The evidence for the yeti consists largely on the footprints of Eric Shipton and centuries of legend and lore. Generational knowledge, religious or cultural teachings generally have a basis in truth originating somewhere in time without end. Let us take a brief look back and see what research tells us about the yeti.

The people native to the Himalayan region vigorously hold to the premise the footprints are made by beings. To them, frightful and inimical creatures unknown to the culture of the white visitor and therefore unnamed in visitor language other than abominable snowman (ABSM’s) or the more generalized term, yeti. After a visit to the Himalayas the white amateur tourist becomes an expert on culture, mountaineering and of course, the yeti. If compelled to write about his adventures, the missive usually begins more or less in this manner:

The mystery of the yeti, beast or bear, originated very fittingly with the first Mt Everest expedition of 1921. This refers to the now famous report by the leader of that expedition, Colonel C. K. Howard-Bury who, accompanied by five other white explorers along with 26 native porters, made an attempt at the north face of Mt. Everest in September of that year. Using the Kharta glacier as the best means of approach, the expedition headed for the Lhakpa La, a pass at a height of 22,000 feet. There, in the soft snow they saw the tracks of rabbits and foxes. To their complete surprise they also found tracks that could only have been made [in the words of zoologist Willy Ley] by a barefoot man.

According to Colonel Howard-Bury, the porters proclaimed immediately that these footprints were the tracks of the Metoh Kangmi. This spelling is from the usage of W.H. Murray, who was a member of the 1951 Reconnaissance Expedition to Everest and who seems to have some familiarity with the native tongues of the region. In magazines and newspaper articles you will find this term spelled in a variety of ways, none of which is terribly incorrect for it refers in every sense of the word to the yeti.

The latter seems to be the generalized term for the creature used by North Americans.

Though Colonel Howard-Bury himself made light of the idea of the existence of a special and unknown race of snowmen, the news media of the day would have none of his explanation. A report from an expedition which was a preliminary survey for a later climb to the peak of the world’s highest mountain made good copy all right, but the possibility of encountering a hitherto unknown race of wildmen, - well now THAT WAS A STORY indeed! The newspaper men did have a very good point: “it was the natives’ calm assertion versus Colonel Howard-Bury’s guess,” and although the colonel was an able and experienced man, who just had, as it happens, live there all of this life and could be expected to know what else lived in the same area? This has remained the argument ever since. Howard-Bury’s guess, by the way, was that the human-like tracks were wolf tracks according to the account as told my zoologist Willy Ley.

The truth is, Colonel Howard-Bury was not the first to report mysterious tracks or on the natives’ assertion that there were snowmen. The earliest source known to me is a book vy one Major L. A. Waddell, who on the title page, is identified as having been a member of the India Army Medical Corps. The book is titled “Among the Himalayas;” and was published in London in 1899. His journey from Darjeeling to northeastern Sikkim took place in 1889, ten years prior. In his book, Among the Himalayas”, pg 223 if you want to follow along is this passage:

“Some large footprints in the snow led across our track and away up to the higher peaks. These were alleged to be the trail of the hairy wild men who are believed to live amongst the eternal snows along with the mythical white lions whose roar is reputed to be heard during storms. The belief in these creatures is universal among Tibetans. None, however, of the many Tibetans I have interrogated on this subject could ever give me an authentic case.”

Major Waddell for want of a better explanation suggested that a bear might have made the tracks, his guess being most likely of the species Ursus isabellinus. Another source which probably antedates Colonel Howard-Bury’s report, is a book by French author Jean Marques-Riviere called L’Inde Secrete et Sa Magie.” Author Marques Riviere said that a pilgrim assured him that the creatures were of the human race, in fact human giants, neither bears nor monkeys and that these giants spoke an unknown language.

This isn’t the first time I had heard of a language possibility. This is something I was told by dark skinned river people in Central Kalimantan. My understanding here however is that the Kalimantan’s version of the hairy creature they called batutut, which is descriptive of the hairy, tailless orang pendek, hardly fit the image of a hairy giant at all. There is a great deal of information to process coming out of Asia with a large percentage of it yet to be proven. In the meanwhile, recording the historic references from an erstwhile generation can certainly incite the more modern mind into pools of deep reflection.

