Flores’s controversially archaic (but chronologically recent) hobbit was found to be alive and well just 12 kya, which made some observers think that sightings of Yeti-like creatures might indeed have a grain of truth. Maybe cryptozoology could come in from the cold after all. The cryptid Sasquatch/Yeti is described as having long arms reaching to the knees—like hobbits and the Asuans of old, and indeed like most early men: Au, H. habilis, H. erectus, and Neanderthal. Long arms, even today, are retained by some groups of H. sapiens pygmaeus, such as the Andamanese, Malaysian Negritos, Aetas, and Veddas; in India, a visitor to Bengal in 1824 reported seeing short-statured wild tribes, their arms extremely long, reddish hair on their skin.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HOMO ERECTUS?
In every major race, both erectus and sapiens forms were represented.
CARLETON COON, ADVENTURES AND DISCOVERIES
Just as Mr. and Mrs. Neanderthal lasted a lot longer into the Mesolithic (and perhaps the Neolithic) than is supposed, Mr. and Mrs. Erectus*147 also survived so late in time that they seem to have coexisted not only with the Neanderthals but even with Cro-Magnons.9
The western Pacific (Micronesia’s Caroline Islands) holds a rich vein of prehistoric cave remains bearing an extinct population of little people: twenty-five miniature humans, with erectoid features, who lived as recently as three thousand years ago on the rock islands of Palau.
Excavated by a National Geographic team in July 2006, these little Palauans, together with their hobbit cousins on Flores, have been the center of a hot scientific debate since their discovery. The tiny Palau specimens, like hobbit, had small faces, large teeth, and a wide gap between their eyes (rather like the feral, completely wild, and extant Orang Pendek of Sumatra). Fairly chinless like hobbit but larger brained, the little people of Palau have caused much head scratching; anthropologist Lee Berger and his team were perplexed by Palau man’s (supposedly surprising) mixture of traits, some of which (reduced chin, vertical depth of jaw) scientists thought of as prehuman.
But what is so perplexing about the blend of traits, which pervades every single branch of the family tree? While our little people of Palau do indeed have a hard time fitting into a smooth evolutionary picture, they go right along with the rest of mankind in demonstrating a mixed gene pool. A wonderful hodgepodge of traits. Call it what you like—crossbreeding, interbreeding, hybridization, or amalgamation—such racial mixing has been going on since the beginning.
If these erectoid Palauans were here as recently as 1400 BP, when did the Druk or H. erectus race actually die out? If we go shopping for H. erectus dates, there is an ample selection to choose from: The experts tell us that they went extinct 120 kya, or was it 400 kya? Gone from Africa, others say, 500 kya; or was that 300 kya? In more recent books we are likely to hear that they vanished only 60 kya, which agrees with Le Gros Clark’s date of H. erectus in the Far East less than 60 kya. H. erectus is getting younger all the time, like Ndandong Man of Java, with recent evaluation of teeth done of course since the upsetting hobbit find (in 2004). Other Javanese skullcaps of H. erectus are dated as young as 28 kyr—a far cry from his supposed extinction 500 kya. But old habits die hard and even current books (say, Brian Switek’s 2010 book Written in Stone) put the H. erectus die-off at 200 kya. Something is definitely wrong with these dates. Jeffrey Goodman’s chart on page 165 of The Genesis Mystery lists H. erectus specimens dated as recent as 10 kya!
Histories drawn from Oahspe (Druks persisting up to the time of Zarathustra, 8 kya, when they intermarried with Ihuan’s, and the long-nosed ground people, hoodas/Druks, living in Arabinia until around 5 kya10) seem to score a match with findings in Australia, where recent H. erectus groups date anywhere from 40 to 6 kya: the Mossgiel cranium from New South Wales, the Cossack skull from western Australia, the Cohuna cranium of Victoria, the Talgai cranium of Queensland, and, finally, the Kow Swamp specimens of Victoria.11 These robust Kow Swamp people are only 10 kyr, notwithstanding their certifiably archaic appearance: receding skulls, continuous torus, massive jaw and brow, big teeth, large erectoid face. A spot of controversy here: Since their femurs are perfectly modern and since the continent of Australia supposedly has never had but H. sapiens types upon it, therefore the Kow people must be H. sapiens if only because the out-of-Africa theory says H. erectus never made it to the nether continent, which was “colonized”
Figure 12.1. The Talgai skull belonged to a recent Australian H.erectus, dated to about 12 kya, the low-vaulted cranium discoveredat Talgai near Brisbane. Talgai Man is similar to today’s Aboriginesin the face (prognathous), dentition (canines), forehead (sloping), andpalate. But the Talgai skulls are above the average dimensions of modabos, though the glabella and eyebrow region are very thick and thepalate, according to Keith, “anthropoid.” Mixed genes are the onlysolution to all such “mysterious” combinations.
