Now there’s a myth I could get behind.
We could start a new religion and get rich off the kooks.
“Only I am in contact with the great Ghostly Bigfoot on the UFO, thanks to my Sasquatchamacallit delivered to me from on High. You must obey His edicts, precepts and commands, except every other Thursday, wherein we will endeavor to obey the Grand Prescentat of enlightenment instead, lest He frighten you with His ghostliness, stomp you with His Bigfootedness, or zap you with his UFO rays. On the Alternate Thursdays shall be your Sabbath, upon which you may be sane again and take care of life’s needs.”
No bones, no scat, no fur, no DNA in an area crawling with hikers and rangers. Preposterous.
The Yeti is far more likely given the remoteness of the area, though the story is still highly dubious.
That said, cryptobiology is one of the most enjoyable and diverting branches of woo and crackpottery. Let me share the views of Daniel Cohen, an expert ::cough:: in this field - he’s written a book!
N.A. Tombazi spotted a humanoid figure in 1925 in the Himalayas, some 15,000 feet up. Well the fish got away, but Tombazi was able to observe footprints as well. A few things. Tombazi described normal sized footprints and was pretty sure he saw an outline of a human being. He reported on local legends of demons and the like, but considered them fairy tales. He speculated that he might have spotted an ascetic or Buddhist monk. Not impossible.
As for the Loch Ness Monster, I would truly like to believe that our watery friend exists in some fashion, even if he’s merely a school of sturgeon, as opposed to a toy submarine bought from Woolworths with a head and neck made of plastic wood.
Historical documents can be found in The Six Million Dollar Man. 
* **
- Big Foot was alien technology in the series.
** Inconceivable, only today I learned that Andre the Giant was Sasquatch!.
There’s lots of stuff out there about the supposed connection between Bigfoot and UFOs/aliens.
A couple of examples:
That’s why I said what I said, of course.
Didn’t Theodore Roosevelt fistfight a bigfoot?
Sorry, no, Roosevelt just recounted a tale of bigfoot.
My rule of thumb is “What are the odds that someone saw something real over the odds that they either misunderstood what they saw, dreamed the encounter, or hallucinated it due to drugs, alcohol, or fatigue?” Almost always, that ratio is very low.
Bigfoot, no.
However, the study of human origins and diversity has gotten interesting in recent years. We have known about Neanderthals for a long time but it is a relatively recent revelation that all people that are not of Sub-Saharan African descent are part Neanderthal and that is proven based on DNA evidence. The Neanderthals never completely died out. You are probably part one yourself.
Now we have another human species with the Desnovians in Asia. Little is known about that except that they probably coexisted with other human species in somewhat overlapping ranges.
The most interesting one to me though is Homo floresiensis or the The Hobbit people found in a cave on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The found remains are thousands of years old but some of the locals claim that they existed even within living memory although they are extinct now. They can even describe the way they acted and vocalized. I don’t know if that is true or not but the local folklore makes it plausible at least.
In short, there were once at least three different species of humans that overlapped in range although there is almost certainly only one now with some genes incorporated from the extinct species. Bigfoot wasn’t one of them but I find the fact that there was more than one human species alive at the same time in the relatively recent past equally impressive.
Four species, including us.
And some of us have Denisovan genes in us, too.
Fruit makes up a big part of the diet of all primates. All large Primates that we know of live in environments that are extremely rich in fruit, & they share those environments with monkeys & other closely related species.
Now there are native monkeys in South America, but none in North America. There isn’t enough native fruit to sustain a population here.
If small monkeys can get enough grub to hack it here, how could a 1000 pound mudsucker like Bigfoot hack it?
Of all primates, only the Baboon and the Human thrive in areas without significant fruit resources. There are limited wild fruit resources in Europe and North America, compared with Sub-Sahaharan Africa, or Southeast Asia. So, we’re not a promising site for primates.
Most of North America has an annual hunting season for wild game, in the Autumn. Men, familiar with the outdoors and skilled in tracking & stalking wild game, go out by the thousands, every year, armed with shotgun, rifle, carbine. crossbow, or longbow. We’ve been doing this throughout the Colonial period, the Pre-Civil War Era, the Golden Age of the American West (would the Mountain Men and trappers have failed to catch one? I don’t think so.), through two World Wars, & into the current Postmodern Era. Nobody has ever bagged one yet! If they had, they could have been rich & famous overnight. I’ve lived in the Wisconsin countryside, & in the mountains of East Tennessee. I’ve known the outdoorsmen who live there, thrive, & love the back country. Believe me: if Bigfoot existed, they’d have shot one by now.
Mountain Gorillas eat very little fruit. Geladas eat mostly grains.
Missed the edit window…
There is also one large primate that often lives in areas that are not rich in fruits: * H. sapiens.*
The problem is that I don’t think the Bigfoot legend is that old. We would have traces of it all over North & South America, if it was a memory that had crossed the Bering Strait. The Bigfoot legend began after white people settled the Pacific Northwest, IIRC.
Yes, but H. sapiens farms, so we grow things that provide lots of the vitamins and energy of fruits, like potatos, and things that are fruits, but are cultivated like vegetables, such as tomatos and peppers.
I’m pretty sure you won’t find hunter/gatherer societies in places without fruit.
You would be wrong.
I’m going to take devil’s advocate unless I say otherwise, and defend the position that Bigfoot is real. I’m a quasi-masochist who likes taking the unpopular side anyway. Not really cause I like being abused–but I get immense satisfaction when it turns out I’m right. So don’t treat me like I’m too much an idiot. I have a really hard job here.
Let me make one thing clear: As D.A. I am NOT claiming Bigfoot is a ghost that lives on a UFO. However, if you do want to start a religion, you can P.M. me for where to send the donation.
Disclaimer: this is a joke and I do not want donations. I do want to refer you to a nice good therapist, however.
To counter this, I point out that there are wild potatoes cultivated in the pacific northwest. They are perennial. Potatoes are only cultivated as an annual because the domesticated varieties have lost disease and pest resistance. You might get a semi-perennial patch of domestic potatoes going for a few years, but every university (and the U of Idaho has tried A LOT) that tries can only keeping em going a handful of years and disease or pests eventually kill them off.
But in the Pacific Northwest a fingerling grows called the Makah Ozette. It was cultivated by the Makah Indians in the Olympic Penninsula around lake Ozette. this potato isn’t as large and has more flavor than domestic potatoes, but has much better disease and pest resistance.
I know all this because just last week me and my mom (she’s a biologist, Master’s degree, 4.0 summa cum laude.) were discussing what we could do to feed our community in the event the infrastructure crumbled and there were many starving people. We decided early on if we’re going to actually do something we wouldn’t get much help until there’s actually hungry mouths to feed and so we had better focus on perennial plants that do not need much attention. I thought of potatoes–what would it take to get perrenial patches of potatoes going on roadsides and other unused land? Nope, it’s an annual, she said, to which I gave her vigorous dispute but she half convinced me. Hell, she’s the expert gardener, not me, though I ain’t bad. So off I went to google, and I made my report to her and she concedes potatoes are perennial plants.
Der Trihs, we are doing this because we’re both liberal and Christian. (I’m actually Libertarian.) If you wind up one of the hungry people here though, you can have some ozettes without any preaching. If they’re not all gone.
Therefore, I do propose as devil’s advocate that Bigfoot eats Makah Ozettes.
Bigfoot is our collective subconscious made substantive created from H. Sapiens guilt over having committed rape and Genocide against Neanderthals and Densovians. He is out to get you.
However, I still have the Sasquatchamacallit and can protect you from this evil and angry god who demands sacrifice.
or alternatively, I have size thirteen feet and am going to eat some Ozettes.
I think Steve Austin will take care of the menace…
Either one, the Bionic Man or the one from the WWF…