But back to the outtake of Marques-Riviere’s book L’Inde Secrete et Sa Magie. He wrote that the “pilgrim claimed to have been a member of an expedition of natives who followed a track of footprints and finally saw the snowmen. Ten or more of them sat in a circle; they were ten to twelve feet high, beating tom-toms, oscillating and engaged in some magic rite. Their bodies were covered with hair; their faces between man and gorilla; quite naked at that great altitude and a sadness expressed on their frightful visages.”

No one, of course, is under any obligation to believe any of this. Don’t shoot the messenger; I’m paraphrasing what has already been written, now weathered, yellowed and worn by the passage of seventy or more years in time. Whether or not the author or the pilgrim embellished the story, it can still be taken as an independent report on the existence of such - - if only as a belief which the natives adhere to among themselves. But not I, says she.

If there be casual acceptance of this belief in Marques-Riviere’s story, it came as a flash in the pan in 1922 from the leader of what was planned to be the second Mt. Everest expedition, General C.G. Bruce. When General Bruce stopped at the Rongbuk Monastery, located to the north of the mountain, he used the opportunity to ask the Head Lama whether he had ever heard of the Metoh Kangmi. The Lama reacted to the question as casually as if it had been about a herd of yak or something else equally known and replied, “yes, five of them live farther up in the Rongbuk Valley.”

General Bruce apparently felt that he could not spare either the time or the manpower to go after snowmen and as well, his expedition never did scale the mountain and who knows what he may have found if he had pursued the matter. Conversely, in recent decades, expeditions have always had a very specific if not well defined goals as if it were military operations. It is quite possible however, that General Bruce simply held disbelief in the whole story. The reasons for the cancellation of his plan to scale Mt. Everest are not clearly recorded in history.

This probably is a fundamental mistake; the earlier explorers who went out to see what they could find seem to have been more successful on the whole. Of course it is also possible that General Bruce simply disbelieved the whole story.

In 1925 a privately published report appeared in Bombay, not causing any stir discernible from a distance. Its author was an Italian, N. A. Tombazi, who had then returned from a photographic expedition to the southern portions of the glacier area of the Kanchenjunga. Tombazi stated simply that he had actually seen a snowman, at an elevation of about 15,000 feet.

“Intense glare prevented me seeing anything for a few seconds, but I soon spotted the object referred to two or three hundred yards away down the valley--unquestionably the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking upright and stopping occasionally to uproot some dwarf rhododendron. It showed dark against the snow and wore no clothing. Within the next minute or so it had moved into some thick scrub and was lost to view. I examined the footprints that were similar in shape to those of a man but only 6-7 inches long by 9 inches wide at the broadest part. Marks of five toes and instep were clear but trace of heel indistinct. I counted five at regular intervals from 1 to 1 ½ feet. The prints were undoubtedly of a biped.”

A stride of 12 to 18 inches is about normal for a man who is not in a special hurry. As for the dimensions of the footprints, it might be that the heel did not touch the ground, or at least not firmly enough to leave an impression.

Just as Colonel Howard-Bury's report on mysterious tracks proved not to have been the earliest, so Tombazi's report on a sighting turned out not to be the first. An earlier one had been transmitted by one H. J. Elwes, a Fellow of the Royal Society, to the Zoological Society of London and had been published in the Proceedings for 1915. The actual witness was not Mr. Elwes himself, but a forest officer named J. R. P. Gent, who was stationed in the vicinity of Darjeeling and who said that he had seen humanoid creatures, called sogpa by the local people, above the tree line. They looked more apelike than manlike to Mr. Gent, who went on to say that they were covered with long yellowish-brown hair. Their stride measured from 1 ½ to 2 feet on reasonably fiat ground. But in steep places they seemed to "walk on their knees" so that the toe marks seemed to point backward.

This last remark is important if only because quite a number of people have made fun of an alleged belief of the Tibetans that the feet of the snowmen point backward.

Chronologically, a story told by the English explorer Hugh Knight lies between the Elwes-Gent report and Tombazi's Publication. Unfortunately I have not been able to find Knight's original story, so that the following is very much second - or even third-hand and is given essentially for the sake of completeness. Hugh Knight is reported to have seen a snowman (who was unaware of his presence) from as close a distance as twenty paces. The snowman had the size of a big man, with a barrel chest and overlong arms. His skin was yellow and covered with blondish hair. He had the high cheek bones of the mongoloids and splayed feet. Though apparently without clothing the creature carried a primitive bow. He is reported to have suddenly run off, as if in pursuit of something which Knight could not see.

The next man to write in defense of the snowmen is a famous geographer and explorer, Ronald Kaulbach. He stated that, in 1936, he had come across tracks "looking exactly as though they had been made by a barefooted man" in a pass between the valleys of the Chu and Salween Rivers.

There were not just one set of tracks but five of them. Kaulbach had four Sherpa porters with him. All four were agreed on the existence of the metoh kangmi, (abominable snowman) but only two said that these particular tracks had been made by them; the other two were willing to admit that they might have been made by snow leopards. Though Kaulbach stressed, "there are no bears in that part of the country," he was told later that the tracks must have been made either by bears or by giant pandas or by an unknown species of monkeys. Kaulbach replied that neither bears nor giant pandas occur in this area, that there are no monkeys there either, and furthermore that any monkeys living there would not go above the snowline. He might have added (but didn't) that "an unknown species of monkeys" would be a very interesting discovery too.

The species of bear usually credited by far-away experts as having made the tracks is the one known to zoologists as Ursus arctos pruinosus. It does occur in the Himalayas--but not everywhere, and this is an incredibly huge region -- and it is an exceedingly large creature, growing to the dimensions of a big North American grizzly or Alaskan Kodiak bear. In color its fur is pale and can be nearly white, and when it is striding normally the hind feet more or less obliterate the tracks made by the front feet, producing a strange compound spoor. [Spoor: trail or line of revealing tracks] The telltale sign is that in addition to the five toe marks in front there are two additional marks on either side of the track, caused by the innermost and outermost toes of the hind feet.

An interesting illustration of this kind of confusion was told by Frank S. Smythe in his book “The Valley of Flowers (New York: Norton, 1949):

About four inches of snow had fallen recently, and it was obvious that the tracks had been made the previous evening after the sun had lost its power and had frozen during the night, for they were perfect impressions distinct in every detail. On the level the footmarks were as much as 13 inches in length and 6 inches in breadth, but uphill they averaged only 8 inches in length, though the breadth was the same. The stride was from 18 inches to 2 feet on the level, but considerably less uphill, and the footmarks were turned outward at about the same angle as a [human] man's. There were the well-defined imprints of five toes, 1-½ inches to 1 ¾ inches long and ¾ of an inch broad, which, unlike human toes, were arranged symmetrically. Lastly there was what at first sight appeared to be the impression of a heel, with two curious toe like impressions on either side .... [perhaps a functionless digit like a dew claws? –I wonder]

My photographs were developed by Kodak Ltd. of Bombay under conditions that precluded any subsequent accusation of faking and, together with my measurements and observations . . . were examined by Professor Julian Huxley, Secretary of the Zoological Society, Mr. Martin A. C. Hinton, Keeper of Zoology at the Natural History Museum [London] and Mr. R. I. Pocock. The conclusion reached by these experts was that the tracks were made by a bear.

At first, due to a misunderstanding as to the exact locality in which the tracks had been seen, the bear was said to be Ursus arctos pruinosus, but subsequently it was decided that it was Ursus arctos isabellinus which is distributed throughout the western and central Himalayas. The tracks agreed in size and character with that animal and there is no reason to suppose that they could have been made by anything else.

