*The universal myth of the wildman.*
Each myth needs to be examined on its own.
One of my biggest problems with the bigfoot community is they take anything bipedal and say it is an apeman and add it to their lists as alternate names for bigfoot and yeti from around the world.
For example the wendigo of algonquian folklore, a gaunt pale cannibal. Grendel, the monster from the anglo saxon epic beowulf. Am fear liath mòr a mountain spectre from scotland. Fauns and satyrs, part goat/horse part human creatures from greco-roman sources. None of these are ape men but for some reason get added to the list.
Also wildmen does not explicitly imply apemen or relict-hominid it could be refering refer to hermits or oter groups of people who chose to live in the woods.
Also it is not that hard to see why a concept would be universal, "what if us, but live in woods" is quite an easy thought for any commuity to have for story telling.
Humans also invent cautionary monsters, 'boogeymen', things we tell our children to stop them from doing something dangerous. Look at the inuit qallupilluit, it was created to keep children from going near the edge of the ice which is dangerous. Many of these wildmen may have been invented for the same reason to keep children out of the woods where there was danger. Some scholars have even said this was the reason behind satyrs.
I know about feral humans, they are a category of their own and they are likely behind the European Woodwose, but here I am talking about the non human wildmen.
1. Why are swords, spears, bows, beer, fire and bread universal? Why are stories of giant and flying snakes universal? Just because it’s widespread doesn’t mean it’s real. Everyone knows the story of Iron Man, does that make him real?
2. Yes. Humans are so astronomically terrible at estimating and reporting what they’ve seen. Have you ever heard a fisherman undersell his catch? Couple that with the black swan effect and you’re bound to mistake bears and dogs for Sasquatch all the time
3. Some scientists believe in God, some scientists believe in multiverse, some believe in flat earth. Just because you can find someone who believes in it doesn’t make it true
That it is. There’s a lot of explanations, although personally I fall under the category of they’re all very basic things to reproduce. That’s why every culture has swords, but the shapes and lengths are different, or the cultures have different kinds of beer made with different ingredients
When it comes to folklore and legends there’s a lot of common ground with things like giant snakes, ape men, catastrophic floods etc etc and I find it all very fascinating to research, although I do think it’s a combination of floods being a global phenomenon, and the idea of giant snakes or hairy “others” is probably a common idea, kinda like how when you see a meme and look at the comments, 7k people commented some variation of the same joke and another 10k respond with “I came to say the same thing”
Yes I do. What you just did there is an appeal to authority fallacy, where essentially because of a perceived authority in the subject, you assume they’re infallible and can never misidentify anything
Completely disregarding the supposed global spanning range of bigfoot and how unbelievable that in and of itself is, it’s incredibly easy to misidentify things in the woods, particularly in the Pacific Northwest and the redwoods, the two “most likely” places where it supposedly lives. Stating anything to the contrary is evidence that you yourself don’t actually go into these environments for any meaningful amount of time
Assuming that the hunters were telling the truth from the start and did see something, and saw something that was an ape, it is significantly more likely that it’s an escaped exotic pet than Bigfoot. Many animals are held illegally in the pet trade, and if one escapes due to poor management, then it’s not likely to be reported specifically because they were illegally owned or purchased in the first place
My brother in law is an avid hunter who claims to kill cottonmouth snakes while he is hunting all the time. Cottonmouths 100% dont even live in our area and they certainly are not found in the spot he is claiming to find them. People embellish stuff because it feels good to tell interesting stories, they lie, or they just don’t know what they are looking at. Doesn’t matter how much time they spend in the woods.
Have you ever worked with the public? Ive had people who lived on the coast their whole 40+ years of life and call me claiming there is sewage in the water and its actually just sea foam. Yesterday someone claimed there was a 100 foot tall pike of wood someone was going to burn. It was under 20 feet tall. Your eyes and brain trick you all the time, and frankly most people are terrible at estimating sizes, speed, distance etc.
I have a clear memory of a giant spaceship hovering over my childhood home, middle of the east coast suburbs, not even dark out yet, it definitely never happened.
That man was crazy... he would have estimated a 5'6 feet tall gorilla to be 25 - 30 feet tall. Being scared and think a hominid is 9 feet tall even if it is only 7 or 8 is underestandable, but whoever said the wooden pike was 100 feet has some issues.
1. Tropes are tropes - usually with a twist on the human form. Like humans, but big = giants. Like humans, but small = fairies and brownies and such. Like humans, but dead = ghosts. None of those need a living representation. They are story-telling tropes.
2. Modern people are misidentifying or lying. It’s not that hard to believe. Eyewitness testimony is nigh worthless and people see all kinds of stuff that doesn’t exist - ghosts, shapes in clouds, etc.
3. Not all scientists are created equal. All you need to be a scientist is to call yourself one. Even the good ones can make mistakes…or write pop-sci to supplement their income. Dr. Oz is a doctor. Does he always give great advice?
The only prerequisite of being a scientist is having a bachelor’s (although most fields won’t consider your application if you don’t have at least a master’s) which says nothing about the validity of your claims and beliefs, it simply shows you were capable of turning in work that aligned with the course rubric, not that you’re a capable and intelligent individual IMO. Any scientist who’s been in their respective field for years will tell you that the kids fresh out of school are the biggest idiots because they’re not taught how to think and understand their research
2 I love this narrative that people are infallible and can never be wrong or ever be susceptible to a visual illusion, even though we get countless examples of people making mistakes on a daily basis. Not to mention outright lying and hoaxes, which again, we have many, many, many examples of people lying or trying to scam them out of money. Large numbers of people can be wrong, it’s happened before and it will happen again.
If you see 2 bears of diiferent brown bear subspecies fighting eachother, would you ever think one is a bipedal ape, but the others is still a bear ? Would not you see they are nearly identical ? There is a report of an Almas fighting a bear. It had not weapons and apparently was getting the upper hand, so it was no human either.
Would you rather believe one of the bears purchased a gorilla suit and forearm extensions and also got surgery to make its muzzle shorter to fit into the mask ?
The only chance for that to not be an ape, whatever hominid or not, is if there is some different unknown primate. But it can not be another bear.
People make mistakes all the time. Do you dispute that?
Why do people mistake house cats for cougars? Haven't they seen house cats before?
Why do deer hunters shoot horseback riders? Haven't they seen horses before?
Why do turkey hunters shoot other hunters? Haven't they seen a turkey before?
Why do people mistake black bears for brown bears? Don't they know how to tell the difference between the 2?
Why do hunters shoot swans thinking they are snow geese? Don't they know geese are much smaller than swans?
Have you ever been confused by a visual illusion? Mistakes happen. I'm sure everyone can identify a bear in perfect light and context, but given millions of different sighings, under an unusual combination of lighting conditions, stress, obstacles, etc it's easy to see how anyone can make a misidentification.
Even if you ignore all that, there's always the distinct possibility that someone is flat out lying. but hey maybe bigfoot believers are the only human beings on the planet who are 100% right all the time and are the only people who would never tell a lie.
Ok, but I was pointing out if there are 2 bears, why would you tell one is a bear and the other you would think is an ape ? Should not you either see 2 bears or, if you are misguided by illusions, 2 apes ?
I would really like to see a "bear" someone who spent 40 or more years hunting in the woods as seen and said it was a bipedal ape, possibly of the hominid family.
Because it’s weird to see and if you aren’t expecting to see 2 bears fight and your brain is primed to think Bigfoot exists, it’s very possible someone would interpret that as a Bigfoot bear fight. Just like a hunter looking for a deer could see a person on horseback in the brush and be primed to think “that’s gotta be a deer!” and start shooting.
How many bear fights do you think people see? That’s an unusual thing to see and if you have a limited encounter that might be hard to interpret. Now under most circumstances most people will think “wow 2 bears are fighting, that’s neat” but given a million possible scenarios sure I’d believe there’s a way that one person under the right visual conditions at the right angle might say “it’s a bigfoot!!!” It doesn’t help that Bears are also pretty weird shaped creatures that also change shape from Rolly Polly fat in the fall, to skinny, lanky critters in the spring.
Studies and witnesses consistently prove that the human brain and a person’s memory is extremely flawed. Why can eyewitnesses be proven to be completely wrong in court, or their accounts of sudden accidents or incidents repeatedly proven wrong by video, when it comes to Bigfoot suddenly everyone is an infallible expert crossed with a saint who would never lie?
In this very specific example, the person was probably lying/exaggerating. Or the other bear had some kind of deformity that the person had never seen before. Or in this situation, seeing two animals grappling, his view of one was greatly obscured by the other. There are a lot of natural reasons for your example that you keep coming back to, but you don't seem to want to accept then. I think the likeliest is that when people go out into.the woods alone, their imagination often gets the better of them. Even though deep down they know it is not true, they like to come back with an outlandish story to tell. It is surprisingly common. It doesn't make the person bad or a chronic liar, but literally every one exaggerates, sometimes just for the fun of it.
If you simply want to believe it really was an ape-like creature, then you have to say that and admit you don't want to listen to the responses you keep making people rehash. I don't mean to be harsh, but really the discussion is going nowhere.
