧羊人过世前的言传身教，马科斯已经学会了觅食。“动物们引导着我，它们吃什么，我就吃什么，”他说，“野猪们吃埋在土里的块茎……它们刨到块茎时，我就扔石块吓跑它们，然后我就将块茎据为己有。”
最不可思议的是，马科斯还跟狼群建立了特殊的联系。“有一天我走进一个洞穴跟里面的狼崽玩耍，玩着玩着我就睡着了。后来母狼给幼崽带回了食物，我也醒了，母狼凶狠地看着我。狼们开始分食生肉，我也饥肠辘辘，一只狼崽靠近了我，我想偷它的食物。母狼用爪子抓我，我就放弃了。”
尽管第一次狼嘴“夺食”并不成功，但接下来却发生了惊天逆转。据马科斯回忆：“喂完狼崽后，母狼给我扔了一块肉。我不敢去接，担心它会攻击我，但是它用鼻子把肉推给我。我拿起肉吞了下去，有些忐忑，以为它会咬我，但它只是伸出舌头舔舔我。自那以后，我就成了这个家族的一员了。”
***以蛇为伴
马科斯还有一个不离不弃的蛇伙伴。“它跟我一起住在一个废弃的矿井里。我给它做了个巢，喂它一些山羊奶。它就到处跟着我、保护我。”
正是因为有着这些动物小伙伴的陪伴，马科斯的深山生活并不孤单。偶尔在听不到动物的声音时，他会很落寞，他就模仿动物们的声音，“如果它们回答了，就证明我没有被抛弃，那我就可以安然入睡了”。直到现在，马科斯还会模仿鹿、狐狸、靴雕等动物的声音。
***回归社会
19岁时，马科斯被西班牙民防军发现了，并被强行带到山脚下的小村庄。马科斯说，被迫再度融入社会的过程是他一生中最大的梦魇。
他见到了自己的父亲，至亲骨肉分别多年却没有上演抱头痛哭的感人场景。“我看到他没有特别的感觉。他只问了我一件事：‘你的外套呢？’就好像我现在还能穿着离家那天所穿的衣服。”
回归人类社会后第一次被带到理发店时，马科斯以为理发师会用剪刀割断他的喉咙。看着面前的热汤时，他不知道该做些什么，傻乎乎地把手伸进碗里，滚烫的汤水烫得他直跳脚。及至今天，他都不习惯睡在床上。
最令马科斯不安的是人类社会的噪音和拥挤。“我无法适应这么多的噪音，比如汽车的声音，我也无法理解人类像蚂蚁一样走动，蚂蚁好歹是向同一方向走，人类却是四面八方到处走。我很害怕过马路，”马科斯抱怨道。
马德里的修女给了马科斯一些帮助，教他吃饭、直立行走。
但是，马科斯还是经历很多挫折，工作换了一份又一份，甚至在军队里服务过。在最艰难的时候，他千百次地闪现过重归山林的念头。马科斯至今想不明白，为什么国家在逼迫他“出山”后却不帮他适应尘世生活。
***单身晚年
马科斯的厄运在遇到一位退休警察后结束了，在后者的邀请下，他在西班牙西北部的一个小村庄“安营扎寨”，过起了宁静的小日子。
马科斯在小村庄里生活了15年，村里的每个人都认识他、尊重他。他曾交过几个女朋友，现在回归了单身，不过身边仍有很多帮助他、爱护他的朋友。
马科斯现在住的房屋很小，天花板很矮，有点像洞穴，里面摆满了纪念品，角落里放着一架钢琴和一把吉他。小天井里长满了鲜花和植物，很是温馨。
他不再工作，靠着在建筑工地落下伤病后获得的退休金过活。不过他也没有闲着，经常去当地酒吧里搭把手。“马科斯是个很好的人，有点幼稚，但不妨碍他的好，他一直在这里，”酒吧主人迈特中肯地评价道。
马科斯断了回归山林的念头。“我习惯了这里的生活，这里有很多是我在山上无法拥有的东西，比如音乐、比如女人。女人是我留下来的理由……我会继续待在这里。”
***是真是假？
西班牙作家、巴利阿里群岛大学人类学家加夫列尔•哈内尔•马尼拉深入调查研究了马科斯的故事，并以此为题材出版了一本小说。他认为马科斯说的是真话，尽管其中有想象的成份。
“开始听到这个故事时，我并不相信他。但是他的故事前后一致，每次我问他时他都能以同样的话复述一遍，我就想去核实，”马尼拉说，“我跟他被发现时与他有接触的人、在家中欢迎他的人、第一次给他洗澡的人、照顾他的神学院学生进行了交谈……大家都强调他狂野的性格、他对社会的无知、他对遵守游戏规则的无能为力，跟马科斯告诉我的一样。”甚至马科斯在2010年再次复述这个故事时，跟几十年前几乎没有差别。
马尼拉相信马科斯的经历是真的，但他认为其中有想象的成份。“马科斯看到一条蛇，给它喂了奶，蛇后来又游回来了。他说蛇是他的朋友，其实不是这样的，蛇跟着他是因为他可以给它奶喝。他说，‘它保护着我’，那是他选择去相信的事实。”或者正是这样的想象力让马科斯熬过了长年与世隔绝的孤苦生活。
西班牙导演赫拉尔多•奥利瓦雷斯将马科斯的故事拍成了纪录片，并在2010年举行了首映，预计将在明年公开上演。
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