Reich and a 300 kya modern human expansion into Africa and Europe from the Levant

David Reich updated his preprint on October 13, 2026. It has a his take on the Origin of Neanderthals, and Modern Humans, a revision of the Out of Africa theory, and the dispersal of the first humans into Europe and Africa, and admixture with archaics in both places. (See it online: Hypothesis: A modern human range expansion ∼300,000 years ago had a critical role in Neandertal origins, David Reich, bioRxiv 2026.03.11.711219; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.03.11.711219)

The following map shows the outline of Reich's hypothesis. Fig. 1. in his preprint.

Original image caption reads: A bicontinental range expansion ∼300 ka.
(a) I start with a previously proposed model for the relationship of Neandertals, Denisovans, and modern Africans in which an early modern lineage contributed mtDNA and Y chromosomes to Neandertals and ∼3-7% of the rest of the genome3. I graft onto it the deep substructure detected in people today, inferred in one study to contribute ∼80% of the ancestry of present-day Africans11, and inferred in several studies to have ended around ∼300 ka7,11,12. At bottom are estimates of divergences and population splits: range of estimated dates for the autosomes, and 95% confidence intervals for mtDNA and Y1. (Not shown: <50 ka gene flow from Neandertals and Denisovans into non-Africans, and superarchaic gene flow to Denisovans.)
(b) Schematic of what the range expansion might have looked like after ∼300 ka, with an early modern human lineage in northeast Africa or the Near East expanding both into Europe and Africa and mixing with local archaic populations; ancestry within these regions would then have homogenized due to admixture among neighbors; the red-to-blue shading indicates mixing. The European archaic range is drawn based on an estimate of the later Neandertal range. Source

Brief Summary

Reich seems to be going alone with this article. There are no other authors. It isn't revert decades of entrenched "Out Of Africanism", but the time is ripe, and this is a first step in the right direction.

This paper by David Reich upturns the classic Out Of Africa (OOA) theory. He suggests that modern humans originated around 300,000 years ago. He does not specifically pinpoint their place of origin, but, although he includes North Africa and a corridor along the Nile to Ethiopia, he has added a Eurasian range that spans the Levant, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus.

Reich the "expansion" of an "early modern human lineage in northeast Africa or the Near East expanding both into Europe and Africa and mixing with local archaic populations; ancestry within these regions" Highlight is mine. I would imagine a group descended from Eurasian Homo erectus evolving in the Levant and then migrating into Africa.

These modern humans then moved into Europe, where they admixed with European archaics (like the Homo antecessor), originating the Neanderthals, and further south into Subsaharan Africa where they met, and mated with very ancient Archaic Africans (they had split from the other branch 1.5 million years ago).

This does away with the current story: Homo heidelbergensis was the ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans. It lived in Western Eurasia and Africa. Then, 300 ky in North Africa it evolved into H. sapiens, there was a first, failed OOA migration ~150 ky ago into the Levant that introgressed human genes into Neanderthals there. Finally, 60 ky ago, modern humans left Africa and replaced, in one single burst, all other humans in the Old World.

Neanderthals descend from modern humans

Reich's take explains why Neanderthals and Denisovans are so similar, from a genetic point of view, yet differ in their mtDNA and Y-chromosome (Neanderthal's are closer to ours). The mtDNA is transmitted by mothers to children (matrilineal), and chromosome Y is patrilineal (father to son), so here we have a theory that basically states that Neanderthals descended from modern humans.

Reich notes that ancient "Neanderthals harbor 3-7% admixturefrom an early modern human lineage ∼300-200 ka"

Modern Humans from the Levant entered Europe and mated with the Archaics that lived there, the blend led to the appearance of Neanderthals, which retained 93% to 97% of the original genes (mainly autosomal), but inherited modern human mtDNA and Y-chromosomes.

Reich then proposes four different scenarios to explain how modern humans passed their uniparental markers on and replaced those in the archaic population.

Into Africa and mix with African Archaics

Another band of these Levantine modern humans moved south into deep Africa and mated with extremely ancient archaic Africans.

Here the mix was very different to the one that took place in Europe. The hybrid population that resulted from the admixture retained 80% modern human and 20% African archaic alleles.

These African Archaics come from a lineage that split 1.5 million years ago from the one that led to the modern humans in North Africa and SW Asia, they evolved separately for 1.2 million years until they encountered these modern humans 300 ky ago. Reich does not say who they were. Were they Homo ergaster or the primitive Homo naledi. Archaic admixture is something that easily explains the "diversity" of Africans vs. non-Africans.

Reich points out that the archaic Europeans were more similar to modern humans: "In Europe, the expansion of this population [modern humans] led to large-scale incorporation of local archaic genes because barriers to producing viable offspring were few, giving rise to Neandertals who ultimately harbored 3-7% ancestry from the expanding early modern human lineage."

But the archaics in Africa were really different: "In Africa, the mixture was with a more divergent lineage, which meant that there was less permeability of the expanding population to admixture with the local archaic group. Thus, the final population which became our own ancestors had a much higher proportion of ancestry from the expanding early modern human lineage."

The Levallois tools

Reich refloats a suggestion first published twentynine years ago by Rob Foley and Marta Lahr in 1997, the "Mode 3 hypothesis". They noticed that around 300,000 years ago a different stone knapping technique appeared, called Levallois. It involves more brainpower because the toolmaker has to work a stone core, in what are known as "prepared core" techniques, shaping the core to prepare it for the flakes that will later be struck from it. This "planning" and foreknowledge of the outcome requires a higher level of cognition than the older Acheulean (Mode 2) or primitive Oldowan (Mode 1) stone knapping.

Reich believes that "Levallois points" are the archaeological proof for his hypothesis. The timing is closer to 400,000 years ago: "...The genetically inferred expansion follows the time when a tool production technique (Levallois points) based on prepared stone cores spread across a wide area of Africa where it was used by early modern humans (known there as the Middle Stone Age and starting by at least 400 ka), and to the Middle East and Europe where it was used by Neandertals (known there as the Middle Paleolithic, starting by at least 480-300 ka)."

It links Neanderthals and Africans during the Middle Stone Age. Notice that the European tools are older than the African ones. Reich adds that the Denisovans in the Far East did not use this technique at such an eraly date: "There is evidence that these technologies were used much less intensively or not at all in East Asia where the closest cousins of early modern humans and Neandertals were Denisovans. In China, the sole strong claim of Levallois in the Middle Paleolithic is at the site of Guanyindong Cave dating to ∼170-80 ka, but this is not a confident inference as another study refutes this interpretation. Levallois has been documented in the Altai Mountains, but this region was proximate to West Eurasia and the technology could have spread from there through contact with Neandertal populations which are well-documented in the Altai. Similarly, evidence of Levallois in India ∼250-200 ka could have been spread by modern human populations from the Near East"

So he also suggests that modern humans were present in India and the Near East, 250,000 to 200,000 years ago. This is far older than the 60 ky suggested by the current version of the Out Of Africa Theory.

PRDM9 gene

Reich also mentions some genetic proof, the PRDM9 gene (that is a link to my post on it). Reich interprets the three main variants of this gene originated over 300 ky ago, and that one of them not found in Denisovans or Neanderthals but present in modern humans, came from archaic Africans. The second lineage is found in Denisovans and Neanderthals but not in modern Africans and is a signal of the archaic Eurasians. The third one "—showing evidence of activity of the “PRDM9-A” allele, which Denisovans lack— is the expanding early modern human lineage represented in admixed form in Neandertals and modern humans living today, but not in Denisovans: a successful early modern human population."

Comments

This is a shift in the simple OOA theory. It implies that modern humans (very likely from the Levant) expanded into Europe, met the archaic population living there, and gradually, as it moved across the continent admixed. The Neanderthal (and Denisovans) that resulted from this blend, "retain[ed] early modern human mtDNA and Y chromosomes while having most of the rest of their genome replaced by archaic genes."

Another group of modern humans from the Levant moved into Africa where our ancestors, "the ancestors of living humans" rose as the outcome of admixture with very ancient archaic hominins lifing in Africa.

It sounds compelling. But, there is only so much that can be inferred from modern genes (the samples taken from modern humans), and old, ancient DNA is lacking in Africa. We have very few samples from Eurasia, and none from archaics. So, further research is needed, and more ancient DNA from Africa, as well as Southern and Southeastern Asia.