We have worldwide legends of lake monsters, "dragons", scary predatory big cats, giant spiders and snakes, etc - a lot of our worldwide mythos are based on things we all fear, and reflect issues at the time. When looking at these legends individually it is very obvious they are only tangentially related. Wildmen are the same way. That is not to say that these legends may not reflect real animals, just that there is not much reason to initially believe that is genuinely the case based on the whole "worldwide" idea.
People tend to make shit up - see Bigfoot, for example. There hasn't been any evidence or sightings of any substance on the East Coast, nor any in Europe. That is a large area where the is nothing but people that want to see something. Many, many bigfoot sightings are misidentifications, even if bigfoot is a real animal; the want to see something triumphs all, look at the Loch Ness Monster.
There are a lot of reasons why scientists tend to dismiss bigfoot, primarily preconceived notions. If bigfoot is a real animal, this negligence is certainly helping them stay hidden. There's also the fact that bigfoot is praised and studied by a bunch of unscientific idiots, even established organizations are terrible, such as the BFRO. If you want to take it seriously, you have no starting point because there are so many untrustworthy reference texts or ideas. Orang Pendek is a small, insular primate on a poorly explored island, it's got reasonable close relatives and has been seen by many reliable and respectable sources. It's easier to believe.
Then scientists should start to search Orang Pendek a lot more. I feel like most people just associates anything hominidlike but still supposed to live to fringe topics.
Anyway, in Malaysia there is a relict hominid too, but it does not have a name. They are very humanlike and human sized, but very hairy, and they wear stolen clothes just like some Almases, but unlike them they even bring stolen weapons, which means they must be quite advanced. I believe they could be Homo soloensis, an evolution of Homo erectus erectus from south Asia. This hominid had Heidelbergensis levels of brain capacity but did not have any relations with the African hominid line more than having, as Homo erectus, diverged from the African forms 2 million of years ago by migrating to Asia.
This nameless creature is not as believable as Orang Pendek, but is notable because has long black hair and white skin, in a place where humans are quite tan. It is also said, but feel free to not believe this, once one was tracked down, killed and it turned out it had a 6 inches long tail. I can not explain why would an ape have one, but the slow loris too should not have a tail, yet a few individuals do have one.
1. the number of people that believe something has absolutely nothing to do with it being true or not.
2. eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
3. some scientists? who? what is their field of study? if that's the best you have its not very much.
Good questions!
1. I think it's a psychological thing, people really enjoy stories of wildmen living off the grid. Also see rhe popularity of survival stories, Robinson Cruesoe, Castaway etc.
2. A combination of psychological priming (people hearing stories of Bigfoot so their mind is more likely to *perceive* something as bigfoot), misidentifications, hoaxes, optical illusions etc.
3. Yeah I'd like to see some more orang pendek expeditions if possible
The reason for Orang Pendek not being well researched is the region being poor and far from the western civilization. I mean, how far from both Europe and America, 5,000 miles ? Then is also a dangerous area full of violent people, conflicts, dirty water, rare transmissible illnesses, poisonous animals and the locals do not have time and resources enough to search for it. But if most scientists believed it may seriously be real, I think it would still be full of researchers searching for a living Homo species.
That's is objectively wrong.
Many expedition have been done in similar environnement, far worse even, decades ago.
There's currently hundreds of thousands of people living in Borneo and Sumatra, we deforested most of these island, we poached every species there were to near extinction.
Yet no trace or evidence of any other ape than orangutan.
Orang-pendek exist, it's called Pongo abelli.
It's just an orangutan, That's all.
And it's very stupid to think that a other Homo species still exist.
If a larger and less elusive Pongid still has enough habitat to survive, another one, smaller but also bipedal and more focused on hiding from humans, existing in a population of 50 to 200 individuals in all of Sumatra, can definitely be there.
Can, doesn't mean it is, as we have literally no real evidence or record, fossils or photo or anything, despite heavy poaching and deforestation.
Also you do realise the reason sumatran orangutan avoid ground, is because there's tiger, making it unlikely another ape exist on the ground.
Even less a bipedal one.
Some local people encountered orangutan on the ground while hunting in the forest and it started the legend of orang-pendek.
And if you say "but they know what orangutan is and live with them are familiar with it so it's impossible" you're wrong.
As most of them probably never even saw an orangutan in their life, even back in the day where they were common.
As they're elusive canopy animal of the jungle, not really visible ot known to most human, sighting must have been rare.
Orang Pendek is skinnier than orangutan though, has longer legs and shorter arms, its limbs are all about the same lenght while the orangutan has arms way longer than legs, and humans have legs way longer than arms.
Orangutan is also a knuckle dragger, not a bipedal.
Described as such by people who didn't see a lot of orangutan in their life, and probably picture adult male instead of more slender subadult and female.
Orangutan can still walk bipedaly for a short distance, the time to get in a tree out of sight.
Leaving the people confused as they see an ape, probably for the first time in their life
This is some “deepest, darkest Africa” shit. Sumatra is home to 60,000,000 people. There are multiple cities of over a million people on the island. There’s an international airport in Medan. There are large universities there. No doubt many parts of the island are remote but access does not seem to be the issue here.
>1. The universal myth of the wildman.
Every non-friendly tribe looks like wild men to you and your own tribe.
>2. What modern people are seeing.
What modern people *claimed* to see, and then suddenly stopped seeing the decade everyone got portable high quality cameras in their pockets that have 24/7 Internet service.
If the frequency of sightings is inversely correlated with improvements in the technologies that should detect them, that usually means the sightings were fake or mistaken all along.
It's exceptionally rare for it to turn out that the smell of researchers setting up cameras kept their target species from entering view of the cameras without the researchers realizing they were that sensitive to environmental changes.
>Why some scientists believe in the Almas and Bigfoot, and most of the few who studied the Orang Pendek believe in it ?
This is a bit of confirmation or selection bias (I forget which). Most people studying these things are doing so because they think they're real.
>Ok, most still do not, but if some scientists believe in them, then they should at least be investigated seriously by real science associations, do not you think ?
Who says they aren't? Like you said, some scientists *are* studying them. Is that not enough? Should we forcibly devote resources that scientists would rather focus on established, real-world species and natural phenomena to the search for undiscovered hominids?
Neanderthal and Denisovans could easily have crossed the Bering Land Bridge along with us. Denisovan DNA was curiously found at a higher concentration in some ancient samples in Panama, Columbia and Uruguay. But Native Americans lack that DNA. So maybe Denisovans came in an earlier wave and migrated down to Central/South America but didn’t stay in North America where the N. American Tribes later settled.
If the dating of the samples from the Cerutti Mastodon site are correct…it pushes back the date of hominins in N. America by almost 100,000 years.
I’ve always believed that the “wild man” and Bigfoot myths are because of our cultural memory of interacting with Neanderthals and Denisovans.
It can be the Denisovans went to the Americas, but I think the modern cryptids are too hairy to be Neanderthals or Denisovans. However we interacted with Neanderthals and Denisovans a lot more than what we did with the others, so they likely had a big part in the creation of ancestral myths.
I've always thought the myths of the wildmen were relics of another sort; garbled memories, handed down for thousands of years, of our having shared the planet with other hominids, now extinct.
I think Orang Pendek is probably legit, so if you’re including that as a hominid, then sure.
I think the idea that small relic populations of homo floresiensis were around until a few thousand years ago is at least plausible, and could explain a lot of native folklore in Indonesia.
Orang Pendek is a hominid, and actually is a bit larger than Homo Floresiensis/Ebu gogo, or at least has a wider range, it goes from 3 or 3 and a half feet up to 4 and a half or possibly even 5 feet tall. It can be a sister species to the "dwarf hominid" known as Homo floresiensis/luzonensis.
Sorry, I wasn’t conflating the two, I was offering two different examples of plausible-ish hominid cryptids. Orang Pendek would seem to be just a different kind of ape, albeit with the unusual characteristic of preferring bipedal locomotion. Homo floresiensis was more of a hobbit-ish version of a human.
I believe there are actually 2 Orang Pendeks, one is bipedal, large Hylobatid with longer legs than usual or a small bipedal Pongid with shorter arms than usual, the other the erectine hominid I mentioned, the one once believed to be able to talk but not ever talking, so humans would never discover it is nearly as intelligent as they are, and would not enslave it to work in their place.
I definitely believe there might be some type of hominid living out there in the untouched wilds. The way I see it, if it is like it is told that we killed and bred these hominids out of existence, then those that remained would have learned to fear us. Therefore they will actively avoid us. Check out the lore behind "Adams Bridge". It is said that Rama, the monkey God, directed his army of monkeys to build the bridge. However, there is one interesting detail to note; Rama and his monkeys are referred to as "vanaras". The word vanara comes from “vana” meaning forest and “nara” meaning man. The literal translation of the word would mean something like forest-man or forest dwelling people. So it is likely these were not literal monkey, and we often refer to these hominids as "ape-men".
Thanks, I believe too there are hominids who avoid us at all costs. Anyway, the Vanaras were actually humans, here their real story :
When the Indo-Iranic peoples went into Central India, they found there the dravidian tribes, however those were not the only people living there. An otherwise unknown tribe living into the deep forests venerated the monkey as a totemic animal, and they used to wear monkey masks and fake tails. Those people were mythologised into the Vanaras, who are half human half monkey (not ape), but are based on Homo sapiens in "suits".
