CRYPTOLINK: Nazis Thought Yeti Could Be Progenitor of Aryan Race: History of Yeti Legends

The Epoch Times

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

Nazis Thought Yeti Could Be Progenitor of Aryan Race: History of Yeti Legends

The Epoch Times

This mysterious creature often takes a backseat to the more notable Bigfoot. However, similar in stature and structure to Bigfoot, the Yeti, ...

A painting of a Yeti in a Northern art style

My latest cryptozoology painting is of an encounter with a Yeti. 

This mystery creature than has been painted many times but this could well be the first time in the Northern School style. 

Recently one of my paintings sold for five thousand pounds, but you will be glad to know that this painting is very reasonably priced and is it is currently available for sale on eBay  

This contemporary painting which is oil on stretched canvas measures approx. 9" x 12" and is in excellent condition with lovely vibrant colours.

RICHARD HAS MADE IT INTO 'THE SUN' (Page Three, no less)

Today's Page Three Stunna is perky Richard Freeman (43) whose hobbies include drinking, science fiction, shrimping, more drinking, wearing frilly shirts, being the Dark Lord of Gothdom, and drinking. Oh, by the way, he also hunts mystery animals in his spare time. Phooaaar....

ccc

CRYPTOLINK: 'Yeti is real': Holiday picture of footprint is proof that Bigfoot exists claims climber

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

Mike Rees snapped the 'Yeti footprint' while climbing Everest [SWNS]

Intrepid Mike Rees, 73, innocently took the picture while trekking in the Himalayas after his wife spotted the imprint and pointed it out as "something interesting".

But it was not until he got home and began to read books on Everest that he noticed the footprint exactly matched one discovered by a team of explorers six decades ago.

It is the same size and shape as the one pictured in 1951 and was found in the same remote region.

The retired computer engineer has gone public with his evidence after boffins last week claimed to have solved the mystery of the Yeti.

Mike, who has been trekking in Nepal four times, said: "It didn't really register with us at all what we had taken a picture of, my wife just thought it was something interesting.

"It wasn't until we got home and developed the film that we realised what it could be.

"We got books on Everest and they all contained the stories about the Yeti, the closer we looked we just thought 'wow' our photo looks exactly the same as that footprint.

The 1951 footprint in comparison to the photo taken by Mike Rees [SWNS]

"I compared the two closely and it had to be the same, it's the same size and shape, there's no doubting it, it looks almost identical." Mike and wife Joyce, 69, were on their second trek to the stunning area in 2006 when they made the discovery.

They were trekking in the Khumbu region of the Himalayas, near the village of Machermo, when they spotted the footprint

Read on...

Is it just me or are people interpreting Prof. Sykes' findings far too loosely?

LIZ BITAKARA'MIRE: Relating to Yeti....

Think about it: you live in the mountains, it's freezing, you're not exactly a dish and you've got sherpas showing adventure-seekers from the West roughly where you live. You've gone underground. You used to let people see you all the time. Let's face it: you're bigger and hairier than most people you come into contact with so why not? What have you to be scared of?

All that changed, though, when you became famous, and now you just want to be left alone. Can't anyone relate to you and what you're going through? One government made a bit of an effort.

According to a recent article in Stylist magazine, archivists have recently discovered a memo from the American embassy in Nepal titled Regulations Governing Mount Climbing Expeditions in Nepal - Relating to Yeti. The 1959 document says that the Abominable Snowman may be 'caught alive but it must not be killed or shot at, except in an emergency rising out of self defence.' The memo was thought to have been released in response to what Stylist magazine's unnamed columnist calls 'yeti fever' in Nepal in the 1950s.

So the American ambassador showed willing, but since the document 'relating to yeti' advises you can be caught alive or potentially shot, it does look like your Persecution Complex is well-founded. Poor old yeti....

DOUG SHOOP: Yeti silliness

Cuyuna Lakes Yeti

 http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/02/26/finding-minnesota-cuyuna-lakes-yeti/

Video:

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/video?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=8501623

CROSBY, Minn. (WCCO) — For all they’ve tried, searchers haven’t found sasquatch in the Pacific northwest or the abominable snowman in the Himalayas. But if you believe the stories being told in central Minnesota, another mysterious creature is on the prowl in the Crosby-Ironton area.

