Adventures in Cryptozoology Volume 1 by Richard Freeman

Author:Richard Freeman [Freeman, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642500165
Publisher: Mango Media
Published: 2019-05-27T12:41:23+00:00

Chapter Five

Giant Apes and Hominins

‘I was walking in the mountains when I saw a wild beast. As it drew closer, I saw it was a man. As it drew closer still, I saw it was my brother.’

—Indian proverb

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All over the world there are reports that stretch back centuries, of encounters with man-like, hair-covered beasts that walk on two legs. The Epic of Gilgamesh, written in 2100 BC, includes a character called Enkidu who is a hairy, powerful wildman who dwells in the wilderness, knowing nothing of civilization.

In this chapter we shall examine such creatures and the new fossil and DNA evidence that supports their existence.

A quick note on terms. Hominin refers to modern man and man’s pre-historic relations. Hominoid refers to all of these and the great apes.

Asia

The most famous of the man-beasts is undoubtedly the Yeti. It is also the most misunderstood as well. In the mind of the general public, the Yeti is a white-furred beast, a kind of hybrid of a polar bear and a gorilla that prowls the eternal snows of the Himalayas. In fact, the Yeti is not white. It’s hair ranges from reddish to brown to black. In all my years of research, I have only come across two reports that give the Yeti white hair. The confusion comes from a mistranslation of one of the beast’s many names, metoh-kangmi, Sino-Tibetan for ‘abominable man of the rocks’. It was mistranslated as ‘abominable man of the snows’. This is where we get the western term abominable snowman. It is also where the false idea of a white, snow-dwelling beast comes from. Above the snowline, there is little for a large primate to eat. The lush forests in the lower valleys make much more sense for a Yeti inhabit. The term Yeti is Tibetan for ‘rock beast’.

Another fact the public doesn’t realise is that the term Yeti is applied to three different creatures. The Dzu-teh is a hulking biped eight to ten feet tall with dark hair. It leaves massive, manlike foot prints. The Mi-teh is more man-sized and moves both bipedally and on all fours. It has reddish hair and leaves tracks that have a divergent big toe. The smallest type, around four feet tall, is known as the Teh-lma and has light brown to yellowish hair. The creatures have many regional names and are reported from the Himalayas, Tibet, China, Malaysia, and India.

The pre-Buddhist Himalayan people spoke of a huge, vastly strong, hairy, manlike beast of the forests and mountains. It used rocks as weapons and made a whistling sound. This ancient description fits in well with the reports of modern times.

British naturalist and explorer Brian Houghton Hodgson spoke of his guides fleeing from a huge, hair-covered, upright, ape-like beast. Hodgson thought it might have been an orangutan. In modern times, though, these have been confined to Borneo and Sumatra.

Indian Army surgeon, Laurence Waddell, was told by his guides in Tibet of huge ape-like creatures. The guides described the beasts’ tracks but Waddell dismissed them as bears.

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