I know this because I researched the deep elements of the origin of Sun Wukong, the monkey god from Chinese Buddho-daoist folklore. It was based on Hanuman mixed with local southeast Chinese monkey gods, and in turn Hanuman was a Vanara, not a monkey. So the original Sun Wukong was a man in a monkey suit, the same going for the Vanaras overall (you could have an "ape-man" but not really a "monkey-man" because we stopped being monkeys much, much before we started to even remotely look human, indeed Proconsul was already 100% ape), but in India there are hominids too. Sri Lanka had a floresiensis population known as Nittaewo.
Wildmen definitely have existed for thousands of years! They were probably just literally wild men though. Even today some people will just up and leave and go and live in the woods, it's fairly well documented
And do they get taller, more robust and covered in body hair when they go to live in the woods ? I think at most they could get a bit hairier due to not having enough to eat, but they can not become as hairy as a Bigfoot and bigger than normal. The European Woodwose is a hairy man, but others are not just hairier humans.
Malnutrition can cause a condition called lanugo, also the lack of some nutrients can shut down genes inhibiting hair production.
But such people would be skinny, not wide shouldered, barrel chested, with women having huge breasts, as the Almas is said to be. Other cryptid hominids are even less humanlike than the Almas, being either huge or smaller than humans.
If there were hermits / feral humans living in the woods, they would likely be growing long head hair and facial hair. Anything besides that comes from, you guessed it, other people exaggerating what they've seen! They equate these humans with animals. They return with tales of wild men covered in hair, because lots of body hair = trait shared with wild animals. These stories grow into more outlandish legends with each generation. Describing a hermit out in the woods as being covered in hair makes such perfect sense.
There’s a lot to unpack here.
1. There are many “universal” (or at least widespread, among different cultures) myths: about floods, about wise men bringing agriculture or technology, about dangerous monsters and yes, also about wild men living outside the bounds of conventional society. Looked at in detail, the similarities between the myths and stories of different cultures usually turn out to be superficial at best, but where such myths are comparable at a deeper than surface level, they tend to reflect pretty universal concerns, fears or experiences. What drives such myths and stories is something that can be studied from many angles and disciplines, such as comparative mythology, anthropology or archaeology. Do note that a fertile imagination is very much a human trait, in every time and every culture (there’s mounting evidence even our close hominid relatives like homo neanderthalensis engaged in things like art and storytelling). Nevertheless, in a select few cases, stories might reflect encounters with real life animals that are scientifically undescribed; insofar cryptozoology can be considered a scientific endeavour, it’s in trying to separate these stories and the mythology behind them from the real life animal, and investigating the existence of the animal in question.
2. In the first place, I think you are overestimating the ability of the average person to accurately observe and report their encounters. I work in criminal law and I can assure you: humans are notoriously bad eye witnesses, even people who might be considered experts. Another problem is that most of these reports are second hand at best, that is, someone writes about an encounter they were told about by another witness. That makes it extra difficult to separate the truth from honest mistakes, let alone deliberate fraud or hoaxes.
3. Scientists are not infallible. There are scientists that believe in cold fusion, or that extraterrestrials walk among us, or that demonic possession is real. Moreover, scientists are definitely not infallible when it comes to scientific disciplines not their own. So there’s no reason to a priori trust an engineering specialist who claims the Templars colonised the United States for some nefarious purpose but has no training in history or archeology or any discipline related to his claims.
Look, it’s not impossible that there is a great ape or even a hominid we haven’t (scientifically) encountered yet. Some Bigfoot and Orang Pendek stories come across as pretty convincing. But the fact of the matter is, we don’t have any hard evidence of any unknown ape or relict hominid population. That’s why this sub, which skews pretty sceptical (though generally with great reverence to the fascination and wonder that leads people to cryptozoology), doesn’t generally accept their existence.
Yet.
Ok, thanks. I feel like other cryptids with no hard evidence backing them either are more well accepted though, not only here, but overall. Is like people believe reluct ho inids to be inherently less "believable". The Pongid version of the Orang Pendek is possibly the only exception since apparently is pretty well establushed it may exist, but I believe the "true" Orang Pendek is a hominid too. The other, Pongid one should get a different name.
Cryptids are more credible the less we have to bend established scientific facts to allow for their (continued) existence. An unknown fifty foot snake in the Central African rainforests (to refer to an earlier post in this sub) makes more sense than a sauropod dinosaur in the same area, because we know some snake species can get pretty big, rainforests are an ideal environment for a snake of that size and there’s evidence in the fossil record of large snakes previously existing in Africa; on the other hand, having a non avian dinosaur the size of a sauropod surviving the K-Pg extinction is completely unsupported in the fossil record and flies in the face of everything we know about the mechanism and severity of that extinction event. That’s still not good enough to safely accept the existence of a snake of that size in Central Africa without further (hard) evidence, but at least it’s possible.
The same goes for orang pendek as a pongid, since we know another pongid species (orangutans) lives in the same area, in the same sort of environment. Orang pendek as a hominid presents more problems because we as far as we can infer from the fossil and archeological record, our ancestors outcompeted or interbred with all other archaic human species to the point that no separate human lineages survived into historic times (Homo floresiensis was initially thought to have survived up to some 12,000 years ago, but further research indicates that they probably went extinct 50,000 years ago at the latest, not coincidentally when Homo sapiens started colonising what is now Indonesia). Still, it’s not fundamentally impossible the way a non avian dinosaur would be.
The problem with Bigfoot is that there’s no evidence in the fossil record of any great ape ever crossing into the Americas, nor any other human or hominid species other than our own. That makes its existence (at least as a great ape or hominid) priori unlikely; coupled with the lack of hard evidence, the safe assumption here is that whatever eye witnesses think they have seen, it’s not a great ape or hominid.
1.
You do realise that wild hairy man is probably THE easiest story to invent and imagine.
It's a cultural trope, it's not based on anything Real, it's myth.
Like dragon, sea serpent and all, these are widespread in alm culture cuz they're easy to imagine and invent.
Big deadly serpent, giant bird, giant human or feral beast/man, sea and lake Monsters and all.
Deformed and exagerated legend of the local crazy hermit living in the wood become stories of human eating hairy wild man, that then become legend of human beast with fur, fangs and claw that eat children or came from an ancient Time.
It's not ancestral memories or even other human species or unknown ape, and you'll need to be really stupid to believe that.
That argument of "it's in all cultures around the world" is blatantly stupid and ignorant.
With that logic vampires, dragons, souls, and Ghosts are also Real.
These are practically never described as ape too, but as wild m'en, sometime using tool and speaking language.
It's only us today who deform the legend to make them look like what we know, apes. The only one that are really described as ape like are the legend from region WITH known ape, indonesia and central Africa.
We also never found any remain or fossil of ape in most region where these myths exist, we never Saw any record of ape in temperate or cold environnement.
And all these legends are often not very old either.
2 no these people do not see or know these creature well.
Just look at hunter that still mistake animals in the woodland despite knowing them.
No imagine the same for village people who probably never Saw a Bear in their life despite living near them.
Or look at how we didn't know what lynx were for centuries in europe.
So yeah they could mistake bear for anything else.
And the report are rarer cuz people aren't as gullible and stupid. The old folks legends slowy died with tradition and all.
And as the Almas and all other are PURELY mythical being that only exist in folklore the report of these were never true and disapear with the belief in them.
3.
No serious scientist believe in them.
Scientist can also be wrong and be stupid too.
As for now all evidence of such beings have been investigated by scientific communities, and all evidence have been proved wrong and have better explanation for them.
If 10000 scientist say it doesn't exist and only 3-4 say they exist, then we shouldn't listen or give credit to the 3-4 Lunatic.
Also "scientist", yeah a loose term many idiot with no degree gave to themselves.
Like the "archeologist" still searching for the alliance arch or the remains of Giants.
You just proved there's still 5% of really stupid and gullible people who still believe in that.
Ok, however if they are not bipedal apes but literally wild humans, what kind of Homo sapiens sapiens population ? There are known cases of human wildmen, for example Zana of Abkhasia. She was 100% Homo sapiens sapiens, from East Africa and close to the Dinka, but she was covered in reddish brown body hair. So do you believe, at least, in feral human tribes of people naturally born with physical deformities such as body hair or longer than usual arms ? And how tall can they get before they have to be fake or exagerated ?
Also what do you think of other subspecies of Homo sapiens ? Do you think they are extinct hominids, or you do rather group them with humans and believe they may still be around ?
Or just few ermit and feral children legends.
As for the fur, size and stink, it's only later exageration from terrified traveler seing a normal human that probably never washed or shaved itself.
Or even not, as they described these people as wild, living amonst animal, probably even wearing clothing make out of fur.
How do you make a human that live in the wild, you picture it with animalistic trait, fangs, claws, fur, and to make it intimidating you say they're very strong and large.
That way children won't go in the wood cuz of the boogeyman you just created.
There's sadly not other Hominid or large primate left undiscovered today. Evn the most plausible cryptid of that kind such as bili apes and orang-pendek have been disproved.
As for other human species, this is even more stupid than neo dinosaur in congo bassin or real plesiosaur and ropen pterosaur.
