DALE DRINNON: On the Identity of East Asian And North American Giant Manlike Apes

On the Identity of East Asian And North American Giant Manlike Apes As Represented in Traditional Art and On the Identity of Both with Gigantopithecus sp.


During the 1980s I was a student assistant for the Anthropology departments at both IU-Bloomington and at IUPUI and I did artwork for both of them. One of the things I did was a speculative reconstruction for Gigantopithecus (Scan included here), which was in general agreement with the version that Grover Krantz came up with subsequently.

At the time it was still a widely held viewpoint that the Miocene apes had descended from small monkey-like ancestors that ran around on all fours much like large macaque monkeys (Proconsuls were supposed to fall in this category) but that many of the intermediate ones were bipeds like today's lesser apes like the gibbons and siamangs. The Miocene apes Oreopithecus and 'Ramapithecus' were generally thought to be bipeds. Using skeletal material from those early apes I made an allowance for larger body size and came up with this reconstruction. It is mostly speculative, of course. However, the point had been made and was then widely circulated that the ancestors of the modern apes were probably bipeds like today's lesser apes, and that the quadrupedal stance of modern apes was a secondary adaptation. Indeed, gorillas and chimps are knuckle-walkers while orangutans place the hand differently on the ground, indicating that the quadrupedal stance was separately evolved along different paths (a source for this is the popular book The Red Ape).

During the 1980s also, it was becoming clearer how Gigantopithecus fit in with the other fossil apes. It was not a part of the more primitive Dryopithecines but of the more advanced Sivapithecines (which also included 'Ramapithecus'). This could be told because the enamel on their teeth was much thicker (and hence more human-like: thinner-enamelled chimps and gorillas must be degenerated in that respect). So that there was nothing basically wrong with the idea that Gigantopithecus was a biped or would tend to evolve in that direction: the other early apes were already inclined to be bipeds (more recent fossil finds are tending to confirm this)
In this case, my Gigantopithecus reconstruction struck me as reminiscent of a Mexican precolumbian figurine of Xolotl, which seems to have an ape's head and massive torso on short legs but human feet. The statuette also has other human-like features: the arms are long and most especially the teeth include fangs.

John Green once said that the Sasquatch could be compared to a gorilla's torso, and arms and legs long enough to be comparable to a human being's. I include also a mock-up showing that idea by way of a comparison.

The ape-like face, with its strong browridge and cheekbones framing very round eyes, is also reminiscent of an illustration from Ivan T. Sanderson's Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, toward the back part of the book and showing a mask from Inner Mongolia.

This mask has a decidedly ape-like head and jaw, but it also had to be worn as a mask and so the cranium had to be fitted to a human head for the wearer. If the original had an ape-like top to the head, that part would cancel it out. But in this case it is the jaw that is of primary interest.

Both the Mexican Xolotl and the Mongolian mask have the same stylisation of the fangs, which is rather odd in itself. The fangs come in a set from the upper jaw and a set from the lower jaw. In this case, after subtracting the mistaken double-fangs, the depiction of the mandible resembles Gigantopithecus, especialy in the appearance of the teeth. Given the size of the mask and how large the lower jaw is on the mask, that might even be a pretty good size-match for a Gigantopithecus jaw in absolute size.

(A and B, Krantz's reconstruction compared to the Mongolian Mask. C and D., the jaw from the mask reconstructed and compared to the jaw of Gigantopithecus)

Similar masks are found in Tibet and they have been associated with the (larger-sized form of the) Abominable Snowman. On the North American side, fewer of the masks are skeletal but many are ape-like, and they are supposed to represent creatures called Sasquatch in English. There is a historical precedent to these ape-like representations: my IU-Bloomington North American Archaeology text included an illustration of one of the 'Stone monkey heads' found in the northwest Coast region in a datable context: this one was 500 BC (scan also included). It might not be the most monkey-like ones of the series but at least it is dateable.



These various depictions tend to reinforce one another, making allowances for the differences in style. They occur over a wide area, geographically, and over a long span of time, historically.

As far as direct evidence goes, a letter in Ivan Sanderson's files mentioned a hunter in southeast Asia that took a tooth out of what he called a Kung-Lu that he had shot. They described dimension of the tooth match Gigantopithecus. Spanish conquistadores also reported giant human teeth that also match the exact size and weight of Gigantopithecus teeth in both Mexico and Peru (these were about the same size as horse's teeth but are unlike them in shape: a horse's molar has a long cylindrical continuously-growing root and a lophodont chewing surface: these were described as bunodont with normal human tooth roots. Examples are quoted on some Creationist blog sites. There are also the old illustrations of these but unfortunately with no indication of scale). What is more, the same teeth are still being reported as in the mouths of large ape-like creatures in South America. Eberhart has an entry about them under Dientiendo, Big Tooth.


Gigantopithecus fossils


Krantz has been criticised as being presumptive and unscientific for saying that the shape of the jaw in Gigantopithecus indicated an upright stance. They say there is no evidence in absence of the body. It is well to remember that this was also the case in the Australopithecines when fossils of only the head and jaws were available: the shape of the jaws suggested an upright stance for the same reason. And eventually the fossils representing the vertebrae, pelvis and legs were found, all proving that it had indeed been so all along.

On the other hand, the old drawings with Gigantopithecus standing on all fours like an immense gorilla are definitely a fantasy with nothing to suggest that. At the time, none of the apes were going on all fours, knuckle-walking like that, and there is every reason to think that even if the Gigantopithecus WAS a quadruped, it would never be a knuckle-walker in the same way as a gorilla knuckle-walks, nor yet would its limb proportions be like the big gorilla Gigantopithecus reppresentations.

Patty Unretouched, Do not pay any attention to Retouched ones!