Sacred Texts  Legendary Creatures  Index  Previous  Next 

---

Buy this Book at Amazon.com

---

Buy this Book on Kindle

Abominable Snowmen, by Ivan T. Sanderson, [1961], at sacred-texts.com

p. 351

16. Our Revered Ancestors

We now seem to have done several things, which had better be straightened out before we go further. (1) We have hinted at just how many of the "skeptics" have blundered into absurdities, contradictions, and frauds. (2) We have destroyed the value of most of the physical evidence, by subjecting it to some proper examination. (3) We have, as a result of the above, "canceled" ourselves out rather neatly, and now need a fresh line of approach, in order to see if any valid avenues still remain to be examined.

Positive arguments put forward against the existence of ABSMs really fall under four heads. These are that the whole thing is (a) lies, (b) hallucinations, (c) hoaxes, or (d) repeated cases of misidentification. That they could all be nothing more than straight lies is, I feel confident in saying, quite impossible. Too many people, fortuitously associated at the time, have actually found the foot-tracks, and all over the world. Moreover, it seems highly improbable that all the reputable people, so many of them well-known, listed in the previous chapters would all make up the same lie to describe the same creature and then say they saw it. For similar reasons, we may dispose also of the hallucination theory. First of all, there is a considerable doubt about the very existence of "mass hallucination" in which several people think they see the same thing at the same time. Then, hallucinations don't leave foot-tracks, hairs, or excrement; make wild yells, or move cairns. This brings us to the hoax theory.

p. 352

Click to enlarge
MAP XIII. THE OLD WORLD

[Numbers in this table on the left side are enclosed in a square, on the right with a circle. These numbers refer to points in map XIII—JBH].

p. 353

This is the most difficult one because it is possible, however improbable it may appear to be, and whether you can suggest any way in which it could be done or not. As to the latter, I personally don't have the slightest idea, or any reasonable suggestions to make, though in some special cases I think I could duplicate some of the observed results by the exercise of a lot of energy, time, and money. However, I will repeat once more, magicians and professional conjurers can do the most amazing things that sometimes seem, to the rest of us uninitiated, to be quite impossible and even illogical, while

p. 354

hoaxers and funsters have gone to the most extraordinary lengths to pull their stunts. One of the classic examples was the famous Würzburg "Fossils." These were a number of little clay tablets inscribed with crude drawings of animals and ancient Hebrew and other scripts which some students planted in a quarry where very ancient fossils were being brought to light by their professor. The nature of fossils was in dispute in those days, the general opinion being that the Almighty had put them into the rocks to test man's faith in the Biblical tale of creation. Another classic hoax may be [and I say this advisedly for reasons that we will see in a moment] the allegation of faking of the lower jaw of the very famous Piltdown Man. Anybody can comprehend how such as these were done once one knows that they are hoaxes but it is sometimes hard if not impossible for us to see how conjuring tricks are accomplished. However, while I haven't the foggiest notion how such tricks as "abominable snowman" tracks might be made in the circumstances among which they have been found, I do have a suggestion to offer a bit later on as to why they should be. For the nonce, however, let us just say that the hoax theory is extremely abstruse and has probably been adequately disproved, or, at least as of now, proved to be impossible. This leaves us with the business of mistaken identity.

I went over this briefly in the last chapter and can only add that, while in some cases a known local animal can be conjured up to possibly explain the alleged "sightings" of the creatures themselves, and even for the excrement and the hairs, there are no living animals known that can make any one of the four main types of footprints. Further, I would again stress the fact that the idea of some of them being made by four-footed beasts putting their hind feet into the imprints of their front ones, or more especially of a series of animals all jumping into the same hole for miles on end, is quite absurd and impossible.

This completes the roster of debunking explanations. Are there any positive suggestions as to what ABSMs might be?

p. 355

[paragraph continues] There is one and it comes in three parts: to wit, that ABSMs are as yet uncaught and unidentified living creatures. There are three suggestions here: first, that all or some are unknown apes; second, that all or some are left-over relics of sub-men [i.e. what used to be called "ape-men" and "men-apes"]; or third, that all or some are remnants of very primitive humans. And, in view of everything else, this would certainly seem to be the best, most logical, and most probable suggestion; especially since the really extraordinary galaxy of other animals both small, large, and enormous which have come to light only in this century and right up to this decade [i.e. the new herd of Woodland Bison in Canada in 1960]. The question then immediately arises: What kinds of animals, sub-men, or primitives? Let us examine this straightforward question.