Bruce Swanson, a local musician known as Father Klunker, wrote a song about it, to the tune of Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. “There’s a tale on the Range, just a little bit strange, ’bout a big cat they call the Lakes yeti,” the song begins. It’s about a beast spotted roaming in the snowy hills of the Cuyuna Lakes region, a creature that keeps watch on the bikers in the woods.

“I think he’s about 6-foot, 6-foot-2, somewhere in there,” said Swanson. “He can run as fast as I can pedal my bike.” As the locals tell it, the Cuyuna Lakes Yeti has mostly kept his distance, not causing too much alarm. Shaun Anderson rides his fat tire bike through the local trails and claims he’s had a few brief sightings.

“I’m OK with him as long as he can’t catch me,” he said. In fact, all the sightings have brought some welcome publicity. The Cuyuna Lakes Mountain Bike Crew is getting ready for a fat tyre bike event known as The Whiteout. “We have a winter fat bike race right at Sagamore, the home of the Yeti,” said Aaron Hautala, president of the Mountain Bike Crew. “We don’t know exactly where he is out here, but we know he’s out here.”

The “out here” he referred to is the Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area, which used to be an iron-mining site. It now has hilly, groomed trails through the woods, which is perfect for the fat tyre bikes. “Fat biking has been around for eight years,” said Hautala, “but in the last two to three years it’s just kind of exploded. You’re seeing them in the winter, you’re seeing them in the summer and I think you’re going to see a lot more of them.”

The yeti, it turns out, has actually become a local celebrity. He’ll show up at the Ya Betcha Bar and Grill in Crosby, and post photos on his Facebook page. “We find a way to make winter awesome,” said Hautala. “That’s what makes Minnesota awesome.” They hope the yeti will draw people in, rather than scare them away. They say he’s a symbol of the “wild side” hidden in all of us.

The Whiteout starts Friday, March 1, and continues on Saturday. It helps raise money for the Cuyuna Lakes mountain bike trails.

KARL SHUKER - WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE? IN SEARCH OF THE WOODWOSE, EUROPE'S ELUSIVE MAN-BEAST

Homo sapiens was not the only species of human named and recognised by Linnaeus when publishing Systema Naturae, his revolutionary binomial system of zoological classification, in 1735. Among several others was Homo ferus, the wild man, which according to Linnaeus was covered in hair, moved on all fours, was mute, and lived apart from H. sapiens in forests, hills, and mountains. Fallacy, or fact?

Read on...

LINK: Yes, We’re Actually Still Looking for the Yeti (featuring the boy Freeman)

Bring me to your yeti leader, and I’ll test its DNA. Image: tolomea

Many scientists make their careers out of searching for the seemingly unfindable. The Higgs Boson, dark matter, the secret, hidden pieces of our universe. Other scientists search for things that probably aren’t real at all. Like yetis. Researchers are about to embark on a quest to determine once and for all whether or not Yetis exist.

Read on...

WHAT A LONG, STRANGE TRIP ITS BEEN

Yesterday was a strange day and today does not look as if it is going to be much better. I was woken up at some ungodly hour of the morning (7:00 give or take) by someone from Radio 5 Live who wanted to interview me about the yeti.

"Why?" I asked, and it turned out to be in connection with a Russian conmference and expedition. Various bits of the BBC phoned me at intervals throughout the day, and again this morning, and each time I gave a non-committal interview saying that I knew next to nothing about the project and wished them well.

Then I got a disturbing phone call from Lars Thomas.

Lars had a strange phone call from someone going by the name of John yesterday. Apparently this chap claimed to be from a production company making a documentary about the ‘tricks and humbug’ of the world of cryptozoology, including the CFZ. After speaking to Lars – who told him to do something drastic with himself physically – he threatened Lars to face the consequences if he were to break silence about the call. The caller’s number was ‘withheld’, and that, along with the threat, would seem to indicate that chicanery is afoot.

Let's hope today shapes up to be better, but having been woken again by the BBC World Service at an ungodly hour, I think that this is highly unlikely.

LIZ WANTS A YETI

http://www.skoda.co.uk/gbr/newcars/yeti/pages/default.aspx

You can now buy a crypto car! Jeremy Clarkson reckons it's the best in the world. I want one :)

RICHARD FREEMAN: THE YETI IN ASSAM

Whilst in Tura on the trail of the Indian yeti we visited local surgeon, Dr Lao. Dr Lao believed that the mande-barung existed but he thought that it was now very rare. He had a collection of books on Indian wildlife. Among them was a book entitled A Naturalist in Karbi Anglong by Awaruddin Choudry, first published in 1993. The book, by one of India’s best known naturalists, records his time in the Karbi Anglong district of Assam, the Indian state to the north of Meghalaya.

