Documentary lm-maker Véra Frossard had been living in Katmandu for six years when she wrote a short but highly revealing book: The Memory of the Yeti: On the Footsteps of a Myth.1 It is a pity that this book should be so poorly known; its simple and precise presentation and its avoidance of embellishments make it a remarkable work.
Véra Frossard relates how she came to enquire about the yeti, following a meeting with a French resident of Nepal who had been living there for 35 years. According to him, the “animal” was only rarely seen. It could climb up to the top of the glaciers. Its cry was a sharp and short whistle that very few people had heard. It mumbled while eating and exuded a fetid smell. The yeti walked on all fours, like a chimpanzee, except in the snow, to keep its ngers from the cold. Its legs were bowed and, when standing erect, it reached 1.60 meters (5 feet 2 inches). Its arms were extremely strong. Finally, her informer said that the yeti was to be seen only in the ve or six days preceding the full moon.
Frossard was so puzzled by this description that she decided to enquire for herself, camera in hand. On her low budget she could afford only a single guide, but was well prepared for the quest, used to the altitude, physically strong, and uent in Nepalese. Newcomers suffer from altitude sickness from 3000 meters (11,000 feet) up, while those having lived in the mountains can climb further without having to rest and acclimatize themselves. At 4500 meters (17,000 feet) there is snow even in the summer and oxygen levels are low. The body needs time to increase its number of red blood cells to ensure enough oxygen is taken in. Sherpas are well acclimatized to high altitudes; presumably, so is the yeti.
Book cover of Vera Frossard’s Memory of the Ye .
PHOTO: Edi ons L’Harma an
Like another great trekker, Alexandra David-Néel, whose books she greatly admired, Véra Frossard could endure dif cult, eight- to 10-hour hikes. She spoke to many people, for example, to a 56-yearold lama who told her, in spite of his reticence, that the yeti was really a god. Reports generally agreed: the yeti were much more numerous before the arrival of tourists in the 1970s. They sometimes came down into the elds, messing up the crops, strangling yaks and eating parts of them.
Frossard was lucky to meet a middleaged woman, Lapka, who had had a close encounter with a yeti when she was 19. She was herding her yaks and had just put potatoes to cook on the re. Feeling a presence, Lapka turned around; the yeti
grabbed her by the neck and threw her into the river. The water was cold—8°C (46°F)—and she lost consciousness. When she came to, she decided to remain hidden in the water. As night fell, she crawled back to the other shore, where she played dead. But, she said:
The yeti had killed all my yaks, a three-year old, a nak (female) and three other. He had torn open the chest of the three-year old and was sucking its blood although not eating its meat. It wasn’t very tall, about 1.50 meters (~ 4.8 feet) but very wide. Its skull was pointed and the short hair on each side of its forehead was clearly parted in the middle. Its smell was very strong, even from where I was observing it. Its body hair was dark, except at its waist were it seemed worn out, and on its chest were it was much lighter.2
It took Lapka a while to recover from this nightmare—the yeti did not leave until dawn. At her mother’s house, a lama came to heal and exorcise her. Lamas study theology, occult sciences, sacred texts, astronomy and medicine. Many observers have commented on their remarkable psychic abilities. Véra Frossard herself noted that the monks are capable of remarkable intellectual achievements, such as extensive debating contests; on the other hand, while in the physical domain, “they quickly reach through a series of short hops a trance that can last for hours, during which they cannot be interrupted or spoken to.”3
According to Frossard, such achievements are merely a means to reach the monks’ goal. She also speaks of the toumo, a practice that allows one to maintain an inner re. The explorer Alexandra DavidNéel had been initiated to this practice during ve winter months in the 1920s, at an altitude of 3900 meters (14,000 ft), dressed in a novice’s thin cotton dress (rés kyang)—from which came the expression toumo reskiang. Alexandra David-Néel described the “masters of the art of toumo, sitting on the snow, night after night, naked, motionless, lost in meditation, while the blizzards of winter howled around them.”4 David-Néel’s toumo apprenticeship saved her life and that of her traveling companion, her adoptive son the young Tibetan lama, Yongden. (See also, chapter 18)
It is also thanks to that inner re that paleontologist Stella Swift, the heroine of Philip Kerr’s novel Esau, was saved from freezing to death in the foothills of Annapurna. An Indian holy man, dressed only in a frayed tunic, warmed her up with his hands:
The power of his hands seems to draw from a deep internal source, so strong that it appeared to be the life-force itself.5 The study of so-called traditional societies shows that each community has a network of basic tenets, which guide their whole life and does so quite effectively. This is clear from medical, psychic and spiritual perspectives. It would be unwise to mock the bizarre habits of remote people. I recall conversations with a neighbor, a Catholic priest, who told me about really bizarre exorcism ceremonies practiced near Nantes hardly 25 years ago, practices con rmed by another friend, a physician from the same area of France.