But that can’t be right. Those Kow crania had both H. erectus and early H. sapiens features: the forehead was flat like mods, but it was sloped. The lower face was prognathous and the cranial vault thick; yet the skull is basically modern, with straight sides. So theorists pulled the isolation card: invoking the separateness of the island continent, evolutionists tried to explain (away) Kow as “peripheral isolates”—a remnant population.
That didn’t work, though, when the same kind of people were found two thousand miles away on the west coast of Australia: the Cossack material. This archaic morphology was not a regional freak but continental in distribution. And when they tried to explain that away by nonevolutionary factors, such as inbreeding, cranial deforma-tion, anemia, malnutrition, “the admission that one or more of these [nonevolutionary] factors could produce a Homo erectus–like morphology is also an admission that the concept of human evolution [itself] is not needed to explain that morphology.”12 Or any morphology.
DEAD MAN WALKING
Archaic traits in living races puts paid to evolution and extinction, indicating instead the steady absorption of bygone groups into the main-stream of the more modern phenotype. Some members of all of today’s races, thought George Frederick Wright, show archaic traits. For example:
France still has a remnant of the large Cro-Magnon who supposedly died out about 11 kya: the tallish, ruggedly handsome, dark-skinned people of the Dordogne Valley, possessing the peculiar Cro-Magnon skull form.
The platycephalic (low-domed) skull of early man is still evident in some people of Holland and England.13 Skull shapes in mid-Wales also show some Stone Age measurements. Some Lapps and Finns have the (Neanderthaloid) occipital bun. The dolichocephaly of many North Europeans is also an archaic leftover.
Marcellin Boule found the Paleolithic Grimaldi skull type among some modern people of Italy, “explained by the facts of atavism.”
According to Franz Weidenreich, Java’s Pithecanthropus and H. soloensis agree with today’s Australian Aborigines in details such as strong browridges, receding foreheads, and angular skulls. Australian and Tiwi Aborigines show a low cranial vault with some keeling at the top of the skull (sagittal crest); Tasmanian and Australian abos are similar to 13-kyr Keilor Man of Victoria.
Weidenreich also noted a certain continuity that bridges Peking Man (Sinanthropus) with today’s Mongolian populations, who also share a short tibia with Neanderthal. Peking Man’s upper incisors were shovel shaped, as found in almost all of today’s Mongoloid peoples. According to Chinese archaeologists, Peking Man’s skull has some characteristics shared by modern Chinese people, particularly the low nose bone and flat cheeks.
Inuits and Aleuts also compare with Peking Man in thick mandibular torus and robust cheekbones. Peking Man’s bony out-growth at the inside of the lower jaw is found in most of today’s Lapps and Inuit. Laplanders and Greenlanders also have a heavy overarching brow and the nonoverlapping, edge-to-edge teeth bite of earlier races. A vestigial sagittal crest (bony ridge along the top of the head, as in Zinj) is found among some AmerInds, Inuit, Chinese, and Australians.
Mincopies (Andam
anese) bones are pretty thick with conspicuous muscular impressions; they share with the Bushman and Khoikhoi the archaic trait of steatopygia (bulked up hips and buttocks).
Bushman nails are considerably curved like Lucy and some habilines who had curved hands and feet, which helped in tree climbing. Other unusual or archaic traits among the Bushmen include labia majora and knob nipples, not to mention the primeval wide-set eyes.
The Mbuti of Zaire are pygmies who “in stature, brain capacity, and even way of life, are comparable to Homo habilis.” Yet the Mbuti “are modern men in every sense except that they do not watch television documentaries nor receive grants from science-funding bodies.”14
The Ona Indians of Tierra del Fuego are of primitive appearance in their low sloping cranial vault. Fuegans and Patagonians (recent skulls) show the jutting browridge and some sagittal keeling.
Figure 12.2. Modern man of Dordogne retains his Cro-Magnon heritage. It is also thought that today’s Basque people are morphologically the same as 20-kyr Cro-Magnon Man.