But, there are some unanswered questions. Why would such an advanced group of early modern humans, living in a wide territorial range (Morocco to Iran, to Georgia, Iraq, Jordania, Israel, Egypt, etc) die out completely and be replaced by a more recent group trekking out of deep Africa 60,000 years ago? Who were the superarchaics living in Africa 300 kya? Where did Reich get the evidence for this Soutwestern Eurasian territorial distribution? How did the early modern humans originate? (from erectus?). The role of Denisovans (we still don't know much about them)?

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Bulrush based societies have existed for over 30 kya

In my recent series of posts about the redheaded "giants" of Lovelock Cave, Nevada, I mentioned that they had developed a lifestyle adapted to living by and on the lakes (dwindling after the Last Ice Age) of the Great Basin Region. They thrived on bulrushes. The Paiute people, who exterminated the last bands of these people called them Si-te-cah or tule-eaters, after the bulrushes known as tule, that they exploited in their lacustrine and fluvial territory.

Early humans, who lived a hunter-gatherer life, included bulrushes as part of their diet. They ate the tender shoots, and cooked, baked, and ground the roots or rhizomes of these plants into flour. They also used the stems to make mats, baskets, huts, and boats. The Si-te-cah people lived on floating rush islands, in a similar way to the Uro people of Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia.

Fig 1. Global distribution of Typha species (bulrushes). Source

The map above shows the global distribution of the cattail family, the Typhaceae. They are found in wetlands across the world, from New Zealand to Canada. Their name Typha comes from the Greek word for marsh. They can survive in wet, hot, cold, and continental climates, even in freezing icy conditions.

An ancient lifestyle

The oldest proof of bulrush exploitation has been found at Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe, dating back 30,000 years (30 ky).

In a research paper, Revedin et al., 2010, (Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107 (44) 18815-18819, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1006993107) discuss the discovery of grinding implements used at European sites:

Bilancino II (Italy), Kostenki 16–Uglyanka (Russia), and Pavlov VI (Czech Republic). They ground different kinds of plants, and these have been identified: Bilancino II is 28 ky old, and the "highly specialized tool types were probably used for the separation of the vegetable fibers from cattail (Typha) leaves... Considering the size distribution of the morphotype e grains, the mode of the measured values is closer to that calculated for Typha angustifolia (narrow leaf cattail) than to that of Typha latifolia (broadleaf cattail) ."

Kostenki site is roughly 31 ky old, moonworts were processed with stone mortars. At Pavlov VI (29 ky old), moonworts and cattails were pounded into flour.

The authors point out that "the practices that we can reconstruct demonstrate knowledge in the Gravettian populations of Europe of the starch-rich portions of edible plants, combined with the ability to transform them to produce a complex dried product (flour). This would have allowed them greater independence from environmental and seasonal fluctuations." Did other hominins adopt this lifestyle?

Neanderthals and rushes

A paper (Hardy BL, Moncel MH. Neanderthal use of fish, mammals, birds, starchy plants and wood 125-250,000 years ago. PLoS One. 2011;6(8):e23768. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0023768. Epub 2011 Aug 24. PMID: 21887315; PMCID: PMC3161061.) reported that Neanderthals living in the Rhone Valley in France 250,000 to 125,000 years ago, processed the starchy roots of plants using stone tools. Were they bulrushes? We don't know for certain. But this site, at Payre shows they were well equipped to obtain starchy carbohydrates from local plants.

China 10,000 years BP

More recently, rushes were used as food in China as reported by Zhang et al., 2020 (Typha as a wetland food resource: evidence from the Tianluoshan site, Lower Yangtze Region, China some 10,000 years ago). The article discusses the people who inhabited the wetlands along the Yangtze River in China. They found "extremely high percentages of Typha" (bulrush) pollen in their fossilized feces. This site is more recent than those discussed in the previous section, and belong to Neolithic humans. This is close to the birth of agriculture ~10 kya, and these people were also exploiting rice. They note that "The coexistence of Typha and rice also gives clues about the environmental background and agricultural management of early rice paddy, with respect to eutrophication, weeding and inundation." Hinting at agricultural practices regarding the bulrushes.

Australian Aboriginals (past 60 ky)

Ken Macintyre and Barb Dobson, 2023 report that the original people of Australia added Typha rhizomes to their diet. They processed these roots into edible flour, and baked bread from it. They also managed the bulrush growth by burning the dry stands during the dry season. This "muck" burning returned nutrients to the soil and promoted the growth of larger rhizomes which had fewer "hairs" and were thicker.

This was a very ancient practice, and Macintyre & Dobson suggest that "We would assume given the antiquity of Australian Aboriginal culture that if such archaeological research were to be systematically conducted on grinding materials from southwestern Australia that the results could well predate these European findings", in other words, they would be older than the 30,000 years reported by Revedin et al.

North American Natives

In my Lovelock series I mentioned the Umatilla people as also being named "tule-eaters" by the Paiute. They lived in Oregon, and although they were not lacustrine like the Tulares or the Lake Tule (Modocs), they also exploited the tule bulrushes. The picture below, by Lee Moorhouse (1850-1926) is captioned "Indian camps on Columbia river, opposite Umatilla c.1900-1910 and depicts "a tipi made of boards, poles, mats and cloth is located on the flat, rocky shore of the Columbia River. Nearby are two horses." The tipi is made of bulrush reed mats. They were light, strong, and provided insulation. They swelled up when wet, provided a waterproof roof.

Below is Lake Tule, where the Modocs lived (Source), by the way, the scenery is magnificent.

Many natives lived in reed huts and we have a drawing by F. Wikersheim described as Californie, rancheria des Indiens d' hocks sur les bords de la rivière de la plume. (cluster of huts of the Hocks Indians. California, on the banks of Feather River, near Yuba city, drawn c.1850 during the California Gold Rush.

In this same area (close to Yuba City), we have another drawing of a native encampment (Robert B. Honeyman, Jr. Collection, c.1850s). Both images correspond to the Sacramento River valley.

The Yokut people of Lake Tulare and the San Joaquin River basin also built tule huts. The following image, from Contributions to North American ethnology. Vol. III, by John W. Powell, 1873, p. 231 shows "Yo'-kuts Tule Lodges":

Powell describes their lifestyle: "In the mountain streams which empty into Tulare Lake they catch lake trout, chubs, and suckers... On Tulare Lake they construct very rude, frail punts or mere troughs of tule, about ten feet long, in which they cruise timidly about near the shore... Their range of food is extensive. Around the lake they cut and dry the seed-stalks of a kind of flag (Typha) which has a head something like a teasel, thresh out the seed and make flour of if; also wild rye and wild sunflower seed...."

The Paiute once again try to exterminate the tule-eaters

Interestingly, Powell also records that the Yokuts were under attack by "the more powerful and warlike Paiuti of Nevada" who managed to bypass the Sierra Nevada through the "the passes which occur at the northern and southern points of junction between the Sierra and the Coast Range... allowed ... the Paiuti... to swarm in toward the rich and tempting plains of California, dispossessing the feebler peoples who were there before them. Living as they do at the lower end of the great basin, the Yokuts received the brunt of the Paiuti attacks. So severe were the latter that the Yokuts, as a geographically solid body of allied tribes, were cut in two in one place and nearly in another. Their habitat stretched originally from the Fresno River to Fort Tejon; but the Paiuti tribes, swarming through Ta-hi’-cha-pa, Tejon, and Walker's Passes, seized and occupied Kern River, White River, Posa Creek, and Kern Lake, thus completely severing the Yokuts nation, and leaving an isolated fragment of it at Fort Tejon, in a nook of the mountains. Doubtless they would eventually have seized all the streams emptying into Tulare Lake, but they seem to have become enervated by the malaria, and reduced to the same condition of sluggishness as the people whom they displaced." Once again, as with the redheaded giants, the Paiute were aggressive and fought against the peaceful tule-eaters of California.

Ancient links between humans and wetlands

The oldest human footprints in America were discovered in White Sands, New Mexico. Now a barren gypsum dune field, 24,000 years ago it was a freshwater lake (Lake Otero) that covered an area of 4,150 km² (1,600 sq. mi.). This was a suitable habitat. Wetlands provide fish, water fowl, and attract large animals (drink, and vegetation for foraging). Maybe these very ancient paleoindians also used the tule rushes of the lake (the basin is now known as Tularosa (from "tule" and "rosa" = "pink" in Spanish).