The first thing we have to do is to list the ABSMs and try to classify them according to whatever characters and characteristics they have or are alleged to have. To lead you through all the arguments by which I have arrived at the following general descriptions would take volumes, and be most irksome and dull. Most of the essential facts have already come out as we have reported the stories about them, and from what little physical evidence there has been left to us. The rest is technicalities, but each and all of the facts have been checked and the data on them is on file.

First, we should understand that the number of names for ABSMs (see Appendix A) has nothing to do with the number of different kinds of these creatures. There are literally hundreds of names for ABSMs still in use today, and hundreds more in over half the languages on earth and in many more that have now passed from common usage. Second, the number of individual localities where they have been reported is again not any guide to the number of kinds there may be. Like other animals, ABSMs seem to have wide distributions, some much wider than others, while some [and perhaps distinct species, or sub-species] appear to have very restricted distributions. Third, this distribution is not in any way as

p. 356

haphazard as it at first appears to be, while apparent inconsistencies and complete illogicalities in it are not only perfectly logical if one particular aspect of geography is taken into consideration—that is the geography of vegetative forms (see Map XVI and the explanation in Chapter 18)—but actually go far to confirming the validity of the whole business. A fourth point we should bear in mind is that size has nothing much to do with the matter, for the distinction between the pigmy, man-sized, Meh-Teh, and giant forms is blurred in any case, while there may be large, medium, and small races, sub-species, or species of any genus of animals—and even in the same locality. This assessment is therefore based on one major and several subsidiary criteria.

The basis is the geography of vegetational types—desert, scrublands, savannahs and prairies, orchard and parklands, woods and forests, and most especially of montane forests on uplands and mountains. The supporting data are, first, the degree of "humanity" or "humanoidness" of the individual creatures as reported or alleged; second, the over-all extent to which their bodies are human; third, the degree in which their footprints approach those of man; and fourth, to some extent, how they are said to behave. They are listed below in accordance with these principles, those at the top being the most manlike, those at the bottom the least manlike, but it should be clearly understood that this does not mean that the latter are any more apelike. This is another matter that will be tackled in a minute. ABSMs then, seem to go like this:

p. 357

p. 358

This completes the roster and calls for some comment. First, I have omitted anything that might exist in the Colombian

p. 359

[paragraph continues] Massif of the Andes except the little Shiru which seems in every way to agree with the No. II class above—namely the Proto-Pigmies. Should it so prove to be, then the Dwendi might probably go into the same group. At the moment, and for reasons that I go into more fully in the next chapter, it is my opinion that the latter are just groups of Mayas or related peoples, some of whom are really almost pigmies (see Fig. 56, the photograph of a Mayan mother, standing beside me, holding one of my godchildren).

I have also omitted the Muhalu and the Tano River giant of Africa as, in view of Mr. Cordier's report, and the nature of the former's footprint, the thing is definitely an ape. Left out also, are Dr. Moore's tailed creatures which as I have already said I personally think were large monkeys. This leaves but one form in doubt. This is the little Teh-lma of the lower valley forests of the Himalayas. Of these there are two conflicting and diametrically opposed opinions, which cannot be reconciled. One party claims that they are giant Macaques or Rhesus-type Monkeys, such as I discussed in the last chapter under their proper name of Lyssodes. This is fair enough and well taken. However, the tracks left by these Teh-lmas were found, copied, and examined by none other than Gerald Russell who is, in my opinion, just about the one man, apart from Mr. Cordier, who could really interpret footprints; and he states categorically that those of the Teh-lmas are definitely humanoid, and he demonstrates this with plaster casts. Also, he says, the creatures always run on their hind legs, which simply is not a simian [or monkey] characteristic. I think therefore that the Teh-lmas must be classed in the Proto-Pigmy group. The only other doubts are whether there really is any difference between the North American, Central, and South American Neo-Giants; and between the Meh-Teh of the Himalayas and the Golub-yavans of the ranges immediately north of Tibet. In both cases the descriptions of the two lots seem to be identical: they could, in each case, simply be races. Therefore, after disposing of the "animals"—mostly apes but some may be monkeys—we are left with eight or possibly twelve types.

p. 360

To reiterate, these are: Four very primitive sub-humans; four proto-pigmies; two or three neo-giants; and one or two really "abominable" and bestial creatures. It is of course possible that the Proto-Malayans and the Yunnan primitives could be two forms of the same; that the Ksy-giiks and the Almas are only a size difference of another; that the Dwendis are fully human; that Teh-lmas and Sedapas are only racial forms of the same creature; that all four giants are but one form, for reasons of their distribution that we will see later; and that, as we have just said, the two "abominable" ones are the same. Such a further combination, or "lumping," gives us a fairly manageable list and perhaps a more believable one. It also coincides with geographical and other requirements. It goes like this:

This is still rather a "tall order" but there it is; and, we can't just sit back and deplore it. Something has to at least be suggested. The next questions, therefore, are: if there are all these creatures still running about waiting to be found, what exactly may they be? Also, do we have any ready candidates on our own family tree that we do know to have existed and to which we might assign any of them?

Here, for almost the first time, we are on surer ground, for we do indeed have plenty of candidates and, moreover, all in most convenient locations, and in many ways looking just right. All these, what is more, are on our particular branch of the family tree, and on rather convenient places

p. 361

thereupon to boot. This calls for said family tree, but even before we look at this it might be worth-while turning to Appendix C and taking a look at the much more extensive and general "Tribal Vine" as I call it, of the major group of mammals to which we belong, and which is known as that of the Primates, or Top Ones. On this you will be able to see at a glance just who your relations are and also just how widely separated you are from the less pleasant ones, and particularly from the Pongids or Apes.

I include the apes in the accompanying tree because there is all this endless talk about our being descended from them [which we are not] and also because of the wide use of the terms Ape-Man and Man-Ape, both of which now have to be abandoned; for, however non-human a Meh-Teh may be, neither it nor anything else can be halfway between Man and Ape.

Here, there appear for the first time on our canvas a number of new characters. These need introduction.

Since the publication of Charles Darwin's Descent of Man—not any longer perhaps the incorrect title it once seemed—anthropologists have been digging away all over the earth trying to find our ancestors. The procedure has had its ups and downs; its sudden great discoveries, and its patient piecing together of chance fragments; it has had its hoaxes, false leads, and other alarms and excursions; and sometimes its executors have gone a bit balmy; but, by and large, it has really made the most remarkable progress. Much of the story has been oft-told, but there is a crying need for a straightforward over-all account that brings matters right up to date. It is an enormously complex story and there remain in it both many blanks, great and small, and some appalling muddles. The worst of the latter, currently and rather surprisingly, concerns Modern Man (Homo sapiens) himself, and most especially in his earlier forms. The archaeologists have pushed him back in time to terrifying lengths on the grounds that he along with a few submen of the Neanderthaler type were the only toolmakers, but then the paleo-physical anthropologists [which is to say the searchers after fossil men's

p. 362

anatomy] suddenly popped up with two horribly nonhuman-looking types of creatures, both of which seem to have made fairly good tools. These are called the Australopithecines of South Africa, and the related Zinjanthropines of East Africa. Also, another group of sub-hominids called the Pithecanthropines of Indonesia and north China, proved in the latter area not only to have made quite usable tools but to have used fire in the latter. This has considerably upset our original ideas about toolmakers.

While all this was going on, other archaeologists searching for artifacts, as is their profession, and anthropologists searching for old human bones, and also the zoologists searching for extinct animal remains, and paleo-climatologists, and paleo-oceanographers, and glaciologists, and a whole bunch of others, even to geomorphologists and people concerned with wider matters like the IGY, kept turning up what appears to be evidence of Modem Men in ever more ancient [or earlier] deposits and strata. So, we have two sorts of floods of knowledge coming from opposing directions—one working back from the present, the other working forward from about a million years ago—not just meeting head on, but overriding and infiltrating each other. While the existence of modem-type Man himself has been pushed far back, the continuing existence of sub-humans and even of sub-hominid creatures has crept steadily forward in time.

Despite this, we find ourselves today no more advanced with the problem of Man per se than we were at the beginning, while we are actually in a greater muddle about both his beginnings, past distribution, and affinities now than we ever were. There are other complications too. The nice old idea that the Neanderthalers were a sort of Model-T Man, from which we arose but which itself later died out, has also gone all haywire. First, we now have bones of quite obvious modern-type men from strata just as early, if not earlier than the first Neanderthalers, and the Neanderthalers turn out to have been much more modern-man-like when they began than when they finally died away. In fact, they progressed backward as it were, getting ever coarser in appearance and

p. 363

structure. Then, there has been the distressing affair of Piltdown Man.

