DALE DRINNON: Abominable Geography

Odette Tcherne included this map in her book In Pursuit of the Abominable Snowman (1970 edition under the name The Yeti)

She called it the S-Distribution map and it is on pages 116-117. Presumably it illustrated the worldwide distribution of all Abominable Snowmen in the wide sense of the term. She evidently made the map about the same time as Ivan Sanderson's book Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life was originally printed, but she says that she deliberately did not read the book. The range indicated on the map supposedly starts in the Caucasus and Pamirs, and then runs on to the Western United States. The map has been reprinted several times and even by serious Bigfooters, under the false illusion that the map is somehow authoritative.

If Tcherne had actually read Sanderson's book it would have helped her knowledge of geography considerably. The main shortcoming of this map is that the maker has not a clue as to the location of the Caucasus, Pamirs or even Mongolia The range indicated at the far left (Western) extremity flies off to someplace in Turkestan and is nowhere near the mountain ranges the map is supposedly indicating.

The SITU ran a review of the book in PURSUIT which harshly criticized Tcherne and substituted one of Ivan Sanderson's maps from his book: there was a criticism especially that Sanderson had thought there were several different types of Abominable Snowmen and Tcherne supposed there was only one. In this, Tcherne was probably following Porshnev's lead because most of the information in the book comes from Soviet-Russian sources. Because the Russian information was little-known to the western world, this was something to be said in its favor when it came out. The book is probably one of the earliest mentions for the Chuchuuna, for example.

But the book's complete ignorance of Inner-Asian geography is not something that should be emulated or repeated by reviewers or students, no matter how fair they might be attempting to be on the matter.