Articles and Papers
Cryptic Odds
J. Richard Greenwell of the International Society of Cryptozoology ranks and reviews the 4 most well known of Bigfoot-type creatures.
1. Bigfoot (sasquatch)
Eyewitness reports describe a giant, bipedal ape standing between six and eight feet tall. Most reliable reports have come from cold mountain forests of western North America, and indicate solitary behaviour — like orang-utans. Many anthropologists deride such accounts, but there are now about 2,000 reports catalogued, involving some 3,000 eyewitnesses, many of them responsible citizens.
There are also hundreds of cases of people finding sasquatch tracks which average 15 inches in length. Many hairs have been analysed inconclusively. The other evidence is a film taken in California in 1967, which shows a large, bipedal ape. Most anthropologists consider it to have been a hoax (it must have been, they reason, because sasquatch doesn't exist!), but some do not. Physical anthropologist Grover S Krantz of Washington State University has studied the issue for more than 20 years and concludes that sasquatch is a surviving form of the giant ape genus Gigantopithecus from Asia, thought extinct for at least 300,000 years. Such a form must necessarily have crossed the Bering land bridge during the late Pleistocene glaciations, about 12,000 years ago, as did what are now the American Indians.
The sasquatch evidence is more substantial than most anthropologists and zoologists realise, and I give this cryptid a fairly high probability of existence.
2. Yeren (wildman)
The yeren (as depicted by a Chinese artist) is more likely to be another kind of primate.
Most of the reports of this sasquatch-like ape from China — mainly from the mountains of the central part of the country — describe lighter-coloured hair than is reported for sasquatch, often red. Several Chinese anthropologists, particularly Zhou Guoxing, of the Beijing Natural History Museum, have evaluated the evidence inconclusively. As China is where most of the Gigantopithecus fossil material has been found, it has been speculated that this genus continues to survive there, and that one population may have migrated to North America to evolve into today's sasquatch. In 1989, when I visited central China with Frank E. Poirier, an Ohio State University physical anthropologist, we conducted the first Westem evaluation of 'yeren' evidence, and found the footprint evidence to be very poor. But analyses of both yeren and control hairs by a new technique called proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) at Fudan University's Department of Nuclear Science, in Shanghai — and later replicated at England's Birmingham University — indicate a primate still unknown to science. Chinese eyewitnesses also kept referring to a large, red primate that went on all fours, leading us to suspect that a mainland population of orang-utans may have survived in China. Since a giant orang did live in China in the Pleistocene, it is possible that the Chinese term yeren may refer to more than one kind of cryptid.
I give the existence of some kind of yeren a reasonably high probability.
3. Almas
Missing man. One answer to whatever became of the Neanderthals could be that they are Almas, alive and living throughout remotest Asia.
There are many reports of hairy, human-like cryptids throughout Asia, from the Caucasus Mountains in the west, to the Pamir Mountains and the Altai range into Mongolia. Reports have also come from both South-west and South-east Asia. 'Almas' is the name used in Mongolia and parts of Russia, though many different names are used in different countries.
Russian investigators have suggested that the almas might be surviving Neanderthals (extinct, according to most anthropologists, about 35,000 years ago) that retreated east to the most inaccessible mountain ranges of Asia when modem humans became dominant.
The Neanderthal theory is supported by both French zoologist Bemard Heuvelmans and British archaeologist Myra Shackley. Heuvelmans believes that the 'iceman' he once examined in Minnesota was a neanderthaloid originally shot in Viemam. No photos have ever been produced, only sighting reports and footprints. Putting aside the iceman, the evidence for the almas is not as strong as that for the sasquatch or even the yeren.
4. Yeti
Yeti reports have been reaching the West from the Himalayas for about 100 years, but the evidence is not nearly as good as many — including many zoologists — have assumed. Most of the evidence has involved footprint finds by mountaineers, including Eric Shipton — who took the classic 1951 footprint photo. Sir Edmund Hillary is highly sceptical. This is partly due to the creature's role in Sherpa folklore, and the question is, is there a real yeti as well as a folkloric one? Lord Hunt, who led the 1953 ascent of Everest, found what he believes were yeti tracks in 1937 and again in 1978, and, unlike Sir Edmund, he accepts its reality.
The actual descriptions vary considerably, and three 'kinds' have been described by the Sherpas. Some reports have it as a quadrupedal primate. If it exists, the yeti would be some form of Asian ape, probably related to the tropical orang-utan, but one which has adapted to ground-dwelling in the high-altitude forested valleys of the Himalayas — certainly not to the snows, which it presumably only crosses occasionally. There are no reliable photos of the yeti, and the number of Western eyewimess reports could almost be counted on one hand — compared to about 3,000 witnesses in more than 2,000 North American sasquatch reports.
What is cryptozoology?
"The search for, and scientific examination of, evidence related to the possible existence of animal species — and sometimes subspecies — which are not recognised by zoology as existing at a certain point in time or in a certain geographical location." This is how J Richard Greenwell, secretary of the International Society of Cryptozoology (ISC), defines his science.
In other words, the administrators of the science of zoology need to have a real animal — its corpse, its fossil, its skull, its skin, any distinctive part of it or, indeed, it itself, alive and kicking. Some animals consistently defy that elementary condition, and the job of the cryptozoologist is to find out why.
While conventional zoologists might search an area just to see what turns up, "cryptozoological fieldwork targets a specific unknown animal for which there is already some, if inconclusive, information." This may come "in the form of eyewitness testimony, travellers' or natives' accounts, photographic or electronic data, archaeological artefacts, artwork, historical manuscripts or folklore." But, of course, this is the hard way of doing it, and while ordinary zoologists, with the take-it-as-it-comes approach, are discovering new species (of insects, mostly) all the time, it's a cruel irony that cryptozoologists virtually never find what they're looking for.
On the other hand, not getting your quarry adds to the weight of evidence that it doesn't exist. And you might discover other things along the way, something that happens a lot. And anyway says Greenwell, "So long as there is any possibility at all that such cryptids may exist unknown fo science — even if they turn out to be not exactly what they have been claimed to be — it is incumbent on us in the zoological world to evaluate such evidence in a calm, objective manner, and not simply to sweep it under the scientific rug."
Adapted from: "Cryptic Odds" by Richard Greenwell, BBC Wildlife, March 1993.