DALE DRINNON: The Question Was "What Do We Do With THE BODY?"

This is a matter with a practical solution to an age-old problem, although it may not be suitable for the squeamish.

[ "Ghoul on a meal." by Arjen E. Pilon from http://www.elfwood.com/]

GHOUL
Definition from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoul

"A ghoul is a folkloric monster associated with graveyards and consuming human flesh, often classified as undead. The oldest surviving literature that mention ghouls is likely One Thousand and One Nights. The term is first attested in English in 1786, in William Beckford's Orientalist novel Vathek,^[1] which describes the ghūl of Arabian folklore.

Early etymology

Ghoul is from the Arabic ghul, from ghala 'to seize'^[2].Marc Cramer and others believe the term to be etymologically related to Gallu, a Mesopotamian demon^[3][4]

In Arabian folklore

In ancient Arabian folklore, the ghūl (Arabic: غول , literally demon)^[5] dwells in burial grounds and other uninhabited places. The ghul is a devilish type of jinn believed to be sired by Iblis.^[6]

The Arabian ghoul is a desert-dwelling, shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. It lures unwary travellers into the desert wastes to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, robs graves, drinks blood, steals coins and eats the dead,^[5] taking on the form of the one they previously ate.

In the Arabic language, the female form is given as ghouleh^[7] and the plural is ghilan. In colloquial Arabic, the term is sometimes used to describe a greedy and/or gluttonous individual."

[Ghool, AKA Rakshasa]

--On the other hand, Cryptozoologists have inferred the name is not Arabic at all, nor is it Iranian (in which "Ghul" means a rose) It is Turkic and part of a well-known cluster of names for the "Wildman" of Turkestan and the Near East, Gulub-Yavans (As Gordon Creighton points out, the "Yavani" means "Wild" in Turkic and the name means "Wild Man") Heuvelmans records that the term of Ghul or Gul alone (in some sources spelled Ghool) is in usage in places.

In other words, the Wildman acquired a reputation of digging up dead bodies in order to eat them, a habit otherwise ascribed mainly to jackals and hyenas. Hence the Wildman is sometimes said to be able to transform into these animals.

It would seem that the Wildman or Neanderthal type has a habit of eating the dead of their own kind and there are occasions when a dead body of an Almas (or one of the American Almases) is buried with a mind for witnesses to dig it up again as evidence, only to find the body has been dug up again when they DO get back to recover it. Presumably other Almases have dug up the body in order to eat it.

[Ghool Footprint] {Neanderthal Footprint 1950]

There is evidence for cannibalism at certain Neanderthal sites where their bones have been scraped with stone knives in getting the meat off them, and the bones treated the same as other kitchen refuse. It would seem that the usual practice among Almases is to eat already-dead corpses, but some of the larger ones (called variously Trolls, Orcs [Orcos], Onis or Ogres) are traditionally said to seize and eat humans, in particular small children, with a preference for young boys. That may have happened occasionally but there are no known cases of this still going on as a regular occurance.

The same thing might be said to be true about sasquatches, except that traditionally the size of the human prey is no matter and they will go after adults just the same as after children. For this reason it is probably a mistake to flatly discount stories about the "Cannibal Giants" even if humans are not ordinarily on the menu for sasquatches much any more. But THEY also seem to eat the dead of their own kind as well, and also they seem to preferentially seek out dead bears when they can find them. In North America, sasquatches will steal deer carcasses from hunters regularly, and the association with sasquatches stealing deer meat is one of the more definite recurring indicators of what their diet usually is.

[Neanderthal Cannibals at Krapina Rock Shelter by Z. Burian]

LINDSAY SELBY: Do cryptozoological creatures smell terrible?

There are lots of reports of smelly cryptids. The Skunk Ape is the one that springs to mind immediately.