Comments

Rushes are a valuable resource, providing fiber for thatching, mats, footwear, canoes, huts, and baskets. Tender shoots, starchy roots, and the food-rich wetland enviornment surely attracted archaic hominins to this kind of habitat.

In an era that preceded agriculture, controlled burns and a stable settlement by a wetland ensured a year-round food supply. It is very likely that hominins exploited these resources in Eurasia, and after entering America did so in North America. The map at the beginning of this post shows that bulrushes were widely distributed across all of Europe, parts of cental Asia, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and most of North America. Did hominins that exploited this environment move along this corridor? In Africa, it is mostly absent, and also in southern and souteastern Asia, as well as South and Central America. Were Neanderhtals and Denisovans adapted to using this type of resource?

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Lovelock Cave redheaded giants - Conclusion (post 6)

This is the final post of the Lovelock Cave redheaded "giants" (Sixth in the Series). In my previous posts I have discussed the information gathered by the first Western person to visit the cave, John T. Reid.

This is the full series of posts on Lovelock Cave's "giants":

  • Post 1
  • Post 2
  • Post 3
  • Post 4
  • Post 5
  • Lovelock Cave redheaded giants - Conclusion (post 6)
  • January 2014 post mentioning Lovelock Cave.

Reid obtained this information from the local Paiute natives, who told him about their oral history and myths. These accounts tell us about a group of tall, redheaded people who were tule-eaters (tule is a variety of bulrush). They were the original people in this area, having arrived before the Paiute. They were well adapted to a lacustrine and fluvial environment, that had gradually been vanishing since the end of the Last Ice Age.

Reid called them Si-te-cah (redheaded tule-eaters). They vanished without a trace because the Paiute exterminated them during a war that lasted several years, and ended at Lovelock Cave. Some versions sayt that a few of these readheaded people managed to get away, making it to Lake Tule and Pit River in Northeastern California.

Summary of the Facts

• Reid's main informants were Sarah Winnemucca and her nephew Gilbert Natchez (he was the grandson of the Paiute Chief Winnemucca, who was Sarah's father; and the son of Sarah's brother, Natchez Winnemucca). Other natives, and locals also mentioned the readheaded people:
  Sarah: they were "barbarians", people who ate the dead, cannibals, "people eaters". She added that they had "reddish hair" and that she owned a dress made with it.
  Mr. Mah-Wee said the dress existed, and had reddish-brown hair, obtained from the Si-te-cah (tule-eaters).
  Gilbert: They came from the Southwest, were "redheaded" and "very tall" they had spears but not arrows, and dogs with peaky, upright ears. They were also identfied with the "Umatilla's" or Pitt River or Modoc Indians (whe were lacustrine people).
  Taylor says they were the original inhabitants of this area when the Paiute arrived (c. 1000 AD according to Sutton). The Paiute would replace them.
  Bow-E-An (aka "Skinny Dave"): He was the grandson of Natchez and great-nephew of Winnemucca , narrated how his father, Pas-sa Dave (aka "Captain Dave") said they had reddish brown hair and some of them "were very tall". He also called them "Si-te-cah which means 'Tule Eaters'."
• Lowe and Harrington who excavated Lovelock cave in 1912 and 1924, respectively, added more information: the Paiute called the "ancient people the name sai-duka’a, “tule-eaters,” a name which might be applied to any people with this habit. This may account for the application of the name or its shortened form sai’i to the Pit River Indians and the form Saidyuka [sic] to Indians of eastern Oregon".
• Comment. In the different soucrces there are several references associating these redheaded giants with the Pit River and Lake Tule (Modoc) people. They lived in NE California and across the border, in southeastern Oregon. They were well adapted to their lakes and rivers habitat. Perhaps this similarity with the lifestyle of the Si-te-cah people led to this connection between both ethnic groups, redheads and Modocs. I will mention this in detail further down.
• Reid believed they were Neanderthals. A newspaper article about Reid said he called them "red-heads, known scientifically as the Sid-ucah [sic] or Neanderthal race."
  While the local Paiute had "round" skulls, that is, brachycephalic, the redheaded tule-eaters had elongated crania, that is, dolichocephalic. In this, they resemble the Paleoindians (Lagoa Santa, Kennewick Man), and also Neanderthals and Denisovans were long-skulled humans.
• Natchez added that there was a child-eating "large beast" that lived in the area in the past, called "Ooh-queetz". Reid mentioned a similar creature, a "cave man" called "Pi-Ee-tsah."
• There were other "Tule eating" natives in California besides the Modocs at Lake Tule, and Pit River; these were the Yokut speakers from Lake Tulare near Fresno and Tulare, CA. The latter believed in a "Hairy Man", a wild-man, similar to bigfoot. They called it "Mayak datat" or "Sunsunut". One of the articles I quoted suggests it was a bigfoot.

Discussion

The now desertic and arid environment at Lovelock, Nevada is very different to the humid conditions that prevailed there when vast lakes covered the Great Basin Region in Nevada and Utah before the end of the last Ice Age. There were people who lived in that lacustrine habitat, thriving on the fish, game and plants that grew in the wetlands surrounding the lakes.

These were the first people in the area, and they were very different from the later arrivals like the Paiute or Shosone.

Baker et al., 2000 using the basket-making techiques of these people was unique, and "has no ethnographic correlates anywhere in North America. The appearance and disappearance of this textile from the Western Great Basin demonstrates a rare technological turnover within a regional basketry sequence characteristic of population replacement" (highlight is mine). The Numic speaking Paiute used "totally different [methods]" to make their baskets.

The replacement of the original population took place ~1000 AD. Baker et al., clearly state that this replacaement ".., means that there was a non-Numic population living in the area before the ancestors of the Northern Paiute arrived."

Who were these people? They were definitely Paleo-Indians, or probably an earlier population, with elongated heads. Their perfect adaptation to the lakes suggests that they had evolved over millennia in contact with this environment. An environment that has a long history in the Great Basin Region and Califnornia.

Lake Tulare in South Central California and its predecessor, Lake Corcoran span a period starting over 750,000 years ago. The Great Basin Lakes formed time and time again over the past 2 million years.

Reid's belief that these people were Neanderthal, due to their skull shape, is probably valid. But, I would suggest that they were Denisovans. These have dolichocephalic skulls like Neanderthals and the readheaded giants, but, unlike the Neanderthals, Denisovans were were big (See my post Denisovans were very tall people!).

I am not convinced about the bigfoot theory, it is likely that the natives had wild-men myths. In fact it is a shared heritage common to most human groups. Wild men, ogres, trolls, hairy giants are found across the world. It could be feasible that the later arrivals, Homo sapiens assigned a primitive child-eating, child-kidnapping behavior to other hominins (wild-men) that arrived earlier to America (Denisovans, Neanderthals, Homo erectus). This would explain the tule eaters description as barbarians and cannibals given by Sarah Winnemucca.

A very wild and farfetched idea is that the redhaired people were of a more primitive kind, for instance gigantopithecus, a giant-sized relative of the orangutans (who have red or orange fur, though we don't know what was the color of gigantopithecus fur). They may have been able to make tools, but it is an implausible possibility.

Red Hair is a unique trait

Readheaded people are not at all common, only 2 to 3% of the total human population have red hair (Source). Red hair or brown hair is extremely rare among Native Americans, who tend to have jet black hair.

The official explanation for the red hair of the Lovelock remains is that chemicals and microbes decolored the hair of the mummified bodies, or that ochre was applied to the hair, coloring it red. Both are valid explanations.

In my 2014 post about Lovelock and the nearby Spirit Cave remains (which also have red hair), I wrote that "Red hair is not at all common among Amerindians or East Asians but Neanderthal had the MC1R gene (melanocortin 1 receptor) associated with red hair in humans... So maybe a band of relict Neanderthals lived in Nevada until quite recently and were wiped out by the Paiute." I made this remark based on a paper by Lalueza-Fox, C., Römpler, H., Hofreiter M., et al., (2007). A melanocortin 1 receptor allele suggests varying pigmentation among Neanderthals. Science, October 25, 2007.

The authors found a mutation in two Neanderthal specimens, a variant that has not yet been detected in humans, the "R307G substitution" in the MC1R (melanocortin 1 receptor) protein that regulates skin and hair color. This substitution causes a partial "loss of function" in the protein, and in human MC1R, a similar loss of function causes pale white skin and red hair. The paper notes that the "Neanderthal individuals that may have had reduced pigmentation levels, possibly even similar to the pale skin color and/or red hair observed in modern humans" and speculates if it could have been the result of selection allowing a better absorption of sunlight in northern Eurasia for vitamin D production in the skin.

As this mutation is different to the one found in humans the paper rules out gene flow and suggest that human and Neanderthals developed red hair through a "convergent evolution of reduced-function MC1R alleles." They note that at least 1% of Nenderthals carried this mutation.

Since 2007, analysis of other Neanderthal specimens has failed to detect this R307G substitution. It must be very rare. These other Neanderthals carry another variant that they passed on to modern humans (see Ding et al., 2014). It is the "Val92Met variant, a loss-of-function variant in MC1R that is associated with multiple dermatological traits including skin color and photoaging. Frequency of this Neanderthal introgression is low in Europeans (∼5%), moderate in continental East Asians (∼30%), and high in Taiwanese aborigines (60–70%)." It causes freckles in Japanese people! Could it cause red hair in Neanderthals?

The modern human mutation causing reduced function on MC1R is ancient. Harding et al., 2000 noted that "for the European red hair–associated Arg151Cys and Arg160Trp variants, we estimate an age of ∼80,000 years." This is far older than modern human remains in Europe. Furthermore, the authors calculated that "the MC1R variants Val60Leu, Val92Met, and Arg163Gln may trace back to ancestors in Eurasian populations existing 250,000–100,000 years ago." Now this date predates the Out of Africa (OOA) event, meaning that these people would have lived in Africa (but there are no redheaded people there). This is inconsistent with the OOA migration. Harding et al., aware of this discrepancy: "... an incompatibility arises between estimated ages in the range of 250,000–100,000 years, for non-African MC1R allelic variation, and ages, from fossil evidence, of ⪱100,000 years for the dispersal of modern humans outside Africa and the Middle East." (They try to explain it away to adapt the dates to the OOA theory).

The point is that red hair is an ancient trait shared by Humans and Neanderthals. Do we know if Denisovans carry this trait? No, we don't. It seems that they don't have the MC1R variants.

But, Tenesa et al., 2018 pointed out that "MC1R only explains 73% of the SNP heritability for red hair in UK Biobank, and in fact most individuals with two MC1R variants have blonde or light brown hair. We identify other genes contributing to red hair, the combined effect of which accounts for ~90% of the SNP heritability" So there are other genes that can cause red hair.

And even in the MC1R there are more variants that can produce redheaded people. A recent paper by Kashyap et al., 2026 searched for mutations in the MC1R gene in 11,000 Indians and found 9 new variants and 12 "ultra-rare" ones, that make skin pigmentation lighter, and an extremely rare, unique variant in a girl from Southern India, that caused red hair.

Then we have an area with a high level of Denisovan introgression, Melanesia where people have a different allele that causes fair hair and also red hair. It is a switch from arginine to cysteine known as the R93C mutation in the TYRP1 (tyrosinase-related protein 1) gene on chromosome 9. Did this mutation reach Polynesia in an ancient wave? I have posted about a pre-Maoir people who are said to have been the original inhabitants of New Zealand, the Urukehu, fair, and redheaded. Then we have the "Ehu" (note the term "ehu" in Urukehu, and Ehu. It means a reddish or brown tint in the hair) of Hawaii was reported by H. D. Alexander, 1893 (p.24): "The existence among them of a strain of lighter colored people with sandy or reddish hair called in Hawaii ehu and in New Zealand kehu may be due to intermingling with another race either in India or the Malay Archipelago."

The Denisovans could have reached America some 400,000 years ago, and adapted to the empty New World. These tule eaters could have been thei last remnants.

Giants

Reid believed they were giants, and the figures he calculated were gigantic. As I have shown, later, formal studies give them a tall yet normal height. This discrepancy requires an explanation.

In my first post, James Hart, who dug the caves, removing guano in 1911 unearthed very large skeletons: a man measuring 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m), he described as gigantic. Where did this skeleton end up? It does not seem likely that it became part of Reid's collection, the one measured by modern scholars, which yielded "shorter" or more "normal" heights. The source I cited states that "It is assumed Reid must have collected these specimens from the Pyramid Lake area and in the Humboldt Sink. The time period to which these remains date is undetermined, as there were no directly associated artifacts or archaeological context. Consequently the skeletal material from the Reid Collection was grouped together and treated during this analysis as if all the individuals were from one time period." So, perhaps none of the cave people were measured, and Reid collected bones from Paiute burials in the region.

We will never know for certain because, as stated in the Humboldt Museum (Winnemucca, NV) website, "In respect for American Indians and compliance with NAGPRA, the display was removed. All human remains have been repatriated. HUMBOLDT MUSEUM DOES NOT POSSESS ANY HUMAN REMAINS OR FUNERARY ITEMS." The remains are lost to science in the name of a supposed (actually non-existent) link between Paiute people and these other humans who were not even Paiute!

The Modoc & Pit River connection

There were several references to the Modoc natives from Lake Tule and Pit River in the stories of the Paiute people about the redheaded giants. Why?

In my first post of this series I quoted Lowe and Harrington as saying "In the Mind of the Northern Paiute they [the tule-eaters] are often associated with the Pit River Indians among whom a remnant [of the redheaded giants] are even supposed to exist today. The Pit River Indians are called by the Paiute sai’i, which is also the name of the ancient people, but the possible reason for this is that both peoples are held in contempt." In other words, the Paiute gave the Modoc (Pit River Indians) the same name they had given the redhead giants: "sai'i" or "ancient". Which is revealing, because it assigns antiquity to these people, coinciding with the idea accepted by modern anthropologists, that they were the first inhabitants of this area of the Great Basin.

Lowe and Harrington also wrote that "The Northern Paiute applied to the ancient people the name sai-duka’a, “tule-eaters,” a name which might be applied to any people with this habit. This may account for the application of the name or its shortened form sai’i to the Pit River Indians and the form Saidyuka to Indians of eastern Oregon."

These Saidyuka were a small band, comprised of five tribes that lived close to Pyramid Lake in NW Nevada. that were displaced by the Paiute into Oregon (Source). They were of Shoshone origin, and therefore related to the Paiute, unlike the "ancient" lake dwellers.

In my second post I mentioned that bothh authors noted that "In some versions a few escaped and were chased to the northwest of Lovelock Cave; in other versions, they ended up as far away as Tule Lake, California."

In my third post, I quote Reid, who gives Gilbert Natchez's account: "the Piutes followed, and when they found that the intruders who Natchez called "Umatilla's" [sic] but other Piutes refer to as the Pitt River or Modoc Indians, had taken refuge in the cave... but other stories go on to state that the intruders were driven to the northwestward". Note that the Umatilla's did not have a river or lake habitat, instead they lived on the Columbia River plateau in Oregon, they used horses.

Reid also mentions that the "Si-te-cah (redheaded tule-eaters) ... who escaped this confrontation were driven north towards the Pitt River."

It seems that the "Pitt" (actually Pit) River natives, the Modoc people, who also lived by Lake Tule in NE California were considered tule-eaters. The versions stating that the survivors of Lovelock Cave massacre moved northwest, and the reference to the Umatilla people of southern Oregon all point at an association in the minds of the Paiutes, between the Nevada tule-eaters and those other ethnic groups, contemporary tribes, living in NE California and Oregon.

This association may have been promoted by the similar lifestyles of Modocs and Lovelock redheads, adapted to lake and river environments. But it is very likely that the Lovelock people did not belong to the Modoc, or Tulare, ethnic groups. They were the ancient inhabitants who settled there during the wet periods preceding the Last Glacial Maximum in the Great Basin Region.

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Lovelock "giants" revisited (Post 5)

Continuing with the Lovelock Cave redheaded giants series, in this post we will explore the comment made by Dorothy P. Dansie in her 1975 article, published in the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Fall 1975 (John T. Reid's Case for the Redheaded Giants) in which she added a curious piece of information: a cryptid, man-eating, hairy giant in the lore of the Paiute people.

After recording the native stories about the redheaded people that were exterminated in Lovelock Cave, Dansie noted that Gilbert Natchez, the Paiute friend of John T. Reid, who had told him about Lovelock Cave, had also told him about a native myth about a child-eating creature.

This is the full series of posts on Lovelock Cave's "giants":

  • Post 1
  • Post 2
  • Post 3
  • Post 4
  • Post 5
  • Lovelock Cave redheaded giants - Conclusion (post 6)
  • January 2014 post mentioning Lovelock Cave.