It would be very nice, even though somewhat disappointing, if Mr. Smythe's photographs proved more than just this single case. But they do not; even though his porters had been fooled by the tracks, the Sherpas, as a rule, are well acquainted with the bear's compound spoor. Besides, bear tracks and "snowman" tracks have been found together.

More stories about strange tracks came in shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War temporarily interrupted interest in Mount Everest. In 1937 Eric Shipton and H. W. Tilman ran a survey expedition in the Karakoram. [*The Karakoram is a mountain range in South Central Asia between Xinjiang-Uygur, China and Northern most Kashmir, India. It extends 300 miles (480 km) to the Pamir range: Northwestern extension of the Himalayas, highest peak the Godwin Austen.]

One member of their expedition and two Sherpas visited a known but remote area which is referred to as Snow Lake, and promptly found tracks: "They were roughly circular, about a foot in diameter, 9 inches deep and 18 inches apart. They lay in a straight line without any right and left stagger, nor was there any sign of overlap as would be the case with a four-footed beast. The Sherpas identified them as those of a Yeti.... A few days later, in another glacier valley, bear tracks were everywhere and were quickly recognized as such by the Sherpas." Eric Shipton had seen else where such circular tracks, which indicate some melting of the snow. And Tilman, who had originally considered the whole matter as a collection of silly superstitions, openly reversed his opinion. If we recall accurately, Tombazi had also been skeptical originally, referring to the yeti as a "delicious fancy" until he saw one.

Though these circular tracks did not show any detail, it is important that they were in a straight line, Bears can't walk that way. It is true that smaller predators, like the European fox, occasionally manage to put all four of their footprints in a straight line--in Europe they say that the fox has been "stringing"; that is, you can stretch a string over the prints--but only small four-footed animals can do it. A large creature either needs legs like a camel's to produce such a track, or else it has to be bipedal.

One particular Sherpa who accompanied Shipton repeatedly should be mentioned now: Sen Tensing. He not only saw yeti' prints on quite a number of occasions, he also once saw a yeti. In November 1949 a large group of Sherpas gathered in front of the Thyangboche Monastery for a religious festival, the monastery is located On a hilltop at an elevation of about 13,000 feet, not too far from Mount Everest; in fact, the mountain can be seen from the monastery. The Sherpas assembled in a meadow that is bordered on one side by a forest. It was out of the forest that a yeti suddenly appeared. The nearest of the Sherpas were about 80 feet away; they said that it was of the same size as they are themselves, averaging 5 ½ feet in height - and that its whole body, except the face, was covered with reddish-brown hair.

Because Eric Shipton, W. H. Murray, and other explorers knew Sen Tensing personally, they saw to it that he was thoroughly questioned. The occasion was a cocktail party at the British Embassy at Katmandu. The Sherpa was brought in, still wearing climbing boots and heavy breeches, and several Nepalese cross-examined him for half an hour. They later said not only that Sen Tensing stuck to his story all the way through but also that he could not have done so if he had not spoken the truth.

Then came the expedition of 1951, and, as W. H. Murray put it, more news of the yeti. Writing in “The Scots Magazine” (vol. LrX, no. 2, May 1953), he told the following story:

Early in November we withdrew from Everest into Sola Khombu in Nepal, and thence explored the unsurveyed ranges, which lie 30-40 miles westwards. Our party split up. Shipton and Ward penetrated into the heart of the Gaurisankar range---a wild tangle of high and icy peaks--by crossing a pass of 20,000 feet,, now called the Menlung La. Bourdillon and I followed them a few days later (after explorations of our own farther north). From the Menlung La we dropped 2,000 feet onto a long, westward-flowing glacier. At 18,000 feet, on its snow-covered surface we came upon the tracks of two bipeds, which were quite distinct from the tracks of Shipton and Ward. Like the latter before us, we followed the strange tracks for two miles down the glacier, because they had chosen the best route through the crevasse system. Where broad crevasses barred the way, the tracks struck sharp left or right to avoid them or dodged around little ice cliffs and pinnacles. They were the tracks of an animal using its intelligence to choose a good, safe, and therefore (in its detail) complex route. Apart from that very important observation our evidence at the best corroborates Shipton's, for the prints had been enlarged by melting and so were the round shapeless prints typical of two previous reports.