One chapter of Chourdy’s book is given over to the Khenglong-po, a yeti-like creature seen in the area and unheard of in the west. As Assam borders onto Bhutan there is a link, or corridor if you will, directly from the Himalayas down to the Garo Hills along which yetis are reported and along which they could travel at will.

He writes:

'Singhason peak and some nearby areas are sacred to the Karbis. Here in the dense forest lives the Khenglong-po, the legendary ‘hairy wild-man’. The Khenglong-po is an important figure in the Karbi folk tale. Whenever I used to get reports of its existence, I dismissed them as fable or mistaken identification of an ordinary animal. But when the much experienced Sarsing Rongphar gave me a fresh report, I had to re-think. Sarsing had been my guide in parts of the Dhansiri Reserved Forest, and I found him to be an accurate and reliable observer.'

Sarsing was a hunter who used dogs to sniff out game such as muntjac and porcupine, which he then dispatched with a long hunting knife. Even before his arrival a Karbi Along Awaruddin Choudry had heard of sightings of a large, bipedal ape. At first he asked witnesses if they might be mistaking a stump-tailed macaque (Macaca arctoides) or a hoolock gibbon (Hoolock hoolock) but the witnesses rejected this as they were familiar with both species, but when his trusted guide told him of an encounter with the beast, Choudry was forced to change his mind.

It was on May 13th 1992 that Sarsing Rongphar and his friend Buraso Terang and his hunting dogs ventured into Dhansiri Reserved Forest. In the afternoon they came upon large man-like footprints that were around 18 inches long and 6-7 inches wide. The pair followed the tracks for 3 kilometres until their usually brave dogs began to panic. Fearing an elephant or tiger was close by they crept cautiously forward. Soon a loud breathing sound became audible as ‘khhr-khhhr’ sound. From 80-90 metres away they saw an ape-like creature leaning against a tree, apparently asleep. The witnesses were at a higher elevation than the creature and had a clear view due to the fact there was no dense undergrowth obscuring their view. The creature was jet-black like a male hoolock gibbon with thick bear-like hair on the body. The hair on the head was long and curly. The creature was a female with visible breasts. Its mouth was open and large, human-like teeth apparent. The face, hands and feet were black and ape-like. In front of the creature was a broken tree and the hunters thought the creature had been feeding on it. They observed the sleeping animal for around one hour. Sarsing likened it to a giant hoolock gibbon but with much shorter fore-arms.

On reaching their village they told tribal elders of what they had seen and were informed that it was a Khenglong-po, a kind of hairy wildman that was thought to be dangerous.

Choudry took Sarsing to his camp and showed him pictures of the Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus) standing on its hind legs and the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei). The hunter identified the latter creatures as being a Khenglong-po whilst recognizing the former for exactly what it was. Choudry interviewed Buraso Terang separately and got the same answers.

A Khenglong-po was once supposed to have wandered up the railway track from Langcholiet to Nailalung.

On another occasion Choudry talked to some hunters from Karbi Anglong in central Assam. They spoke of a large, herbivorous, ground-dwelling ape that they called Gammi. According to them two Gammis were seen together in 1982 feeding on reeds on the eastern slope of the Karbi Plateau in the upper Deopani area. An elderly hunter had encountered one in the Intanki Reserved Forest in Nagaland in 1977-78. The creatures are said to be covered in grey hair and to be man-like in appearance. The name Gammi means ‘wild-man’.

Choudry concludes…

“It seems possible to me that a terrestrial ape, larger than the gibbons existed in some remote parts of Karbi Anglong and adjacent areas of Nagaland. The creature was always rare and preffered the remotest corner of the jungle, and, hence, evaded discovery by the scientific world. Now with the forests vanishing everywhere, this ape perhaps faces extinction. Expeditions to the heart of the Dhansiri Reserved Forest and Singhason area may well produce some result. But for now, I am looking for any fossil evidence including skull, bone or part thereof. This will at least put the Khenglong-po at its right place, even if it is extinct. Lastly, if a large mammal like the Javan or smaller one horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus) can be discovered in recent years in a small pocket of the war-ravaged Vietnam, outside its known locality in Indonesia and beyond anybody’s expectation, one cannot rule out a Khenglong-po in the forests of Karbi Anglong.”