Skunk-apes are hairy humanoids sighted in many areas of North America, but especially in swamp areas and the consistent characteristic ascribed to skunk apes is the smell. It is said to be an extreme odour that is nauseating. See report below:

Skunk Ape: Area's own stinky Big Foot -Something stinky in the swamp

By Eliot Kleinberg Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 02, 2009

It supposedly hides in muddy, abandoned alligator caves, thus the smell. For more than two centuries, people have sworn they saw it dash across the Everglades or retreat from a rural road.In Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, barking dogs, petrified security guards and bug-eyed kids bear testament.There are photographs, grainy and distant, but attested to by their bearers. More than 75 sightings were reported in Florida in the past two decades. The scare had started when an amateur archaeologist claimed he'd seen the thing in southwest Florida's Big Cypress Swamp.But it was concentrated locally in the 1970s, when South Florida then had more open space and about half the people it does now. A local dispatcher said he was advising lawmen that locals were so jumpy the cops should identify themselves when they approached homes."I know it exists," Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputy Marvin Lewis said in 1980.He said he and fellow deputy Ernie Milner made some 50 forays to the wild. They said they shot something in 1974 west of Lantana that grunted and fled back to the dark. Another time, they found mysterious hair on a barbed-wire fence. Lewis put in 27 years and retired in 1997. He hasn't changed his mind. He said recently that any along the coast were long ago driven west by encroaching civilization."I couldn't point to a photo and say, 'That's what I saw,'" he said. "But cops act on investigation and evidence. full story:



http://www.palmbeachpost.com/npost/content/neighborhood/npall/epaper/2009/04/02/npall_posttime_0402.html



see also report of smelly bigfoot: http://www.psican.org/alpha/index.php?/20080830112/Cryptozoology/TheSmell-Of-Sasquatch.html


The Guiafairo of Senegal is described as a giant bat that is very smelly, and even sea creatures have been described as stench-making:

Seen in Burra Haaf – In Waters in the area in the 1900s -Several reports of a creature with a sail-like body and a flipper on the end of its nose exist in this region of water off the Shetland Isles. A fishing crew who encountered it stated the beast destroyed several of their nets, and came so close to their boat they could detect a pungent stench.

So what is it with smell? Well, all animals smell to us: the odour of wet dog or wet cat is pretty bad. But if smell is an indication a cryptid may be near, it is a good tracking device and should perhaps be one that should be taken more seriously. Next time you smell something awful when out in a boat or in the countryside, investigate it; it could be that something cryptozoological is passing that way.

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 1933 the movie King Kong opened in the United States of America. Whereas the film’s special effects haven’t aged well, mostly thanks to some very bad reacting to the effects, for the time it was spectacular and inspired the superior Japanese ‘giant monster’ films like Godzilla. Some even contend that certain aspects of the ‘popular culture myth’ that surrounds Bigfoot/BHM can be traced back to King Kong. Another debt society owes King Kong is that without the original skyscraper-based rampaging ape Nintendo would never have been inspired to create Donkey Kong and its hero Mario, and without Mario there would be no Legend of Zelda games and no Pokemon (which inspired a whole new generation of children to show an interest in natural history, cryptozoology, care for the environment and animal rights). It’s quite astounding to think of the knock-on effects one fairly ropey film has had on modern culture.


And now, the news:

Digger wasps protected by antibiotics
Boozy chimp off to rehab
It's raining fish ... no really

For most fortean researchers, witnessing a rain of fish as it happened would be a ‘bream’ come true….


EDITOR'S COMMENT: King Kong 'fairly ropey'? Really, Oliver. Tut tut.

CFZ ARCHIVING PROJECT: BHM Part Twenty four

As you know, Oll has been working on the archiving project since early February 2009, and he is now working on the BHM section. This 24th and last trench of this section, redefines the words `mixed bag` with bigfoot, wildman, orang pendek and monkey man cuttings from 1799 - 1995. The next section is general forteana. Good stuff.

HERE

CFZ ARCHIVING PROJECT: BHM Part Twenty three

As you know, Oll has been working on the archiving project since early February 2009, and he is now working on the BHM section. This 23rd trench is a real mixed bag with bigfoot, yowie and yeti cuttings from 1954 to 2009. Good stuff.

