Hello:
In medieval England, Germany and Switzerland there used to be sightings of so-called hairy "wild men" that were not ape-like Bigfoot giants but man-sized hairy men with a bearded European man's face. The sightings, still reported only in Switzerland where I visited last year, are of a naked hairy man of a European type like the wild men depicted on heraldic coats-of-arms. I'm sure you have seen many examples of these where you are in England. The European wild man always appears holding a wooden club of oak. As far as I am aware, no prehistoric 'cavemen' were completely hairy as the wild man and no prehistoric 'apemen' were over 4'11". So how does one account for the often 6-feet-tall wild man? Is it perhaps a thought-form
like the yeti of Tibet?
Daniel Pace
Florida
Your assumptions about European "Cave men" are not exactly correct. First off, nobody really nows if they were hairy or not, that part did not preserve as fossils. I had an Anthropology professor tell me at Indiana Univeristy that hirsuitism (a hairy body) could come and go at any time during human evolution. We still have as many body hairs as apes do, only they just aren't as prominently developed. Some modern humans do become fully furry due to a hormonal imbalance and this is a known medical condition.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, some European Cavemen were six-footers back as far as Heidelburg man, and the common Neanderthalers were not especially shorter than Pre-industrial Europeans. The males averaged about 5'6" and the females about 5' even. The difference is that at those heights they were probably 50 pounds heavier in bone and muscle mass than modern Europeans. And even at that time there were still some six-footer Neanderthals, only not in Europe during the height of the glaciation. Averages do not mean that everybody is necessarily of one standard size.
There is evidence to the contrary that the European Wildmen had a facial structure, and hence a skeletal structure, the same as Neanderhals, and this was mentioned by Ivan Sanderson in the scientific journal Genus.
Best Wishes, Dale D.
The yeti is no tulpa, its a great ape, or rather they are great apes. It seems there are three distinct kinds.
ReplyDeleteThe wildman of Europe may have been based on social outcasts living feral in thehuge forests. We know that humans living like this grown more body hair as in the case of the 'monkey boy' from Africa a few years back.
I would agree with Richard F about there being three kinds of Yetis in and around Tibet, and I would even go so far as to say we define those three forms as being pretty much similar by description and comparably classified as to their zoological placement. I think we differ slightly in the same way that different systems of taxonomy differ in the area.
ReplyDeleteI do not feel that the basic type of European Wildman is based on reports of human outcasts although they have fed into the mythology: I think the Wildman represents the former European range of the Almas type, and it has become eradicated subsequently over most of the area. I differ from Richard in saying this does mean they are probably Neanderthals, but no doubt I am using a broader classification than Richard does. For example I would not separate Neanderthalers from Heidelburgers, more along the definition of a "Neanderthal stage of Humanity" than applying only to the European Neanderthal population of the last ice age. And I continue to emphasize that some experts have clasified all such types as Homo sapiens before and than many books you will find continue to do so. So that entire matter of their clasification may only be a tempest in a teapot as far as the Wildman types go.