We can see then an unbroken link of yeti sightings from Bhutan down into India.

DALE DRINNON: Clarifications on "Dzu-Teh" as The Big Yeti, Together with an Ecological Specification For It

The Tibetan stories go that the larger Yetis are eating yaks preferentially and living up in the highest terrain. There is one name that Ivan Sanderson favoured for the Big Yeti and that was Dzu-Teh. His book says that means 'The Hulking Thing' but an alternative interpretation is that it means 'Yak-Bear', Dzo meaning the domesticated yak-hybrids the Tibetans usually raise. And so it should be spelled Dzo-dred. After some consideration, I still think that must be the Big Yeti for several reasons, a couple of them already noted in captions to the pictures. The main reason is that they can be reported in areas where there are no bears (Sanderson notes that in the book Abominable Snowmen, 1961, p. 323) they behave differently than bears, go to different places than the bears would go and do different things in a different way. They go uphill into the permanent snows when the bears would be going down and they kill yaks by breaking their necks, which is not the way a bear would ordinarily do it. And I have specific native artwork of the type on the triangular stamp from Bhutan, where an example is shown ripping a human victim in half, holding him above his head. Bears do not have human or ape-like shoulder joints and can no more get their arms up over the head and spreading them out any more than giant ground sloths could. Besides which, the creature is depicted as having the limb proportions of a gorilla.

So I still think the Dzu-Teh is the Big Yeti even if the name DOES mean Yak-bear, because in this case the word 'bear' is generic for 'Predator.' The word 'dred' CAN be used as bear in the specific sense, but it can also be 'varmint' in the general sense according to other sources. Furthermore, the usual term Meh-Teh as 'manbear' is the same term used in China and elsewhere, and translated as 'wildman' (but can even be used as 'Bear-MONKEY')











There are several reasons why the Dzu-Teh should NOT be an ordinary bear, and the fact that it has taken up a life as a specialist yak-raider is one of them. That is not ordinary bear behaviour in Tibet. The other main reason is that they live generally at a higher altitude than the usual (blue) bears do and the ranges for either type are entirely different. That and the fact that their tracks are entirely different.












The range at a higher altitude is what is specified in the description of the largest yetis and in fact this coincides with the range of the wild yaks (The yak steppe - SEE MAP BELOW).

The brown (blue) bears ordinarily live in a different georaphic area at a lower altitude (the wild ass steppe).

The bigfoot-like big yetis in this region seem to have gone into specialisation as beef-eaters and live almost exclusively on yaks, something along the lines of the Plain Indians (Indigenous Peoples) of the Old West. The yetis live primarily on calves or older, sick and dying yaks, but they also seem to have made a career out of seeking out animal victims of bad winters (winter kills) and storing the carcasses away for future use, at the higher altitudes. Hence they go up the mountains where bears would come down (as noted by Heuvelmans) Sanderson also mentions that they are supposed to crack open long bones for the marrow, which would be a hominoid activity if they are using rocks to do so.

The Tibetan sources when speaking of 'wildmen' (as opposed to bears) do seem to imply that they know of a creature like a chimpanzee and then again a larger one like a gorilla. That would be the same as Heuvelmans's little yeti and big yeti, and the little yeti is the one like a chimp that leaves the 'Mitten' track. It eats meat in small packages, like mouse-hares at maximum size. The big yeti is the one the Tibetans compare to a gorilla, and it takes on larger prey, including humans according to reputation. Its tracks are almost exactly like human tracks but up to 18 and even over 20 inches long. The footprints match the Sasquatch and this is the one that Sanderson, Heuvelmans, et al, call a surviving Gigantopithecus.

Heuvelmans also says it is the Rimi, as a general name for it: Rimi means simply 'man of the mountains' (which is about the way Sanderson has it): in the north of Tibet the name Jez-Tyrmak probably means about the same in Mongolian. The Jez-Tyrmak is supposed to be grey in colour (getting lighter in age and according to altitude, by the reports) but it has copper-coloured nails. I would suggest they are stained by ripping up animal carcasses. The scratch of their nails is probably septic.

The 'copper' colour is probably from Staphylococcus aureaus and the fingernails probably are loaded with E. coli - in other words, their fingernails are loaded with the stuff that causes food poisoning in poorly-cooked meat and their hands are as unsanitary as a slaughterhouse.