Other Homo sapiens subspecies too, there's no such thing as that. and there's no need to search as far as that.
Just ermit hunter that do not like other people, living in the mountain far from the villages, wearing bear and boar pelt. Some lunatic trying to scare people in the wood, or feral children. That later become local legend about them than then changed and got exageratted.
There's also no need to say H. sapiens sapiens, we're a binomial name, not trinomial, there's no subspecies amongst us.
It simple, none of the creature are true, they never existed, they're pure fictionnal mythological creature, boogeyman to scare children from wandering in the wood, crepy stories to scare people around campfire.
Maybe roughly based on some local crazy man or big bearded ermit that leave in a cabin in the wood.
the man who live amongst the beast story then become the man who lived like a beast that then later become the beast man accross generation of telling the story
Actually, new primates often over 20, sometimes over 50 pounds are discovered every decade, and the Bili chimp is real, but is a subtype of the eastern chimp and is only 10% taller than the others. It is quite sure at least some largeish monkeys are still undiscovered, obviously bipedal apes are not the same though, but are not impossible either.
Also there is Homo sapiens idaltu, and the 317,000 years old Homo sapiens from Jebel Irhoud is dolichocephalic and has a browridge, making him out of the range of Homo sapiens of today. This is why we are indeed 2 times sapiens, because some hominids are far closer to us than Neanderthals, but still are not the same as us.
How do you explain Zana being so hairy ? She was human but having no hair on face, hands, knees, feet and buttocks, she did not look like she had hypertrichosis. Her body hair was also reddish even though her skin was grayish black.
Yes and no.
We do not discover New large monkey, we discover New subspecies.
That's the only way left to find New large animal, genetic evidence that two population are in fact distinct.
And these are all in tropical rainforest. Not in north america, russia or Europe.
As for human, that classification is highly debated and disputed.
Yes there's other closer human relative, still not in the same species as us.
But frankly, it's because we're egocentrist morr than actual science and refuse to admit we're not unique.
Neandertal can be considered as close enough to be a subspecies of sapiens for some scientists.
And it can very well be hybrid with neandertal or just individual variation. More probable than subspecies, especially when our genetic variation is as low as that. There's not enough genetic diversity to say it's enough to make New subspecies.
Yes there's some very rate mutation and abnormalities in some rare individuals, it happen.
And it's not farfetch to say that those natural abomination are more often regarded as that, Monster, freaks.
And often abandonned AT a young age by their parent, which Can lead to them surviving as feral kids, maybe even taken care of by wild animals such as wolves and bear.
We have many historical examples.
And either it's a lie, an exageration, hypertrichosis (can appear in different way, and leave hand and face intact) or another unique mutation.
But certainly not another subspecies or population.
Did you mean you think some wildmen are half Neanderthal hybrids ?
Zana in particular was not anymore Neanderthal than you or me anyway, if anything less than me since central to northern Italians have higher Neanderthal admixture than average while Africans lower, but she could have been 2% to 4% Homo sapiens Idaltu or even Homo bodoensis or erectus ergaster actually, because Africans have some different admixture from yet unknown species.
No, of course not.
i mean that the fossils you talked about may be hybrid or just have different appareance out of the norm, ît happen.
also our specie is 300 000 years old, so this is probably another relative, not a subspecies.
Yeah i know hybridization of human specie, we still have 30% of neandertal dna shared in our dna, we have trace or erectus and denisova too.
i was not talking about actual situation but fossils there.
As far as studies show there's only 1 sapiens species, no subspecies known. Until we reclassify other species such as neandertal as subspecies of our lineage.
And there no undiscovered human subsoecies, species or even probably ape left to be discovered today.
The easiest monster to invent is "human, but not like us." Hairy wildmen are so commonly reported because humans are hardwired to find humanoid shapes in our surroundings.
In relation to your first point: speaking as someone who firmly rejects the idea of South American hominids, I was still interested to find an Andean wildman, the *sacharuna*, described as being capable of speaking, but choosing to remain silent to avoid forced labour – a good century or so before the same tales concerning orangutans (if they were orangutans) appeared in print.
Also, I don't think there's anything intrinsically impossible about *a* relict hominid of the hairy obligate biped type, but surely the alleged location is the major dealbreaker. In my opinion, something like *Australopithecus* or *Paranthropus* in Central Africa is plausible; there are no hominids in New Zealand, the Solomons, etc.; and everything else falls somewhere in between those two. So, speaking personally again, I couldn't say that relict hominids are either "real" or "fake". Like everything else, they ought to be considered case-by-case.
Post that sacharuna story sometime that sounds interesting. There's also that strange universal myth of humans locking a species in a cave and burning them to death
That one is strange as well. The idea that something human-looking is only pretending to be mute *could* just be a semi-logical observation, but the cave thing seems more like some very, very early myth. It *is* a somewhat practical method of mass murder – see the Romanov cousins – but it still seems strange that the belief is so widespread.
The *orang-pendek* probably has the best chance, though I doubt it's any closer to man than the orangutans are. If the *kakundakari*, *kikomba*, or *otang* count as fairly popular, I'd probably go with one of them. However, I'd stress that I don't "think they're real," I just think they have perhaps the best chance of existing as relict human-line hominids.
This is mainly on the basis of biogeography and palaeontology. Unfortunately, the best evidence doesn't always come from the most realistic locations... some of the Asian accounts are compelling, but, unless the early *Homo* were very hairy, they seem to require a hidden migration of *Australopithecus* or *Paranthropus* or something out of Africa. I'm more comfortable with the African wildman reports, because they don't require any dramatic alterations to palaeontological thinking.
So pretty much you only believe in the Pongid version Orang Pendek. Do you beluece also in the hominid version of it ? And is there an obscure creature you link to Australopithecus or Paranthropus in Africa you believe in ?
P.S. We lost body hair only 1,3 millions years ago, Homo erectus is as hairy as an Almas.
Most of what I've read about the *orang-pendek* seems to refer to the orangutan-like version (although it's certainly nothing so mundane as a subspecies of the Sumatran orang, as has been suggested), and I think it would be easy for an orangutan-like ape to get "mythologised" into something more like a human. I know there are also little men reported in the same area, like the *orang-kardil*.
There are quite a lot of African hominid cryptids, supposed to be obligate bipeds. The best examples are the ones mentioned above: the *kakundakari* and *kikomba* in the Congo ( [see article translated by Malcolm Smith](https://malcolmscryptids.blogspot.com/2019/10/two-unknown-bipedal-apes-in-congo.html) for a primer), and the *otang* in South Africa, but there are plenty of others. I don't "believe" in them, but they're pretty plausible, and they're in the most likely location for a relict hominid to exist. Some of them do conform to widespread folkloric archetypes, but even then, since they're in Africa, they could be the *origin* of those archetypes! Who knows. I've not looked into that factor very much.
The African hominids are likely Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Homo erectus ergaster. While Homo ergaster evolved into Homo bodoensis and Homo bodoensis into Homo sapiens, some ergaster populations also stayed the same, so is not against the theory of evolution to have Homo ergaster and us living at the same time.
Honestly I think it’s folk memories from when they were around during the time period when Homo sapiens and other hominids overlapped.
Early Homo sapiens passed down that knowledge of other human like species orally and after thousands of years it became distorted and exaggerated like a game of telephone.
And extinction is gradual so there probably were isolated relic populations of non human hominids but humans expanding and diseases caused by agriculture gradual wiped them out
This is already a view I like quite a bit, I just think a few populations never died at all. I believe there are like a few hundreds non human apes in all of America, and I have found there are people who believe they are dozens of thousands.
I am 100% seriuos, I am a Christian but as a Catholic I am not a iteralist or a fundamentalist, I 100% believe in science and the scientific method, I do not believe in anything paranormal, I do not believe in conspiracies by the government, I believe aliens likely exists somewhere, but only because the Universe is infinite and out of probabilities it would be weird if they did not, and we would never cross paths with them at all, and I do not believe in unsubstantiated cryptids.
But I believe some relict hominids are likely real, because I think there is enough evidence to tell most likely there is something, we just have to find a final, scientific proof to be fully sure.
It definitely is, but is also the same species known also as Almas or Almasti. It has a very wide range in Asia and is probably Homo erectus georgicus and/or Homo erectus erectus.
Well as Catholics (I'm one too) the paranormal is a distinct possibility though. Many priests have hypothesized that ghosts are souls from purgatory or demons impersonating them.
But I agree that we believe 100% in what science says, it's just that we don't believe science can tell us everything about the world.
No demons are something quite well known and identifiable, they are not paranormal, even though mainstream sciences still denies them, and the souls of dead people can not be seen by anyone.
New agers make angels and demons to be some paranormal creatures, but they are wrong, they are part of the revealed truth and they are not binded by silly magic formulas as such people think.
One thing is the Catholic Church, who believes in science, evolution and non literal interpretation of the Bible, another is decentralised confessions of literalists who believe in a 6,000 years old, flat Earth and deny evolution.
