What else lives in the crust that they don't tell us about?
Dean
From Forbidden Archaeology, page 615
A report of a more recent sighting of live wildmen was related to Myra
Shackley by Dmitri Bayanov, of the Darwin Museum in Moscow. In 1963, Ivan
Ivlov, a Russian pediatrician, was traveling through the Altai Mountains
in
the Southern part of Mongolia. Ivlov saw several human-like creature
standing on a mountain slope. They appeared to be afamily group, composed
of
amale, female, and child. Ivlov observed the creatures through his
binoculars from a distance of half a mile until they moved out of his
field
of vision. His Mongolian driver also saw them and said they were common in
that area. Shackley (1983, p. 91) stated: "So we are not dealing with
folktales or local legends, but with an event that was recorded by a
trained
scientist and transmitted to the proper authorities. There is no reason to
doubt Ivlov's word, partly because of his impeccable scientific reputation
and partly because, although he had heard local stories about these
creatures he had remained sceptical about their existence."After his encounter with the Almas family, Ivlov interviewed many
Mongolian
children, believing they would be more candid than adults. The children
provided many additional reports about the Almas. For example, one child
told Ivlov that while he and some other children were swimming in a
stream,
he saw a male Almas carry a child Almas across it (Shackley 1983, pp.
91-92).In 1980, a worker at an experimental agricultural station, operated by the
Mongolian Academy of Sciences at Bulgan, encountered the dead body of a
wildman: "I approached and saw a hairy corpse of a robust humanlike
creature
dried and halfburied by sand. I had never seen such a humanlike being
before covered by camelcolour brownishyellow short hairs and I recoiled,
although in my native land in Sinkiang I had seen many dead men killed in
battle .... The dead thing was not a bear or ape and at the same time it
was
not a man like Mongol or Kazakh or Chinese and Russian. The hairs of its
head were longer than on its body" (Shackley 1983, p. 107).The Pamir mountains, lying in a remote region where the borders of
Tadzhikistan, China, Kashmir, and Afghanistan meet, have been the scene of
many Almas sightings. In 1925, Mikhail Stephanovitch Topilski, a
majorgeneral in the Soviet army, led his unit in an assault on an
antiSoviet guerilla force hiding in a cave in the Pamirs. One of the
surviving guerillas said that while in the cave he and his comrades were
attacked by several apelike creatures. Topilski ordered the rubble of the
cave searched, and the body of one such creature was found. Topilski
reported (Shackley 1983, pp. 118-119): "At first glance I thought the body
was that of an ape. It was covered with hair all over. But I knew there
were
no apes in the Pamirs. Also, the body itself looked very much like that of
a
man. We tried pulling the hair, to see if it was just a hide used for
disguise, but found that it was the creature's own natural hair. We turned
the body over several times on its back and its front, and measured it.
Our
doctor made a long and thorough inspection of the body, and it was clear
that it was not a human being."
"The body," continued Topilski, "belonged to a male creature 165-170 cm
[about 5'/z feet] tall, elderly or even old, judging by the greyish colour
of the hair in several places. The chest was covered with brownish hair
and
the belly with greyish hair. The hair was longer but sparser on the chest
and close-cropped
and thick on the belly. In general the hair was very thick, without any
underfur. There was least hair on the buttocks, from which fact our doctor
deduced that the creature sat like a human being. There was most hair on
the
hips. The knees were completely bare of hair and had callous growths on
them. The whole foot including the sole was quite hairless and was covered
by hard brown skin. The hair got thinner near the hand, and the palms had
none at all but only callous skin."Topilski added: "The colour of the face was dark, and the creature had
neither beard nor moustache. The temples were bald and the back of the
head
was covered by thick, matted hair. The dead creature lay with its eyes
open
and its teeth bared. The eyes were dark and the teeth were large and even
and shaped like human teeth. The forehead was slanting and the eyebrows
were
very powerful. The protruding jawbones made the face resemble the Mongol
type of face. The nose was flat, with a deeply sunk bridge. The ears were
hairless and looked a little more pointed than a human being's with a
longer
lobe. The lower jaw was very massive. The creature had a very powerful
chest
and well developed muscles .... The arms were of normal length, the hands
were slightly wider and the feet much wider and shorter than man's."In 1957, Alexander Georgievitch Pronin, a hydrologist at the Geographical
Research Institute of Leningrad University, participated in an expedition
to
the Pamirs, for the purpose of mapping glaciers. On August 2, 1957, while
his team was investigating the Fedchenko glacier, Pronin hiked into the
valley of the Balyandkiik River. Shackley (1983, p. 120) stated: "at noon
he
noticed a figure standing on a rocky cliff about 500 yards above him and
the
same distance away. His first reaction was surprise, since this area was
known to be uninhabited, and his second was that the creature was not
human.
It resembled a man but was very stooped. He watched the stocky figure move
across the snow, keeping its feet wide apart, and he noted that its
forearms
were longer than a human's and it was covered with reddish grey hair."
Pronin saw the creature again three days later, walking upright. Since
this
incident, there have been numerous wildman sightings in the Pamirs, and
members of various expeditions have photographed and taken casts of
footprints (Shackley 1983, pp. 122-126).
We shall now consider reports about the Almas from the Caucasus region.
According to testimony from villagers of Tkhina, on the Mokvi River, a
femal
e Almas was captured there during the nineteenth century, in the forests
of
Mt. Zaadan. For three years, she was kept imprisoned, but then became
domesticated and was allowed to live in a house. She was called Zana.
Shackley (1983, p. 112) stated: "Her skin was a greyishblack colour,
covered with reddish hair, longer on her head than elsewhere. She was
capable of inarticulate cries but never developed a language. She had a
large face with big cheek bones, muzzle-like
prognathous jaw and large eyebrows, big white teeth and a `fierce
expression."' Eventually Zana, through sexual relations with a villager,
had
children. Some of Zana's grandchildren were seen by Boris Porshnev in
1964.
In her account of Porshnev's investigations, Shackley (1983, p. 113)
noted:
"The grandchildren, Chalikoua and Taia, had darkish skin of rather negroid
appearance, with very prominent chewing muscles and extra strong jaws."
Porshnev also interviewed villagers who as children had been present at
Zana's funeral in the 1880s.
In the Caucasus region, the Almas is sometimes called Biabanguli. In
1899,
K. A. Satunin, a Russian zoologist, spotted a female Biabangulf in the
Talysh hills of the southern Caucasus. He stated that the creature had
"fully human movements" (Shackley 1983, p. 109). The fact that Satunin was
a
wellknown zoologist makes his report particularly significant.
In 1941, V. S. Karapetyan, a lieutenant colonel of the medical service of
the Soviet army, performed a direct physical examination of a living
wildman
captured in the Dagestan autonomous republic, just north of the Caucasus
mountains. Karapetyan said: "I entered a shed with two members of the
local
authorities. When I asked why I had to examine the man in a cold shed and
not in a warm room, I was told that the prisoner could not be kept in a
warm
room. He had sweated in the house so profusely that they had had to keep
him
in the shed. I can still see the creature as it stood before me, a male,
naked and barefooted. And it was doubtlessly a man, because its entire
shape
was human. The chest, back, and shoulders, however, were covered with
shaggy
hair of a dark brown colour. This fur of his was much like that of a bear,
and 2 to 3 centimeters [1 inch] long. The fur was thinner and softer below
the chest. His wrists were crude and sparsely covered with hair. The palms
of his hands and soles of his feet were free of hair. But the hair on his
head reached to his shoulders partly covering his forehead. The hair on
his
head, moreover, felt very rough to the hand. He had no beard or moustache,
though his face was completely covered with a light growth of hair. The
hair
around his mouth was also short and sparse. The man stood absolutely
straight with his arms hanging, and his height was above the averageabout
180 cm [almost 5 feet 11 inches]. He stood before me like a giant, his
mighty chest thrust forward. His fingers were thick, strong and
exceptionally large. On the whole, he was considerably bigger than any of
the local inhabitants. His eyes told me nothing. They were dull and
empty-the eyes of an animal. And he seemed to me like an animal and
nothing
more" (Sanderson 1961, pp. 295-296). Significantly, the creature had lice
of
a kind different from those that infect humans. It is reports like this
that
have led scientists such as British anthropologist Myra Shackley and
Soviet
anatomist Dr. Zh.1. Kofman to conclude that the Almas may represent a
relict
population of Neanderthals or perhaps even Homo erectus (Shackley 1983, p.
114). What happened to the wildman of Dagestan? According to published
accounts, he was shot by hisSoviet military captors as they retreated before the advancing German
army.
In the 1950s, Yu. I. Merezhinski, senior lecturer in the department of
ethnography and anthropology at Kiev University, was doing research in
Azerbaijan, in the northern part of the Caucasus region. From local
people,
Merezhinski heard reports of an Almaslike wildman called the Kaptar.
Khadzi
Magoma, an expert hunter, told Merezhinski that he would take him to a
stream where the Kaptar sometimes bathed at night. In exchange, the hunter
asked Merezhinski to take a flash photo of the creature for him.
Merezhinski
agreed, and they went to the stream, near which a few albino Kaptars were
said to live. Shackley (1983, p. 110) stated: "sure enough Merezhinski saw
one from a distance of only a few yards, clearly discernible on the river
bank through the bushes. It was damp, lean and covered from head to foot
with white hair. Unfortunately the reality of the creature was too much
for
Merezhinski, who instead of photographing it shot at it with his revolver
but missed in his excitement. The old hunter, furious at the deception,
refused to repeat the experiment."Here once more we have a report by a professional scientist who directly
observed a wildman. As an anthropologist, Merezhinski was particularly
well
qualified to evaluate what he saw. It is reports like this that tend to
dispel the charge that the Almas is a creature that exists only in
folklore.
And as far as folklore is concerned, accounts of the Almas and other
wildmen
are not necessarily a sign that the Almas is imaginary. Dmitri Bayanov, of
the Darwin Museum in Moscow, asked (1982, p. 47): "Is the abundant
folklore,
say, about the wolf or the bear not a consequence of the existence of
these
···
animals and man's knowledge of them?" Bayanov (1982, p. 47) added:
"Therefore we say that, if relic hominoids were not reflected in folklore
and mythology, then their reality can be called into question."