After two miles the glacier became excessively riven [torn apart or split] so the tracks diverged rightwards onto the stony moraine [a mass of rocks, gravel, sand and clay carried and deposited directly by a glacier] and there we lost them.

We, too, had to take to the moraine. We followed it one mile to rough grazing grounds, which support small herds of wild goat and sheep and presumably yetis too. On meeting Shipton and Ward we found them still in a state of subdued excitement over the tracks; they had come on them several days earlier than we, when the prints had been no more than a few hours old. Where the snow lay soft and heavy the yetis had left only the deep outline of the foot, but where it lay thin and frozen the pad marks and the five toe marks had been distinct within the print. Where the yetis had jumped the smaller crevasses the scrabble marks of their toes could be clearly seen on the far side. The prints were 6 inches wide by 12½ inches long; the gap between the prints was 9 or 10 inches. The Sherpa, Sen Tensing, who accompanied Shipton, was able to identify the prints as those of two yetis. He knew well the spoor of bear and could say at once that these were not bear tracks ....

Eric Shipton, who had come across the tracks when they were still fresh, took a photograph that proves that, no matter how many "yeti tracks" were really made by bears, these were decidedly not. There is no mammal known to science in this area, which leaves such tracks. An interesting point must be added here however: Dr. Lawrence W. Swan of San Francisco State College has called attention to the strong similarity between the footprints photographed by Eric Shipton and the cast made by Carl Akeley of the foot of an African mountain gorilla (Science, vol. 127, 18 April 1958).

Although they resemble human tracks they are as decidedly "un-human." The latter fact is important too, for in addition to the customary explanations citing two kinds of bears, loping wolves, loping snow leopards, giant pandas; and monkeys, several people have held that the snowmen were simply men: Hindu ascetics or outlaws. Of course both Hindu ascetics (who go naked, or very nearly so, in the snow) and outlaws do exist, but if they leave footprints they are still human footprints, about 10 inches long and at most 4 inches wide.

The conclusion appears inevitable that the prints were made by something other than outlaws, bears, or snow leopards. W. H Murray concluded his article rather lightheartedly: "What, then, is the Abominable Snowman? In my own judgment it is no other than the metoh kangmi, mirka, yeti or sogpa. But what is the metoh kangmi, or rather what could it be?

Before embarking on speculation I want to list quickly a few additional stories. Andre Roch of the Swiss expedition of 1952 reported on several sets of tracks of different sizes, as if a family had moved out of the valley when the expedition moved in. In the spring of 1954 the Daily Mall of London actually sent an expedition to Nepal to find the snowmen; the result was, unfortunately, not a snowman but a book about the snowman. [The Abominable Snowman, by Ralph Izzard (New York: Doubleday, 1955]

It does not settle the case, but it is a nice compact collection of newspaper stories on the snowman from the papers of three continents. Critics have complained that it is just that, plus another newspaper story wrapping everything else together; apparently only a researcher can appreciate the convenience of not having to hunt, twenty years later, for something printed in an out of-the-way newspaper.

At the time this expedition was under way, Colonel K. N. Rana, director of the Nepalese government's Bureau of Mines, reported that on two occasions Nepalese tribesmen had actually made prisoners of snowmen. He was informed that one prisoner was a baby. The information reached him too late; a search party failed to find the people who had picked up the "snow baby"; they had simply vanished. This, it was emphasized, is not too unusual in this land of glaciers, towering peaks, and high snowy passes, but it was annoying just the same. In the other case one of the tribesmen took prisoner a male snowman, presumably full grown. They trussed it up securely but the specimen refused to eat what they offered and finally died on the long journey. Not realizing that a dead specimen would be almost as valuable as a live one, the tribesmen abandoned the carcass and arrived with nothing but the story of their adventure. Unfortunately for Colonel Rana mere stories are not always believed.