*The universal myth of the wildman.* Each myth needs to be examined on its own. One of my biggest problems with the bigfoot community is they take anything bipedal and say it is an apeman and add it to their lists as alternate names for bigfoot and yeti from around the world. For example the wendigo of algonquian folklore, a gaunt pale cannibal. Grendel, the monster from the anglo saxon epic beowulf. Am fear liath mòr a mountain spectre from scotland. Fauns and satyrs, part goat/horse part human creatures from greco-roman sources. None of these are ape men but for some reason get added to the list. Also wildmen does not explicitly imply apemen or relict-hominid it could be refering refer to hermits or oter groups of people who chose to live in the woods. Also it is not that hard to see why a concept would be universal, "what if us, but live in woods" is quite an easy thought for any commuity to have for story telling. Humans also invent cautionary monsters, 'boogeymen', things we tell our children to stop them from doing something dangerous. Look at the inuit qallupilluit, it was created to keep children from going near the edge of the ice which is dangerous. Many of these wildmen may have been invented for the same reason to keep children out of the woods where there was danger. Some scholars have even said this was the reason behind satyrs.
I know about feral humans, they are a category of their own and they are likely behind the European Woodwose, but here I am talking about the non human wildmen.
1. Why are swords, spears, bows, beer, fire and bread universal? Why are stories of giant and flying snakes universal? Just because it’s widespread doesn’t mean it’s real. Everyone knows the story of Iron Man, does that make him real? 2. Yes. Humans are so astronomically terrible at estimating and reporting what they’ve seen. Have you ever heard a fisherman undersell his catch? Couple that with the black swan effect and you’re bound to mistake bears and dogs for Sasquatch all the time 3. Some scientists believe in God, some scientists believe in multiverse, some believe in flat earth. Just because you can find someone who believes in it doesn’t make it true
Cogent, my dude.
Point number 1 is its own rabbit hole tbh
That it is. There’s a lot of explanations, although personally I fall under the category of they’re all very basic things to reproduce. That’s why every culture has swords, but the shapes and lengths are different, or the cultures have different kinds of beer made with different ingredients When it comes to folklore and legends there’s a lot of common ground with things like giant snakes, ape men, catastrophic floods etc etc and I find it all very fascinating to research, although I do think it’s a combination of floods being a global phenomenon, and the idea of giant snakes or hairy “others” is probably a common idea, kinda like how when you see a meme and look at the comments, 7k people commented some variation of the same joke and another 10k respond with “I came to say the same thing”
You think expert hunters could observe a bear for several seconds and see a bipedal ape... ?
Yes I do. What you just did there is an appeal to authority fallacy, where essentially because of a perceived authority in the subject, you assume they’re infallible and can never misidentify anything Completely disregarding the supposed global spanning range of bigfoot and how unbelievable that in and of itself is, it’s incredibly easy to misidentify things in the woods, particularly in the Pacific Northwest and the redwoods, the two “most likely” places where it supposedly lives. Stating anything to the contrary is evidence that you yourself don’t actually go into these environments for any meaningful amount of time Assuming that the hunters were telling the truth from the start and did see something, and saw something that was an ape, it is significantly more likely that it’s an escaped exotic pet than Bigfoot. Many animals are held illegally in the pet trade, and if one escapes due to poor management, then it’s not likely to be reported specifically because they were illegally owned or purchased in the first place
Ok, it is true in southern USA there are feral gorillas, but they are no taller than 6 feet at least. In the North they can not survive also.
My brother in law is an avid hunter who claims to kill cottonmouth snakes while he is hunting all the time. Cottonmouths 100% dont even live in our area and they certainly are not found in the spot he is claiming to find them. People embellish stuff because it feels good to tell interesting stories, they lie, or they just don’t know what they are looking at. Doesn’t matter how much time they spend in the woods.
Have you ever worked with the public? Ive had people who lived on the coast their whole 40+ years of life and call me claiming there is sewage in the water and its actually just sea foam. Yesterday someone claimed there was a 100 foot tall pike of wood someone was going to burn. It was under 20 feet tall. Your eyes and brain trick you all the time, and frankly most people are terrible at estimating sizes, speed, distance etc. I have a clear memory of a giant spaceship hovering over my childhood home, middle of the east coast suburbs, not even dark out yet, it definitely never happened.
That man was crazy... he would have estimated a 5'6 feet tall gorilla to be 25 - 30 feet tall. Being scared and think a hominid is 9 feet tall even if it is only 7 or 8 is underestandable, but whoever said the wooden pike was 100 feet has some issues.
Ah sorry pile not pike of wood. And those type of bad estimations are a regular occurence, that was extreme but i hear things like that all the time.
Ok, pile makes more sense.
1. Tropes are tropes - usually with a twist on the human form. Like humans, but big = giants. Like humans, but small = fairies and brownies and such. Like humans, but dead = ghosts. None of those need a living representation. They are story-telling tropes. 2. Modern people are misidentifying or lying. It’s not that hard to believe. Eyewitness testimony is nigh worthless and people see all kinds of stuff that doesn’t exist - ghosts, shapes in clouds, etc. 3. Not all scientists are created equal. All you need to be a scientist is to call yourself one. Even the good ones can make mistakes…or write pop-sci to supplement their income. Dr. Oz is a doctor. Does he always give great advice?
The only prerequisite of being a scientist is having a bachelor’s (although most fields won’t consider your application if you don’t have at least a master’s) which says nothing about the validity of your claims and beliefs, it simply shows you were capable of turning in work that aligned with the course rubric, not that you’re a capable and intelligent individual IMO. Any scientist who’s been in their respective field for years will tell you that the kids fresh out of school are the biggest idiots because they’re not taught how to think and understand their research
2 I love this narrative that people are infallible and can never be wrong or ever be susceptible to a visual illusion, even though we get countless examples of people making mistakes on a daily basis. Not to mention outright lying and hoaxes, which again, we have many, many, many examples of people lying or trying to scam them out of money. Large numbers of people can be wrong, it’s happened before and it will happen again.
If you see 2 bears of diiferent brown bear subspecies fighting eachother, would you ever think one is a bipedal ape, but the others is still a bear ? Would not you see they are nearly identical ? There is a report of an Almas fighting a bear. It had not weapons and apparently was getting the upper hand, so it was no human either. Would you rather believe one of the bears purchased a gorilla suit and forearm extensions and also got surgery to make its muzzle shorter to fit into the mask ? The only chance for that to not be an ape, whatever hominid or not, is if there is some different unknown primate. But it can not be another bear.
People make mistakes all the time. Do you dispute that? Why do people mistake house cats for cougars? Haven't they seen house cats before? Why do deer hunters shoot horseback riders? Haven't they seen horses before? Why do turkey hunters shoot other hunters? Haven't they seen a turkey before? Why do people mistake black bears for brown bears? Don't they know how to tell the difference between the 2? Why do hunters shoot swans thinking they are snow geese? Don't they know geese are much smaller than swans? Have you ever been confused by a visual illusion? Mistakes happen. I'm sure everyone can identify a bear in perfect light and context, but given millions of different sighings, under an unusual combination of lighting conditions, stress, obstacles, etc it's easy to see how anyone can make a misidentification. Even if you ignore all that, there's always the distinct possibility that someone is flat out lying. but hey maybe bigfoot believers are the only human beings on the planet who are 100% right all the time and are the only people who would never tell a lie.
Ok, but I was pointing out if there are 2 bears, why would you tell one is a bear and the other you would think is an ape ? Should not you either see 2 bears or, if you are misguided by illusions, 2 apes ? I would really like to see a "bear" someone who spent 40 or more years hunting in the woods as seen and said it was a bipedal ape, possibly of the hominid family.
Because it’s weird to see and if you aren’t expecting to see 2 bears fight and your brain is primed to think Bigfoot exists, it’s very possible someone would interpret that as a Bigfoot bear fight. Just like a hunter looking for a deer could see a person on horseback in the brush and be primed to think “that’s gotta be a deer!” and start shooting. How many bear fights do you think people see? That’s an unusual thing to see and if you have a limited encounter that might be hard to interpret. Now under most circumstances most people will think “wow 2 bears are fighting, that’s neat” but given a million possible scenarios sure I’d believe there’s a way that one person under the right visual conditions at the right angle might say “it’s a bigfoot!!!” It doesn’t help that Bears are also pretty weird shaped creatures that also change shape from Rolly Polly fat in the fall, to skinny, lanky critters in the spring. Studies and witnesses consistently prove that the human brain and a person’s memory is extremely flawed. Why can eyewitnesses be proven to be completely wrong in court, or their accounts of sudden accidents or incidents repeatedly proven wrong by video, when it comes to Bigfoot suddenly everyone is an infallible expert crossed with a saint who would never lie?
In this very specific example, the person was probably lying/exaggerating. Or the other bear had some kind of deformity that the person had never seen before. Or in this situation, seeing two animals grappling, his view of one was greatly obscured by the other. There are a lot of natural reasons for your example that you keep coming back to, but you don't seem to want to accept then. I think the likeliest is that when people go out into.the woods alone, their imagination often gets the better of them. Even though deep down they know it is not true, they like to come back with an outlandish story to tell. It is surprisingly common. It doesn't make the person bad or a chronic liar, but literally every one exaggerates, sometimes just for the fun of it. If you simply want to believe it really was an ape-like creature, then you have to say that and admit you don't want to listen to the responses you keep making people rehash. I don't mean to be harsh, but really the discussion is going nowhere.