The monster that ate children

This is what Dansie wrote about Natchez and the native tales:

"Off the subject, but perhaps related, is another tale told that day by Natchez of some large beasts which had once roamed the Humboldt region. They were dangerous carnivorous animals which devoured unprotected children and he claimed that Indian mothers still threatened their children with, "Ooh-queetz will get you, if you are not good." Reid adds that he had heard similar mention of a "cave man" who would get the children if they were unruly. Another term for a terrifying child-eating beast was Pi-Ee-tsah."

I have encountered similar myths in Patagonia, child, and woman-eating creatures, hairy man-like beasts living in caves. They probably reflect the megafaunal creatures that existed until some 10,000 years ago (sloths, large cave bears, sabre tooth felines, etc.) In this case it seems that Dansie added the story because somehow, she believed they were linked to the redheaded "giants" that lived in the region. Perhaps a tribal memory about them.

The tule-eaters

Before looking into the hairy giants myths, I'd like to refer to the the "real" people who lived in this area by the lakes, who were well adapted to its environment. They were, according to the Paiute, tule-eaters. The ones that have been documented histocrically, and have survived until today, lived in California: the Modocs in the Northeastern corner of the state, and the Yokuts in central California, along the San Joaquin River Valley.

As mentioned in a previous post (see: Modocs on Pitt River (and Lake Tule), and Lake Tulare in the south) these people based their subsistence on the tule bulrush (Schoenoplectus acutus). They made houses, mats, boats, baskets, nets, and footwear out of the rushes. They ate the tender shoots, and ground the roots into tule flour. Indeed they were tule-eaters. They also hunted the wildlife that lived in the wetlands around Lake Tulare and Lake Tule.

It may seem an adaptation to a strange, possibly unique environment, but it wasn't. The region was completely different 15,000 years ago. Nevada, western Utah, southeastern California and northern Arizona may be arid nowadays, but back then the region was very humid, and had many vast lakes.

It would have been an ideal environment for the first Paleoindians, providing water, food, and natural resources. The Paiute people were latecomers to the region. Mark Q. Sutton suggested in 1958, that the Northern Paiute reached the region around 1000 AD. "presumably supplanting earlier inhabitants" Yes, they did, they exterminated the tule-eaters.

During the Pleistocene Ice Age periods over the past two million years (a period of time long enough to cover potential migrations of archaic hominins into America), glacial ice melt and grater rainfall formed a network of large lakes across the Great Basin Region.

It gets its name because it is a closed drainage basin (no outflow into the oceans that surround North America).

At the end of the Pleistocene, deglaciation brought with it a gobal warming period and climate change that altered rainfall patterns and led to an increased dryness in that region. As arid conditions set in, evaporation increased and the lakes started to shribnk. Water levels dropped, and the lakes broke up into smaller ones. Most of them dried up quickly while others shrunk to their current size some 8,000 years ago. Their ancient coastlines are etched high up, along the valleys that were once filled with freshwater.

Now, this area has former lake beds that became salt flats or sinks that seasonally carry water. However, some of the modern lakes, are remnants of those vast Ice Age lakes: Great Salt Lake in Utah, Lake Utah, Bear Lake, Lake Mono, Carson Lake, Lake Tahoe, etc.) The following map, prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey (Paleoclimate Variability of the American Southwest) shows, the ancient (dark blue) and modern (pale blue) lakes of the Great Basin Region.

Pleistocene Lakes in the Great Basin Region. California, Nevada, Utah. U.S.G.S.

The area around Lovelock contained a vast lake, Lake Lahontan, with a surface area of 22,000 km² (8,500 sq. mi.) it was almost 270 m deep (900 ft.) An ideal setting for humans to thrive.

Not far from this lake, in the region west of the Sierra Nevada, south of Sacramento, California (and possibly north, along what now is the Sacramento Valley), was another vast lake (Lake Corcoran) that was formed around 760,000 years ago and emptied around 650,000 years ago into the newly formed San Francisco Bay.

In the Southern Part of the Californian Central Valley some parts of Lake Corcoran survived. Nowadays, the San Joaquin River runs along it, with a SE-NW course. It has its sources in the Sierra Nevada, to the East, and its valley is enclosed on the west by the Southern Coastal Ranges, that run parallel to the Pacific coast. Just south of Fresno, was a large lake (Lake Tulare).

Below is the map prepared by Narváez, of Alta California, who visited California in 1822, and published it in 1830. You can see the "Ciénagas de Tulares" (Tulares Marshes - after the Tule bulrushes) running along the San Joaquin River Valley, south of Sacramento all the way to Bakersfield. I highlighted some landmarks on the map.

Narvaez probably exagerated in the extent of the wetlands, basing his knowledge on native informants. But we do know that Lake Tulare was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. It covered an area of over 1,750 km² (~700 sq. mi.) which could grow to almost 1,100 sq. mi. (2,800 km²) during very wet spells.

The surrounding areas were marshes. Starting in the 1870s, the lake was dissecated to make room for farming, the rivers dammed and the overflow used for irrigation.

Something similar took place in NW California where Lake Tule - also named for the bulrushes, (53 km² or 13,000) was drained in the 1920s. It was much bigger in the past, covering between 50,000 and 100,000 acres (200 to 400 km²) depending on the snowpack and precipitation.

The native people who lived by these lakes were displaced by Western settlers after 1850, and their unique lake-based lifestyles vanished. Below is a short summary about these people.

The Modoc

These were mentioned by John Reid's informants, as the source (in some versions) or the survivors (in other versions) of the giant readheaded tule-eating people who were exterminated by the Paiute in Lovelock.

The Modocs lived on both sides of the Oregon-California border, around Lake Tule and along the Lost River that feeds it. Contact with westerners in the late 1700s introduced disease (smallpox) that wiped out most of them. Then came the pioneers heading for Oregon in the 1850s which led to war, uprooting and relocation with other ethnic groups (Klamaths, and Paiutes). Finally they rebelled and war broke out in 1872. They were defeated and some relocated to the Indian Territories (now Oklahoma), where a band of Modoc still live, in Miami, OK. (Source).

The Lake Tulare People

The first people of Tulare spoke the Yokut language, and were not related to the Modoc, they spoke a different language. But they shared the same lacustrine environment and adaptations. Over 35,000 people spread into more than 40 tribes lived in the region. The Tachi Yokuts of Leemore, CA, and the Tule River Indian Tribe of Porterville, CA are the current remnants of the tribe. (Source).

The Mayak-Datat - "Hairy Man"

Just like the Paiute, who had their myths about the child-eating caveman, the Lake Tulare natives also have oral traditions about a "hairy man". Their ancestors depicted the creature in their rock art.

An article by Kathy Moskowitz Strain, 2012 (The Relict Hominoid Inquiry 1:1-12, Mayak Datat: The Hairy Man Pictographs) decribes the myth and the rock art. The following image is a composite adapted from Strain's article:

Three different "hairy men" (Father, Mother, and Child). K.M. Stain, 2012

The paintings are between 700 and 2000 years old, most likely 500-1000 years old, and represent animals, and the "Hairy Man". Strain says that the "Tule River Indians equate Hairy Man to Bigfoot".

The natives call it Mayak datat or sunsunut. It is depicted as a hairy biped. There is a male, a female and a "child" painting at the site. The creatures have five finters, and "an unusually rounded head, suggestive of a sagittal crest."

The story of the Hairy Man can be found on the Tulare people's website , and I quote it below:

"Big Foot, The Hairy Man

Big Foot was a creature that was like a great big giant with long, shaggy hair. His long shaggy hair made him look like a big animal. He was good in a way, because he ate the animals that might harm people. He kept the Grizzly Bear, Mountain Lion, Wolf, and other larger animals away. During hot summer nights all the animals would come out together down from the hills to drink out of the Tule River. Big Foot liked to catch animals down by the river. He would eat them up bones and all.
It was pleasant and cool down by the river on hot summer nights. That is when grown ups liked to take a swim. Even though people feared that Big Foot, the hairy man, might come to the river, people still liked to take a swim at night.
Parents always warned their children, "Don't go near the river at night. You may run into Big Foot." Now Big Foot usually eats animals, but parents said, "If he can't find any animals and he is very hungry, he will eat you. Big Foot, the hairy man, doesn't leave a speck or trace. He eats you up bones and all. We won't know where you have gone or what has happened to you."
Some people say Big Foot, the hairy man, still roams around the hills near Tule River. He comes along the trail at night and scares a lot of people. When you hear him you know it is something very big because he makes a big sound, not a little sound. Children are cautioned not to make fun of his picture on the painted rock or play around that place because he would hear you and come after you.
Parents warned their children, "You are going to meet him on the road if you stay out too late at night." The children have learned always to come home early.
Told by Ruby Bays Jennie Franco From Big foot and other stories."