This character, in the form of several pieces of a cranium and most of half a lower jaw was said to have been discovered in a gravel pit in the south of England by a man named Dawson in the year 1911. These were shown to Prof. Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, who declared them to constitute the remains of a new and very primitive form of sub-man with the brain of a human and the face and teeth of an ape. The fragments of the skull were assembled in various different ways by various experts; the mandible was completed in theory by extrapolation; and a single canine tooth was fitted into the general scheme so that a pretty fair assemblage was created upon which tendons, muscles, and skin were in due course modeled, ending in some very fine "artists' conceptions" of the original owner of the bits. And so it went till 1953 when investigations made in the Department of Anatomy at Oxford and of Geology at the British Museum using new and elaborate methods of dating materials, indicated to some research workers that the lower jaw was a fake, and made from that of a modern chimpanzee by coloring with chemicals, artificial abrasion, and the filing of its teeth to match the human pattern. The single upper canine tooth, which is rather doglike, was declared also to be that of a modern chimpanzee, and also to have been tampered with. This "disclosure" made a great splash in the press. Unfortunately it now transpires that just about every aspect of it is as phony as Piltdown Man himself is alleged to be.

First, even these researchers admitted readily that the bits of the skull (cranium) are very old indeed. They are also very odd, being enormously thick but showing, by their curvature that they belonged to a very big brain-box. Comparison of the grains of rock still in their interstices would seem to indicate that they came from an exceedingly old strata for any hominid—no less than the Red Crag Beds of East Anglia, which is actually far "worse" than anything claimed for them by Messrs. Dawson and Woodward who said they came from a comparatively late Pleistocene river gravel—a mere difference

p. 364

of a million years! Next, the fragment of lower jaw is not, by its shape, that of a chimpanzee. It could possibly be that of a young orang-utan but it has one feature [called the simian shelf] more in conformity with some extinct apes than with any living one.

The final examinations made of the jaw [the cranium had been admitted by everybody to give good evidence of being hominid, human, and about 50,000 years old, wherever it came from] were made by a man who ought, above all others, to know what he was talking about. His name is Dr. Alvan Marston, a dental surgeon and a trained anthropologist and, furthermore, the discoverer of the famous Swanscombe Skull. He read a paper on his findings to the Royal Society of Medicine in London.

To this most august body he showed radiographs of the teeth "in which it was possible to see that the pulp chamber, or nerve canal, is filled with grains of ironstone and sand. This points to the fact that it was a young animal, which had not finished growing, and in whose tooth the pulp canal was still empty. In the Piltdown tooth, the entrance to this cavity is blocked with a piece of stone which has become cemented in, as stones are cemented into stalagmites in caves. This shows that it could not have come from a recent ape. Moreover, the crown is of a sort that is never found in existing species. It is found in the fossil Proconsul. The palatal surface of the root is flatter, too, than in existing types. This suggests a smaller mouth, and this (in turn) is borne out by the poorly developed simian shelf, such as those of certain fossil apes."

Dealing with suggestions that the teeth of a modern ape had been taken and deliberately ground into a shape more in keeping with human shape by some unscrupulous person, Mr. Marston said (ex Leonard Bertin, Science Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, London):

p. 365

This is a very important matter to ABSMery for it points up two facts: first, that a very modern type of man [i.e. the cranium] was around Europe some 50,000 years ago; and second, that mandibles of most ancient apes have been disinterred [even if only in the Mediterranean area from where Dawson, the alleged discoverer of the Piltdown Man seems to have obtained many of his other fossils] for a long time, and can have most extremely hominid or humanoid-appearing molar teeth. These things we must bear in mind. Thus, both the Piltdown cranium and jaw are extremely ancient. However, it does seem to be true that they don't belong together and that they were never deposited at Piltdown, but probably were transported there by Mr. Dawson along with some phony bone tools and a few other odd bones. The gravel beds in which they were said to have been found have been extensively dug and sifted and not so much as one bone of anything has ever been found in them.