The most tangible piece of evidence is an object of animal hide, strangely peaked and furry, which is kept at the Thyangboche Monastery and which is stated to be the scalp of a yeti. Ralph Izzard quotes several people who have seen it as going on record that it is not a cap but must be a scalp, since no seams could be detected. It is as understandable as it is deplorable that the Lama does not wish to part with this item, though he will show it to serious visitors. [Mind you this text is from a 1950’s rendition of how things were ‘then.’ Much has changed since then.]

In 1953 Navnit Parekh of the Bombay Natural History Society visited the monastery and was accorded by the Lama the privilege of being shown the scalp. Taking some slight advantage of the old man's friendliness, Mr. Parekh pulled out a few strands of hair, which he sent to Dr. Leon A. Hausman of New Brunswick, N.J., for examination and possible classification.

Doctor Hausman tends to think that the "scalp" is actually a cap, made of fur from the back or shoulder of a large mammal. The strands of hair are definitely not from a langur monkey (Semnopithecus roxellanae), or from a bear, or from tiny animal closely related either to the langur or to the bear. The strands are quite old; their age possibly may have to be measured in terms of centuries. Finally Dr. Hausman pointed out that, if it is a cap, the animal that grew the fur need not be native to Nepal or Tibet. [In more recent times since Ley’s book was published, the hairs are believed to be that of a serow –when I find further information, I’ll add it here. BShort]

In 1957 the snowman hunt of the Daily Mail was repeated by a private expedition, again without tangible result.

Later in the same year a member of a Soviet expedition to the Pamir Mountains reported having seen a snowman from a distance. These mountains are in the Tadzhik Republic in Central Asia. The purpose of the Soviet expedition was to survey water resources. One day a specialist with the expedition, A. C. Pronin, saw a snowman on a rocky summit and watched it for about five minutes. The creature was stocky; Mr. Pronin told the reporter of Kornsomolskaya Pravda, it had long arms and a body covered with grayish-brown hair. Three days later Pronin saw it again briefly in the same spot. These sightings occurred in August 1957; the exact dates were not given.

I don't know what the Russians thought about snowman stories as long as these reports reached them from what was considered "capitalist" countries in the 1950’s, but apparently a sighting by one of their own nationals spurred them into activity. A special "collective" was organized to track it down; among the members are the geologist and explorer Sergei V. Obrutchev and the historian Professor Boris F. Porshnev. In November 1958 the group made a kind of interim report in which two things were asserted: that the "existence of the snowman was confirmed little by little" and that its habitat was in the deserts of Tibet and in Sinkiang province in northwestern China. One of the Russians said that the failure of the various expeditions made by Englishmen and Americans was probably due to the fact that they had looked in the wrong place, to the south of the Himalayas.

"Many Tibetans have met this creature," the Soviet scientists stated. "They speak of it as an animal moving on two legs, with brown shiny fur and long hair on its head. Its face looks like both ape and man. Hunters often find remnants of its food, for example, bits of rabbit. But, according to them, the wild man also eats plant roots." Through these dates, a few tentative conclusions can be drawn. The explanations that have been advanced are the following:

1. It is just the langur monkey.

This is the weakest of all. Langurs walk on all four legs, they are not large enough, and where they occur they are well known to the local people.

2. The tracks were made by bears and since bears often rear up and sometimes walk on their hind legs the whole thing was caused by bears. There is no doubt that some yeti tracks probably are bear tracks. But bears only sometimes walk upright, not all the time or as a normal course of things. They are not structurally meant to walk upright. The most important evidence is Shipton's footprint, which is most decidedly was not that of a bear. There is modern evidence of bear tracks in addition to another completely different track than the one in Shipton’s photograph. We very well could have two things going on here. An undiscovered bear and a yeti.