Lapka, the young woman affected by her encounter with a ferocious yeti, also bene ted from a session of exorcism by a lama, but only with temporary effects: questioned a few years later about the event, she suffered a week-long relapse that required new treatments.
Véra Frossard put together a 52-minute lm of sequences shot in Nepal. Her document is well worth seeing. She speaks, for example, of westerners’ “King Kong syndrome,” adapting data about the yeti to their own ideas rather than to those of the Sherpas who have lived in its proximity for centuries. Sherpas think of the yeti as a god, which is probably why they are not listened to. One should, on the contrary, enter into their worldview (scenery, people, fauna and
ora), some aspects of which are millennia old. Lapka reiterated that a god should not behave like that, a belief typical of the Sherpa: as a consequence of her making the yeti a god, scientists did not take her seriously. However, if taken from a different point of view, her testimony offers a path to the imagination of these people and how they construct a myth.
1 Edi ons de l’Harma an, 2004.
2 Véra Frossard, op. cit., p.40.
3 Véra Frossard, op. cit., p.43. Such an ability to run quickly in small hops is reminiscent of the ye !
4 Alexandra David-Néel, Voyage d’une Parisienne à Lhassa, p.164.
5 Philip Kerr, Esau, London: Cha o & Windus, 1996, p. 334.
8. The Dumje Festival
For a start, the people of Kumjung hang multi-colored ags to the branches of their garden. The next morning they bring joyful banners to the monastery, where the long horns sound their bizarre tones. There is a crowd of people of all ages in the monastery yard. This is the feast of Kumbila, the god of the mountain. Masked men dance to music played by the lamas. At the sound of the gong, all the spectators throw rice. Each family offers a silk scarf to Kumbila who, after his nal dance, re-enters the monastery, ending the rst day of the festival.
The holiday lasts four, seven, even nine days, depending on the village. The exact date varies according to the lunar calendar, but the key time is the night of the full moon after the summer solstice. On that day, work in the elds ceases; the crops, and with them the future of the farmers, is left to the will of the gods. On this profoundly Sherpa holiday, solemn rites of exorcism are performed to ward off evil and natural catastrophes.
These rites hark back to early shamanic days. The usual practices, such as the construction of a “devil trap,” built from threads crisscrossing on a wooden frame, or an offering to calm a slighted spirit, no longer suf ce. There is a need for elaborate festivities, uniting the energies of the whole community as a powerful shield against misfortune. It is interesting to note that the Sherpa devil trap has its analogue
in the dreamcatcher of North-American natives.1
Each year, a number of families—more precisely eight from each village—are responsible for nancing the Dumje festival. This is a heavy charge, but each family is proud to play an important role for the bene t of all. This gift to the community is similar in a way to the potlatch of the Paci c Northwest.
During Dumje, the dances, the women’s festive apparel, the men in their Sunday best sporting cowboy hats, and of course the beer (chang), all contribute to the merriment. Some rites are performed by monks within the monastery walls and are not open to the people. They belong to the esoteric, or secret, world. Other rites, exoteric, are open to everyone’s participation. On the third day of Dumje, the man who dresses as a yeti makes his appearance. Frossard, the lmmaker, visited him at home; he is Tibetan, his wife Nepalese.