I go into this not only because it is a pertinent example of a hoax, plus the almost total unreliability of supposed "experts" [on some occasions, at least], but also because it shows the limitations of the much vaunted modern dating techniques, the manner in which the press can be completely misled, the lack of knowledge of one speciality by persons trained in another, and a galaxy of other obscenities that plague the whole gamut of the sciences. In this case, we have the added importance [to us] of evidence at the same time of a really very modern-type of man which, if some experts are now finally correct, could antedate quite a number of the so-called sub-humans, and sub-hominids. *

In our search for candidates for living ABSMs, therefore, we need not go dashing off into the remote past looking for bandy-legged, long-armed, brainless, gibbering peoples, before considering very carefully the large choice of manlike ones that have been around for a few thousand years and, maybe, even since before the four recent crustal shifts or ice-advances.

p. 366

We do not actually have a real definition of a true Man as opposed either to a sub-man or a sub-hominid. Anatomically, we may be able to draw a fairly fine line, saying that this, that, and the other cranial characters are typically of Homo sapiens, whereas others are not. However, I could name two prominent anthropologists who claim that they themselves are almost perfect Neanderthalers—i.e. living examples of sub-men! The reasons for their claims are perfectly valid as far as their bone structure, and posture goes. Also, I may say, both of them and especially one who is a North European are almost completely hairy all over: a most startling sight on a white sand beach in summer! When it comes to features other than osteological, such as skin color, hairiness, shape and size of teeth, gait, length of arms, thumb manipulation, toe agility, and so forth, we simply have no established criteria. We have been wrestling with what we call "race" for so long we have completely overlooked many much more important points about living human beings. Skin color really has practically no significance whatsoever, and it may change throughout life; as witness the number of Congolese babies born bright pink. Head-hair does show some classifiable features; so also do some oddities like "pepper-corn" hair growth as found among the Bushmen-Hottentots, the Mongolian-fold on the upper eyelids of Mongoloids, the "larkspur" heel of some of the Negroids, and so forth. These are special adaptations and they have nothing to do with basic hominid taxonomy.

The fact is, we cannot draw a line between "men" and "sub-men" and in many parts of the world today all manner of intermediate forms—both individuals, tribes, and whole races—still exist. It is only within the last few years that anthropologists have seriously suggested that the "Blackfellows" of Australia are really a separate sub-species of Homo sapiens, if not a distinct full species, having all manner of characteristics that most of the rest of us don't have—such as a different heat-regulating system, and other features. Then again, the yellow-skinned, glabrous Bushmen, with their steatopygy [or fat bottoms], the strange form of the male penis which is

p. 367

often permanently semi-erect, and the odd development of the female labia minora into huge flaps that may fall even to the knees, and which are known as "Hottentot Aprons," it seems obvious, really stand quite apart. Just because their head-hair is very tightly spiraled, and they have greatly everted lips, it used to be thought that they were sort of "primitive Negroes." This is quite absurd as they do not have any single feature that is typically Negroid, nor do they share any of their own odd ones with that race.

Likewise the Negrillos of Africa and the Negritos of the Orient, or Pigmies, as we call them, were until recently also thought to be a sort of offshoot of the great Negroid stock. But they too have practically nothing in common with the true Negroes. Apart from their tiny stature [as opposed to the exceptional tall stature of Negroids] their lower leg is shorter than their upper, they have reddish skins, they are covered with a yellow down sometimes developing on the limbs into quite thick hair; their blood type is quite different, and they have many other odd features, all of which are quite contrary to those of the Negroids. So also are they to those of any other race—Bushman, Australoid, Caucasoid, or Mongoloid. Then there were once the Tasmanians. These seem to have been an extreme and almost pigmy form of the Australoids and really to have been almost another species. They are extinct.

The Negroid so-called "race" is apparently the newest, and it is the least pongid-like of all. [Apes have no lips, the straightest of hair, the shortest legs and longest arms, and a host of other features that are the exact opposite of those of the Negroes.] The most pongid-like are the Caucasoids which have non-everted lips, straight hair, and so forth. The Mongoloids are really very different from both. Their absence of body hair and very thick long straight head-hair, round in section, is very odd; so also are the proportions of the parts of their limbs, with small hands and feet, short lower limbs and long upper. It is also curious that, despite their enormous fecundity, the Mongoloids become "lost" in crossing with the Caucasoids and sometimes in one generation, whereas they

p. 368

vanish completely at the first cross with Negroids. It has been observed—and by entirely "unprejudiced" people—that it takes nine crossings with Caucasoids for a Negroid to lose all his special features. The Negro in fact is a strongly dominant type and also a very new one who does not actually enter into our picture at all. Nor does the Mongoloid unless, as was once suggested, he developed quite separately from the Pithecanthropines. Rather is it with the Pigmies, Bushmen, and Caucasoids that our story is concerned.

