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.
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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.
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1 comment:
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.
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