I am the one who has carried the yeti’s skull in Kumjung for the past fourteen years, one day each year. The people of the village picked me and they pay me with rice, beer or money; nobody really wants to impersonate the yeti.
“Why?” asked Frossard.
Because they are afraid…2 During the afternoon, there are more dances in the monastery yard. Two of the dancers are dressed as skeletons. But it’s really the following day that the yeti-man makes his grand entrance, wearing a sheepskin coat, a black mask and, on the top of his head, the yeti’s skull, which looks just like that drawn by Hergé in Tintin in Tibet. That skull is a replica; the “real” one is kept in a metal locker in the monastery.
The villagers at rst hesitate to approach the yeti. They soon gather courage and expel from the monastery the fearsome destroyer of crops. They then also leave the monastery yard and a procession of monks, musicians and villagers pursue the yeti to the limits of the village.
Back in France a few months later, Véra Frossard discovered a similar celebration when she attended the Festival of the Bear, a relic of a ritual formerly common in all Europe. The festival is held each year in February in Prats-de-Mollo (Pyrénées-Orientales), France. A man disguised as a bear terrorizes the village. He is caught and the celebration ends with the shaving of the bear: its animal nature is removed so as to bring it back to the civilized realm.3
Closing her story, Véra Frossard re ected on the words of an old Buddhist monk: “There is a yeti deep in every man’s spirit. Only the wise are not haunted by it.”4
A color supplement complements her book, with pictures of scenery, houses, people, costumes and relics. The author overcame cold and fatigue to reach people involved in the quest for the yeti, for example, the Sherpa Gyalzen, who acted as a guide for researcher Robert Hutchison. Gyalzen distinguished two types of yetis: a short one, the mitey, and a tall one, chuty, speaking of the wild man in general as migo.
Testimonies collected by Véra Frossard suggest that the kidnapping of women by male yetis is just as frequent as the capture of men by female yetis. There are sometimes offspring, showing that the two species are genetically compatible.
Chinese Tarzan, the monster abducts the heroine. PHOTO: Chinese comic book, 1986 It is only because she knew how to approach people that Frossard managed to acquire such information. Speaking the language made a big difference. She probably managed to explain—perhaps even to show through videos—what she wanted to communicate to the public, creating a functional “ethno-dialogue” if not exactly reaching a shared anthropology. She especially succeeded in communicating the symbolic role played by the yeti, as traditionally represented by a masked villager. It becomes quite clear that the authenticity of the skull used during the Dumje celebration is of little relevance. What matters is the resemblance, which suf ces to identify the amateur actor with the yeti. At that point, the yeti stands for more than just an animal. It is the symbol of the threat of bestiality, that tendency which leads from beer to orgy. The beast, or rather its brutality, must be expelled from the village through dances, music and rituals. The goal is to bring together the animal and rational natures of man, its primeval urges and civilization.
However, the spread of modern consumer society habits has had its impact on traditional customs. Gyalzen notes that the yeti is more rarely seen today and that young people no longer believe in its existence. The actual physical presence of the yeti would seem to be the key to the continuation of the Dumje rituals.
In any case, René de Milleville, a Frenchman who lived in Nepal for 35 years and wrote extensively about it, remained convinced that the yeti would some day be identi ed. In 1985, he provided Prof. Michel Tranier, of the mammology laboratory of the Paris Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, a handful of reddish hair. Tranier concluded that they belonged to a primate closely related to the orangutan.
What are we to think of the ritual behavior of the yeti-man? Might it be the expression of an antagonism between, on the one hand, an ancient shamanistic attitude seeking violent power through magic and sorcery, or the ascetic and paci c nature of Buddhism, favoring detachment from the world?
The man who wears the animal skin, the pointed skull and the yeti mask is exposed to the in uence of dark forces. He takes upon himself the demonic powers, which the community seeks to expel during Dumje. The danger that he may himself fall victim to these powers is such that there are few volunteers for the role. During Dumje, many spectators avoid approaching or even looking at the yeti. It is the powers that it represents rather than its actual resemblance to the animal that really matters.
1 Véra Frossard also speaks of the “delicious Tibetan bread.” Similarly, North American Na ves fry an unleavened bread, bannock. These simple foods acquire a symbolic meaning as links with the nurturing Mother Earth.