HERE

CFZ ARCHIVING PROJECT: BHM Part Twenty two

As you know, Oll has been working on the archiving project since early February 2009, and he is now working on the BHM section. This 22nd trench is a real mixed bag with bigfoot, yowie and yeti cuttings from 1971 to 1994. Good stuff.

HERE

CFZ ARCHIVING PROJECT: BHM Part Twenty one

As you know, Oll has been working on the archiving project since early February, and he is now working on the BHM section. This 21st trench is from the mid 1950s and is all yeti related. Good stuff.

HERE

CFZ ARCHIVING PROJECT: BHM Part Twenty

As you know, Oll has been working on the archiving project since early February, and he is now working on the BHM section. This 20th trench is from 1994 and is all Bif=gfoot related. It also contains extracts from a Bigfoot Journal that we have not been able to identify! Good stuff.

HERE

CFZ ARCHIVING PROJECT: BHM Part Nineteen

As you know, Oll has been working on the archiving project since early February, and he is now working on the BHM section. This 19th trenche is from 1994 and contains bits and bobs from issue 33 of the journal Track Record, and a peculiar story about an Everest climber who claims to have killed the yeti! Good stuff.

HERE

DALE DRINNON: Comparisons between fossil hominids and yowies

Because of the vagiaries of the Internet, some of the pictures that should have accompanied Dale's last post didn't make it through. So when Dale re-sent them, I suggested that he write captions for them all, and we post them as a new stand-alone bloggo entry...

1)Yowie and Homo erectus

The most widely-circulated depiction of an Australian Yowie compared to a more standard reconstruction of Homo erectus from the Time-Life books Early Man foldout. The depiction of the Yowie is exaggerated as a sort of cartoon version of the other, yet the salient features are still identifiable. In particular, the shape of the head and the planes of the face and the relative smallness of the cranium, are all like the known fossil form.

2) Yowie compared to Fossil Hominids, Ape and Modern Man

The shape of the Yowie's head is much like Homo erectus, reference skulls are Java (Trinil) man to the left and Pekin (Beijing) man to the right. Most notably the top of the head has a sagittal keeling causing the peaked appearance of the midline, low cranial profile, the erectus or Solo type of browridges, and the shape of the lower face is comparable. The Yowie is drawn with much exaggerated fanged canines: That is a severe exaggeration but as a matter of fact Javan H. erectus had outsized canines that projected into the lower row and created a gap (diastema) which in that sense made their dentition more primitive than the earlier Australopithecines.

3) Homo erectus comparisons
Left: reconstruction of original Homo erectus finds by Dubois, under the name of Pithecanthropus erectus. This reconstruction statue was redrawn for Heuvelmans's book On the Track of Unknown Animals. On the right is the most complete find of erectus or a closely related species, the Turkana boy. The arms are actually long in comparison to modern man, but not excessively so. This was an individual that had not yet reached full adult growth and would have been over six feet tall as an adult.

4) Face reconstruction of Homo erectus (Pithecanthropus), for comparison to the Yowie's face.

5) Solo skullcap from Java
For comparison to Rex Gilroy's purported piece of fossil Yowie skullcap

6) Purported scrap of Yowie skull
From Rex Gilroy's collection, a fossil assumed to have been a very large form of Homo erectus (or 'Meganthropus') It does in fact resemble that part of the erectus skull and there is no known native Australian animal with that sort of a forehead.

7) Purported Yowie Fossil footprint
From the blue mountains, another of Rex Gilroy's finds. I am not certain if he has the big toe correctly outlined on this one. The actual footprint would be smaller than the outlined space but still it is about eight inches wide and sixteen inches long by the ruler.

8) Purported Yowie fossil molar tooth

Another find from Rex Gilroy's collection of possible Yowie evidence, a fossil tooth that has been completely mineralised and has become impregnated by iron ore. It does look to be exactly what Gilroy says it is but of course, I have not seen the original.

