A Unique American Leprosy Strain.

Leprosy was active and present in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. A recent study published in Science (Pre-European contact leprosy in the Americas and its current persistence) reported that a second strain of a pathogen that causes the disease, which has been named Mycobacterium lepromatosis, was found in ancient remains of Pre-Hispanic natives.

On a global scale, the majority of leprosy cases are caused by another related bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae. So the "American" variety is quite unique, it was, until the arrival of Europeans, exclusive to the American continent. Both strains are related, and have a common ancestor (more on this below).

This paper found the second strain in the remains of a human being from the area along the Alaska-Canadian border and remains from Argentina. Modern cases of this strain have almost identical genomes to the ancient ones indicating that it mutates very slowly. The authors estimate that the M. lepromatosis has been evolving isolated in America for the past 10,000 years. But they can't assure if it originated in America, or if it was brought by some animal or human agent.

Bishop teaching lepers, illustration, Middle Ages. Source

Both M. leprae and M. lepromatosis shared a common ancestor 720,000 years ago. This means that the American and Rest-of-the-World strains split at the time Denisovans and Neanderthals split from the branch that led to Modern Humans. As the American strain was not found elsewhere until European contact dispersed it (it also introduced the global variant into America)... Could this imply that the Denisovan-Neanderthal people reached America with this leprosy strain where they remained isolated from the other global strain?

There are four clades of this American leprosy, all in the Americas, but a fifth one has been detected in the UK: "infecting red squirrels in the British Isles raises the possibility that this lineage originated in the Americas well before any known historical or zoonotic connections between the Americas and other continents, given its estimated divergence time of 3,200 BP."

This suggests somehow that the bacterium moved across the Atlantic from America to Britain. The authors try to find an explanation for this, but it isn't convincing. Perhaps some Mediterranean vessels in the tin trade with Britain crossed the Atlantic and brought back squirrels that somehow infected their British relatives? A stray Norse ship? Phoenicians? A mystery.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

2025 Update, Syphillis and the peopling of America

In 2014 I posted on syphillis and the peopling of America. Since then, research and genetic analysis has advanced and new information is available. A paper published in Dec. 2024 in Nature (Ancient genomes reveal a deep history of Treponema pallidum in the Americas) sheds new light on the subject.

Now we know, thanks to genetic studies, that yaws is much younger than previously thought. This paper summarizes its findings as follows:

"This study confirms the presence in the Americas of deeply derived lineages for all three known T. pallidum subspecies prior to the first Columbian expedition in 1492. Consideration of these broad data in two different molecular dating approaches has yielded an upper bound of around 9000 bp for emergence of the most recent ancestor common to all T. pallidum. This post-dates both current genetic estimates for the initial divergence of Indigenous American populations from East Asians43 and archaeological estimates for human arrival in the Americas44. Our data thus support a scenario in which all genomically typed ancient and modern T. pallidum stem from an origin in the Americas during the middle Holocene epoch, possibly as a zoonotic infection from an unidentified host."

In my posts, I mentioned the genetic clock used to time the clades, and the mutation rate. This paper uses (6.7 × 10_-8 and 8.4 × 10_-8 substitutions per site per year) similar to the rate used in the studies commented in my previous posts. So my comments still stand.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Solitons and Lake Monsters

Solitons sound like some particle from quantum physics, but they were discovered by a classic Victorian scientist, J. Scott Russell in 1845. He was a Scotsman, a civil engineer and a naval engineer. One day and he observed a strange wave formed by a boat in a canal that traveled several miles along it without decaying. He wrote an article about this stange phenomenon, in 1845. Waves are supposed to lose energy and fade away, this one, on the other hand, remained coherent-

The name Soliton is now used to describe these waves "solit" from "solitary" wave, and the "-on" suffix in an analogy to the one used for elementary particles (electron, photon, proton, etc.)

The "solitary wave" or "soliton" are a special type of wave, that once they form move constantly in the same direction with no changes in the height of the wave, its interval (frequency) or shape. They don't dissipate, they maintain their form and can travel long distances from the spot they were created.