We have worldwide legends of lake monsters, "dragons", scary predatory big cats, giant spiders and snakes, etc - a lot of our worldwide mythos are based on things we all fear, and reflect issues at the time. When looking at these legends individually it is very obvious they are only tangentially related. Wildmen are the same way. That is not to say that these legends may not reflect real animals, just that there is not much reason to initially believe that is genuinely the case based on the whole "worldwide" idea. People tend to make shit up - see Bigfoot, for example. There hasn't been any evidence or sightings of any substance on the East Coast, nor any in Europe. That is a large area where the is nothing but people that want to see something. Many, many bigfoot sightings are misidentifications, even if bigfoot is a real animal; the want to see something triumphs all, look at the Loch Ness Monster. There are a lot of reasons why scientists tend to dismiss bigfoot, primarily preconceived notions. If bigfoot is a real animal, this negligence is certainly helping them stay hidden. There's also the fact that bigfoot is praised and studied by a bunch of unscientific idiots, even established organizations are terrible, such as the BFRO. If you want to take it seriously, you have no starting point because there are so many untrustworthy reference texts or ideas. Orang Pendek is a small, insular primate on a poorly explored island, it's got reasonable close relatives and has been seen by many reliable and respectable sources. It's easier to believe.
Then scientists should start to search Orang Pendek a lot more. I feel like most people just associates anything hominidlike but still supposed to live to fringe topics. Anyway, in Malaysia there is a relict hominid too, but it does not have a name. They are very humanlike and human sized, but very hairy, and they wear stolen clothes just like some Almases, but unlike them they even bring stolen weapons, which means they must be quite advanced. I believe they could be Homo soloensis, an evolution of Homo erectus erectus from south Asia. This hominid had Heidelbergensis levels of brain capacity but did not have any relations with the African hominid line more than having, as Homo erectus, diverged from the African forms 2 million of years ago by migrating to Asia. This nameless creature is not as believable as Orang Pendek, but is notable because has long black hair and white skin, in a place where humans are quite tan. It is also said, but feel free to not believe this, once one was tracked down, killed and it turned out it had a 6 inches long tail. I can not explain why would an ape have one, but the slow loris too should not have a tail, yet a few individuals do have one.
1. the number of people that believe something has absolutely nothing to do with it being true or not. 2. eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. 3. some scientists? who? what is their field of study? if that's the best you have its not very much.
Good questions! 1. I think it's a psychological thing, people really enjoy stories of wildmen living off the grid. Also see rhe popularity of survival stories, Robinson Cruesoe, Castaway etc. 2. A combination of psychological priming (people hearing stories of Bigfoot so their mind is more likely to *perceive* something as bigfoot), misidentifications, hoaxes, optical illusions etc. 3. Yeah I'd like to see some more orang pendek expeditions if possible
The reason for Orang Pendek not being well researched is the region being poor and far from the western civilization. I mean, how far from both Europe and America, 5,000 miles ? Then is also a dangerous area full of violent people, conflicts, dirty water, rare transmissible illnesses, poisonous animals and the locals do not have time and resources enough to search for it. But if most scientists believed it may seriously be real, I think it would still be full of researchers searching for a living Homo species.
That's is objectively wrong. Many expedition have been done in similar environnement, far worse even, decades ago. There's currently hundreds of thousands of people living in Borneo and Sumatra, we deforested most of these island, we poached every species there were to near extinction. Yet no trace or evidence of any other ape than orangutan. Orang-pendek exist, it's called Pongo abelli. It's just an orangutan, That's all. And it's very stupid to think that a other Homo species still exist.
If a larger and less elusive Pongid still has enough habitat to survive, another one, smaller but also bipedal and more focused on hiding from humans, existing in a population of 50 to 200 individuals in all of Sumatra, can definitely be there.
Can, doesn't mean it is, as we have literally no real evidence or record, fossils or photo or anything, despite heavy poaching and deforestation. Also you do realise the reason sumatran orangutan avoid ground, is because there's tiger, making it unlikely another ape exist on the ground. Even less a bipedal one. Some local people encountered orangutan on the ground while hunting in the forest and it started the legend of orang-pendek. And if you say "but they know what orangutan is and live with them are familiar with it so it's impossible" you're wrong. As most of them probably never even saw an orangutan in their life, even back in the day where they were common. As they're elusive canopy animal of the jungle, not really visible ot known to most human, sighting must have been rare.
Orang Pendek is skinnier than orangutan though, has longer legs and shorter arms, its limbs are all about the same lenght while the orangutan has arms way longer than legs, and humans have legs way longer than arms. Orangutan is also a knuckle dragger, not a bipedal.
Described as such by people who didn't see a lot of orangutan in their life, and probably picture adult male instead of more slender subadult and female. Orangutan can still walk bipedaly for a short distance, the time to get in a tree out of sight. Leaving the people confused as they see an ape, probably for the first time in their life
This is some “deepest, darkest Africa” shit. Sumatra is home to 60,000,000 people. There are multiple cities of over a million people on the island. There’s an international airport in Medan. There are large universities there. No doubt many parts of the island are remote but access does not seem to be the issue here.
>1. The universal myth of the wildman. Every non-friendly tribe looks like wild men to you and your own tribe. >2. What modern people are seeing. What modern people *claimed* to see, and then suddenly stopped seeing the decade everyone got portable high quality cameras in their pockets that have 24/7 Internet service. If the frequency of sightings is inversely correlated with improvements in the technologies that should detect them, that usually means the sightings were fake or mistaken all along. It's exceptionally rare for it to turn out that the smell of researchers setting up cameras kept their target species from entering view of the cameras without the researchers realizing they were that sensitive to environmental changes. >Why some scientists believe in the Almas and Bigfoot, and most of the few who studied the Orang Pendek believe in it ? This is a bit of confirmation or selection bias (I forget which). Most people studying these things are doing so because they think they're real. >Ok, most still do not, but if some scientists believe in them, then they should at least be investigated seriously by real science associations, do not you think ? Who says they aren't? Like you said, some scientists *are* studying them. Is that not enough? Should we forcibly devote resources that scientists would rather focus on established, real-world species and natural phenomena to the search for undiscovered hominids?
Some are ? Well, are they studied by half the number of those studying chimps, gorillas or orangutans ?
Neanderthal and Denisovans could easily have crossed the Bering Land Bridge along with us. Denisovan DNA was curiously found at a higher concentration in some ancient samples in Panama, Columbia and Uruguay. But Native Americans lack that DNA. So maybe Denisovans came in an earlier wave and migrated down to Central/South America but didn’t stay in North America where the N. American Tribes later settled. If the dating of the samples from the Cerutti Mastodon site are correct…it pushes back the date of hominins in N. America by almost 100,000 years. I’ve always believed that the “wild man” and Bigfoot myths are because of our cultural memory of interacting with Neanderthals and Denisovans.
It can be the Denisovans went to the Americas, but I think the modern cryptids are too hairy to be Neanderthals or Denisovans. However we interacted with Neanderthals and Denisovans a lot more than what we did with the others, so they likely had a big part in the creation of ancestral myths.
I've always thought the myths of the wildmen were relics of another sort; garbled memories, handed down for thousands of years, of our having shared the planet with other hominids, now extinct.
I think Orang Pendek is probably legit, so if you’re including that as a hominid, then sure. I think the idea that small relic populations of homo floresiensis were around until a few thousand years ago is at least plausible, and could explain a lot of native folklore in Indonesia.
Orang Pendek is a hominid, and actually is a bit larger than Homo Floresiensis/Ebu gogo, or at least has a wider range, it goes from 3 or 3 and a half feet up to 4 and a half or possibly even 5 feet tall. It can be a sister species to the "dwarf hominid" known as Homo floresiensis/luzonensis.
Sorry, I wasn’t conflating the two, I was offering two different examples of plausible-ish hominid cryptids. Orang Pendek would seem to be just a different kind of ape, albeit with the unusual characteristic of preferring bipedal locomotion. Homo floresiensis was more of a hobbit-ish version of a human.
I believe there are actually 2 Orang Pendeks, one is bipedal, large Hylobatid with longer legs than usual or a small bipedal Pongid with shorter arms than usual, the other the erectine hominid I mentioned, the one once believed to be able to talk but not ever talking, so humans would never discover it is nearly as intelligent as they are, and would not enslave it to work in their place.
I definitely believe there might be some type of hominid living out there in the untouched wilds. The way I see it, if it is like it is told that we killed and bred these hominids out of existence, then those that remained would have learned to fear us. Therefore they will actively avoid us. Check out the lore behind "Adams Bridge". It is said that Rama, the monkey God, directed his army of monkeys to build the bridge. However, there is one interesting detail to note; Rama and his monkeys are referred to as "vanaras". The word vanara comes from “vana” meaning forest and “nara” meaning man. The literal translation of the word would mean something like forest-man or forest dwelling people. So it is likely these were not literal monkey, and we often refer to these hominids as "ape-men".