Yeti food - below, what Dale charmingly describes as `hairy little hamburger`..

DALE DRINNON: Napier in BIGFOOT Again

John Napier in Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality, 1973 goes over evidence for the Yeti in Chapter 2, Bigfoot in Asia. His identikit starts on page 59:

The profile of the Yeti based on the features most frequently given in Sherpa tales, goes like this: height varies between 4 ft 6 in [permissable to say 4 ft even] and 16 ft. The head hair is long and sometimes falls foreward over the eyes. The face is partially naked, often white-skinned [or sunburnt-DD]with features reminiscent of an ape or a monkey. Hair, predominantly reddish-brown to dark brown or black in colour but lighter on the chest, covers the entire body. Shoulders are heavy and hunched, arms long enough to extend to the knees or thereabouts. The posture is roughly man-like though slightly stooped. The walk is partly bipedal and partly quadrupedal.

It is particularly interesting that there is such a great variation in size in these accounts. Just over half the reports state that the creatute is over 6 ft in height; rather less than half the reports state that it is under 6 ft. The height most frequently given is between 5 ft and 6 ft and the commonest analogy is that it is the size and the build of a youth. The appearance of a conical-shaped skull, one of the most consistent features in reconstructions of the Yeti, is only mentioned in six out of the eighteen reports....


[Table of Yeti Habits and Habitat from the Sherpa Tales]
ECOLOGY
1. Habitat. The Yeti live in caves high in the mountains* between 13,000 and 20,000 feet. Or they live in the impenetrable thickets of the montane forests at about 10,000 feet (The former belief is by far the more widespread
2. Activity rhythm. Nocturnal*
3. Diet. Carnivorous. The Yeti preys on yaks as well as on smaller mammals such as the pika (Himalayan mouse-hare), which is found at a maximum altitude of 20,000 feet or thereabouts. Characteristically, they discard the intestines before eating these creatures. When hungry the Yeti may raid villages and carry off human beings*

HABITS
1.Vocalization. The repertoire of the Yeti calls includes loud roars, noisy yelps, loud mews [ A sound something like that made by a seagull-DD] and, most characteristically, a high-pitched whistling call.
2. Body Odor. Yetis have a vile, pungent smell*
3. Physical Behaviour. Yetis have tremendous physical strength and can uproot trees and hurl boulders over vast distances.* The breasts of the females are so large they have to throw them over their shoulders when running or when bending down.* In both sexes these creatures are impeded when running down slopes by their long head-hair, which falls over their eyes and thus blinds them.* Yetis are inordinately fond of alcohol (eg, chang) which can be used as a bait to trap a Yeti after it has been intoxicated*
4. Social Behaviour. Unrecorded. Yetis are usually observed as isolates.

(pgs 60-61)* indicates a recognised Folkloric feature known from other parts of the world. I have amended Napier's figure of 14,000 ft under Habitat to 13,000 because that is the figure given in the tradition of the Nyalmo, and that is clearly the tradition Napier is referring to.

Napier also takes pains to note that while such features as the feet allegedly pointing backwards (p 60) and the hair falling before the eyes or a female throwing breasts of their shoulders (p 61) are part of the FOLKLORE, there are no actual reports which allege such things to be observed by witnesses.

Heuvelmans sorts the reports by summing two sorts of Yeti, the Grande Yeti and the Petit Yeti or Big Yeti and Small Yeti. He assumes the Yetis usually repotrd by the Sherpas are the reddish Small Yetis, and these are the ones whose tracks are seen more often.. Heuvelmans says the Big Yetis are darker in colouration, darker brown or black, and they have the tracks that are over a foot long. These are the ones that are likely to be surviving Gigantopithecus and Heuvelmans also specifically links them to the Rimi at seven to nine feet tall and ordinarily roaming between 10,000 and 13,000 feet. The most likey explanation for the Nyalmo is that they are based on the Rimi but with a further extrapolation according to the belief that Yetis get bigger the higher up in the mountains you go.

