Wednesday, September 26, 2012

RUSSIAN YETI (1): What The Mail says


'They just rushed away, all in fur, walking on two legs': Three yeti 'sightings' in Siberia in a week

Hunted: An artist's impression shows a primitive Yeti emerging from a cave
Hunted: An artist's impression shows a primitive Yeti emerging from a cave
Three separate 'sightings' of yetis have been made in Siberia in recent weeks, say fishermen and an official in Russia.
All were in the remote Kemerovo region, where around 30 'abominable snowmen' live, according to the country's leading researcher on the creatures.
In one previously undisclosed case last month near Myski village, fishermen in a boat on a river initially mistook distant figures first for bears and then people, said the Siberian Times
'We shouted to them - do you need help?,' said fisherman Vitaly Vershinin.
'They just rushed away, all in fur, walking on two legs, making their way through the bushes and with two other limbs, straight up the hill.'
He said: "What did we think? It could not be bears, as the bear walks on all-fours, and they ran on two.... so then they were gone.'
On a second sighting on the bank of the Mras-Su River several days later, an unnamed fisherman was quoted saying: 'We saw some tall animals looking like people.'
He added: 'Our binoculars were broken and did not let us see them sharply. We waved at the animals but they did not respond, then quickly ran back into the forest, walking on two legs.
'We realised that they were not in dark clothes but covered by dark fur. They did walk like people.'

TODAY'S BIG CAT ROUND UP


The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we should have a go at publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. In September 2012, Emma Osborne decided that the Mystery Cat Study Group really deserved a blog of its own within the CFZ Blog Network.




Here is the latest tranche of news...


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  • NEWSLINK: Rogue feral cat in Bromley
  • NEWSLINK: More on controversial Australian big cat...
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    RICHARD COMMENT ON RUSSIAN YETI


    Yeti is not a Russian word; it is Nepalese and means rock beast. The yeti (of which there are three distinct kinds) are quite different to the creatures reported from Russia. From eyewitness descriptions, the yeti sound like great apes, the larger (8-10 feet tall) may be a surviving Gigantopithecus; the man sized yeti may be a mainland orang-utan and the smallest one ( 4-5 feet tall) sounds like it’s related to orang-pendek.

    The Russian beasts from the Kemerovo region sound very like the creatures known as the Almasty reported from the Caucasus Mountains. I hunted these back in 2008 and talked to many eyewitnesses, including the deputy head of a national park.  They sound nothing like Neanderthals, but something much more primitive. We know that Neanderthals were sophisticated, having fire, spears, flint tools, and clothes.  They made art and seemed to have venerated the cave bear, and lived in small tribes who took good care of the sick, injured and elderly.

    The largest Neanderthals were only 5 foot 7 inches tall (but vastly stronger than modern man), and it has often been said that if one were shaved, washed and put in a suit he could walk through a modern city unnoticed.

    At up to 7 feet 6 inches, the Almasty is bigger than the Neanderthal, and they have a much more primitive look about the face. They have tool use (clubs, rocks and so on) but do not make fire. Some don uncured deer skins occasionally, but mostly they go naked save for their shaggy hair.

    Neanderthals and modern man speciated about 188,000 years ago. Neanderthals contributed about 1-4 % genetic material to modern, non-African humans indicating some interbreeding. There is no ‘missing link’ between Neanderthals and us as we did not evolve directly from them.

    It would seem to me that both the Caucasus Almasty and the Kemerovo creatures are early offshoots of Homo erectus, the species that begat both Neanderthal man and modern man, as well as Homo heidelbergensis. This species seems to be adapted for mountain environments.