3. The tracks were caused by Mylodon, the giant sloth.

This explanation is the weirdest one and is advanced essentially because the Mylodon seems to have walked upright and did have a heavy fur which would protect it from the cold. But all Sloths giant or otherwise, extinct or living, are New World animals or are they? As an aside the State of Florida claims to have had a Giant Sloth (Eremotherium) active during the Pliocene & Pleistocene ages. That Giant Sloth was known to be a vegetarian, with an extensive noticeably long tail, 20 feet in length from head to tail tip; the largest land animal to ever live in the State of Florida. Interestingly enough modern day Skunk apes are also reported in the same region. Searches are also underway currently for such a giant sloth in the Amazon. El Duende or the Didi is a hairy biped also said to inhabit the South American jungles of Columbia, specifically Guiana.

4. Perhaps the yeti is a very primitive type of Man, possibly the supposedly extinct "giant man of China," or an off shoot of the Russian wildman or some say, it’s an anthropoid ape. This is the only idea worth considering. Right now there are three kinds of living apes, quite different in type and appearance. Two of them live in Africa, the chimpanzee and the gorilla. The third, the orangutan, in Sumatra and Borneo or rather the Kalimantan. All three of them can and do assume an upright stance and walk on their hind legs only. The chimpanzee can do it better than the gorilla and the gorilla better than the orangutan. But none of them walks on its hind legs exclusively; they all revert to a special variety of four-legged walk whenever it is convenient. The mountain gorilla can stand rather cold temperatures and happens to be the least hairy of the trio, while the orangutan, living in the warmth of Indonesia, has exceptionally long hair, though the fur is not very dense.

One can see that the puzzle would not be completely solved simply by postulating the existence of a hitherto unknown ape of Central Asia. Not that such an ape would be impossible. Apes did live in Asia in the geologic past and they might well have shared the experience of two animals, which have been mentioned in connection with the snowmen. Both the giant panda and the langur monkey were originally inhabitants of a near-tropical area.

As the mountains slowly rose and the area cooled off, the giant panda adapted to changing conditions rather than migrate elsewhere. The food problem was resolved in a somewhat peculiar manner: the panda lived exclusively on bamboo shoots. The bamboo, normally a warm-climate plant, had proved to be rather cold resistant too. The langur monkey, itself long thought to be a fable until it was discovered by Pere Armand David, also chose to remain in the cooling mountain forests, perplexing later zoologists with the surprising spectacle of a monkey roaming snowy branches, and causing itself to be actually named "snow monkey" for a while. Naturally neither of these animals lives above the snowline, where there is no food for a vegetarian or partly vegetarian animal.

What happened to the panda and the langur might also have happened to the yeti. But simply postulating the existence of a Central Asian equivalent to the African mountain gorilla does not solve the problem fully.

One would have to postulate an ape with some special human-like characteristics, the most obvious of which would be the adoption of a bipedal walk all the time. Why an ape, staying with its cooling forest, should have done that is hard to understand; cold or not, it is still a forest. No ape has evolved to walk upright that we’ve discovered so far. Additionally, it would have to be an ape that has taken to a partly carnivorous diet, which, considering the circumstances is easier to understand. Finally, if Hugh Knight's story can be trusted, it would be the only "ape" to carry a tool.

The reasoning narrows on something that is closer to "Man," bluntly speaking a very primitive type of Man - "proto-Man," if you like. And that is where the suggestion of the "extinct giant man of China" comes in.

During the interval between the two World Wars interesting things transpired in East Asia. Quite a long time ago, in October 1891, a Dutch physician, Eugene Dubois, found a skull (jaws missing) and a femur some distance from Ngawi, near Trinil on Java. The owner of these bones was named Pithecanthropus erectus (the "upright [walking] ape-man"), and the long controversies that arose all centered around the unanswerable question whether this being had still been essentially an ape or already essentially a man. The probability was that it actually stood halfway, but the more sensible people stayed away from the argument and said that more evidence was needed to make a decision.