Even if we don't know where "sub-man" ends and "man" begins we do know that, quite apart from myth, legend, and folklore, there was once [and in some cases still seems to be] a group of not-quite-humans spread all over a vast area from Morocco to the Pacific, and from the southern border of Eurasia [which, incidentally seems to have remained the domain of the surviving Neanderthalers] to central Africa, southern Arabia, Ceylon, the East Indies, New Guinea, and the greater islands immediately beyond. Everywhere we go throughout this vast swath of the earth's surface we find traces of peoples so primitive that they are variously alleged to have been hairy, to have had tails [a mere profligacy, as we have explained], to dwell in trees, have had no proper language, be cannibals, lack fire and even tools, and generally to be "Those who lived in the land when our ancestors first came from …" Osman Hill has brought to light some exceedingly interesting facts about one of these races called the Nittaewo in Ceylon.

These little, mostly Pigmy, primitives that seem once to have inhabited the whole of the tropical belt of the old world, provide us with most suitable candidates for our Proto-Pigmy Class of ABSMs—the Sehite—Agogwes of Africa, and the Sedapa—Teh-lmas of the Orient. These little ones are alleged to be really very human in many respects and their footprints are as human as they can be. The facts that they are hairy and gibber do not, as we have seen, necessarily put them into any bestial class nor even out of the human. They could just be leftovers; the "Devil-Sakai" that can really use the trees as highways. If there really are such Proto-Pigmies in

p. 369

the New World, represented by the Dwendis and the Shirus, they must have traveled around the long way by the Bering Straits land-bridge at an early date, and become isolated. These two little ABSMs would certainly seem to be pigmy primitives, rather than sub-hominids or even tiny races of sub-men.

We come now to the odoriferous characters who invaded the plantations of Malaya in 1953 and who appear to have sent their females to solicit young Chinese girls. These seem in almost every way to be thoroughly human despite their odor, nasty teeth, and excessive hairiness. There is no mention of them being covered with fur; rather, that they all had great mustaches and long head-hair, and very hairy limbs: They were also said to have light skins. All of this points clearly to a human type and even Caucasoid at that, primitive maybe, but still not even a sub-man. The same goes for the hairy primitives of inner Yunnan, reported by the Chinese. There is no implication that these were sub-men or bestial; just completely wild "people" without speech, and which could even be tamed and which would then show what appeared to be pleasure at accomplishing simple tasks and in the use of clothes. In fact, I feel rather strongly that these two types—which, incidentally you may note are the only two for which there are no recognized specific and distinguishing names—are simply very primitive peoples that have somehow managed to keep out of sight until things like the British bombings of the Communists in Malaya and the Communist stirring-up of country life in China brought them to light.

For the northern types—that is of Eurasia, in particular—we must wait until we look into myth, legend, and folklore in the next chapter, though, be it noted, that was the land of the Neanderthalers and everything about the Ksy-Giiks and Almas and all the others reported from that continent seems to point solidly to their being just such creatures.

The two remaining types of ABSMs, the Neo-Giants and the Meh-Tehs, present us with problems altogether different from any that we have so far encountered. Here, we come to the real core of the matter. These are the Dzu-Teh, Tok, Gin-Sung,

p. 370

[paragraph continues] Sasquatch, Oh-Mah, Sisemite, Didi, Mapinguary type on the one hand, and the Meh-Teh, Golub-yavan on the other. We may well call these the "Inevitable No-men."