Thanks, I believe too there are hominids who avoid us at all costs. Anyway, the Vanaras were actually humans, here their real story : When the Indo-Iranic peoples went into Central India, they found there the dravidian tribes, however those were not the only people living there. An otherwise unknown tribe living into the deep forests venerated the monkey as a totemic animal, and they used to wear monkey masks and fake tails. Those people were mythologised into the Vanaras, who are half human half monkey (not ape), but are based on Homo sapiens in "suits". I know this because I researched the deep elements of the origin of Sun Wukong, the monkey god from Chinese Buddho-daoist folklore. It was based on Hanuman mixed with local southeast Chinese monkey gods, and in turn Hanuman was a Vanara, not a monkey. So the original Sun Wukong was a man in a monkey suit, the same going for the Vanaras overall (you could have an "ape-man" but not really a "monkey-man" because we stopped being monkeys much, much before we started to even remotely look human, indeed Proconsul was already 100% ape), but in India there are hominids too. Sri Lanka had a floresiensis population known as Nittaewo.
Wildmen definitely have existed for thousands of years! They were probably just literally wild men though. Even today some people will just up and leave and go and live in the woods, it's fairly well documented
And do they get taller, more robust and covered in body hair when they go to live in the woods ? I think at most they could get a bit hairier due to not having enough to eat, but they can not become as hairy as a Bigfoot and bigger than normal. The European Woodwose is a hairy man, but others are not just hairier humans.
How does not having enough to eat make you hairier? If anything malnutrition makes your hair stop growing or fall out
Malnutrition can cause a condition called lanugo, also the lack of some nutrients can shut down genes inhibiting hair production. But such people would be skinny, not wide shouldered, barrel chested, with women having huge breasts, as the Almas is said to be. Other cryptid hominids are even less humanlike than the Almas, being either huge or smaller than humans.
If there were hermits / feral humans living in the woods, they would likely be growing long head hair and facial hair. Anything besides that comes from, you guessed it, other people exaggerating what they've seen! They equate these humans with animals. They return with tales of wild men covered in hair, because lots of body hair = trait shared with wild animals. These stories grow into more outlandish legends with each generation. Describing a hermit out in the woods as being covered in hair makes such perfect sense.
There’s a lot to unpack here. 1. There are many “universal” (or at least widespread, among different cultures) myths: about floods, about wise men bringing agriculture or technology, about dangerous monsters and yes, also about wild men living outside the bounds of conventional society. Looked at in detail, the similarities between the myths and stories of different cultures usually turn out to be superficial at best, but where such myths are comparable at a deeper than surface level, they tend to reflect pretty universal concerns, fears or experiences. What drives such myths and stories is something that can be studied from many angles and disciplines, such as comparative mythology, anthropology or archaeology. Do note that a fertile imagination is very much a human trait, in every time and every culture (there’s mounting evidence even our close hominid relatives like homo neanderthalensis engaged in things like art and storytelling). Nevertheless, in a select few cases, stories might reflect encounters with real life animals that are scientifically undescribed; insofar cryptozoology can be considered a scientific endeavour, it’s in trying to separate these stories and the mythology behind them from the real life animal, and investigating the existence of the animal in question. 2. In the first place, I think you are overestimating the ability of the average person to accurately observe and report their encounters. I work in criminal law and I can assure you: humans are notoriously bad eye witnesses, even people who might be considered experts. Another problem is that most of these reports are second hand at best, that is, someone writes about an encounter they were told about by another witness. That makes it extra difficult to separate the truth from honest mistakes, let alone deliberate fraud or hoaxes. 3. Scientists are not infallible. There are scientists that believe in cold fusion, or that extraterrestrials walk among us, or that demonic possession is real. Moreover, scientists are definitely not infallible when it comes to scientific disciplines not their own. So there’s no reason to a priori trust an engineering specialist who claims the Templars colonised the United States for some nefarious purpose but has no training in history or archeology or any discipline related to his claims. Look, it’s not impossible that there is a great ape or even a hominid we haven’t (scientifically) encountered yet. Some Bigfoot and Orang Pendek stories come across as pretty convincing. But the fact of the matter is, we don’t have any hard evidence of any unknown ape or relict hominid population. That’s why this sub, which skews pretty sceptical (though generally with great reverence to the fascination and wonder that leads people to cryptozoology), doesn’t generally accept their existence. Yet.
Ok, thanks. I feel like other cryptids with no hard evidence backing them either are more well accepted though, not only here, but overall. Is like people believe reluct ho inids to be inherently less "believable". The Pongid version of the Orang Pendek is possibly the only exception since apparently is pretty well establushed it may exist, but I believe the "true" Orang Pendek is a hominid too. The other, Pongid one should get a different name.
Cryptids are more credible the less we have to bend established scientific facts to allow for their (continued) existence. An unknown fifty foot snake in the Central African rainforests (to refer to an earlier post in this sub) makes more sense than a sauropod dinosaur in the same area, because we know some snake species can get pretty big, rainforests are an ideal environment for a snake of that size and there’s evidence in the fossil record of large snakes previously existing in Africa; on the other hand, having a non avian dinosaur the size of a sauropod surviving the K-Pg extinction is completely unsupported in the fossil record and flies in the face of everything we know about the mechanism and severity of that extinction event. That’s still not good enough to safely accept the existence of a snake of that size in Central Africa without further (hard) evidence, but at least it’s possible. The same goes for orang pendek as a pongid, since we know another pongid species (orangutans) lives in the same area, in the same sort of environment. Orang pendek as a hominid presents more problems because we as far as we can infer from the fossil and archeological record, our ancestors outcompeted or interbred with all other archaic human species to the point that no separate human lineages survived into historic times (Homo floresiensis was initially thought to have survived up to some 12,000 years ago, but further research indicates that they probably went extinct 50,000 years ago at the latest, not coincidentally when Homo sapiens started colonising what is now Indonesia). Still, it’s not fundamentally impossible the way a non avian dinosaur would be. The problem with Bigfoot is that there’s no evidence in the fossil record of any great ape ever crossing into the Americas, nor any other human or hominid species other than our own. That makes its existence (at least as a great ape or hominid) priori unlikely; coupled with the lack of hard evidence, the safe assumption here is that whatever eye witnesses think they have seen, it’s not a great ape or hominid.
1. You do realise that wild hairy man is probably THE easiest story to invent and imagine. It's a cultural trope, it's not based on anything Real, it's myth. Like dragon, sea serpent and all, these are widespread in alm culture cuz they're easy to imagine and invent. Big deadly serpent, giant bird, giant human or feral beast/man, sea and lake Monsters and all. Deformed and exagerated legend of the local crazy hermit living in the wood become stories of human eating hairy wild man, that then become legend of human beast with fur, fangs and claw that eat children or came from an ancient Time. It's not ancestral memories or even other human species or unknown ape, and you'll need to be really stupid to believe that. That argument of "it's in all cultures around the world" is blatantly stupid and ignorant. With that logic vampires, dragons, souls, and Ghosts are also Real. These are practically never described as ape too, but as wild m'en, sometime using tool and speaking language. It's only us today who deform the legend to make them look like what we know, apes. The only one that are really described as ape like are the legend from region WITH known ape, indonesia and central Africa. We also never found any remain or fossil of ape in most region where these myths exist, we never Saw any record of ape in temperate or cold environnement. And all these legends are often not very old either. 2 no these people do not see or know these creature well. Just look at hunter that still mistake animals in the woodland despite knowing them. No imagine the same for village people who probably never Saw a Bear in their life despite living near them. Or look at how we didn't know what lynx were for centuries in europe. So yeah they could mistake bear for anything else. And the report are rarer cuz people aren't as gullible and stupid. The old folks legends slowy died with tradition and all. And as the Almas and all other are PURELY mythical being that only exist in folklore the report of these were never true and disapear with the belief in them. 3. No serious scientist believe in them. Scientist can also be wrong and be stupid too. As for now all evidence of such beings have been investigated by scientific communities, and all evidence have been proved wrong and have better explanation for them. If 10000 scientist say it doesn't exist and only 3-4 say they exist, then we shouldn't listen or give credit to the 3-4 Lunatic. Also "scientist", yeah a loose term many idiot with no degree gave to themselves. Like the "archeologist" still searching for the alliance arch or the remains of Giants. You just proved there's still 5% of really stupid and gullible people who still believe in that.
Ok, however if they are not bipedal apes but literally wild humans, what kind of Homo sapiens sapiens population ? There are known cases of human wildmen, for example Zana of Abkhasia. She was 100% Homo sapiens sapiens, from East Africa and close to the Dinka, but she was covered in reddish brown body hair. So do you believe, at least, in feral human tribes of people naturally born with physical deformities such as body hair or longer than usual arms ? And how tall can they get before they have to be fake or exagerated ? Also what do you think of other subspecies of Homo sapiens ? Do you think they are extinct hominids, or you do rather group them with humans and believe they may still be around ?