According to Napier's table of Yeti Tracks (Table 1 in the back of the book) the Big Yeti tracks a foot long or over have been noted a half-dozen times by travellers (excepting Shipton's tracks) and they range up to 18 or to possibly 24 inches long. These would be the equivalent to Sasquatch tracls. The smaller tracks are usually eight to ten inches long and just possibly up to a foot long also. For that reason we cannot be sure of an automatic assortmentbased on absolute size. They have been seen eight, maybe ten times between 1915 and 1970. And the tracks which feature an opposed toe are in this series: the Shipton track is most like the smaller series except for the fact that it is markedly larger than the rest and it has a peculiar second toe also. The Shipton track compares to others of the smaller series at an increase of 150% above the average, and if the average Small Yeti is only a bit over five feet tall, the Shipton Giant beast is presumably over seven and a half feet tall. It is SO much larger that it is almost certainly an individual freak and not typical for the series.

There is also a good deal of difference in position of the big toe in different tracks of the smaller series. That is not an issue I need to discuss in this overview because I deal with it elsewhere.

At this juncture I should add that I agree with Napier as to the involvement of bears in the reports, and as a general cause for confusion. HOWEVER the basic Yeti creature stories cannot ONLY be based on stories of bears because of specifically apelike features. One of these features is the opposed toe seen on some of the tracks and another is the pointed, conical head ascribed to the Yetis in reports. Those features simply cannot be describing bears of any sort.

Now as to the Traditional Yeti, it seems to me that nearly all of the description actually refers to The Big Yeti or the Sasquatch sort. On the other hand when Sherpas actually report Yetis, they are not reporting the Big Yetis of the legends, they are reporting the more familiar Small Yetis of the lowlands, presumably come up to grub for lichens or to nab some mouse-hares as a dietary supplement. They are presumably about as carnivorous as chimpanzees but some of them acquire a sweet tooth for mouse-hares that can be most easily quenched by running them down on the snowfields, and it might be assumed that their hunting technique for nabbing small animal prey is less effective in the deep forests that are usually their homes (Incidentally I do have a specific statement from an Indian woman that when such creatures live more ordinarily at lower levels in places like the Assam, they frequently raid bananna plantations and otherwise behave in a manner to be expected of quite ordinary great apes)

The Big Yeti is the one where the females have large breasts and large human-shaped feet twice the size of usual human feet. They have something like a bang of hair across the forehead and just above the eyes. And they are often said to live high in mountain caves and to drag bodies of dead animals-and allegedly humans-up to private cashes where they can eat them at leisure. They are seen at all levels down to 10000 feet in normal conditions and they can raid the valleys lower down when times are bad. But at the end of summer they go up to higher levels above 13000 feet, according to the stories, and they stay up there where their natural refrigeration works best. And actually, as Heuvelmans notes, that is the complete opposite from what you should expect from bears.

NB: I was just doing further research and I found that Darren Naish's blog says the Shipton yeti print was a hoax. I do not believe we need to go that far, but from what I could tell from its cast, the print has certainly sublimated off to the outside and the outline may well have been 'helped' before recording it. It is certainly atypical otherwise. It would be a matter of taste to equate retouching to actual hoaxing in my opinion, however.

OLL LEWIS: How the West Learnt About the Yeti: Part 4

In modern times Everest has become much more accessible to Westerners, Nepal is a fairly open country with close ties to the West (particularly the UK due in a large part to the Gurkhas) and yet sightings of the Yeti are reported less from the area than they may have been in the past. This could be for fear of ridicule due to the erroneous belief held by some people that no cryptids/unknown species of animal could possibly exist because they would have been discovered by scientists already. Although this is a view held by many who like to think they know about science, this is thankfully not a view held by the majority of biologists who in most cases would at least be open to the possibility that cryptids may exist even if they would consider it a very small probability or certainly not shout it from the roof tops and are well aware that there are new species being discovered all the time.

Another reason that Yeti sightings may not be reported as frequently from the area is the increased urbanisation of the population: not only are people less likely to see something if there are less people walking through the areas where it may be but often when a population is urbanised they don't pass on the old folk tales or those stories about the time great-grandfather saw a Yeti. Case in point: when I was in university one of my flat mates was an international student from Kathmandu in Nepal and when I asked him about the Yeti it turned out that he hadn't even heard of it before. It is worth remembering as well that from the mid '90s until recently there was a civil war in Nepal with large sections of the countryside controlled by people of opposing ideologies so often travel within the country and the flow of information may have been somewhat curtailed.

As a result of all this in more recent years Yeti researchers have paid a lot closer attention to India and the Garo Hills especially. The Garo Hills has not only has had sightings of Yeti going back many generations but has the advantage of having, in recent years, been much more politically stable than Nepal and being a part of India is much easier to obtain access to than the Tibet area of China. Along with the recent CFZ expedition to the area there have been several other expeditions and investigations conducted there so far this century including an investigation by the BBC in 2008.