What could the Neo-Giants be and why should they have the apparently extraordinary distribution that they are alleged to have? At first both questions sound unanswerable but both are really amenable to very simple suggestions. Some years ago (1937) one Dr. von Koenigswald was searching through bottles of old fossil bones and teeth in a Chinese apothecary's store in Hong Kong when he came across a human molar tooth that was at least ten times in volume that of any ever grown by a man. And thus started the affair of what has been named Gigantopithecus, an enormous something, that once inhabited south China and left its bones in limestone caves. The controversy about this creature has been extensive and intense. Dr. Koenigswald's associate, Prof. Weidenreich, named the tooth Gigantopithecus, which means the giant "monkey" or by license "ape," rather than Gigantothropus or the Giant Man, because he was a very conservative and ultra-cautious soul. However, even before further remains of the brute had been found, other leading scholars stated that it was misnamed and was definitely a Hominid. [I had the privilege of examining the tooth all one afternoon in the American Museum of Natural History, and comparing it with the molars of all manner of men, current and fossil, and with apes, and for what my opinion is worth, it is certainly most strongly hominid.]

The tooth remained a ghastly enigma until 1956 when a Chinese farmer by the name of Chin Hsiu-Huai dug guano out of a cave in a mountain named Luntsai in Szechwan and spread it on his field. In this was found a part of a jaw with teeth of the same kind. Dr. Pei Wen-Chung, doyen of Chinese anthropologists, set up a prolonged search and found some fifty more teeth and, allegedly, a number of limb bones of the creature. He said that these indicated that it was a 12-foot tall, bipedal, carnivorous [sic] ape, than which there could hardly be a longer list of non sequiturs. Its teeth are utterly human, not just humanoid or hominid; if it walked erect, it was not an

p. 371

ape—not at that size and weight; and if it was carnivorous [which its teeth do not at all indicate] it was, again, not an ape as that seems to be just about the only distinguishing thing about the diet of that group—they are all profoundly herbivorous, though gibbons will take insects.

The other question debated about this brute has been whether [if it is not an ape but a Hominid], it belongs with the Pithecanthropines of North China and Java—to wit: Sinanthropus, Pithecanthropus, and the giant Meganthropus. This is not really very important to us but the manifest fact that it was a Hominid and not a Pongid is so, and leads to certain potent observations. If it was really that size, or even over six feet tall, it must have been a terrestrial creature, and if it was an ape it would have walked on all fours like the gorilla. Nothing that size can travel by treetops. If it was not an ape, it started out with the hominid type of foot, which is what is called plantigrade, and neither it nor its ancestors ever needed to develop a specialized great toe, which was opposed and worked like a thumb. Thus, this creature, primitive as it may have been, probably had a very human type of foot on which to support its immense bulk. Whatever it was, it lived in what is now southern China.

Now let us look at Map X. This area is a part of Orientalia, and is today subtropical. The mountains that surround it are those of the Indo-Chinese Massif and of the Szechwan Block. These areas are the lands of the Dzu-Tehs, Toks, Kung-Lus, and Gin-Sungs—the huge, furred "bear-men" or "men-bears" of ancient Chinese, Mongolian, and Tibetan legend and of current ABSM lighters. But then comes another thing. What else lives in and previously lived in this area? This is the land of the Metasequoia, of the raccoons called pandas, of certain curious little insectivorous mammals, of several odd amphibians, and of numerous invertebrates including a lot of most rare and odd parasitic forms. And where else, if anywhere, are any of these or their only relatives found today? In the northwestern part of North America!

There is still a continuous causeway of mountains from Szechwan all the way [to the west of China proper] to and

p. 372

through Manchuria to eastern Siberia. Because of increasing altitude toward the south (see Chapter 18), this is clothed in the same type of montane forest all the way. The same kinds of forest start again on the other side of the paltry Bering Strait, in Alaska, and continue on down in an almost unbroken chain to Tierra del Fuego at the very bottom end of South America. Moreover, sometime during the recent ice-advances and retreats, all manner of Siberian animals crossed over to the New World—like the Brown Bears, the Moose, the Elk, and others; and finally, the Amerinds, and then the Eskimos, did so too. Why on earth, should or could not a large sub-hominid also have done so, and simply by following the richly stocked montane forests all the way? That low temperatures could have prevented or even dissuaded them from doing so is just not valid, for, if the Dzu-Tehs are their living representatives, they can travel in snow without any trouble, and crossing the Bering Straits [even without a land-bridge due to alterations in sea level or elevation of the land], is no problem, for you can always walk across the ice in winter. It looks, therefore, very much as if Bernard Heuvelmans might have been right when he suggested that the largest type of ABSM in northern Orientalia could be a descendant of the Gigantopithecus, and the bolder his suggestion seems now, when it is realized that at that time (1952) the consensus was that that creature was an ape.