Similar stories can be found among other native groups living in the area (see "Rock Giants" in C. Hart Merriam's book The Dawn of the World Myths and Weird Tales Told by the Mewan [Miwok] Indians of California, published in 1910. The Mewan are a different group from the Yokut, but share the myths of man-eating giants.

Comments

I am skeptical about bigfoot or a similar cryptid. Some have suggested it could be a species similar to the Asian gigantopithecus, but it seems unlikely. However, this "hairy man" and the other references to child-eating cavemen, and rock men, may indicate the presence of "wild men". Wild men are a common myth in South America and Patagonia, and in my posts I have suggested that they were exactly that, wild hominins, probably Neanderthals, Denisovans or Homo erectus. In my next post, the final one in this series, I will go into this hypothesis in detail.

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Lovelock "giants" revisited (Post 4)

Today's is the fourth post in this series about the redheaded giants of Lovelock Cave, Nevada. In it, I will discuss some points mentioned by Reid and his sources about a local cryptid, and the belief held by Reid that these tule-eating giants were in fact Neanderthals.

This is the full series of posts on Lovelock Cave's "giants":

  • Post 1
  • Post 2
  • Post 3
  • Post 4
  • Post 5
  • Lovelock Cave redheaded giants - Conclusion (post 6)
  • January 2014 post mentioning Lovelock Cave.

Neanderthals

Dorothy P. Dansie published an article in the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Fall 1975, titled John T. Reid's Case for the Redheaded Giants. Besides the documents about readheaded giants, she also added some context, mentioning skulls that John Reid believed were Neanderthal skulls.

Dansie notes that Reid was a mine engineer and geologist, however, he didn't have any formal training in anthropology or archaeology, but he was a smart person and sought the advice and support of professional scholars.

She adds that "Reid's research had led him to believe he possessed Neanderthal skulls", so he wrote to the leading antrhropologist in America at that time, Ales Hrdlicka. Hrdlicka together with William Henry Holmes of the Smitshonian Institution, and Thomas Chamberlin of the United States Geological Survey, refused to accept that humans had reached America before the end of the last Ice Age, and placed their arrival around 3,000 to 10,000 years ago. So, when Reid wrote to him about the possibility that the skulls belonged to Neanderthals, Hrdlicka rejected the idea, and "simply referring Reid to Hrydlica's publications on the subject."

But Reid didn't give up. Dansie reports that "Reid had read of unusual skulls having been found in Illinois, Indiana and Iowa and also of General H. G. Thomas's exhumation of skulls in Dakota Territory "... like those of the great gibbon monkey..." So he sought advice elsewhere.

The Dakota Skulls of 1872

I will add some context to this statement about General Thomas and the Dakota Territory skulls.

These remains came from ancient Indian mounds. Cyrus Thomas (1825-1910) had an eclectic career, studying medicine, law, working as a school superintendent, and a Lutheran Evangelist minister. He helped found the Illinois Natural History in 1859 and in 1869, joined the Hayden Survey of the Northern Rockies as an entomologist. In 1873 he was appointed Professor of Natural History at Southern Illinois Normal University. In 1881 he was named Direcotr of the Division of Mound Exploration of the Bureau of Ethnology. (Source). It was during his service in North-Central USA in 1872, that he arrived at what then was the Dakota Territory (now North Dakota), and met General H. G. Thomas there. His account (which can be read in "Thomas, Cyrus 1873 Ancient mounds of Da ko ta. Geological Survey of the Territories for 1873. Government Printing Office, Washington, pp. 655-658) tells us that he was taveling in the Territory of Dakota in the summer of 1872, and learned about some mounds in the area. The local military force led by General H. G. Thomas provided him with support and Sioux guides and soldiers to help him excavate the mounds.

The mounds were, according to Cyrus, 2 miles southeast of Jamestown, North Dakota on Pipestone Creek (now named Pipestem Creek) see the approximate site in Google Maps.

Cyrus unearthed several human skeletons and drew a sketch of the mounds. He found nothing unsual. He also included a text written by General H. G. Thomas who had cut into some mounds before his arrival (Source); below I quote the relevant part of it; the highlight is mine:

"The crowning argument however comes with the skull. It is unlike that of any human being to day alive on this continent the frontal bone being low receding growing narrow and pinched from the brows up the top of the head depressed in the center. The cavity of the cranium is full seven inches long and a scant four and a half inches wide. The orbital ridges or eyebrows are excessively developed like those of the great Gibbon monkey. In fact the whole skull resembles that of the great Gibbon monkey.
HG THOMAS Captain Twentieth Infantry Brer Brig Gen USA"

Thomas believed these were oddly shaped skulls was not that of a modern human being. Of course Reid would believe that these primitive skulls were those of Neanderthals.

So, we will return to our main story, back in Lovelock Nevada.

Neanderthal skulls in Lovelock

Dansie wrote that "during the summer of 1928 Reid was visited by S. de la Rue and Mary Sasse whom he claimed were well informed on the subject, having studied in museums in Europe. They took measurements of the skulls and " ... had no hesitation in pronouncing these Neanderthal. ... " They returned to Lovelock in 1929 and told Reid that they had submitted the skulls to various authorities before depositing them with the Museum of Natural History in New York and that they were more than ever convinced of their first evaluation".

So, these skulls never became part of the collection of the Nevada Historical Society in 1984, who acquired Reid's original collection. They ended up in New York City. I have not been able to find any information about S. de la Rue or Mary Sasse.

Dansie adds that "Dr. Clark Wissler, then Curator in Chief, Division of Anthropology at the Museum of Natural History, in due time informed Reid that the skeletons appeared to be of a type of early man (MS February 1, 1933)."

A newspaper article published in the Mason Valley News, Yerington, Nevada, 02 May 1931, titled Much Interest Taken in Lovelock History reports that Reid had said he'd found evidence of the presence of Mayan people in the region. It also mentions the 7 foot tall skeleton discovered nearby by Lloyd de la Montanya, and Reid's collection and the Lovelock cave redheaded giants, described as "red-heads, known scientifically as the Sid-ucah or Neanderthal race." You can read the article following the link above. Below is a cropped image.

The shape of the skulls

An interesting point is that Reid corresponded with Wissler and sent him bones and artifacts. In a letter dated October 1930, Reid wrote to Wissler about a grave where "another skull had been found, which Reid described as being that of a typical roundhead Indian distinctly different from the longheaded, redheaded people represented by the remains in the shipment (Letter, October 30, 1930, to Mr. Clark Wossler, Museum of Natural History, New York City, New York)."

This is a new fact about the redheaded people. Unlike the typical Indians like the Paiute, who had "round" skulls, that is, brachycephalic, the redheaded tule-eaters had elongated crania, that is, dolichocephalic.

Native Americans have both broad and long headed skulls (brachycephalic and dolichocephalic). Shape varies between regions, time periods, and ethnic groups, but the Paleoindians were mostly dolichocephalic. Only later did the natives shift towards rounder skulls (brachycephalic).

The skulls of Kennewick Man from Washington USA and Luzia, from Lagoa Santa, Brazil were dolichocephalic, and date back to around 10,000 years ago. They were paleoindians. The fact that later and modern Native Americans have rounded crania suggests that a second, more recent wave of migrants reache the Americas, and these were brachycephalic.

Intriguingly, (Boggione et al., 2025) Neanderthals and Denisovans (Qiang Ji et al., 2021) had elongated skulls, just like the ancient paleoindians had.

My next post will look into the local myths regarding a hominin-like monster that lived in that area.

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Lovelock "giants" revisited (Post 3)

In this, the third post on my series about the redheaded giant natives of Lovelock, Nevada, we will dissect the article by Dorothy P. Dansie, published in the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, Fall 1975, titled John T. Reid's Case for the Redheaded Giants. It includes not only the quotes published by Lowe with Reid's account, and several native accounts on the redheaded Indians.

This is the full series of posts on Lovelock Cave's "giants":

  • Post 1
  • Post 2
  • Post 3
  • Post 4
  • Post 5
  • Lovelock Cave redheaded giants - Conclusion (post 6)
  • January 2014 post mentioning Lovelock Cave.

