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Abominable Snowman
A
large creature, not human but walking upright, allegedly living in the
mountains of
Tibet. The term 'Abominable
Snowman' was accidentally coined by a
'Calcutta Statesman's columnist named
Henry Newman, who at the time (1921) was writing an article about
Howard-Bury's sighting of a group of these beasts.
Also
known as Yeti,
Raksha (Sanskrit word for 'demon'),
Metoh-Kangmi, Yeh-teh,and Meh-teh,
this unsubstantiated creature is said to be 7 to 10 feet tall, with feet
twice the size of a human's, and with a noticeably disagreeable aroma.
Similar beings have been also reported in
Nepal,
China,
Siberia,
Canada, and the
U.S. Northwest.
Contrary to popular belief, the Snowman is not white, instead having dark fur, and
is not a
single creature. If real, these man-animals probably live in quiet refuge in the
foggy valleys of the
Himalayan regions, using the snowy passes only to move from
one area to another.
In every mountain range in the world live people who tell stories of a strange,
lumbering, manlike creature; of footprints too large to belong to any human; of
isolated communities living in fear of a monster that goes by many names.
In the Himalayas he is known as the Yeti. Elsewhere in Asia, from the Gobi
Desert in the north to Assam in the south, he goes by the names of Meti, Shookpa,
Migo, Kang-Mi, and many others. To people living in remote, wooded parts of the
northwestern United States, he is
Bigfoot. In the foothills of the Canadian
Rockies he is known as the
Sasquatch.
Whatever the name, the description is roughly the same; height, up to 10 feet;
weight, about 300 pounds; appearance, hairy and apelike, but walks upright on
two legs; species, unknown.
In his 'On the Track of Unknown Animals',
Bernard Heuvelmans
suggests that these creatures may be leftovers of the race of
Pithecanthropus
that occupied southeast Asia at the end of the
Pliocene
— particularly the
larger specimens of the ancient ape-man group, called
Pithecanthropus robustus
and
Meganthropus palaeojavanicus. Another likely candidate
is the
Gigantopithecus.
Living in impenetrable woods appears to be a characteristic of these creatures
everywhere they are sighted, thus supporting the theory that they are evolutionary dropouts
seeking refuge from an inimical world.
The late
Ivan T. Sanderson —
world famous zoologist and writer who published exhaustively in scientific
journals under the auspices of the
British Museum, the
Chicago Museum of Natural History and other institutions, holding degrees with honors from
Cambridge University, in Botany, Zoology, and Geology (he also studied
Anatomy and Physical Anthropology) — accumulated material for over 30 years
on the subject of mysterious man-beasts. According to his research and work,
not one, but possibly four separate kinds of Yeti still walk the earth!
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