There remains then the Meh-Teh—Golub-yavan group of creatures, the original "Abominable Snowmen" which, as it now turns out seem to be the least "human" of all. Their distribution is odd but may be fully rationalized once again by referring to a map on which both topography and vegetation are shown (see Maps XI and XVI). The creature is obviously an inhabitant of the upper montane forests, but of the temperate zones; not of the tropical, such as occur on the Indo-Chinese Massif. As is explained in Chapter 18 the various vegetational belts that girdle the earth are repeated upward on mountains as zones and in the same succession as found at sea level, traveling from the equator to either pole. Further, in this arrangement, 600 feet of altitude is equivalent to

p. 373

one degree of latitude. Now, it so happens that the whole of central eastern Eurasia rises steadily to its southern rim [or, alternatively, tilts down northward to the great depressions of the Tarim to the Gobi]; and it also so happens that this tilt is just enough to create identical conditions for vegetation on the upper slopes of the enormous Pamirs-Kunlun-Nan Shan string of mountain ranges which run along the northern rim of the Tibetan Plateau, and along the mighty Himalayas to the south. The Pamirs themselves are too high for this type of vegetation, but it is continuous around their eastern face, so that one can travel in the same type of forest all the way from northern Assam west to those uplands, then north, and finally east all the way back to the Tsin-Lings in central China. This great U, lying on its side, is just the alleged distribution of these creatures. By this point, you will notice that when we speak of ABSMs, we are really referring to their alleged foot-tracks. Everything else about them stems from mere reports. Our sole problem here is, then, what could leave footprints of the nature attributed to these Meh-Teh—Golub-yavans.

These prints are really very odd indeed. Nothing at all like them is known in any hominid or pongid, either living or extinct; the outstanding difference between the two being that the big toe of apes is enormous and widely opposed, while that of all known hominids, though larger than any of the other toes, is not much separated from them and lies parallel to, and is bound to them. The Meh-Teh prints are in some respects intermediate, in that the big toe is considerably opposed; but then, so also is the enormous second toe.

The opposition of the big toe of the Pongids is an extreme speciality and was obviously developed by a tree-climbing animal, and, once developed, it has persisted [i.e. been unable to be gotten rid of]. In those apes—and notably the gorillas—which due to their weight have had to come to the ground and stay on it, and would much better have a foot like ours, it still persists. There is, however, the question of rock-climbing, and there are monkeys that have brought this activity to a high art, notably the baboons and macaques. However, these retain the fully opposed big toe and do not in any known

p. 374

example show any signs of having so developed the second toe. Thus, these Meh-Tehs must be a special evolutionary development of their own, at present without known ancestors. Just because the Pithecanthropines are known once to have existed in the Malaysia-Indochinese-Chinese swath of provinces; and just because the Himalayas are nearby and shown on all our atlases as being "in the same continent," the suggestion has often been made that these ABSMs may be descendants of those sub-hominids. We do not have the skeleton of a foot of the Javanese Pithecanthropines but we do have some foot bones of the north Chinese ones (known previously as Sinanthropus), and they are quite human and do not show even any tendency to the extreme oddities of the Meh-Teh feet, which are quite non-human. Dr. W. Tschernezky has discussed these feet fully in a paper in Nature (Vol. 186, No. 4723, May, 1960) and he therein shows, that despite these extraordinary big- and second-toe arrangements, it is fully plantigrade. Hence it is neither pongid nor hominid. What could it be?

I know of no answer to this question, and the only reasonable suggestions are that it is either (1) a very primitive hominid that for some reason developed that kind of foot, or (2) a very advanced pongid that did so after coming to the ground at a very early time. Frankly, in view of the "character" attributed to these ABSMs and their alleged actions I personally think that they are more pongid. Also, it would seem to be somewhat more in accord with what we know of the processes of morphological evolution to suppose a further adaptation of a foot with an already opposed big toe by changes in the second toe, rather than for a human-type foot to develop not just one but two opposed toes. Thus, I would place this type of ABSM as it is shown on the family tree; namely, as an early offshoot of the Pongids.

Footnotes

365:* By "sub-human" I mean Hominids that are not evolved into a form we can call Homo sapiens: by "sub-hominid" I mean species of Hominids of genera other than Homo.