RUSSIAN RESEARCH

When most people think of the possibility of sasquatch-type creatures on the other side of the world, they immediately think "Yeti." However, there is much more information out there by the Russians than anything from the Himalayas. Only problem is that not much of it is widely publicized in English.

There are some publications, some authors that will publish translations. And with internet programs available that will translate, if the material is on the internet, you can get some idea of what is being said.


John Green was frustrated by the apparent unavailability of information from those countries. So for years he corresponded with Professor B.F. Porshnev, Igor Bourtsev, and Dmitri Bayanov of the Hominid Problem Seminar at Moscow. Green had some articles translated but found the translation not easy to follow and he made an attempt to paraphrase what Porshnev wrote and hoped he did not distort or confuse what he was trying to say.


First off, the group used names for the creatures that Green was not comfortable using as they carried the concept of primitive man. Green felt that might give people a one-sided view of the evidence offered. But he was equally uncomfortable using the term Sasquatch if there were any possibility that the Russian creatures were something different.


The name that this group preferred was Homo troglodytes. This was also the name that Karl Linnaeus  used to label the two creatures he studied more than two centuries before the Russian study. Linnaeus talked of these creatures that resembled man physically but yet were hair covered and lacked speech. "Troglodyte" is generally taken to mean "cave man" but scientifically also can be used to mean the Anthropoid apes. John Green used the term Troglodyte with that understanding.


When Linnaeus explored the alleged novelty of the two creatures, he was amazed that people were getting so excited over monkeys while natural scientists were ignoring the troglodytes as if they did not exist. -- Ah, yes. Somethings never change.


The Mongolian scientist T. Jamtsarano and his investigation into the manlike creatures in Mongolia was discussed in an earlier post. V.A. Khakhlov was unaware of Jamtsarano's work when he began gathering information between 1907 and 1914 in the Tien Shan region of Mongolia.


He learned quite a bit of the creature "Kshee-guiek", as the Khazastan people called them. So he wrote to the Russian Academy of Science on June 1, 1914, renaming the creature Primihomo Asiaticus.


Jamtsarano and Khakhlov researched and reached their conclusions independently of each other. But both established that the natives of the regions believed in the existence of similar creatures. They agreed concerning habitat, appearance, and behaviors. It would be difficult to believe that in two different regions of central Asia that such similar folklore could be so alike. And have descriptions that would match fossils discovered at a later time. Fossils that neither the people nor Jamtsarano or Khakhlov were aware existed.


Later, Mongolian professor G.P. Dementiev and others would carry out extensive field research. They obtained more precise anatomical, morphological and biological information.


P.P. Sushkin, being inspired by the evidence found by Khakhlov and other travellers throughout Central Asia, conducted further academic research. His conclusions were that transformation from ape to man took place in the high mountains of Central Asia, passing through the intermediate form of an upright-walking animal. However, he restricted his research to information gathered from a limited region of Central Asia which caused the arrival at this mistaken theory.


However, it is interesting in itself that the Russian research approached the problem as being more related to man than ape. Western European scientists on the other hand, researching in Nepal and the Himalayas, looked at the creature first as relating to bear and then to ape. Not to man.




frontiersofzoology.com

More from Porshnev and the Russians in a later post.

Nancy


"I'll spark the thought; what you do with it is up to you."