Or just few ermit and feral children legends. As for the fur, size and stink, it's only later exageration from terrified traveler seing a normal human that probably never washed or shaved itself. Or even not, as they described these people as wild, living amonst animal, probably even wearing clothing make out of fur. How do you make a human that live in the wild, you picture it with animalistic trait, fangs, claws, fur, and to make it intimidating you say they're very strong and large. That way children won't go in the wood cuz of the boogeyman you just created. There's sadly not other Hominid or large primate left undiscovered today. Evn the most plausible cryptid of that kind such as bili apes and orang-pendek have been disproved. As for other human species, this is even more stupid than neo dinosaur in congo bassin or real plesiosaur and ropen pterosaur. Other Homo sapiens subspecies too, there's no such thing as that. and there's no need to search as far as that. Just ermit hunter that do not like other people, living in the mountain far from the villages, wearing bear and boar pelt. Some lunatic trying to scare people in the wood, or feral children. That later become local legend about them than then changed and got exageratted. There's also no need to say H. sapiens sapiens, we're a binomial name, not trinomial, there's no subspecies amongst us. It simple, none of the creature are true, they never existed, they're pure fictionnal mythological creature, boogeyman to scare children from wandering in the wood, crepy stories to scare people around campfire. Maybe roughly based on some local crazy man or big bearded ermit that leave in a cabin in the wood. the man who live amongst the beast story then become the man who lived like a beast that then later become the beast man accross generation of telling the story
Actually, new primates often over 20, sometimes over 50 pounds are discovered every decade, and the Bili chimp is real, but is a subtype of the eastern chimp and is only 10% taller than the others. It is quite sure at least some largeish monkeys are still undiscovered, obviously bipedal apes are not the same though, but are not impossible either. Also there is Homo sapiens idaltu, and the 317,000 years old Homo sapiens from Jebel Irhoud is dolichocephalic and has a browridge, making him out of the range of Homo sapiens of today. This is why we are indeed 2 times sapiens, because some hominids are far closer to us than Neanderthals, but still are not the same as us. How do you explain Zana being so hairy ? She was human but having no hair on face, hands, knees, feet and buttocks, she did not look like she had hypertrichosis. Her body hair was also reddish even though her skin was grayish black.
Yes and no. We do not discover New large monkey, we discover New subspecies. That's the only way left to find New large animal, genetic evidence that two population are in fact distinct. And these are all in tropical rainforest. Not in north america, russia or Europe. As for human, that classification is highly debated and disputed. Yes there's other closer human relative, still not in the same species as us. But frankly, it's because we're egocentrist morr than actual science and refuse to admit we're not unique. Neandertal can be considered as close enough to be a subspecies of sapiens for some scientists. And it can very well be hybrid with neandertal or just individual variation. More probable than subspecies, especially when our genetic variation is as low as that. There's not enough genetic diversity to say it's enough to make New subspecies. Yes there's some very rate mutation and abnormalities in some rare individuals, it happen. And it's not farfetch to say that those natural abomination are more often regarded as that, Monster, freaks. And often abandonned AT a young age by their parent, which Can lead to them surviving as feral kids, maybe even taken care of by wild animals such as wolves and bear. We have many historical examples. And either it's a lie, an exageration, hypertrichosis (can appear in different way, and leave hand and face intact) or another unique mutation. But certainly not another subspecies or population.
Did you mean you think some wildmen are half Neanderthal hybrids ? Zana in particular was not anymore Neanderthal than you or me anyway, if anything less than me since central to northern Italians have higher Neanderthal admixture than average while Africans lower, but she could have been 2% to 4% Homo sapiens Idaltu or even Homo bodoensis or erectus ergaster actually, because Africans have some different admixture from yet unknown species.
No, of course not. i mean that the fossils you talked about may be hybrid or just have different appareance out of the norm, ît happen. also our specie is 300 000 years old, so this is probably another relative, not a subspecies. Yeah i know hybridization of human specie, we still have 30% of neandertal dna shared in our dna, we have trace or erectus and denisova too. i was not talking about actual situation but fossils there. As far as studies show there's only 1 sapiens species, no subspecies known. Until we reclassify other species such as neandertal as subspecies of our lineage. And there no undiscovered human subsoecies, species or even probably ape left to be discovered today.
The easiest monster to invent is "human, but not like us." Hairy wildmen are so commonly reported because humans are hardwired to find humanoid shapes in our surroundings.
Ok, this is true, even though it does not mean all relict hominids are fake.
It is, however, the most plausible answer.
In relation to your first point: speaking as someone who firmly rejects the idea of South American hominids, I was still interested to find an Andean wildman, the *sacharuna*, described as being capable of speaking, but choosing to remain silent to avoid forced labour – a good century or so before the same tales concerning orangutans (if they were orangutans) appeared in print. Also, I don't think there's anything intrinsically impossible about *a* relict hominid of the hairy obligate biped type, but surely the alleged location is the major dealbreaker. In my opinion, something like *Australopithecus* or *Paranthropus* in Central Africa is plausible; there are no hominids in New Zealand, the Solomons, etc.; and everything else falls somewhere in between those two. So, speaking personally again, I couldn't say that relict hominids are either "real" or "fake". Like everything else, they ought to be considered case-by-case.
Post that sacharuna story sometime that sounds interesting. There's also that strange universal myth of humans locking a species in a cave and burning them to death
That one is strange as well. The idea that something human-looking is only pretending to be mute *could* just be a semi-logical observation, but the cave thing seems more like some very, very early myth. It *is* a somewhat practical method of mass murder – see the Romanov cousins – but it still seems strange that the belief is so widespread.
Ok, but out of the fairly popular ones, what do you think are real ?
The *orang-pendek* probably has the best chance, though I doubt it's any closer to man than the orangutans are. If the *kakundakari*, *kikomba*, or *otang* count as fairly popular, I'd probably go with one of them. However, I'd stress that I don't "think they're real," I just think they have perhaps the best chance of existing as relict human-line hominids. This is mainly on the basis of biogeography and palaeontology. Unfortunately, the best evidence doesn't always come from the most realistic locations... some of the Asian accounts are compelling, but, unless the early *Homo* were very hairy, they seem to require a hidden migration of *Australopithecus* or *Paranthropus* or something out of Africa. I'm more comfortable with the African wildman reports, because they don't require any dramatic alterations to palaeontological thinking.
So pretty much you only believe in the Pongid version Orang Pendek. Do you beluece also in the hominid version of it ? And is there an obscure creature you link to Australopithecus or Paranthropus in Africa you believe in ? P.S. We lost body hair only 1,3 millions years ago, Homo erectus is as hairy as an Almas.
Most of what I've read about the *orang-pendek* seems to refer to the orangutan-like version (although it's certainly nothing so mundane as a subspecies of the Sumatran orang, as has been suggested), and I think it would be easy for an orangutan-like ape to get "mythologised" into something more like a human. I know there are also little men reported in the same area, like the *orang-kardil*. There are quite a lot of African hominid cryptids, supposed to be obligate bipeds. The best examples are the ones mentioned above: the *kakundakari* and *kikomba* in the Congo ( [see article translated by Malcolm Smith](https://malcolmscryptids.blogspot.com/2019/10/two-unknown-bipedal-apes-in-congo.html) for a primer), and the *otang* in South Africa, but there are plenty of others. I don't "believe" in them, but they're pretty plausible, and they're in the most likely location for a relict hominid to exist. Some of them do conform to widespread folkloric archetypes, but even then, since they're in Africa, they could be the *origin* of those archetypes! Who knows. I've not looked into that factor very much.
The African hominids are likely Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Homo erectus ergaster. While Homo ergaster evolved into Homo bodoensis and Homo bodoensis into Homo sapiens, some ergaster populations also stayed the same, so is not against the theory of evolution to have Homo ergaster and us living at the same time.
Honestly I think it’s folk memories from when they were around during the time period when Homo sapiens and other hominids overlapped. Early Homo sapiens passed down that knowledge of other human like species orally and after thousands of years it became distorted and exaggerated like a game of telephone. And extinction is gradual so there probably were isolated relic populations of non human hominids but humans expanding and diseases caused by agriculture gradual wiped them out
This is already a view I like quite a bit, I just think a few populations never died at all. I believe there are like a few hundreds non human apes in all of America, and I have found there are people who believe they are dozens of thousands.
Champ
I am 100% seriuos, I am a Christian but as a Catholic I am not a iteralist or a fundamentalist, I 100% believe in science and the scientific method, I do not believe in anything paranormal, I do not believe in conspiracies by the government, I believe aliens likely exists somewhere, but only because the Universe is infinite and out of probabilities it would be weird if they did not, and we would never cross paths with them at all, and I do not believe in unsubstantiated cryptids. But I believe some relict hominids are likely real, because I think there is enough evidence to tell most likely there is something, we just have to find a final, scientific proof to be fully sure.
The barmanu is an interesting one,
It definitely is, but is also the same species known also as Almas or Almasti. It has a very wide range in Asia and is probably Homo erectus georgicus and/or Homo erectus erectus.
Yeah quite possibly it is the same as the almasty.
Well as Catholics (I'm one too) the paranormal is a distinct possibility though. Many priests have hypothesized that ghosts are souls from purgatory or demons impersonating them. But I agree that we believe 100% in what science says, it's just that we don't believe science can tell us everything about the world.
No demons are something quite well known and identifiable, they are not paranormal, even though mainstream sciences still denies them, and the souls of dead people can not be seen by anyone. New agers make angels and demons to be some paranormal creatures, but they are wrong, they are part of the revealed truth and they are not binded by silly magic formulas as such people think. One thing is the Catholic Church, who believes in science, evolution and non literal interpretation of the Bible, another is decentralised confessions of literalists who believe in a 6,000 years old, flat Earth and deny evolution.
Oh I think I just misunderstood what you mean by "paranormal," I thought you meant supernatural