DALE DRINNON: Land of the Giants

When all is said and done, and when we are talking about the general category of big hairy erect man-ape creatures, the discussion basically begins and ends with Sasquatch. When all is said and done, the Sasquatch stands apart from all the others in several consistent features which are unique to the Sasquatch type alone and are distinct from both the standard humans on the one hand and the standard apes on the other.

Sasquatch feet look approximately like human feet at first glance, butr from the tracks are made, the foot skeleton must be working in a completely inhuman manner. There is no arch to the foot and in walking the foot basically rolls in sections front to back like a caterpillar tread. There must be essentially a set of hinges running straight across the foot at right angles to the long axis of the foot for that to happen, at the phalanges, at the proximal and distal ends of the metatarsals and there must be a most peculiar joint between the tarsals and the metatarsals, and on top of that the ankle must be proportionately much larger than in humans and set further foreward. That is partly in line with Krantz, partly from other authors and partly based on my own assessment.



The head-to-body proportion of the Sasquatch is also inhuman and at best could be compared to a robust Australopithecine. The cranial capacity allowing for the presumed sagittal crest is more in line with the absolute size of the brain in Homo erectus that it would be to Homo sapiens. The stance and walking posture is unusual but I would not insist that makes the gait necessarily inhuman: however it does indicate that the knees and hips are commonly used in a way that is very different from most modern human beings.

I do not work woith Sasquatc material myself, I work with materials pertaining to the Eastern Bigfoot, which I believe to be something else quite different again. Because of this situation, I defer to other authors on the subject and I have done so since the 1990s. Heuvelmans in his checklist deferred to Krantz on the matter of Sasquatch and I also believe that to be the most prudent course of action in this case. Two very good books on the subject are Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence by Grover NS. Krantz, Hancock House 1999,
and North America's Great Ape: The Sasquatch by John A. Bindernagel, Beachcomber Books, 1998.

Having said that much, I also agree with Krantz's classification of Sasquatch as a surviving Gigantopithecus, and I believe I have good indirect evidence for that identification posed in an earlier CFZ blog
http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/12/dale-drinnon-on-identity-of-east-asian.html
And in that blog I also asserted my opinion that the evidence indicates that not only indicates a survival of Gigantopithecus in East Asia, the artistic traditions in East Asia and North America indicate it is the same surviving-Gigantopithecus on both sides of the Pacific.

Grover Krantz justified his naming the animal that left Sasquatch tracks as a Gigantopithecus in an article written in 1986 "A species named from footprints" in Northwest Anthropological Research Notes 19:93-99

Now all of this is only to build up to the assertion that the larger form of Chinese Wildman, Shan-Tu or Kung-Lu is the same as the larger form of Tibetan "Yeti", and that both are surviving Gigantopithecus and the same species as the Sasquatch. A slight side issue arises in this in that the creature in question is often said to be dark grey or black when smaller (younger or females) but lighter gray or white in the larger ones. This is not a mistake, Eberhart mentions in the Yeren entry that the larger Wildmen from Sichuan are reported as ten feet tall and white, and the same description occurs in Tibet and at least once in the cae of the Himalayan Abominable Snowman. So that it appears the "Bumble Snow Monster" does represent a legitimate tradition for the larger "Snowman", which is the same as the Sasquatch. Sanderson says that some Sasquatches are "Grizzled" and can even go white with age: I suspect that it is something like the big male Sasquatches being "Silverbacks" only in their case it is an overall effect. The rumor has also had it that the larger "Snowmen" are thus invisible in snowfields and on glaciers, and although the tradition has been denied, that is what is shown on the Bhutanese stamp showing the largest "Snowman" type

The same sort of Sasquatch creatre also seems to be commonly reported around Manchuria and Southern Siberia especially. That does not equate it with the ChuChunaa, although there seems to be some sort of confusion between the two types in that area.

Incidentally, although the name "Sasquatch" is not exactly any Native name fr the creature, it is close enough to "Sosq'atl" to be considered an English equivalent, given that English-speakers find it much easier to pronounce a ch sound than a tl sound.