DALE DRINNON: Variations in Cryptid Homind Sightings In Accordance With Recognized Biological Laws

In general, reports dealing with Sasquatches, Wildmen and other types of what Ivan Sanderson called ABSMs follow along the lines of two well-known biological laws: Bergman's law and Gloger's law. To put this as simply as possible, this means that the reports from more northerly climes are creatures that are larger in size but lighter in color, while the ones in tropical cimes are smaller and darker in colouration. Using the definitions from Wikipedia:

'In zoology, Bergmann's rule is an ecogeographic rule that correlates latitude with body mass in animals. Broadly it asserts that within a species the body mass increases with latitude and colder climate, or that within closely related species that differ only in relation to size that one would expect the larger species to be found at the higher latitude. The rule is named after a nineteenth-century German biologist, Christian Bergmann, who first formulated the rule in 1847. The rule is often applied only to mammals and birds (endotherms), but some researchers have also found evidence for the rule in studies of ectothermic species. Bergmann's rule is controversial amongst researchers and its validity has been called into question, and there is division amongst scientists about whether the rule should be interpreted to be within species variation or among species variation.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergmann%27s_Rule

Gloger's Rule is a zoological rule that states that within a species of endotherms, more heavily pigmented forms tend to be found in more humid environments, e.g. near the equator. It was named after the zoologist Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger, who first remarked upon this phenomenon in 1833 in a review of covariation of climate and avian plumage colour. (Stresemann notes that the idea was already expressed by Pallas in Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica (1811)). Gloger found that birds in more humid habitats tended to be darker than their relatives from regions with higher aridity. Over 90% of the species researched conform to this rule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloger%27s_rule

Earlier publications have noted the pattern for Sasquatches in the Western part of North America follow both rules, with generally the reported sizes decreasing from North-to-South from Southern Alaska to California, with the average recorded track sizes in direct correlation to this, while the trend in colouration is harder to tell right off, but the California reports are markedly darker (more often black by percentage) in compared to Sasquatches reported in British Columbia (including more 'Blondes and Redheads' as the Native Americans put it)

Back when Ivan Sanderson was still alive I sent in a message to him saying that I thought the categories of Protopygmy and Sub-human as presented in his book Abominable Snowmen might merely be a size difference in the same general category. He did not reply directly, but I was sent a back issue of Pursuit, which included a review of Odette Tcherne's book, then newly released, and the review contained the map of 'ABSM' traditions world-wide with some interesting additional notes. Among these was the note that stated that the sub-humans reported in Malaysia might well be the same species as the Orang Pendek with a size difference. [This would be the small-homind, longhaired Orang Pendek that leaves small Neanderthal-like tracks] More recently and furthering the same notion, I made up these maps of various presumed categories of cryptid-hominids and added them to the Frontiers of Zoology group together with these captions:

Erectus Hominids, Protopygmys

Marked Hominids, Neandertaloids

Map 1: Coleman-Hughye Field Guide Maps, Little Modified. The main maps show an obvious latitudinal cline in types
Map 2: Coleman-Hughye Field Guide Maps Little Modified,Added Tropical categories in Africa And South America not in Field Guide. Little People are ubiquitous and their omission in areas like Siberia is suspicious.

- And the last comment was because the reports from North America and (traditionally) Europe seem to be that the smaller ones were the young of the bigger ones (which was Ivan Sanderson's suggestion) - otherwise by Bergman's law, the Protopygmys tend to the Tropics, in the same zone where we find human Pygmys.
I had a couple of comparative size charts that I had made up for a series of articles submitted to Pursuit but ultimately unpublished by the time of that magazine's demise. I attach them here. In figuring the enlargement or shrinking of human beings, it should be remembered that the proportions are not exactly constant. Bigger humans have proportionately smaller and more rugged skulls while smaller humans have proportionately larger and more rounded skulls. That too tends to go along with the reported cryptid-hominds.

In the case of other presumed differences, the Marked Hominid is marked by the specific trait of having lighter-coloured hair, in patches and all over. That the colour of the hair on the head and body of the Central-Asian Almas could be reported as mismatched was one of the observations made by Porshnev. The fact that larger and more rugged types seem to have more 'primitive' skulls may be discounted as an effect of allometry. That certain reports are 'too primitive to be Neandertals' is not a valid deciding feature. The reports are 'too primitive' to be erectus also by the same token. In any event the features do not have to be as primitive as the rumours have it simply because they are rumours and not scientific observations. I find that the fact that the primitive and animalistic features of the reports matching the earlier misconceptions about the Neanderthals is a continuance of the same tradition and may not reflect an actual reality, but does go to confirm that the current rumours are talking about the same thing as the earlier (mistaken) descriptions of Neanderthal men were talking about.

Wildmen and others

DALE DRINNON: Pugnoses Part 2: On the Ice

There have been many commentators on the 'Iceman' body examined and described by Ivan Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans. Most of the expressed opinions on the matter made by others are completely worthless.

There have been claims by certain persons that they have manufactured the model body that was used in the Iceman exhibit. These are false claims. Ordinarily the claimants will identify features that the body examined by Sanderson and Heuvelmans did NOT have, and in fact the claims usually cite features of the second iceman exhibit and that one definitely did not match the first one, most especially in the face. I have seen Heuvelmans's original photographs in Sanderson's files and I could see that the two icemen as exhibited did not match and could not both be the same model (as Napier alleges in his book Bigfoot) Furthermore, the head has a distinctly Neanderthaloid facial skeleton. An allegation made by the Balls states that the body they manufactured was based on a Cro-Magnon man: there is no way that they could have been looking at a Cro-Magnon body and put distinctively Neanderthal characteristics on it. If they knew enough to make such an accurate depiction, they would most certainly have known the difference.

Similarly, the facial skeleton is definitely NOT characteristic of Homo erectus: Neanderthal browridges were arched and erectus' browridges ran across the face in a straight horizontal line. The shape of the eye sockets alone tells the tale, and several prominent Cryptozoologists that have pronounced the body to belong to the species Homo erectus have merely demonstrated that they do not have enough technical knowledge to make the distinction.

One of these Cryptozoologists is Mark Hall. Mark Hall did in fact send me material on the so-called "Homo gardarensis" skull found in Greenland and dating from the Viking age.

It is also clearly a primitive hominid of very large size, and not a modern human with acromegaly as has been alleged.

This one skull pretty much clinches the matter entirely.




As far as the Iceman goes, I have read Heuvelmans's book on it, which has been written in French but never published in English. It is a very impressive and convincing book and I reproduce several tables and illustrations from it. Before I saw the copy Heuvelmans and I had exchanged letters on the subject, and he graciously sent me copies of articles about it: he also put me in touch with Loofs-Wissowa, and I communicated with the latter over the phone a few times. I had told Heuvelmans that even going by Sanderson's drawings, I could tell that he (Heuvelmans) had been correct in his identification but Sanderson himself had missed several telling signs. I also told him that what he called Homo pongiodes could not be considered either an unknown species nor an unknown animal, to which he quite readily agreed.

I had made up some transparencies for lectures back in the late 1980s and on them I had cut-out portions of Sanderson's Iceman drawing and Neanderthal fossil material. I include scans of those transparencies here. In the original, I could take the Iceman face or hand and lay the transparency over the corresponding Neanderthal part and the set would match up practically perfectly.

The Neanderthal hand skeleton, which matches the Iceman's hand, is also close to the Pangboche hand. In Ivan Sanderson's book Abominable Snowmen: Legend come to life, he states that the bony structure of the Pangboche hand was identified as possibly Neanderthaloid by Ostman Hill and definitely o by Russian experts. That constitutes an exact scientific classification of identity by separate assessments. There are also other such hands reported in Central Asia, some of them retaining the hairy covering (red being stated in one such case). That too goes on to confirm the identity.
It is also pretty certain that the Central Asian Almas is anatomically close to Neanderthals. I include my comparisons for a Neanderthal (hairless body) reconstruction with a magazine illustration representing Caucasian sightings (that from Sanderson's files) and another comparing an old Neanderthal head restoration, with something of a pug nose also, to a reconstruction of the Almas (marked "A". the latter was compiled from several "Blobsquatxch" photos. The region of the back of the neck looks different but that would be because the live Almas had thick hair back there.

Any one of these things would be enough. Frankly, once you have the Gardar skull you do not need to say the Iceman was genuine. Once you have established that the Pangboch hand has a Neanderthaloid anatomy, you do not even need the Gardar skull.. And in fact once you have DNA samples from hairs that consistently fall into the Neanderthal genetic range, you do not need anything else.

I do not claim to have solved the mystery. All I am doing is pointing out that the mystery was already solved years ago.

And kindly allow me to repeat my earlier statement: it is a recognised school of thought that Neanderthals are only a subspecies of Homo sapiens. That does not have to be currently popular among theorists in order for the term Homo sapiens neanderhalensis to still be on the books and still be in use. Therefore if these creatures really are Neanderthals, it automatically follows that they are H. sapiens. And you cannot call your own species unknown. The default assumption in the case of all of these hairy Wildmen running around must be that they are all actually HUMAN.

[Note: There has been some insinuation that the Iceman could not have been a real body because human bodies would not be on display in a sideshow exhibit. That was an incorrect assumption: for example, the body of poor Julia Pastrana wound up as a sideshow exhibit, alongside her stuffed and mounted baby. It does sound like the reason the original body of the Iceman was swapped for a fabricated model is that the FBI was about to look into the matter, and evidently the real owner - whoever that might have been - had a strong disliking for being investigated by the FBI]

There are also such things as large human teeth ascribed to the Eastern Bigfoot that match the Neanderthaloid taurodont pattern, and other alleged remains ranging from hair samples that match each other and fall in the Neanderthal range up to whole alleged skeletons, as well as several purported examples.

DALE DRINNON: Pugnoses Part 1: Wild Child of the Italian Renaissance

Probably a couple years back in the Frontiers-of-Zoology group, astute member Dave Francanzo (cobriaclord) added a photograph reproducing a Renaissance curio shop with a small furry creature in the foreground, which elicited a pretty good discussion at the time.

At the beginning of the current month I posted this article on pug-nosed hominids [1] being sighted as the Barmanu and represented in old church carvings in France (As the Homo sauvage/Wildman or Basajaun). After the posting Dave answered with the posting:

Re: Article on 'Homo pongiodes'

Fascinating.

Also, if you go to the photo album Wildmen and to the picture 'curious george and the greyhound,' the ape-like creature looks to have an upturned nose.

And so it does, indeed. In this case the 'Curious George' creature does not have a head shaped like that of a chimpanzee, the cranium is instead more like a young Neanderthal.

The creature is also the same size and general proportions as the human child in the far right of the original reproduction.

There shall be a part 2 to this but before leaving the Rennaisance it is a singular fact that at the time the Wildman was a 'known' creature. Linneaus catalogued it and in fact, one of the illustrated editions of Linneaus included a depiction of the Wildman that is unmistakeably like the Iceman.

Bottom line of that situation is, how can a species be called unknown now when it was known and named by Linneus? And even if it was subsequently denied by critics, isn't it still valid anyway when good evidence that the same thing is still around today resurfaces and is published by scientists of repute? The mere fact that a species is in dispute does not negate the fact that the species is known to science and listed on the books.

[1]"A new element in favor of the authenticity of Homo pongoïdes" By Olivier Décobert, France, October 2002

All the cryptozoologists know the case of the frozen corpse ('Iceman') that Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson had the occasion to examine in 1968, through the ice which surrounded this creature.

The disappearance of the corpse made more noise than its discovery... Jean Roche largely detailed this affair in its book Savages and hairy. Since opinions are divided, certain considerations were that it was about a hoax, others being convinced of the authenticity of this wild and hairy hominid Heuvelmans described like a Neanderthal form.