That new evidence took a long time to come. In 1929 Dr. Davidson Black turned up with very primitive skulls from the vicinity of Peking. They were named Sinanthropus (China Man) and were considered human. Just the same, there were numerous similarities between the Skulls of Sinanthropus and that of Pithecanthropus, indicating that Pithecanthropus might also be considered human.

Soon after the finds near Peking, Java began to yield more Pithecanthropus material. The man who did most of the work, both in the field and in the laboratory studying the material, was Dr. G. H. R. yon Konigswald. In January 1939 Dr. yon Konigswald went to Peking, where the late Dr. Franz Weidenreich was working at the time. Doctor von Konigswald brought a part of an upper jaw with him. It had well-preserved teeth, which were indubitably human. But it also had a gap between the front teeth and the canines, which had always been considered typical for the anthropoids and was therefore called the "simian gap." In spite of the simian gap both scientists accepted the jaw as human, because of the teeth, and in spite of the fact that it was unusually large for a human jaw.

After some hesitation the new type was called Pithecanthropus robustus. Then Dr. von Konigswald found two more jaws, both near Sangkan on Java. The first could not be classified because many of the teeth were missing completely and what there was left of some was so worn down that it was impossible to tell the difference between man and ape.

The other was undoubtedly human. And it was large, large even for Pithecanthropus robustus. Dr. v on Konigswald decided that it had to be a still different type and named it Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, the "big man from old Java." Speaking of it in a lecture, Dr. Franz Weidenreich declared, "We shall not err in estimating that Meganthropus reached the size, stoutness, and strength of a big male gorilla."

A point of doubt was permissible. There have always been individual "giants," pathological specimens with malfunctioning glands, usually weak and sickly not in spite of but because of their size. Their lower jaws are especially large if the pituitary gland is unbalanced, and that has even received the special name of "acromegalic gigantism." What proof was there that the jaw fragment found was not such a pathological case?

It would have been a reasonable question, but Dr. Weidenreich forestalled it by looking for such a possibility himself. Now, in an acromegalic giant the thickening is pronounced only in the lower portions, accompanied by an enormously prominent chin. The jaw of Meganthropus is thick all the way through and it has no chin at all.

There was, the experts declared, nothing pathological about that jaw. It is just big, indicating a primitive man with the size and strength of a gorilla but with much higher intelligence. An even more astonishing find was made by Dr. von Konigswald a little later. The Chinese call all fossils lung-tchih or lung-koo, "dragon bones" or "dragon teeth," and ascribe high pharmaceutical value to them.

For that reason they used to keep secret the localities where such bones could be found, and Western scientists had to buy their fossils in pharmacies. Paleontologists spoke half-jokingly of a "Chinese drugstore fauna." In such a drugstore Dr. von Konigswald acquired, one by one, three large molars (roots missing), which seemed to be human but had six times the volume of the corresponding molars of modern man.

Dr. von Konigswald referred to them as Gigantopithecus (giant ape) but Dr. Weidenreich argued as even today they should be called Gigantanthropus (giant man). If one can assume the same proportions now prevailing the creature must have had twice the size of a male gorilla. But it may be wise to wait for more fossil material before a verdict is attempted.

All of which, taken together, means that several types of protohuman or very primitive human types existed in Asia and Indonesia in the past. This of course, adds fuel to the fire surrounding the stories coming out that area of a creature called the orang pendek.

As regards the yeti, the two most likely possibilities are these: either it is an anthropoid ape which differs very considerably from the other anthropoid apes, which have easier climates to contend with, or else descendants of a very primitive nearly human type are still around and are now known as the yeti, snowman and countless of other ethnic names.

Source: Text from “Exotic Zoology,” 1959, Willy Ley

Born in Berlin, Willy Ley (October 2, 1906 - June 24, 1969) was a science writer and space advocate who helped popularize rocketry and spaceflight in Germany and the United States. Ley was known best for his books on rocketry but his book "Exotic Zoology" gave us this account of the Yeti. Ley died in Jackson Heights, Queens just a month before the first person set foot on the moon. The Ley crater on the far side of the Moon has been named in his honor.

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