2 Véra Frossard, op. cit., p.52.
3 For further details, see my book Sasquatch/Bigfoot and the Mystery of the Wild Man, Part IV, Sasquatch and the World of Mythology.
4 Véra Frossard, op. cit., p. 95.
9. Esau the Hirsute
As a preamble to scienti c speculations about the nature of the yeti, let’s take a look at Philip Kerr’s novel Esau. (1996). Kerr’s main protagonist, star alpinist Jack Furness has conquered Everest without bottled oxygen. On a subsequent expedition, he falls into a crevice. His climbing mate is killed, but Jack survives and returns with a nearly intact skull found at the bottom of the deadly pit. He hands the fossil over to his friend Stella Swift, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley. At rst glance, she is reminded of Paranthropus robustus or perhaps even Gigantopithecus.
Paranthropus , as the name suggests, was similar to man: para = close, anthropos = man.
Prehistorian Leroi-Gourhan suggests, “the evolution of the anthropic skull seems to re ect a triple process: the freeing of the back part of the skull arising from the adoption of an erect posture; an expansion of the forehead following the progressive shrinking of the dentition; an increase in the volume of the brain up to the Neanderthals, followed by an expansion of the frontal lobes without increase in volume.”1
Robustus was distinguished by a prognathous appearance, with large jaws and a prominent sagittal crest. Although mainly a herbivore, its powerful jaws—it has been nicknamed the nutcracker— allowed it to chew tough roots as well as insects, rodents and small game, basically eating whatever was available. Robustus was of modest stature, less than 1.50 meters (4 feet 10 inches) tall and weighing between 25 and 45 kilograms (56 to 100 pounds); it used simple tools but did not master the use of re.
Robustus lived between 2.2 million and 1.0 million years ago, a forerunner but not a member of the Homo family. Other species were evolving at the same time: Australopithecus garhi, soon to disappear; Homo habilis; Homo ergaster; Homo rudolfensis; and even Homo erectus, which would survive long after robustus.
Should robustus be distinguished from its predecessors, the Australopithecines, simply because of its large jaw? This is a matter for discussion among paleontologists. There is no speci c reason known for the disappearance of robustus. It certainly possessed a number of useful traits: a varied diet
, walking erect while still able to climb trees, even mastery of re for Paranthropus boisei, a variant discovered in 1959 by Mary and Louis Leakey in Tanzania.
Giganthopithecus, a giant ape, which lived 400,000 years ago, weighed up to 600 kilograms (1450 pounds) and measured up to three meters (10 feet)! A bamboo eater, like the giant panda, it may have been hunted by its cousin Homo erectus. Its remains—three jawbones and a million teeth—have been found in China and Vietnam. Competition for food with the panda and Homo erectus, as well as mortality at the hands of Homo erectus hunters, may have been responsible for the demise of Giganthopithecus. Below a certain population level, the species would no longer have been able to survive. However, Gigantopithecus might have survived in the Himalayas (as the yeti) and across the Bering Strait (as the sasquatch).
Book cover of Philip Kerr’s book Esau. PHOTO: Cha o & Windus, 1996 Isolation would have protected these hairy giants; otherwise Homo sapiens would have wiped them out, as it probably did Neanderthal man. However, it would be a mistake to imagine that only the genus Homo is capable of systematic destruction. The author of the novel Esau, of which Jack Furness and Stella Swift are the heroes, quotes Jane Goodall, who studied the warlike nature of a group of chimpanzees systematically eliminating the members of an enemy group. Jane Goodall thought that the process of extermination would have been much more rapid had the chimpanzees bene ted from human weapons.
In the novel Esau, researcher Stella Swift consults a computer specialist to obtain a digital image of the brain that used to ll the fossilized skull discovered by Jack Furness. The computer model makes it possible to view the various parts of the brain, to examine details, and to view the various lobes from different angles. Stella is especially interested in an area dear to her heart: Broca’s area, where language ability is thought to reside in humans. That same area is clearly present in the skull under examination.
The Asian Wild Man Page 5