Jordi Magraner, whom the world of cryptozoology learned with consternation of his assassination in North-Pakistan in August 2002, had used the drawings of Heuvelmans like iconographic locates during its discussions with witnesses having observed the barmanou, the wild man of the Pakistani mountains, and all had recognised the Homo pongoïdes as correspondent so that they had seen.

A characteristic of Homo pongoïdes, which would have been quite difficult to invent, is the aspect of its nose, very crushed, the nostrils strongly turned forwards, as the nose of human which would have been supported against a vitre.

This very curious detail is found in the descriptions of Barmanou collected by Jordi Magraner.

Moreover, and it is what interests us here, this unique nose is found in representations of the past, like certain sculptures of the Middle Ages in France, which supposes the survival of these beings in our areas, up to one recent time (Michel Raynal gives a testimony going back to 1774 in Iraty Forest (South West France) in his article 'The wildman in the Pyrenees and the survival
of the Neanderthals').

One of these works is well known and is in the cathedral of Tugdual, in Tréguier (Brittany): it is about a woodcarving. While going up much further in the past one finds in the cave of Isturitz (always in the Basque Country) a rupestral engraving representing one hairy hominid with the fleeing face and once again, with the very crushed and gone up nose. I will thus add to these disconcerting observations these discoveries, which I made between the Basque Country and Bearn (Southwest France): in July 2001, on holiday in this area, I saw on a tourist leaflet a photograph representing the sculpture on stone of 'hairy', with a comment explaining that the original was visible in the Sainte-Engrâce church (11th century), among other carvings.

I went on the spot and discovered indeed this creature, which was represented beside a flute player. It seems that what one sees around the neck this being is a collar and it is probable that the musician is a 'showman of hairy man.'

Later, the well-known bear showers of the Pyrenees will take their succession, wild men becoming too much rare and untraceable in these mountains. It is curious besides to note that photographs of the sculptures posted in this church are accompanied by comments, which consider that the creature represented is a bear! It is clear that the idea of the wild and hairy man does not come to mind from people and that, vis-à-vis impossibility of identifying this being, one compares it to a bear, even if confusion is impossible... This lucky find was already interesting, but the aspect of the nose was not striking, although by looking at the sculpture on the side, one notes a difference compared to the nose of the flute player.

In 2002, benefiting from one week of freedom at the end of June, I left again for the Basque Country with the intention of visiting other churches to try to find new representations of 'hairy'. I was rather quickly disappointed, the majority of the buildings being too recent, and by spite, I turned over to Sainte-Engrâce, where I knew that I could again admire the sculpture, and I
benefited from it to explore the basic church .This is whereas I have a surprise of size: On one of the pillars were a series of small metal heads which had not drawn my attention at the time of my first visit. I examined them attentively and discovered animal representations. A wolf, a bird (raptor with the hooked beak), and... an hominid head with the crushed nose and the open nostrils, strongly turned forwards, a reducing face with "hair" going down to the eyes, massive jaws, not of chin, in short, the identical picture of the Homo pongoïdes! I was fascinated.

There were definitely too many coincidences not to correspond to reality... When one knows moreover than work of certain anthropologists shows that the Neanderthals, that one wanted during associating the species Sapiens too a long time, had, according to the structure of the nasal cavity, a broad nose with the open nostrils forwards, one has really evil not to accept the authenticity of the corpse observed by Heuvelmans, and thus, the obvious survival of paleanthrops in various places of the world until our time.

Copyright Olivier Décobert, France - October 2002

Bibliography:

Bernard Heuvelmans, On the track of unknown animals (Plon, 1955)
Neandertal Man is always alive (Plon, 1974)
Jean-Jacques Barloy, Survivors of the shade (Arthaud, 1985)
Jean Roche, Savages and hairy (Exergue, 2000)
Michel Raynal, The wild man in the Pyrenees and the survival of the Neanderthals (Bipédia, vol.3, 1989)
The Neanderthal relics, of the Pyrenees in Pakistan (Bipédia, vol.10, 1993)
Jordi Magraner, Relic hominids of Central Asia (1992, Booklet diffused by association Troglodytes)