Figure 12.3. Map of prehistoric sites in the Dordogne region of France.
Figure 12.4. (A) Tierra del Fuego people drawn by Captain Fitzroy, Darwin’s superior on the HMS Beagle. Three of these Fuegans were brought back to England and presented to the Queen. (B) Fur-clad Ona Indians of Tierra del Fuego in the 1890s.
Figure 12.5. An Ona Indian.
Figure 12.6. This woman, Trugannie, was one of the last of the full-blooded Tasmanians (1875).
Figure 12.7. Tasmanian molar, compared to lower molars of chimpanzee, Heidelberg Man, and a modern Frenchman.
Figure 12.8. Splayed big toe as seen in: (A) Olduvai Au child (B) modern Bushman (C) Italian Neanderthal. A feature of the archaic body plan, the divergent big toe is extant in the gene pool of H. sapiens: Bushman, Negrillos, Veddas, and Malaysian Negritos possess the big toe projecting sideways. The feature was suited to the tree-climbing, branch-grabbing early races, such as the australopiths (Au. afarensis, Sterkfontein, OH 8, etc.). Next in line to inherit the divergent digits was H. habilis; then, Neanderthal; then Chancelade man of the Magdelenian—all seen with the divergent great toe.
Thomas Henry Huxley felt that those recently discovered Neanderthals (at Feldhofer, 1856) were little more than an extension back in time from the living Australian Aborigines, the latter regarded in Victorian times as the most brutish of living humans. Australian and Tiwi prognathism, large teeth, and depressed nasal root appear to be holdovers from Neanderthal.
Speculation about extant Neanderthaloids did not end with the Victorians. A recent issue of The Barnes Review highlights the work of Stan Gooch, who said that Jews can trace “integral components” of their heritage to the Neanderthals who, he maintains, were not destroyed by the Cro-Magnon culture but were incorporated into it through interbreeding.15 Indeed, at the end of the Paleolithic, the Ghans back-bred with the Druks, accounting for Neanderthal traits in Neolithic mods of the Middle East and beyond.
Gooch went on to speak of a Neanderthal race still living in Central Asia today, contradicting out-of-Africa enthusiasts who assure us that Neanderthals went extinct long ago, without issue, and with no particular relationship to moderns, for they were “completely replaced.”16 Modern Asian features have also been compared to late archaic hominids, the beaky Neanderthal face, for example, still notable among the living people of India and peripheral Mongoloids such as the Nagas of Assam. Some anatomists have remarked that the splayed big toes and nasal cavity of today’s Bushman are the same as Neanderthal’s, as is the molar formation of the Bantus. In addition, Congoid people typically have the distinctive Neanderthal occipital bun (protuberance at back of head),17 which is also found among the Finns and Basques. It seems that other aspects of the Neanderthal cranial type persist in today’s Europeans, some of whom “bear the traces of their remote Neanderthal ancestry . . . in their rather heavy browridges, deep-sunk eye sockets, receding foreheads and weakly-developed chin,”18 seen especially among Nordics, as noted by Hooton and Sir William Turner, anatomist. According to Arthur Keith, “traits which may be called . . . primitive are of frequent occurrence . . . still among South Europeans.”19 Indeed, the likelihood of extensive hybridization in the Mesolithic makes it less surprising that some Central Europeans today have in their posterior skull, femur, and nose a structure reminiscent of Neanderthals.
Figure 12.9. Shirley and Max. Cartoon by Marvin E. Herring.
HOMO FERUS
The first amalgamation that got the ball rolling, the Ihin-Asu match of old, was only the beginning: many forbidden matings were to follow, and some of the resulting hybrids did not entirely disappear. Roman historians alluded to “wild races”—were they Neanderthals? And what about today’s acclaimed Sasquatch of the Northwest or Yeti of the Himalayas? The abominable snowmen, a hirsute race of humanlike giants, are neither bears nor apes, their faces coarse but manlike, with sad expressions. Some analysts think Yeti might be a relict Sinanthropus (Peking Man), having survived in the inaccessible Himalayas and in parts of Central Asia. Jim Dennon portrayed Bigfoot as a subhuman creature, 82 percent beast—the largest hominid. Carleton Coon wrote in his autobiography, Adventures and Discoveries, “I am sure that both these bipedal primates [Yeti and Sasquatch] exist.” In China, Coon heard stories about wild men, covered with hair, seen in the Yellow River Valley; there have been similar reports from Kiang-Si province.