They form in the sea, in rivers, lakes, and canals. Wind, tides, shallow water, water layers with different temperatures, ships, and underwater topograph can contribute to their formation.

Johen Scott Russell pointed out that "if a wave is too big for the depth of water, it splits into two, one big and one small" with the bigger one traveling faster than the smaller one. Over time they will become separate waves. But there are other mechanisms that can split solitons even in deep water forming a train of waves that travel together over an otherwise flat body of water. These trains can contain between two and six separate waves.

Professor Sergei Eremenko describes this in his book and includes photographs like the one below.

Soliton in Lakw Wakatipu, NZ.

The video is captioned: "Unstoppable like tsunami, soliton envelope wave packet, composed from two distinct sub-groups, slowly cruising Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand."

The same type of wave trains can be seen in Patagonia. Below is a soliton observed in Lake Nahuel Huapi on Feb 16, 2020. The viewers thought they were seeing the activities of the famous "Nahuelito". But a scientist consulted by the press suggested it was a soliton (source),

2020 Soliton in Lake Nahuel Huapi.

As expected, the video mentions "Nahuelito," ignoring the scientific explanation.

In recent posts I have suggested that waves are a reasonable explanation for mysterious lake creatures, especially single wave fronts that look like the wake left by a submerged animal.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Lake Mascardi "creature" (I don't think so)

Lake Mascafrdi is U-shaped and is fed by the meltwater from the glaciers of Mount Tronador which enter its NW tip. Its NE tip on the other hand is a wide valley, with a marshy area that marks the continental divide. Just north of the divide is Lake Gutierrez that drains into the Atlantic Ocean through Lake Nahuel Huapi and the Limay and Negro Rivers. Mascardi, on the other hand, drains west through the Lower Manso River on its SW shore, which eventually reaches the Pacific Ocean throught Puelo River.

It is set at an elevation of 750 m (2,460 ft.), and has a surface area of 39,2 km² (15 sq.mi.). It is deep (on average 218 m - 715 ft.), and in the past its waters had a greenish tint due to the glacial sediments from Mt. Tronador.

The map shows Mascardi (bottom-center), the city of Bariloche on Lake Nahuel Huapi (upper right), Mt. Tronador (upper left). The red arrow marks the spot of the sighting.

Lake Mascardi map

The "serpent"

The following video was published in the news on March 14, 2018 as "Two families assure having seen a 'long serpent' in Lake Mascadri? (source)

The video on youtube, is shown below:

Lake Creature?

This is the story published in the media:

Maricel Gómez, who lives in Bariloche, and her family stopped at a service station (ACA Mascardi - see a Google Street view at this spot, red arrow in the map below).

The lake was calm and they saw a "wake", Maricel described the incident as follows:

"The lake was completely calm and suddenly I saw like a large serpent coming in and out of the water. What protruded above the water was a black, large back, and when it went underwater it left a long wake like two meteres, although that is what it seemed like from a distance, the wake was very long, like those left by planes in ths sky... The hump of the back emerged and submerged in the water, it did so like six times. We all saw it. Even, Cinthia [her sister] thought it was the tail of a snake. We couldn't believe it, we imagined it was a fish or a diver, but no. It was crossing the whole lake, but very far from us."

In my opinion, probably a fish, a diving bird like a huala, a special type of wave known as a soliton, or even the wake of a distant boat. Not a "serpent".

I have fished on the lake in a boat, picnicked on its northern tip by Fresco Creek, trekked its shore to lake Llum, and from the Casalata Creek to the Upper Manso River. I have driven along its coast on Ruta 40 and on the Tronador highway (all these spots can be seen on the map). I never saw anything odd. Just a regular Patagonian Lake.

Lake Mascardi
Top: central part, Mt. Bonete. Middle: Heart Island. Bottom: Mt. Tronador seen from the lake.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

The Gigantic Worm of Chilóé, the Piruquina

The natives of Mapuche origin that lived in the island of Chiloé in Chile, had a particular myth involving a gigantic worm, the piruqina.

Its name in Mapuche language means "Piru" = worm, "Quina" = lineage.

The Giant Red Worm

Lava flows, red and worm-like.

It was mentioned by Augusta in 1916, and Ramírez wrote about it again in 1995:

"It is a gigantic snake that takes more than 25 years to develop completely, and then it emerges from deep beneath the ground producing a strong earthquake. First its head appears, then it opens its enormous eyes, and if anyone is within reach of its gaze it will die instantly. Once the Piruquina has reached the surface, the scales of its body change color from an intense red to a darker, earth-like color. Finaly it disintegrates, and in the place where it appeared as traces of its presence remain dark worms."

According to Villagrán and Videla (source) this myth reflects the volcanic nature of Southern Chile, and it describes the appearance of a stream of red hot lava that then solidifies and darkens as it cools on the surface. The tremors of a volcanic eruption, and the risk of death for those who get to close to it.

There is a place in Chiloé named Piruquina (see it in Google maps). There is one species of snake in Chiloé, the short-tailed snake (culebra de cola corta), Tachymenis chilensis, which is barely 70 cm long (2.3 ft.) and it isn't red.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Patagonia during the Last Ice Age

Glaciers covered the Andean region, and part of the Patagonian steppe during the Ice Ages that took place over the past 2 million years. The remaining Ice Field are minute in comparison to the ice sheets that the first natives, the Paleo-Indians encountered when they reached the area around 20,000 years ago.

I found an Excellent interactive map online (see it online here) ) that shows how the ice fields evolved as they melted, the glacial lakes they formed, and how the Patagonian coasline changed as sea levels rose. Below are two still from the animated map showing the panorama 35 and 15 kya.

Ice sheets over the years. Source: Patice

It is interesting to point out that the Patagonian sea shelf covered a vast aerea (now submerged) covering around 180,000 km² (70,000 sq. mi.). Sea levels were roughtly 120 m (395 ft) lower than current levels, and the shelf would have been on average, 170 km wide (110 mi.) This was a unique ecological niche for the first Patagonians to hunt, gather, and live on. The megafauna and forests would have extended eastwards along what is now the steppe region more in this paper).

The Ice Fields nowadays

Below are some pictures of the remaining Ice Fields. The Southern Ice Field ranks third globally in size after the Antarctic and Greenland. But, declining due to climate change.

North Patagonian Ice Field, seen from space. Looking West. It is 125 km (78 mi.) long.

South Patagonian Ice Field, seen from space. From left to right Lakes Argentino, Viedma, San Martin, Cardiel in Argentina. Far left lakes in the Torres del Paine Nat. Park, Chile . Looking West. It is 350 km (220 mi.) long.

Mount Fitz Roy and a part of the South Patagonian Ice Field

Monte Sarmiento in the Darwin Ice Field, Tierra del Fuego.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Ralun's "Black Man"

Ralún is a spot located on the northern tip of Reloncavi estuary, a long and narrow arm of the Pacific that has a north to south course and is roughly 55 km (34 mi.) long and 2 km (1.2 mi.) wide. It is set south of the Osorno volcano, southwest of Mount Tronador, and is relatively close to Puerto Montt in Chile (see it on Google maps).

A blog post reported that a local woman, Margarita, who owned a restaurant there, mentioned that "one night, she and her husband saw a mysterious light flickering in the forest on a nearby mountainside. The light source wouldn't be strange if it wasn't for the fact that that spot was inaccessible and threfore completely uninhabited... on another occasion... she was startled when her dog was barking a lot and in a specific and worrying way. She went towards the door, cautiously, and when she opened it, her face turned white with terror. The dark and blurred otuline of a man was standing before her. "It was the 'black man', a ghost that ambles around the region helping people. It isn't an evil being" she said, dramatically."

Reloncavi, Chile. Source

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

The Submerged Forest of Lake Traful

The submerged forest of Lake Traful is a unique sight that is located on this large lake in the Nahuel Huapi National Park (map marking the spot). Events like the one that created this forest show how the scenery is constantly evolving.

The lake is roughly 24 km (14.7 mi) long and 3.5 km (2.2 mi.) wide. It has a northern arm that heads deeply into the mountains. Its surface covers 72 km² (29 sq. mi.) and its maximum depth is 340 m (1,115 ft.). It is set at an altitude of 720 m (2,360 ft), and it flows eastwards along the Traul River into the Limay River.
No strange reatures have been reported in this lake.

The submerged forest.

The Sumbmerged forest in Lake Traful

The steep slope of the Andean mountains that form the valleys where the glacial lakes were formed, are relatively unstable and can undergo landslides. Ancient tectonic faults were the origin of the depressions along which the ice sheets advanced during the Ice Ages. These masses of ice carved u-shaped valleys with very steep slopes.

Lake Traful, at Villa Traful.

When the ice melted 12,000 years ago, organic and inorganic sediment accumulated on the bare rock and plants grew in the this soil. Nowadays, coihues, lengas, ñires, and also the Cordilleras cypress (Austrocedrus chilensis) form the dense forest found in the Andean mountains.

Under special conditions, a section of forest and the soil beneath it can slide down the mountain. This depends on the adhesion between soil and bedrock and is usually triggered by an earthquake. The mighty earthquake of Concepción (Chile) that took place in 1960, jolted a portion of the hillisde of Cerro Bayo (also known as Alto Mauida) and caused it to slide downhill into the lake.

The trees remained standing, underwater on the north coast of Lake Traful, on the western side of Península Grande, opposite the village of Villa Traful.

It is a small forest made up of some 50 or 60 cypresses whose roots are 20 m (70 ft.) below the water level.

How the forest was formed. Copyright © 2025 by Austin Whittall

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

Slowly moving towards an earlier date for the peopling of America

Abrand new paper published in Science (Elena S. Gusareva et al.,From North Asia to South America: Tracing the longest human migration through genomic sequencing. Science388,eadk5081. DOI:10.1126/science.adk5081) analyzed the DNA of different Native American and Siberian groups to understand the dynamics of how modern humans reached America.

It is a good effort, perhaps hampered by the constraints of orthodox science, with a far too recent date for my liking, for the presence of Humans in Siberia:

"The earliest known presence of modern humans in northern Eurasia at latitudes greater than 50°N was around 45,000 years ago (ya) in West Siberia, and by 31,600 ya, humans had migrated far east toward Beringia, north of the Arctic Circle at 71° N...
The migration of humans to the Americas occurred when the Bering Land Bridge was still open, with the earliest human remains in North America found in the Clovis burial site in western Montana dating back to around 12,700 ya. However, recent evidence suggests human presence in North America from at least 23,000 ya..."

Indeed, dates are far older than those mentioned in this paper, but we are confident that orthodoxy is beginning to accept an older date for the arrival of modern humans in America.

The paper states that:

"the divergence between northern and southern Native American populations is estimated to have occurred between 17,500 and 14,600 ya south of the North American ice sheets, according to modern and ancient genomic analyses. The rapid dispersal of humans in South America is suggested by archaeological records, which date the earliest human presence in North Patagonia, the southernmost tip of the Americas, to 14,500 ya
...
The demographic history has greatly influenced the Patagonian Kawésqar, whose ancestors migrated the farthest distance out of Africa. They have the smallest effective population size and one of the smallest genetic distances between community members. It has been reported that contemporary Native Patagonians (including the Kawésqar) show the highest genetic affinity to ancient Patagonian maritime individuals that lived 1000 ya, indicating genetic continuity in the region."

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

"Cuero" in Lake Lolog or waves?

Lake Lolog is a glacial lake with a surface area of 35 km² (13.5 sq.mi.) set at an elevation of 900 m (2,952 ft.). It is located 9 km (5.7 mi.) north of San Martín de los Andes in Neuquén, Argentina. Its western tip is part of the Lanin National Park.

Its name comes from "lolo" = mouse, and "hue" = place, a place with many mice. There are different species of rodents like the long-tailed mouse (Oligoryzomys longicaudatus) living in the forests.

Long and narrow, it flows eastwards along the Quilquihue River and its water reaches the Atlantic Ocean along the Chimehuin, Collón Curá, Limay and Negro Rivers.

Its western part is surrounded by steep mountains and the dense Andean forest, to the east it is drier, with an open wooded area, that gradually blends into the steppe.

Lake Lolog. Eastern tip and Quilquihue River (top), western tip (bottom).

Creature or waves?

The following video taken in 2018 shows a wake on the surface of a relatively calm lake. The caption video says "25-10-18 where you can see strange waves in Lake Lolog that can only be caused by the "Monster of Lake Kolog", known fondly as "Lologuito"."

Lake Lolog waves.

Trains of waves, the wake of a boat, a sudden burst of the potent Patagonian wind can cause a phenomenon like the one shown in this video. I think it is just waves. No animal involved.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall © 

The Bearded Man from Mulchen, Chile

Dillman Bullock, was born in Michigan, US in 1878, and died in Angol, Chile in 1971. He was a Methodist missionary, and a scholar and scientist (he was also an agronomist).

Bullock lived in Chile for over 60 years, publishing books on agronomy and anthropology. He founded a museum in El Vergel, Angol, that is named after him.

We have mentioned him in a previous post (two headed patagonian giant) and in our book comment about his theory of a small sized race that lived in Chile before the Mapuche arrived, the Kofkeche.

He found many objects and put them in his museum, he described them in papers printed in reputable journals. One of them, was titled "Un objeto curioso y raro encontrado en Mulchen." Bullock, Dillman S. Santiago, 1965. Universidad Catolica de Chile. pp. 271-275. Año L-LI. Fasc. 2 ("A curious and strange object found in Mulchen.") The paper deals with a really strange stone statue, pictured below.

Bearded man stone sculpture. Source

The object is a stone that has been shaped to look like a bearded man. It is made of andesite, a very hard and fine-grained extrusive igneous rock, the sculpture is rod-shaped, and measures 12.2 cm long (5 in.) and has a diamter of 31 mm (1.25 in.) at its widest part. It weighs 159 g (5.6 oz.)

It has a rough finish, and the stone contains mica that reflect light, and that was how a man, who was plowing a field in Mulchen, Chile, spotted it: it reflected sunlight. A few years later he gave it to Bullock.

Bullock saw that it depicted a human head, with a man's face sporting a moustache and a beard. The hair was covered with some kind of cap. It definitely has a Caucasian look to it.

It is very different from Mapuche rock art. It also has two holes on both sides of the head, on the lower corner of the jaw, suggesting it could have been used as a necklace.

In his paper Bullock wrote that "in the month of November of 1964, a man who was visiting the Museum, approached him and said: 'I have a small stone I want to show you.' He took a stone out of his pocket. Remarking that it was found around ten years before, plowing a field with black soil rich in organic matter, located ten kilometers inland from Mulchén.".

Bullock sent photos of it to scholars around the globe, but nobody managed to explain it, other than it was a modern artifact that had somehoiw reached Chile after the Spanish conquest and probably belonged to some sailor of the 16th to 18th centuries. But, how did it reach Mulchen? A mystery that remains unsolved. (See Mulchen in Google maps).

Another website provides additional information, it states that the object is stored in the Museum under the number 66-2 and that it was found by a farmer of German descent, Francisco von Plate. It mentions that the back side of the object has a "turquoise inlaid like in the small Inca sculptures."

In my opinion it is too big to be a necklace pendant, it was probably set in some kind of holder. But I can't fathom what its purpose was, perhaps the tip or head of a walking cane?

Of course, some have imagined that Vikings explored Chile and one of them left this stone effigy behind.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall ©