A reader sent me a link to these articles but he was really most interested in the possibility of the mummified remains of a Yeti, the third article down:
Does a ten foot, ape-like humanoid stalk the frozen tundra of the Himalayas? Sightings of the Abominable Snowman have been reported for centuries.
20,000ft above sea level, the highest peaks of the Himalaya are carpeted in perpetual snow.
Yet it is here that the tracks have been found, on separate occasions, giving credence to the legend of the Yeti. Historians have noted that these stories pre-date the coming of Buddha.
Meanwhile, an international group of scientists concluded a two day expedition into Yeti country with a tentative probability that the Abominable Snowman may well exist.
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If the creature lived in the American North-West, it would be called Bigfoot or Sasquatch. But it lives in Asia, where the Tibetan and Nepalese names are prone to mistranslation into English.
The most famous of all was Metoh Kang Admi, which should have been 'male bear snow man'. But Henry Newman, a New Stateman journalist working in Calcutta, received a garbled rendering of the Tibetan words in the first place.
He then compounded matters by mistranslating 'metoh' as 'filthy'. Releasing that this didn't look good in print, he substituted the word for one that was more dramatic in English. Thus the world read about the Abominable Snowman for the first time in 1921.
This wasn't the first report of the creature itself. It was merely the start of its best known and most commonly used nickname.
The locals themselves have several words. It is Michê, Migoi, Meh-teh (the phonetic rendering of this is from where we got Yeti), Yeren, Dzu-teh, Mi-go, Mande Burung, Bun Manchi, Mirka, Almas, Kangmi or simply Kang Admi - snowman - depending on your country or tribe.
They all mean similar things - bear, snowman, wild man of the rocks or wild man of the mountains; and they all refer to something with an identical description from Russia to Bhutan; from India through to China.
Adult Yetis grow up to ten feet tall and their fur is black, red or brown, not the white of popular culture. They keep to themselves, disdaining contact with humans; and they live in caves hidden behind snow-drifts. They walk on two legs and their faces are remarkably human in aspect.
The legends are all intact; but is the Yeti real?
![]()
In 2003, an expedition funded by National Geographic set out to Bhutan to speak with eye witnesses and try to find evidence of the Yeti.
It was a well connected trek. A member of the Bhutanese royal family accompanied them! Which probably encouraged villagers along the way to share their stories.
It certainly gained them access to a remote and isolated Buddhist monastery, where monks claimed to hold the mummified remains of the creature.
The team examined it. It had been cut in two and stitched together, but the agonized expression was all too human. Nevertheless the condition of the pelt and the absence of a skeleton made it difficult to determine what it could have been.
A skeptic on the trip was still disturbed. If it wasn't a Yeti (and he was convinced that it couldn't be), then it was a human being. The implications of its violent death gave him a sleepless night.
On the whole, the trip was disappointing. A seven inch footprint was found, which matched in all dimensions plaster-casts of Yeti prints, but little else went right. Their motion triggered track cameras picked up traveling nomads, cattle and a squirrel, but no ten feet tall primate.
Then their luck changed. They met a man who worked for Bhutan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. He hunted the Yeti (or Migoi) in an official capacity and knew precisely where the creature's lair could be found.
A punishing climb up a mountain and into dense forest uncovered the aforementioned footprint. It also led to a gigantic cedar tree with a hollowed base. This was the place, but the Yeti wasn't home and the weather was closing in.
If they didn't hurry back to a lower elevation, then incoming snows may see them trapped up there.
But hunting around inside the hollowed cedar tree, wildlife cameraman Ted Giffords found a sample of hair with 'a nice, plump follicle there'. This was precisely what the team needed!
Back in Britain, there was one more member of the team who didn't need to travel to Bhutan to play his part. It was geneticist Professor Bryan Sykes, and he was willing and able to test that hair for all that it might reveal.![]()
As Professor of Human Genetics at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, Bryan Sykes is one of Britain's leading researchers in the field.
I've personally had my DNA tested by him!
It was during his research into the Blood of the Isles, wherein he determined the genetic make-up of modern Britons.
Had we intermingled into a mongrel race made up of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Romans, Normans and every other invader and immigrant? Apparently not! We still have our enclaves and very little of the twain will meet.
(Incidentally, my results showed a 98% chance that I'm a Brythonic Celt. In short, my DNA is Welsh. No real shock there then!)
But on this occasion, he was receiving samples purported to come from a Yeti. The hair from the cedar tree wasn't all that he was given. After sifting through all of the wild pig and goat hairs, the most promising offering had been skin. It turned out to belong to a bear. Then he tested the hair.
"Because we were half expecting a bear - because of the analysis of the skin sample - we went directly and asked the reaction to look for bear DNA." Prof Sykes explained on camera. "But there wasn't any there."
He and his team performed more tests. They looked specifically for humans, bears and primates, but none were a match. In fact, so far, it can't be identified as 'any known species'.