Dansie's Article - Main points

The article tells how John Reid, a local geologist, and mine engineer, who was born nearby in Nevada, and lived out his life there, provided the two expeditions (Lowe's in 1912 and Harrington's in 1924) that explored Lovelock cave with information about the local myths. Reid, who had worked at his father's General Store in Lovelock, spoke Paiute language and was a friend of the local Native Americans. This gave him intimate knowledge about their myths, lores, and also about the cave near the town of Lovelock.

Dansie, who read his files, says that Reid mentioned that the first time he visited the site was around 1866, as a boy, in the company of Gilbert Natches (or Natchez), a relative of Sarah Winnemucca and a Paiute. Gilbert was accompanied by other natives, and the party was searching for wild horses. They camped by the cave, and Natchez told Reid the following story (highlighting is mine):

"A long time ago an indian [sic] tribe came into this country from the southward, this indian tribe was redheaded and they were very tall men, the Piutes fought them on the south and west side of the lake that the intruders crossed over the lake and into the cave, by the use of tule boats they were able to cross the lake easily. The Piutes followed, and when they found that the intruders who Natchez called "Umatilla's" [sic] but other Piutes refer to as the Pitt River or Modoc Indians, had taken refuge in the cave , then the Piutes gathered in council and decided that they would gather all of the sagebrush that they could get hold of that lay to the east of and above the cave and after placing this on the bluff above and setting it afire that they would continue to throw over lighted brush into the face of the cave until all within had perished from suffocation all the while having men so posted that any of the people within the cave trying to escape could be killed with well directed arrows. After a siege lasting several days, Natches [sic] relates that all of the intruders were killed, but other stories go on to state that the intruders were driven to the northwestward. I can only reconcile this lack of harmony in the different stories with the probable fact that where the battles took place to the southward of Humboldt Lake, it is more than probable that the intruders had their force divided into two groups', one of which went on the east side of the lake while the other went on the west side of the lake .... (MS August 8,1924, "Notes for Mr. Harrington")."

The origin of these "readheaded-giant" is relevant. Reid says that according to his Paiute friends, they came from the Southwest (as seen from Lovelock, Nevada). I prepared the following map to show the places mentioned in this text. Lovelock is the red star, in Nevada (Yellow), the southwestern direction is the Triangle to the lower left of the map, into California. Pitt River (also known as Pit River) is located in northeastern California, and flows into the Sacramento River. It runs through Modoc County. Both are mentioned by Reid as names given to these Indians by the Paiute. Interestingly (as mentioned in my previous posts), Sarah Winnemucca said these people were Tule eaters and lived on Humboldt Lake weaving tule bulrushes, living on tule islands, with tule boats. There are two lakes associated to the word tule, one is Lake Tulare, near modern Tulare and Fresno in California, now dissecated, a former lake and vast wetland fed by the snowmelt of the Sierra Nevada in California, and the San Joaquin River basin. The other in northern California has also been partly dissecated, and is located just beyond the western tip of Modoc County.

Map with the places mentioned in this text. Copyright ©2026 by Austin Whittall

Since Modoc and Pit River are northwest of Lovelock, something does not fit. I believe that the Paiute found the Modoc tule-eaters similar to others "that came from the southwest", possibly from the region of Lake Tulare, in California (see map).

However, another story has them coming from the Modoc region as we will see below.

In this story, Reid tells us about a man named Dick Sampson, who was around 75 years old in 1924, who recalled a tale told to him by his great-grandmother about the battles between Paiute and these other (readheaded) natives. This time, we learn they came from the west, from Pit River: "She had told Sampson that those now called "Pitt River Indians" came in from the west" and that after several battles"They finally departed westward, back to Pitt River where they had come from".

They weren't redheaded either: "Sampson told Reid that he had never heard that those people whom the Paiutes killed at the cave above Humboldt Lake were redheaded, as had been stated by Chief Natchez." This ties in with the Modoc region, but depicts them as regular natives.

Reid also had other accounts by people who lived in the region. They said that the "Si-te-cah (redheaded tule-eaters) ... who escaped this confrontation were driven north towards the Pitt River."

But, unlike other versions, these tule-eaters spoke a different language; "Virginia" Jim recalled that they had called out to the Paiute "in mournful tones, " Yah-hah-nah-ho-week-ho-no," as well as he could remember it, but that he did not understand its meaning nor did the ancestors who told him of the incident. He thought it was a plea for peace."

In another story, a civil engineer named L. H. Taylor, recalled that in 1904, an old Indian told him about the fighting between the Paiute and "the people who had been in the area when the Indians came."

This suggests that these tule-eaters were the first, the original people living there before the arrival of the Paiute.

This fighting took place along Carson River (that runs from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada south of Lake Tahoe, with a NE course into Nevada, draining into a closed basin (Carson Sink) south of Lovelock. This aligns with the SW direction mentioned further up.

The habitat of the tule-eaters was the lakes, rivers, and wetlands in west-central Nevada beyond Lake Humboldt. This idea is reinforced by another statement recorded by Reid, given by James Hunter from Lovelock, who had been told by a Paiute named Bung-Eye-Jim that: the Paiute asked other tribes of the intermuntain region for help, and they provided it, sending reinforcements to cover the Paiute losses, "to assist in an all-out effort to exterminate the enemy. Cooperation seemed assured because other tribes had exterminated the redheaded people in the surrounding territories and the antipathy toward them would lend impetus to the plan for final genocide."

The "Intermountain Region" spans California east of the Sierra Nevada, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado west of the Rocky mountains. It extends north and south between the Cascades and the Rockies (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, west Montana and Wyoming, Northern Arizona and Western New Mexico). The natives living here detested these tule-eating people. Why?

Sarah Winemmucca's red-hair dress

I have already mentioned that Sarah Winemmucca said she owned a dress made with the red hair of these defeated people. Reid had more information about this weird garment.

A native named Mr. Mah-Wee made a statement in 1927, who was around 76 years (or more) at that time. He was questioned by Reid, and the statement was witnessed by a government surveyor named John Runner. This was the statement; Reid asked the questions, Mah-Wee answered them:

"Question: Do you remember anything pertaining to a dress that Sarah Winnemucca had that was made of human hair?
Answer: I do.
Question: What was the color of the dress?
Answer: It was red.
Question: Was it a light or a dark red?
Answer: It was a brownish red.
Question: Describe this dress.
Answer: It was like a shirt dress.
Question: What became of this dress?
Answer: I do not know.
Question: How did Sarah W. Hopkins get this dress?
Answer: From the Sai-te-cah (Tule Eaters)
Question: What was the color of these people's hair?
Answer: It was reddish-brown, or a brownish-red.
Question: Did you ever talk directly to Sarah Winnemucca as to how it was that this came to be handed down to her?
Answer: We were not inquisitive and did not ask many questions as you people do as to what happened in the past, but, I remember the dress very well.
Question: How long was the hair in the dress?
Answer: It was made up of hair of various lengths, from a few inches in length to two or more feet in length.
Question: Where is Sarah Winnemucca buried?
Answer: I heard she was buried in Oregon or Idaho, or some place afar off.
(MS December 31, 1927)"

So this witness says these people had red hair, and that Winnemucca's dress existed. It would invalidate the version that the hair of the remains found in Lovelock cave was red due to aging (chemicals, exposure, etc) or ochre.

Reid also recorded that Jasper Wright had told him that about 1920 Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins was with Yellow Tail at one of the Wyoming reservations above Riverton, near Casper, and she was wearing one of the coats with red hair." Sam Dick noted in 1930 "that the Si-te-cah dressed in those coats but the Indians did not."

Another account by a Paiute called Bow-E-An (aka "Skinny Dave"), grandson of Natchez and great-nephew of Winnemucca, narrated how his father, Pas-sa Dave (aka "Captain Dave") about "people who had lived by the Humboldt and Carson Lakes in his great-great-grandfather's time. They had reddish brown hair. He said that some of them were about the height of Paiutes, but others were very tall. These people were called Si-te-cah which means "Tule Eaters." These people lived principally upon the lakes where they had boats made of tules and upon these boats there were built thatched houses made of tules. The boats could be bound together so that the people could step from one boat to the other as on rafts. However, the boats could be detached readily. The Si-te-cah seldom left the rafts except to procure necessities such as seeds and the stones for grinding them. The Paiutes, whom they feared , kept them hemmed in for a great many years."