It was during this investigation that Depu Marak gave some samples of what he believed could be Yeti hair to BBC journalist Alastair Lawson to be tested in the UK. The hairs were analysed in July 2008 by several different laboratories. The first of the tests was the microscopic analysis of the hair samples, which helped to eliminate the originator of the unknown animal hairs from a list of known species by Ian Redmond. At this stage of the investigation Redmond was able to eliminate Asiatic black bear, wild boar and macaque monkeys from the list of potential suspects, and he was optimistic that the hair could have come from an unknown species of animal. The hair follicles were still attached so there were sent to an American laboratory who preformed a DNA analysis. The DNA results came back as Himalayan goral. Redmond was optimistic about these results as although they had not confirmed the existence of the Yeti they did at least mark an extension of the goral's range into an area where they had not been observed before. Finding evidence of an animal where it has never been seen before is not as spectacular as finding evidence of a Yeti but is still an interesting outcome. An expedition to Bhutan also obtained possible Yeti DNA evidence; however, when this was analysed by Professor Bryan Sykes this was found to be from a brown bear or an Asiatic black bear.

DNA results would only be the first step in verifying the existence of the Yeti; even if intriguing results pointing to an unknown species are obtained all these will tell you is that there definitely something out there. In order to fully confirm a creature's existence and that it is a new species then it is a sad fact that you would need a body. The Italian mountaineer and explorer Reinhold Messner believes he may have obtained just that when he shot a bear in Tibet. In the 1980s he had seen a bear, which he took to be a Yeti on first glance and when he compared tracks that it had left in the snow with photographs taken by Eric Shipton in 1951 Messner concluded that they were very similar.

Whatever the truth behind Yeti sightings, with such a range and variety to them in the selected examples I have written about in these blogs, it is unlikely they all have the same explanation. Some sightings or evidence could be due to misidentification of known animals, some could be hoaxes and some could well be of an undiscovered animal. Truth be told, after having heard tales of the Yeti in the West for almost 200 years we are not much closer to any definitive answers than we were when B.H. Hodgeson wrote about what he thought might be a Himalayan orangutan.

OLL LEWIS: How the West Learnt About the Yeti: Part 3

After the Daily Mail Expedition presented its findings the next westerner to go to the Himalayas specifically to look for the yeti was the American oil man Tom Slick in 1957. According to Wikipedia, Slick's interest in cryptozoology was little known until the publication of Tom Slick and the search for the Yeti in 1989 so it is entirely possible that some of Slick's adventures may have been slightly exaggerated with the passage of time (many of the facts only came to light in public over 20 years after his death) but it is known for a fact that Slick did finance a number of yeti expeditions. Slick was not interested in the yeti exclusively, and he also funded and participated in expeditions to look for the Loch Ness monster and closer to home, the Trinity Alps giant salamander in California, and Bigfoot.

It was not until 1959 that Slick's yeti expedition found something of note: supposed yeti scat. Analysis of the scat found an unidentified parasite, which led Bernard Heuvelmans to write:
'Since each animal has its own parasites, this indicated that the host animal is equally an unknown animal.'

However, this was just an example of Heuvelmans getting a little over-excited, as he was prone to do on several occasions in his otherwise distinguished career (for example, see the Minnesota Iceman incident). In reality the presence of an unknown parasite certainly does not indicate that it came from an unknown animal; scientists find previously unknown parasites in all number of known animal species, including man.

The Tom Slick yeti story that everyone knows, though, also took place in 1959: the story of Jimmy Stewart and the yeti's hand. Slick had heard of the existence of a mummified yeti hand in Pangboche monastery, Nepal, on the 1957 expedition and photographs had been taken of the hand by Peter Byrne in 1958. The plan was that the team would take the hand away for testing in the 1959 expedition; however, when the monks refused permission for this Byrne is said to have taken bone samples from the hand while the monks were distracted, and replaced them with human bone fragments. Byrne is then said to have smuggled the bone fragments into India where he met up with the Hollywood actor James Stewart who smuggled them into the United States of America. The analysis conducted on the samples, and a DNA analysis in 1991, concluded that they were 'near human', which sadly does not tell us a lot.

After the 1991 DNA analysis the entire hand was stolen from the monastery. Edmund Hillary visited the monastery in 1960 but concluded the hand was a fake. However, those that believe in the hand's authenticity have said his conclusions were largely based on the “modifications” made by Byrne to cover up for the sample he had taken.

Hillary's expedition to Nepal in 1960 was in part thought to be a cover for an expedition to spy on Chinese military technology and activity but he did take the yeti-hunting part of the expedition seriously and as well as investigating the Pangboche hand, obtained what was alleged to be a yeti scalp from Khumjung monastery in Nepal. The scalp was subjected to scientific testing and it was concluded that, far from being a yeti scalp, the skin had come from the hide of a serow. Myra Shackley, archaeologist and author of Wildmen: Yeti, Sasquatch and the Neanderthal Enigma contested the findings claiming that the hair looks distinctly monkey-like and the parasitic mites found on the scalp were of a different species to those found on the serow. A discrepancy of mites does not necessarily indicate that it is not a serow though because different mites and parasites will feed on dead tissue, long dead tissue like the 'yeti scalp' in particular, than living tissue.

OLL LEWIS: How the West Learnt About the Yeti: Part 2

The first particularly notable Yeti sighting of the 20th century occurred in 1925 when a Greek geologist and photographer called N. A. Tombazi was on an expedition to Tibet with the Royal Geographical Society. Tombazi saw a figure that looked black against the snow but very human in shape. It was occasionally bending over to pick at rhododendron bushes and was, as far as he could tell, naked. When descending the mountain Tombazi and the other expedition members found what they took to be the footprints of what they had just seen. In his book Account of a Photographic Expedition to the Southern Glaciers of Kangchenjunga in the Sikkim Himalaya Tombazi described the prints as being 'undoubtedly those of a biped' and similar in shape to that of a man but 6-7 inches long by 4 inches wide.

What a lot of articles on the history of the yeti will omit is that Tombazi did not believe that he saw a yeti. He explained the sighting as being possibly that of a local hermit; however, several people at the time and since have contested that what he saw was a yeti.

After the end of World War 2 westerners made several serious attempts to summit Mount Everest and several of the mountaineers involved made claims to have seen a yeti or evidence of one while on the mountain. Eric Shipton, who had been involved in some capacity in most British attempts on the summit of the mountain since the 1930s, claimed to have found a series of strange footprints, which he concluded had been made by a yeti, when on an expedition in 1951 with Dr Michael Ward. Shipton stood down as expedition leader for the 1953 successful attempt on the summit but both Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay, who would eventually summit the mountain, at the time of the expedition believed that the yeti was a flesh and blood animal that could be found all over the Himalayas. During the expedition they both saw large footprints on the mountain that they thought may have been yeti prints but in subsequent years they revised their opinions on the yeti. Hillary believed the yeti was more likely a spiritual being from Sherpa belief rather than an actual flesh and blood creature and Norgay, who at one time thought the yeti could be a large ape, became sceptical of the creatures existence despite his father having told him of seeing the animal on two occasions.

The British public were particularly intrigued by the upsurge in evidence of the yeti's existence coming out of the Himalayas and this prompted the Daily Mail to fund an expedition to the mountains specifically to look for evidence of the yeti. The newspaper had previously got its fingers burnt when Marmaduke Wetherell, under the paper's pay at the time, was hoaxed by persons unknown on the banks of Loch Ness. The Mail had tried to capitalise on the public's new-found interest in Nessie and sent the charismatic big game hunter to the loch, and it seemed like a sure thing that he would find the monster, especially when he found the beast's tracks. However, those tracks turned out to be all made by the same left foot of a hippo and the Mail distanced themselves Wetherell. This time things would have to go differently; this time the Mail would take the expedition very seriously and it would start by hiring people who would be taken a lot more seriously than Wetherell. The expedition's team consisted of several well qualified scientists and experienced climbers. Members of the expedition photographed pictures of the yeti from monasteries, tracked footprints and obtained hairs from an alleged yeti scalp in Pangboche monastery.

The scalp was perhaps the most interesting of the expedition's findings. The hairs on the scalp were of a reddish colour and were extensively analysed by Professor Fredric Wood Jones. Jones concluded that the hairs were not from a scalp and were not from a bear or ape; he thought that the hair was from a coarse-haired hoofed animal but did not pinpoint an exact animal. Perhaps given more time he would have been able so to do, but Jones died that September.