"It's certainly mysterious." Prof Sykes concluded. He also appeared dumb-founded, as if this was not the anticipated result. It must have made an impact upon him too.
In May 2012, Prof Sykes put out a call for any alleged Bigfoot, Sasquatch or Yeti hair. It was part of an announcement that he was teaming up with Michel Sartori, the director of Lausanne Museum of Zoology, in Switzerland.
The academics will test all of the hair samples, in order to establish for once and for all what grew them.
....
![]()
It seemed that Professor Bryan Sykes wasn't the only genetics specialist bamboozled by possible Yeti samples.
On November 22nd 2010, scientific researchers working for the Shennongjia Nature Reserve, in China's Hubei province, had an announcement of their own.
They also had a hair loaded with unknown DNA.
Local people had been seeing the Yeren for decades, before an official investigation was launched in 2009.
The Hubei Wild Man Research Association was headed by scientist Luo Baosheng. The team included archaeologist Wang Shancai from the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology. They set out with a budget that was the equivalent of $1.5m.
It was this project which yielded the hair sample. That was described as 'thicker than human hair and thinner than horsetail hair'.
The Yeren is said to be nearly seven feet tall, with red, black or grey hair all over its body.
No further announcements have been made about this.
NB: I have deliberately left out the reports of the "Siberian Yeti" because it is obvious that use of the term is a mistake for that region, far away from Tibet where the term is properly used. The mummified "Yeti" skin that had been ripped in half and sewed togetheragain seems to be some sort of a macaque monkey. Other evidence (from the DNA evidence of the hairs and from other considerations) the basic Yeti and Yeren is "A sort of orangutan" as agreed by Bernard Heuvelmans, Richard Greenwell and a growing number of other Cryptozoologists. this explanation is actually as old as the first sightings that became known to Western audiences. also if the one famous track from 1951 was one out of the line of the shapeless and irregular "tracks" in the lower photo, then it is obvious that it has been cleaned up and dressed up from the others to make a nice picture.That part may have been done by some overly-zealous expedition members wanting someting more definite in the photo for posterity, but it seems the original tracks were nothing like that and they were probabably valueless as evidence from the start. But basically reserachers are still missing the important point that "Yeti" means at least two distinct things: one is like the Sasquatch and the other is like the Orang Pendek (roughly speaking) and because of that their data that is "Trying to identify the Yeti" can only result in conflicted and contradictory reports.-DD.
Is the Yeti Real?
http://wizzley.com/is-the-yeti-real/Does a ten foot, ape-like humanoid stalk the frozen tundra of the Himalayas? Sightings of the Abominable Snowman have been reported for centuries.
20,000ft above sea level, the highest peaks of the Himalaya are carpeted in perpetual snow.
Yet it is here that the tracks have been found, on separate occasions, giving credence to the legend of the Yeti. Historians have noted that these stories pre-date the coming of Buddha.
Meanwhile, an international group of scientists concluded a two day expedition into Yeti country with a tentative probability that the Abominable Snowman may well exist.
1. What is the Abominable Snowman?
What is the Abominable Snowman?
It's a dodgy piece of mistranslated Tibetan language. But the Yeti (by whatever name) is a Sasquatch, which purportedly lives in the Himalaya Mountains.
If the creature lived in the American North-West, it would be called Bigfoot or Sasquatch. But it lives in Asia, where the Tibetan and Nepalese names are prone to mistranslation into English.The most famous of all was Metoh Kang Admi, which should have been 'male bear snow man'. But Henry Newman, a New Stateman journalist working in Calcutta, received a garbled rendering of the Tibetan words in the first place.
He then compounded matters by mistranslating 'metoh' as 'filthy'. Releasing that this didn't look good in print, he substituted the word for one that was more dramatic in English. Thus the world read about the Abominable Snowman for the first time in 1921.
This wasn't the first report of the creature itself. It was merely the start of its best known and most commonly used nickname.
The locals themselves have several words. It is Michê, Migoi, Meh-teh (the phonetic rendering of this is from where we got Yeti), Yeren, Dzu-teh, Mi-go, Mande Burung, Bun Manchi, Mirka, Almas, Kangmi or simply Kang Admi - snowman - depending on your country or tribe.
They all mean similar things - bear, snowman, wild man of the rocks or wild man of the mountains; and they all refer to something with an identical description from Russia to Bhutan; from India through to China.
Adult Yetis grow up to ten feet tall and their fur is black, red or brown, not the white of popular culture. They keep to themselves, disdaining contact with humans; and they live in caves hidden behind snow-drifts. They walk on two legs and their faces are remarkably human in aspect.
The legends are all intact; but is the Yeti real?
The Bigfoot Report: Extinct? The Yeti
Ro Sahebi examines some of the theories and evidence for the existence of the Yeti.
Watch Destination Truth's Yeti Documentaries on Amazon Instant Video
Josh Gates and the team travel to Nepal, then Bhutan, in search of the Yeti in these special editions of the popular true adventure series.
