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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Saturday, September 04, 2010

DALE DRINNON: More on Almas

While researching the reported possibly-recent-possibly-Neanderthaloid teeth from Inner Mongolia, I came across this terracotta piece, which looks rather as if it is meant to depict an Almas skin (with the hair removed): it is rather saggy and baggy and "deflated" looking. But for the fact that there is a finger or a toe missing off each of the hands and feet, they match what is reported of the Almas. I think the face is partly meant to resemble a traditional-Rakhshasa-demon, but there are some features which make me think the Anyang terracotta piece might have a more authentic representation.

That combines with the suggestion (from Russian sources) that the Arimaspi of antiquity might not only represent the Almas in the Altai region (see Herodotus map) but the names might be linguistically identical. Hence "Arimaspi" could="Aramas+Pi". "P'i" is a largely disused historical name for the Almas in China, but it could also be related to ther names still in use. In the Mirror Of Medicine Almas depiction, one of the names used to label the wildman in Chinese is "P'i".

The Arimaspi are Cyclopes according to tradition, but the literal meaning of 'cyclops' is not 'one-eye' but 'round-eye' and the round eye sockets are definitively characteristic of Neanderthal alone among fossil Homo.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hopefully by next installment those photos will be more obviously keyed to the text and start to make a little more sense.

The photos do actually have names which serve as captions, so hopefully that much helps.