Cryptozoology is an active and valid field, probing cryptids like the Almas of Central Asia (Gooch’s Neanderthals?) and their cousins in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan’s white-haired Kaptar. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has followed these unknowns among AmerInd, Asian, and African tribes, folk traditions about them going back thousands of years. Usually described as possessing erectoid-like features, such as short legs and long arms, cryptids have also been depicted with bull necks, fanged canines, and heavy browridges, answering in every detail to the (supposedly extinct) hominids of the Paleolithic.
We see hundreds of species in our modern world who are in fact survivors of previous Earth epochs.
VINE DELORIA JR., RED EARTH, WHITE LIES
White skinned and black haired is the rumored “ape man” of Africa’s Gold Coast—reputedly fourteen feet tall,20 (these giants perhaps related to the unknown makers of the enormous biface tools found in southern Morocco). On the short end of Africa’s spectrum is the man-beast of Tanzania, called Agogwe, a russet-furred manimal, who authorities speculate might be a survival of Homo erectus, not unlike cryptids seen in Zaire, Sudan, and Senegal. When these odd “little men” called Agogwe*148—reported by many credible witnesses and also an intrinsic part of tribal lore—first came to the attention of academia, they were considered some sort of missing link.
Twice as Tall?
Hand axes from sites in Ethiopia, Morocco, and Syria (at Ain Fritassa and Sasnych) are “far too large” (ten pounds and more) to be hand-held by people of today’s world; the bifaces from Agadir, Morocco, weigh in at 17 pounds, and their use requires the finger spread of a 13-foot tall man. Ordinary flint tools of the same type weigh less than a pound. They certainly suggest a bygone race of much greater size. “Mortals became twice the size of men today . . . an imperfect giant stalk . . . and the time of generation of mortals had risen. Many lived to be 300 years old.”*149 Theopompus knew of people twice as big as normal men, and they lived double our age. Explorer and author David Hatcher Childress, on Nan Madol in the Pacific, learned of a human femur found in the jungle that was twice as big as a normal man’s.
But the only thing “missing” is a frank understanding of crossbreeding: sexual congress enjoyed by the disobedient Ihuans with the ground people, the most common type of exogamous unions documented in these chapters. Africa, thought Loren Eiseley, “like other great land areas, has its uneasy amalgams.”21 It was here, in 1888, that Henry Morton Stanley encountered pygmies with “fell” over their body, almost feathery; just as the first white men to meet Africa’s Twa people in the nineteenth century
said their whole body was covered by thick hair, almost like felt. To this day there are pygmy tribes among whom infants are born with reddish lanugo.
The early progenitors of man were no doubt once covered with hair.
CHARLES DARWIN, THE DESCENT OF MAN
Other furry tribes include the hairy Ainu of Japan. Caucasoid and modern though they are, the Ainu yet retain the extreme hairiness of the archaic type. (They themselves must be Darwinists, for they claim their furriness came from their ancestor, the bear!) One story out of China recalls the Chou Dynasty’s brain trust (twelfth century BCE), one member of which was so hairy that no one could see his skin (see figure 12.10).
We are aware of some strange creatures of this type quite a bit closer to home. Jacko for example, seen by a huntsman in British Columbia, was a pint-sized fellow who “resembles a human being” but is covered with glossy hair and has extraordinarily strong arms.22 Bernard Heuvelmans (Mr. Cryptozoology) reported on another wild type known as didi in Venezuela and British Guiana, who answers to the description of Jacko; short and powerful, with human features and reddish brown fur, didi resembles, in turn, the Sisemite of Central America, who are covered in black hair, which grows almost to the ground.
BATS, BATAKS, AND BATUTUTS
First man, Asu, with his long arms and hairy body, left a few genes to the atavistic Bat people of Brazil, as well as to other groups of absolutely wild men, Homo ferus—all considered dead ends on the human family tree. But a few did survive.
In the iconography of our forebears, such beings with hairy bodies, deformed bones, snarling fanged mouths and claws are not sym-bols of anything or the mythic fantasy of unschooled people; rather are they remembrances of the monstrosities that were not corrected until Apollo’s time, eighteen thousand years ago.23 A few probably survived to a much later date, though deeply ensconced in the hidden places of Earth.
Mysterious Origins of Hybrid Man Page 41