National Geographic Yeti Expedition to Bhutan in 2003
Please note that this section contains spoilers for the program 'Yeti: Hunt for the Wildman'.
In 2003, an expedition funded by National Geographic set out to Bhutan to speak with eye witnesses and try to find evidence of the Yeti. It was a well connected trek. A member of the Bhutanese royal family accompanied them! Which probably encouraged villagers along the way to share their stories.
It certainly gained them access to a remote and isolated Buddhist monastery, where monks claimed to hold the mummified remains of the creature.
The team examined it. It had been cut in two and stitched together, but the agonized expression was all too human. Nevertheless the condition of the pelt and the absence of a skeleton made it difficult to determine what it could have been.
A skeptic on the trip was still disturbed. If it wasn't a Yeti (and he was convinced that it couldn't be), then it was a human being. The implications of its violent death gave him a sleepless night.
On the whole, the trip was disappointing. A seven inch footprint was found, which matched in all dimensions plaster-casts of Yeti prints, but little else went right. Their motion triggered track cameras picked up traveling nomads, cattle and a squirrel, but no ten feet tall primate.
Then their luck changed. They met a man who worked for Bhutan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck. He hunted the Yeti (or Migoi) in an official capacity and knew precisely where the creature's lair could be found.
A punishing climb up a mountain and into dense forest uncovered the aforementioned footprint. It also led to a gigantic cedar tree with a hollowed base. This was the place, but the Yeti wasn't home and the weather was closing in.
If they didn't hurry back to a lower elevation, then incoming snows may see them trapped up there.
But hunting around inside the hollowed cedar tree, wildlife cameraman Ted Giffords found a sample of hair with 'a nice, plump follicle there'. This was precisely what the team needed!
Back in Britain, there was one more member of the team who didn't need to travel to Bhutan to play his part. It was geneticist Professor Bryan Sykes, and he was willing and able to test that hair for all that it might reveal.
Books About the Yeti | Books About the Abominable Snowman
Buy these testimonies to learn more about what people are seeing out in those remote mountain tundras.
Prof Bryan Sykes Tests Hair for Yeti DNA
Or, at least, he's looking to see what else it could be! The interesting ones are those indicating an unknown species.
As Professor of Human Genetics at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, Bryan Sykes is one of Britain's leading researchers in the field.I've personally had my DNA tested by him!
It was during his research into the Blood of the Isles, wherein he determined the genetic make-up of modern Britons.
Had we intermingled into a mongrel race made up of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Romans, Normans and every other invader and immigrant? Apparently not! We still have our enclaves and very little of the twain will meet.
(Incidentally, my results showed a 98% chance that I'm a Brythonic Celt. In short, my DNA is Welsh. No real shock there then!)
But on this occasion, he was receiving samples purported to come from a Yeti. The hair from the cedar tree wasn't all that he was given. After sifting through all of the wild pig and goat hairs, the most promising offering had been skin. It turned out to belong to a bear. Then he tested the hair.
"Because we were half expecting a bear - because of the analysis of the skin sample - we went directly and asked the reaction to look for bear DNA." Prof Sykes explained on camera. "But there wasn't any there."
He and his team performed more tests. They looked specifically for humans, bears and primates, but none were a match. In fact, so far, it can't be identified as 'any known species'.
"It's certainly mysterious." Prof Sykes concluded. He also appeared dumb-founded, as if this was not the anticipated result. It must have made an impact upon him too.
In May 2012, Prof Sykes put out a call for any alleged Bigfoot, Sasquatch or Yeti hair. It was part of an announcement that he was teaming up with Michel Sartori, the director of Lausanne Museum of Zoology, in Switzerland.
The academics will test all of the hair samples, in order to establish for once and for all what grew them.
....
Yeti Footprint in the Himalayas
This famous photograph was taken in 1951 by explorers in Nepal. The original was recently sold at Christie's for £3,500.
Chinese Geneticists Announce DNA of an Unidentified Species
The country's Global Times newspaper was full of speculation that it was the Yeren - the Chinese name for the Yeti.
It seemed that Professor Bryan Sykes wasn't the only genetics specialist bamboozled by possible Yeti samples.On November 22nd 2010, scientific researchers working for the Shennongjia Nature Reserve, in China's Hubei province, had an announcement of their own.
They also had a hair loaded with unknown DNA.
Local people had been seeing the Yeren for decades, before an official investigation was launched in 2009.
The Hubei Wild Man Research Association was headed by scientist Luo Baosheng. The team included archaeologist Wang Shancai from the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology. They set out with a budget that was the equivalent of $1.5m.
It was this project which yielded the hair sample. That was described as 'thicker than human hair and thinner than horsetail hair'.
The Yeren is said to be nearly seven feet tall, with red, black or grey hair all over its body.
No further announcements have been made about this.