Captain Dave met these people and they gave him some gifts: "... beads, a moccasin made of badger skin, arrow points made of sea shell, foodstuff, and a small dog which had ears that stood up straight. The Paiutes did not have any dogs. Since the dog warned the Paiutes of anything coming from far off, they thought he was pretty smart. [he] also brought lots of different things made of mud hen skins, such as neck bands of flowing feathers, and beaver blankets... There were a great number of the redheaded people who in the early mornings and evenings made cooking fires, whereas the Indians ate most of their food raw having no regular time for building fires as did the people destined to become their mortal enemies"

This story mentions the use of dogs by the tule-eaters but not by the Paiute, and that they also employed fire, which the Paiute didn't. Strange indeed!

Tall skeleton

In 1931, Reid learned about a skeleton in the lake bed close to the cave. He dug it up, it was "a large skeleton... 7 feet 7 or 6 inches in height. The difference of one inch ... is due to the matter of being unable to determine if the toes, lying upward, had been bent or were erect" A few months later "Lloyd De La Montoya of California had discovered the skeleton of a "giant" on the lake bed near Toy." Reid measured its femora and "deduced that this man had been "nine and one half or possibly ten feet" tall." Really tall! (2.9 to 3.05 m tall)

The article includes curious information about native monster myths and Reid's theory linking these giants to Neanderthals, which I will discuss in my next post.

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Lovelock "giants" revisited (Post 2)

This is the second post in this series of posts about the redheaded giant Indians discovered in Lovelock Cave, Nevada in the early 1900s. My first post commented the account given by the local Paiute natives, as recorded in Sarah Winnemucca's book, published in 1883, the scientific report onthe excavation sin Lovelock Cave by Lowe and Harrington in 1929, and John T. Reid, a local geologist and anthropologist who had explored the site and spoke to the guano miners who discovered it in 1911.

This is the full series of posts on Lovelock Cave's "giants":

  • Post 1
  • Post 2
  • Post 3
  • Post 4
  • Post 5
  • Lovelock Cave redheaded giants - Conclusion (post 6)
  • January 2014 post mentioning Lovelock Cave.

The giants were not so gigantic

I found more information about Reid and the redheaded giants, in an article titled John Reid's Redheaded "Giants" of Central Nevada: Fact or Fiction? by Sheilagh Brooks, Carolyn Stark and Richard H. Brooks, published in the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly of Fall 1984. The authors analyze the size of the bones unearthed at Lovelock Cave and conclude they were not giants. They also try to explain the red color of these people (they were redheaded).

Lovelock Cave. Ken Lund

Background

Reid collected bones from many sites in this region in northwestern-central Nevada over the course of the years. His private collection included many artifacts too, but the core of it were the fourteen skulls and skeletons of this readheaded group of natives. The collection was acquired in 1984 by the Nevada Historical Society, and analyzed in depth.

The article sites Reid's biography by James Graves Scrugham, published in 1935 who wrote: "One of his great finds was a skeleton, found ahout twenty miles southerly of Lovelock, Nevada, showing that the body of which it was a framework, was exactly seven feet, seven inches tail. It is one of the "giant men" of an ancient race of which skeletons were unearthed in Central Nevada. (1935:228-229)" This is a remarkable height 7 ft. 7" is 2.31 meters tall!

The book then describes the tribe to which this person belonged, they seem to summarize the information provided by Winnemucca and Natchez that I transcribed in my first post:

"... a race of extremely tall redhaired people, referred to as Tule Eaters, who lived in the Humboldt Sink area. These people frequently were described as cruel, wicked, and possibly cannibalistic. Supposedly the Northern Paiutes feared and hated them. According to one version of the story, fighting broke out between the Giants and the Northern Paiutes. The Northern Paiutes chased the Giants into Lovelock Cave and covered the entrance with brush, which they fired to suffocate the Giants. Those Giants who tried to get out of the cave were shot by the Northern Paiutes' best marksmen. Some of the Giants did escape, and the fighting continued into the Humboldt Sink and around Pyramid Lake. All of the male Giants were killed, but a few of the females survived and later mated with Northern Paiute men. In some versions a few escaped and were chased to the northwest of Lovelock Cave; in other versions, they ended up as far away as Tule Lake, California."

I highlighted a new piece of information, that the surviving "giant" women were taken into the Paiute tribe as brides, and, the other version, that some escaped to Tule Lake in California. This lake (see it in Google maps) is 320 km (200 mi.) northwest of Lovelock, close to the California-Oregon state line.

Why did Reid conclude that these people were giants? He measured their femora (thigh bones) and compared them with his knee-to-hip distance. Simple maths lead him to calculate heights ranging from 7 ft. 7" to 9 ft. 6", 2.31 m to 2.9 m. These were tall men!

The hair was also reddish: "Hair is preserved on some of the skulls, which still have soft tissues adhering. The hair is a brownish red in color, confirming the description in the Redheaded Giant stories of these people being red haired. Because of his size estimates and the hair color, Reid was certain that he had found and identified the Redheaded Giants described in the Northern Paiute stories he had heard in his youth."

Many of the bones don't belong to complete skeletons, and the exact origin of many of them is unknown. Not all of them came from Lovelock Cave. The authors assume, that they came from Lake Humboldt and Lake Pyramid region, but are not certain of their provenance.

Furthermore, their dating is not known. They could be remains spanning tousands of years, from different ethnic groups. The authors treat them as belonging to a single time period. With these caveats, they concluded that the remains were of a normal stature. Not giants.

Only six male specimens had femora, and these were measured and using a formula devised by Trotter and Gleser, they estimated the height of these individuals, using left and right thigh bones, the range of heights was: 1.66 m to 1.79 m (5 ft 5" to 5 ft 11") plus minus 2" (5 cm). These are similar to other remains collected in the region in known sites.

The authors conclude that "some of the individual males were relatively tall" but the calculated values "in no way qualifies those persons as giants. Also, others were short for males..."

Their hair was red

The remains had red hair, and the article has two explanations: (1) the use of ochre, and (2) chemical action by natural decomposition and mummification.

"In the Reid Collection there are semi-mummified skeletons, and also in the burials recovered from Lovelock Cave by Loud and Harrington (1929). These are natural mummies, preserved by the arid climate. The hair of the mummies in the Reid Collection, when preserved, is a reddish-brown color. From archaeological research, and from ethno-historical accounts, data have been accumulated demonstrating that many of the Great Basin Native American Indian groups painted themselves while alive, and also painted their dead, with red ochre.
Red ochre is a mineral paint which colors anything a reddish-brown or orangish-brown shade. The significance of red ochre is that as a mineral it will not disintegrate, if placed on a body prior to burial, when the soft tissues deteriorate. If the body becomes fully skeletalized, the red ochre will then stain the bones after the soft tissues have gone. Red ochre also will color hair, changing black hair into a reddish or rusty-brown shade.
Also after burial, either during the drying out of the soft tissues of the body, or during their disintegration, these tissues release various fluids, which will dye or stain hair if it is preserved. One component of these fluids is ammonia, which dyes black hair a reddish or orangish shade.
Either one or both of these methods of staining preserved hair could have affected the mummies in the Reid Collection, and also those collected hy Loud and Harrington (1929) from Lovelock Cave. This reddish or rusty-brown coloring for the hair of mummies is not unusual in regions where the natural aridity of the climate has preserved the bodies and the hair as natural mummies."

The explanations sound reasonable. Ochre has been used by humans and other hominins over hundreds of thousands of years, and natural processes can change the color of hair. There has been speculation about readheaded Amerindians (see this post, and this post), and mythical redheaded creatures among Native Americans, like the Trauco or the Corupira) but no tangible archaeological proof of their existence.

The 1984 article concludes that "The archaeological materials associated with the burials removed by Loud and Harrington are of types expected to occur in that area of the Great Basin at that prehistoric time period. There is no substantiation that a group of people with a differing culture pattern, who might fit the description in the stories of Redheaded Giants, lived in Lovelock Cave, Pyramid Lake, or Humboldt Sink during the prehistoric period. Nor is there any evidence of death by violence observed on the skeletons of the Reid Collection, and the description of the burials found by Loud and Harrington indicates that they originally had been carefully prepared for burial".

My next post, the third in this series will follow an article by Dorothy Dansie, published in 1975, with more sources on John Reid and the redheaded giants.

---

Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall ©