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
  • 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 I will go into this hypothesis in detail.

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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
  • 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.

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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
  • 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.

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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
  • 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.

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

Lovelock "giants" revisited (Post 1)

Nearly 17 years ago I wrote a post about the Lovelock Skull and Spirit Cave Man - Nevada and quoted a short paragraph form a book written by a Paiute woman named Sarah Hopinks Winnemucca in 1883: Life among the Piutes, their wrongs and claims. Putnam’s. N. York. p 73. In it she describes how her people fought against a "small tribe of barbarians" who were cannibals, and who "had reddish hair". I remarked that redheadedness was uncommon among Amerindians but that Neanderthals carried a gene responsible for red tinted hair and suggested that "maybe a band of relict Neanderthals lived in Nevada until quite recently and were wiped out by the Paiute."

The story is longer and far more entertaining than my brief post revealed. Today's post is the first of a series that will look into other sources about these redheaded Indians, which, according to some witnesses, were giants.

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

  • Post 1
  • Post 2
  • Post 3
  • Post 4
  • Post 5
  • January 2014 post mentioning Lovelock Cave.

The Version given by Sarah Winnemucca: Redheaded Cannibals

Sarah Winnemucca, 1883 portrait. Source

This is what Sarah Winnemucca (1841-1895) wrote in her book (she had learned to read and write in English at a Mormon school in Genoa, Nevada):

"Among the traditions of our people is one of a small tribe of barbarians who used to live along the Humboldt River. It was many hundred years ago. They used to waylay my people and kill and eat them. They would dig large holes in our trails at night, and if any of our people travelled at night, which they did, for they were afraid of these barbarous people, they would oftentimes fall into these holes. That tribe would even eat their own dead —yes, they would even come and dig up our dead after they were buried, and would carry them off and eat them. Now and then they would come and make war on my people. They would fight, and as fast as they killed one another on either side, the women would carry off those who were killed. My people say they were very brave. When they were fighting they would jump up in the air after the arrows that went over their heads, and shoot the same arrows back again. My people took some of them into their families, but they could not make them like themselves. So at last they made war on them. This war lasted a long time. Their number was about twenty-six hundred (2600). The war lasted some three years. My people killed them in great numbers, and what few were left went into the thick bush. My people set the bush on fire. This was right above Humboldt Lake."

So, here we hava a band of "bararians", "Barbarous people", who were cannibals, warmongering and "very brave". The Paiute tried to integrate them but they couldn't adapt. The story goes on, describing how the barbarians fled in boats made from bulrushes known as Tule, across Lake Humboldt, and were picked off by the Paiute as they landed. They hid in a cave (Lovelock Cave) and were killed every time they left the cave to fetch water. The Paiute asked them if they'd quit their bad ways: "My people would ask them if they would be like us, and not eat people like coyotes or beasts. They talked the same language, but they would not give up." So finally they gathered wood and dry bushes and burned them alive in their cave. Winnemucca added: "This tribe was called people-eaters".

This took place in west-central Nevada, not far from its capital city, Reno. See Humboldt Lake in Google Maps. The map also shows the location of Lovelock Cave. The area is now barren, but during the period following the last Ice Age, it was a well watered region with lakes (the lake is pictured below, Source).

Winnemucca's red hair dress

Then she mentions that they were redheaded and that she owned a dress made from their hair!

"My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father to son. I have a dress which has been in our family a great many years, trimmed with this reddish hair. I am going to wear it some time when I lecture. It is called the mourning dress, and no one has such a dress but my family."

The discovery of Lovelock Cave

The cave is mentioned by Llewllyn L. Loud and M.R. Harrington in their scholarly account about their excavations at the cave (See their book: Lovelock Cave, 1929. For a full description of their activities there).

Loud visited the site in 1911 once the mining of bat guano from the cave had concluded. During the mining period, bones and artifacts had been found in the cave, and many were destroyed, lost, or sold to private collectors. Starting in 1912, Loud recovered thousands of artifacts. In 1924, a new expedition conducted by Harrington went to the cave, Loude assisted him. The book includes accounts given by Gilbert Natches in 1914, Gilbert was the grandson of Sarah Winnemucca, her account about the cave, and the story of its discovery by White men, given by John. T. Reid.

Interestingly, Gilbert Natches mentioned a Paiute myth about abstaining from killing bears and using their fur: "bear meat was never eaten, because bears are just the same as a person. They understand our language and know when they are being talked about even at a distance." This is similar to what Winnemucca had said about the man-eaters "They talked the same language" as the Paiute. So maybe the redheaded people didn't speak the Paiute language.

Lowe and Harrington report the Paiute's belief in "supernatural creatures", who attributed to them the stone tools made in different shapes, and from different types of stones to the ones they knapped:

"They had spears and no arrows, while the Northern Paiute had arrows but no spears. They were mean, contemptible, foolish, degraded cannibals, had red hair which they were excessively fond of decorating with bone ornaments, and yet w'ere so poor that they dressed in robes made of the skin and feathers of the mud hen. In a collection of specimens from Nevada every object w'hich is unfamiliar to a Northern Paiute is attributed to them.
In the mind of the Northern Paiute they are often associated with the Pit River Indians among whom a remnant 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.
Of the ancient sai ’i there were two bands. The first band, which is conceived, like any band or “family” of Northern Paiute, to consist of only a few hundred individuals, lived at Humboldt lake until exterminated by the Northern Paiute... " [Source]

The book mentions Sarah Winnemucca's account (transcribed further up) including it as Appendix III, and reports that Gilbert had heard this same account from his grandmother who had learned it from her grandfather.

Lowe comments on Sarah's story and notes that " Much of the hair found on the mummies in the cave is reddish. Similar hair is known from mummies from the Pueblo region, Peru, and elsewhere, the color being due to age or chemical action." He also notes 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".

Tule (Schoenoplectus acutus) is a variety of bulrush that grows in North America and which the natives used to weave baskets, mats, clothes, tents, and watercaraft. The tender shoots can be eaten, and the roots (rhizomes) and flowers are boiled like vegetables. The old, tough roots, can be boiled and mashed to remove the fiber to produce flour. So the name "tule eaters" or Sai-duka'a (also written Si-Te-Cah) given to these people is quite reasonable.

Finally, in Appendix IV, it gives "John T. Reid’s Accounts Of Lovelock Cave" which we will discuss below.

John T. Reid

John T. Reid, born in 1871 in Unionville, Nevada, died 1943 in Lovelock, Nevada. His father ran the General Store there between 1883 and 1895, and John was a clerk. He later became a geologist and mining engineer. His intimate knowledge of the natives and his interest in anthropology and archaeology led him to investigate the local sites, and also befriend the natives. Below is his portrait.

John T. Reid, portrait. Source

This is the account given by Reid to Lowe (Source). Captain Natches is Gilbert Natches. Highlight is mine:

"I recall that along about 1887, when I was about 16 years old, Captain Natches, two other Indians, one known locally as “Coffee Charley,” the other as “Mustache Charley,” and myself had undertaken to catch some wild horses that roamed in the neighborhood of the Carson and Humboldt sinks. In due time we came in contact with the wild horses, and then the chase was on. After running those horses all day long we were obliged to camp over night near the southern end of the Humboldt sink and on its eastern shore. The next morning we resumed the chase, following the horses over into the Carson Sink desert. But here we had to turn around, homeward bound, since we had no fresh saddle horses available to pursue the mustangs further.
On the way back we passed Lovelock cave, and the hour being late wo decided to camp there for the night. Later, Captain Natches related to me the great calamity which had occurred in that cave to another race of people who had been exterminated by the Piutes.
In the tale that Natches related, with the other two Indians aiding him in bringing out all of the material facts that had any connection, I was informed that about four or five generations back the Indians had fought to extermination a people who were redheaded and who spoke their own language. The fact that these two people spoke tho same language suggests that they had lived together for a long period of time.
Natches assigned no reason for the origin of the trouble between the two races, and I doubt if he knew or had a history, although his sister, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, states that these people were cannibals and ate the Piutes. This is hardly compatible with her further statement that the Piutes had taken some of these people into their own families.
Annie Lowry, a half breed, who married an Indian named Mr. Sanny, assigned as a reason for the trouble between the two races that these people had stolen their women and taken their wild rice seed away from them.
I rather think that the matter of food was the trouble and the Piutes decided after a period of droughts that they would exterminate the other people who were consumers of the small amount, that was all the while getting smaller and smaller, of food that was available in the form of wild seeds and wild fowl that visited the lakes.
Natches stated that these people had come from the southwest. A battle had waged for a long time on the Carson sink at some sand hills on the east and west side of the Carson river, after which the Piutes had driven these people northward into the region of the Humboldt lake, thence across the lake to the cave, some going into the cave while others went northward.
From what I learned through Natches, and from numerous others of the old Indians, I have deduced that this redheaded people had long occupied the territory about the cave before the Piute Indian had come from elsewhere.
Natches further related how the Piute Indians had gathered sagebrush in great quantity around and about the hills adjacent to the cave and assembled it on the bluff above the cave. Then they had lighted and thrown it down immediately in front of the cave. The Piutes staid on either side of the cave, at a safe distance, and watched for the people within to come out for food or water, or to escape the smoke which in part penetrated the cave. As they came out they were dispatched with well-directed arrows."

The story told to Reid by Gilbert Natches and his companions is identical to the one told by Sarah Winnemucca. But it seems that some of the readheaded people managed to escape unharmed fleeing north.

Lowe then transcribes an account that John Reid had heard from James H. Hart (Source). Hart and David Pugh filed a mineral claim on the cave to mine bat guano deposits in 1911. James Hart said:

"In 1911 I heard David Pugh of Lovelock tell of an old Indian cave some twenty miles south of Lovelock. He said that it was full of bat guano in which he had dug down four feet. When a boy he had learnt from the Indians where the cave was. There had then been fires in it for there was much smoke on the walls. Realizing that if the cave was as large as described the guano might be of value, I arranged with Pugh to file a mineral location upon it and ship out the guano. This we did, working from the fall of 1911 to the spring of 1912. We drove a small tunnel into the mouth of the cave, or rather to one side of it, the natural opening being too small to work through. We took out about five car-loads of guano which were shipped to the Hawaiian Fertilizer Company of San Francisco. Wd soon began to discover Indian relics, and notified Dr. J. C. Merriam of the University of California, who took the matter up with the University of Nevada and the Nevada Historical Society. We also wrote to the Smithsonian Institution, but they advised that they had no funds for collecting, receiving only donations. After some of the best specimens had been destroyed, we received word from the State Historical Society that, in conjunction with the University of California, they would send an investigator. This was Mr. Loud. We gave him all possible facilities for collecting. Many objects had been destroyed by the weather and others had been taken away. I recall many boas or ropes of fine feathers. As these lay strewn about in the open end of the cave in the way of the workmen they were irreparably damaged. Some of these boas were found perfectly preserved. All the Indian objects began to appear about four feet below the surface of the guano.
In the south end of the cave, "about twenty feet deep," we unearthed some skeletons. In the north-central part of the cave, about four feet deep, was a striking looking body of a man "six feet six inches tall." His body was mummified and his hair distinctly red. There was a grass rope about his neck with a knot under the left ear. The rope was about eight feet long. The feet were bound together from the ankle to above the knees with stout rope. The mummification was complete except for a part of the abdomen. The other mummies all had red hair — I think there were either four or five. Those that appeared to be women were small, something like a Japanese woman in height." This was not altogether due to the shrinking of the bodies in mummifying, because the man was “a giant.” The women had on moccasins which reached clear to the knees; the buckskin was beaded with shells. Two of them had on a kind of buckskin coat (gown) that came down to the knees. These bodies were from the deep south end of the cave.
There were no bats in the cave when we went there to work."

This is an eyewitness account of giant men six feet, six inches tall (1.98 m) which isn't gigantic, but, is tall. The women were smaller, suggesting sexual dimorphism, which isn't overly marked in humans but noticeable in other primates.

I also highlighted the remark about bats, let's see the relevance of bats in this story.

Bats and the date of the site

The arid and desert-like environment of Lake Humboldt, there are bats, like the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) in NW Nevada. They migrate and hibernate but live in small groups. There are over 20 bat species living in the state of Nevada. Any of them could have lived in the cave.

Bat excrement accumulates on the floor of the cave, beneath the bats hanging from the ceiling. This cave had 3 to 6 feet (90 to 180 cm) of guano (bat droppings, used as fertilizer) on its floor (see p. 8). But, as mentioned by Hart, in 1911 there were no bats in the cave. The accumulation of guano may have been old.

How quickly does guano accumulate in a cave? This depends on many factors. The seasonality of the bat population (do they live in the cave on a permanent basis, or move to other sites?), the population itself, and the cave chemistry. An example reported by Bogdanowicz et al., 2020 dated guano in two caves in Jamaica. In one, a core 81 cm long was dated to 200 years old, in the other, a 1.29 m long core was found to be 4300 years old. This confirms the different deposition speeds (4 mm per year in cave #1 and 0.3 mm per year in cave #2, a thirteen-fold difference.

Six feet of guano would have accumulated over a period of 450 to 6,000 years using the values given by Bogdanowicz. But it could have been even thicker; Lowe reports that "Before the arrival of the writer, 5 carloads of 50 (?) tons each had been taken from the cave for fertilizer. Besides this, a large quantity was left in the cave because it was so much mixed with other things that it no longer paid to ship it. Bat manure was sometimes found in nearly pure beds of perhaps several feet thickness." (p. 34) Lowe adds that "Although there was so large a quantity of bat guano in the cave no bats were seen during the writer’s stay; but a cowboy said that several years previously he had smoked out large numbers." Lowe and Hart saw no bats, is it reasonable to believe that they had been smoked out in the past?

While dealing with the bat excrement, Lowe says that "The human excrement in the cave reveals, on the part of the ancient inhabitants, an incredibly coarse diet of seeds, hulls, and tough plant fibers. Some of the excrement was over 2 inches in diameter." An amazingly fibrous diet, but also, weirdly large sized stool. Were these people human beings, or some plant-eating primate?

The bats, according to Shackley, M. Steven n.d. occupied the caves shortly after a wet period 7.000 years ago: "Heizer and Napton state that Lovelock Cave was occupied by bats at a date coinciding with the estimated end of the Altithermal perhaps as a direct result of the rejuvenation of Humboldt Lake. The initial buildup of the older bat guano layer may have begun ca. 5000 B. C. The earliest, although intermittent evidence of human occupation is in the Older Guano layer at ca. 2700 B. C. Bats and other creatures continued to inhabit the cave until about 2500 B. C. when human occupation began ca. 1500 B. C... Intensive occupation of the cave began ca. 1500 B. C. and continued until about A. D. 500. Due to a massive rockfall (ca. A. D. 440 ± 90) access to the interior of the cave was greatly impeded, but it continued to be utilized as a repository for the dead and for cache purposes. According to Heizer and Napton (1970: 41), human occupation of the interior of the cave was drastically curtailed, and this, together with the reduced illumination and air circulation made it attractive to bats. Thus, between A. D. 700 and A. D. 1911, a thick deposit of bat guano accumulated over the cultural deposits. Human occupation of the outer shelter and use of the inner cave probably continued until 1829."

So there is an "old" and a "new" period of guano buildup, one prior to 2,500 BC, the other after 700 AD. These are relatively recent.

In the second part of this series of posts, we will look into more information about Reid and the redheaded giants, following John Reid's Redheaded "Giants" of Central Nevada: Fact or Fiction? by Sheilagh Brooks, Carolyn Stark and Richard H. Brooks, 1984. The authors conclude that the people buried in Lovelock cave were not giants and also explain their origin of their reddish hair.

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

Drimolen Cave in South Africa and the Eurasian Homo erectus

A paper published last week, on Sept. 30th, by archaeologists from La Trobe University, (Martin, J. M., Leece, A. B., Baker, S., Herries, A. I. R., & Strait, D. S. (2026). New hominin cranial and mandibular remains from Drimolen Main Quarry, South Africa. Annals of Human Biology, 53(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/03014460.2026.2725046) described the remains of bones discovered at the Drimolen site. They reached some interesting conclusions.

Drimolen Site

This site is located in a hotspot (there are other similar aged sites nearby —Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Kromdraai, Coopers), see Google Map. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site known as "Cradle of Humankind". The place, a quarry, was discovered in 1992, by chance by an amateur archaeologist named André Keyser in 1992. Diggings at the quarry found teeth, jaws, fragments of crania of different hominins, including unidentified Homo species, and Paranthropus robustus. The age of the remains spans a period from 1.5 to 2 million years ago.

The site was an old cave, that was infilled with sediments over the years, and into which animals and hominins fell, and were preserved in the dirt, that became a rock known as breccia (a conglomerate of sharp pebbles cemented together by fine graind sands). This setting, plus the fact that it was a lime quarry, makes me wonder if the old dates assigned to the specimens are accurate. See Herries et al., 2020 who describe the sediments, the now exposed remains of the cave, erosion, quarry alterations, etc. Which tend to downplay disturbed sedimentation, but confirm my suspicions that the site's dating could be skewed to antiquity to favor the OOA theory.

The remains have been described in different papers over the years, and this one is the most recent publication, that describes and identifies the species to which several fossils belong.

The authors identify one of the fossils, named DNH 127, as not belonging to the Paranthropus or the Australopiths. It is assigned to the erectus genus.

It was found in a block of rock that may have been part of a pinnacle (DNH 7) which had been dated (this shows that the dating of the remains is tentative, some fossils were found in situ, in the beds of sediments, others in loose soil. After all, this was a quarry and has disturbed rock beds).

They give it the same age given to the other specimens found in the DNH 7 bed. There was an erectus in the site, DNH 134, so scholars expected to find more. This paper assigns the DNH 127 remains to the Homo erectus group, and date it to ~1.98 million years ago.

Link with Dmanisi

Interestingly, they note that "Heuristically, the morphology preserved by DNH 127 most closely resembles that of D2700 from Dmanisi. Based on this mosaic of traits, we tentatively assign DNH 127 to Homo erectus sensu lato." This is revealing, Dmanisi in Georgia, is in the Caucasus, 9,200 km (5,700 mi) away, and it is the site with the oldest crania of Homo erectus in Eurasia. Their age is slightly younger than the age given to the Drimolen Cave specimen (at 1.8 million years old). But, since it was dated based on a conjectural belonging to a given pinnacle, it may be possible that the date is not precise. If so, the Dmanisi remains could be older, or possibly there are older remains yet to be discovered in Georgia. In this case, we could imagine a migration into Africa, from Eurasia, that reached South Africa 1.98 million years ago. The vanguard of these migrants met and coexisted with Paranthropus in this area.

By the way it is interesting how Herries et al., 2020 stress that the Drimolen erectus is older than Dmanisi. Like they need to reinforce the OOA and African origin of Homo genus: "At ~2.04 Ma ago (minimum age 1.95 Ma), DNH 134 is the most complete and oldest early Pleistocene Homo neurocranium in South Africa. DNH 134 is at least 100,000 to 150,000 years older than H. erectus s.l. specimens from Dmanisi... As such, DNH 134 represents the oldest fossil with affinities to H. erectus in the world. Despite this, we do not assert that the species necessarily evolved first in southern Africa, especially given major geological biases in hominin finds across Africa. However, the dating of the DNH 134 cranium to >1.95 Ma ago substantially weakens the hypothesis that H. erectus sensu lato evolved outside of Africa."

Other unclassified hominins

The paper also mentions that specimens SK 847 and StW 53 have not been classified yet, which "leaves open the possibility that more than one species of Homo may have been present on the landscape in southern Africa ∼2.0 Ma" It states that dental traits have led other authors to assign them to "Homo sp. indet. [but], there is not yet unequivocal evidence to suggest that more than one species of Homo is present within the DMQ assemblage" If so, there would be three or more species there (the other two being erectus and Paranthropus).

A 10 to 1 ratio of Paranthropus to erectus

The unusual ratio of bones between primitive Paranthropus and more evolved Homo erectus.

Although the paper itself does not mention this, it is noted in the University's media release (titled Fossils confirm human ancestors first appearance). In it, one of the coauthors of the paper is quoted as follows regarding Paranthropus and erectus (highlight is mine):

"... “These two human species shared the same landscape and are both preserved in Drimolen cave. While we know that Homo erectus and the lineage leading to us was ultimately the successful one, 2 million years ago P. robustus outnumbered Homo erectus at Drimolen by more than 10 to one. During this time period it was our ancestors that looked like the outside long-odds chance to survive,” Dr Martin said."

This remark drew my attention, why would one species outnumber the other ten to one? It seems that Paranthropus was well adapted to this location, its habitat and environment allowed them to proliferate and grow into a large, well established population. Primitive, the Paranthropus living in this area had larger teeth and jaws, forming a distinct species from other members of the group. This specific adapatation show that they were successful, and the dominant primates in this area.

The fewer erectus remains, however, seems to suggest that they were newcomers. They appear suddenly in the fossil record here, with few members and this hints at recent arrival, a migration of a small population (maybe from the northeast, spreading into a new territory).

The Homo group would be far more successful than Paranthropus but 2 million years ago, they were sharing their new home with very well adapted primates who outnumbered them ten to one.

It is likely that they exploited different resources from their habitat, perhaps the erectus were meat-eaters and gatherers, they made stone tools (though none have been reported here at Drimolen). The Paranthropus were apes, similar to chimps, who may have eaten plants, fruit, and tubers.

The Drimiolen quarry site suggests that erectus was a newcomer to South Africa, it does not prove that they were migrants, and it does not prove that they originated there, in South Africa. Their age, barely older than the oldest Eurasian erectus is used to suggest an African origin for erectus. But, it can't disprove an Eurasian origin and migration into Africa.

Further discoveries will clarify the mystery of the origin of erectus.

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

Study: American Natives arrived not before 21,000 years ago.

A research article published now, by Bethany Potter, Savannah Hay, Archana Singh, and Jennifer Raff (Genomic insights regarding early migrations into the Americas, Current Opinion in Genetics & Development. Volume 101, 2026, 102534, ISSN 0959-437X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gde.2026.102534), explores the three alternatives for the peopling of America and chooses the middle of the road one. These alternatives are (1) Clovis First, sooner than 14,000 years ago, (2) Older than 25,0000 years before the Last Glacial Maximum, and (3) In between, from 21,000 to 14,000 years ago.

As expected, they accept a late peopling of Siberia, source of Native Americans, and mention the Yana River sites, 32,000 years ago. They choose the intermediate dates for genetic reasons, based on the current DNA studies (which, may I point out, set their dates based on the fossils!! A vicious circle.

They discard the older dates (older than 25,000 years) because of a lack of pre-sapiens sites (which, by the way, nobody looks for because it is not even considered as an option). The authors write: "If human paleogenomic data were recovered from the earliest claimed sites, we would expect such genomes to belong to Neanderthals, Denisovans, or an unknown lineage of early humans rather than to H. sapiens"

Then, they take the Out of Africa date (60,000 to 70,000 years ago) and agree that humans could have reached America around 40,000 years ago but "Patterns of archaic admixture present in the oldest Native American genomes (such as Upward Sun River, Anzick) are inconsistent with such a scenario ... the presence of humans in the Americas even shortly before the LGM is not immediately compatible with the genetic evidence present in ancient and contemporary Native Americans"

The evidence of an early presence of humans in America (like White Sands, NM, USA, which are 21,000 years old) is acknowledged and swept under the carpet: "Therefore, purported pre-LGM populations, such as the White Sands population (Table 1) must either belong to a lineage we have not yet sampled (unsurprising as we have very little genomic data from the Americas), a lineage that left no contemporary descendants, or perhaps a lineage that contained traces of ancestry seen in low proportions in later Native Americans, such as Population Y" (See my post on Population Y). And that is that.

The closing comments, mention that "Much of Homo sapiens’ evolutionary history involves repeated dispersals into continents that had already been inhabited by so-called ‘archaic’ hominins for hundreds of thousands of years. Genomic data show us that the dynamics of the peopling of the Americas were quite different..." This is true, but nobody has seriously looked for pre-sapiens presence in America. The Clovis Firsters, the lack of research funds in South America, the discrediting of old sites (i.e. Pedra Furada —mentioned in the paper with its name and 40 ky date, but not discussed. The same with Cerutti (∼130.0 kya), Topper (∼50 kya), and Chiquihuite Cave (∼32.0 kya). All sites are marked as "most contested" by mainstream orthodox archaeologists.

Comment

This article is a step in the right direction. It actually mentions the lack of archaic hominins in America. Neanderthals, H. erectus or Denisovans are never mentioned when the peopling of America is discussed. So, this is positive. Second, the date, though not old enough for my liking is slowly pushing the accepted dates into the 20,000s BP. Finally, DNA studies which set dates based on "facts" from archaeology should revise these "facts". If humans appeared earlier than 300 kya, or if the OOA event never existed, it would surely shake up the conclusions made by geneticists based on these "facts".

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

Orangutans and humans - are they our closest relative?

Continuing with my series on the evolution of humans (in my previous posts, I discussed the split between chimpanzees & bonobos, and humans), today I will look into the possible links between humans and orangutans.

The orangutan

Orangutan. Source

The orangutans are the great apes that live in Asia (the other great apes are African). Their habitat, encroached by humans has reduced their geographic territory that spanned Southeast Asia and the south of China and now is reduced to some areas of Indonesia, in Sumatra and Borneo.

Orangutans (by the way, their name, in Malay, means orang = "man" and hutan = "forest"; "forest person"), belong to the genus Pongo and comprise three separate species, one living in Borneo (P. pygmaeus) and the other two in Sumatra (P. abelii and P. tapanuliensis).

Nevertheless, we share roughly 97% of our genome with the orangutans. They are believed to have split from the rest of the hominids (that include humans and the African great apes) around 9 to 13 million years ago (Source). With such a distant split time, it is difficult to believe that we may descend from them. The orthodox viewpoint is that we split from a common ancestor of the chimpanzee lineage some 6 million years ago.

The first to propose some kind of ancestry between humans and apes was the French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), in his work Philosophie Zoologique, p.352 he describes the Angola orang (chimpanzee) as "the most highly developed of animals; it is far superior to the orang of the Indies (Simia satyrus L.) —known as the orangutan—yet, in terms of physical structure, both are vastly inferior to man in both bodily and intellectual faculties." So, the chimpanzee was also known as "orang", but clearly the Indonesian ("Indies") variant was the real orangutan.

Charles Lyell (1797-1875) in his Principles of Geology p.575, criticized "Lamarck's theory of the transformation of the orang-outan into the human species" (worth reading). Later, Charles Darwin, applied Lyell's geological ideas to biology and created the theory of evolution by natural selection (published in his famous book, On the origin of species, 1859). Darwin also wrote about the origin of modern humans in his work "The Descent of Man", 1871 see p. 240, where he speculates the birthplace of humans "In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee ; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere. But it is useless to speculate on this subject; for two or three anthropomorphous apes, one the Dryopithecus of Lartet, nearly as large as a man, and closely allied to Hylobates, existed in Europe during the Miocene age; and since so remote a period the earth has certainly undergone many great revolutions, and there has been ample time for migration on the largest scale" This is often cited by Out-Of-Africa supporters who only mention the first part (African origin from chimps or gorillas), omitting the second part (possible Eurasian origin and migration). He adds, on p. 255 "We may thus ascend to the Lemuridae; and the interval is not very wide from these to the Simiadae. The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the Universe, proceeded." Indeed, we split from Old World apes, but which? Chimpanzees or orangutans?

We share many traits with Orangutans

There are many similarities that reveal that we are closer to them than to chimpanzees. For instance: roughly 0.8% of our genome is closer to orangutans than to chimpanzee. See: Hobolth, A. et al. Incomplete lineage sorting patterns among human, chimpanzee, and orangutan suggest recent orangutan speciation and widespread selection. Genome Research 21, 349-356 (2011); and Locke, D.P. et al. Comparative and demographic analysis of orangutan genomes. Nature 469, 529-533 (2011).

John Grehan of the Buffalo Museum of Science, NY, USA, and Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of Pittsburg, PA, USA, coauthored a paper (John R. Grehan and Jeffrey H. Schwartz. Evolution of the second orangutan: phylogeny and biogeography of hominid origins. Journal of Biogeography, 2009 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02141.x) putting forward the idea that humans evolved from the orangutans. Schwartz had already championed this cause in his 2005 book The red ape: orangutans and human origins, and Grehan has published about this same idea in 2006 (more below).

In their 2009 article, they argue that morphology shows that humans and orangutans share 28 unique physical traits compared to 2 with chimps and 7 with gorillas. Another 7 features are shared with all three apes, and finally, chimpanzees and gorillas share 11 features, placing them closer together.

Furthermore, the DNA record is patchy with large gaps in the sequences, so it can't be used conclusively to support a common ancestry with chimps.

Another factor that is seldom taken into account, is that there are no fossils linking humans with chimpanzees.

Both authores propose that humans and orangutans shared a common ancestor, in Asia, that originated the organgutans in Southeast Asia, and then migrated west across Asia, to Africa and Europe some 12 million years ago when this region was forested and formed a single ecosystem. Then, the western branch evolved into a group of apes that later became extinct, and, the first Homo individuals.

Since the fossils of apes in Africa are not older than 500,000 years, and there are older fossils in Europe, the orthodox viewpoint is that the apes originated in Africa, migrated to Europe, and from there to Asia (the orangutan ancestors), and then, returned to Africa to generate the African apes and humans. The authors argue that this is too complicated to be true.

The paper also compared Australopiths and orangutans, who share 8 traits in common and with early humans, and 7 traits between themselves.

Grehan wrote, in his earlier work, in 2006 (Mona Lisa smile: The morphological enigma of human and great ape evolution. The Anatomical Record Part B: The New Anatomist. 289B. 139-157. 10.1002/ar.b.20107.) that the similar shape (morphology) of 28 human and orangutan features vs. only eight between humans and chimpanzees "suggests there is very little in morphology to support a unique common ancestor for humans and chimpanzees... The uniquely shared morphology of humans and orangutans raises doubts about the almost universal belief that DNA sequence similarities necessarily demonstrate a closer evolutionary relationship between humans and chimpanzees." Grehan then examines similarities in detail, such as male mustache and beard, concealed female ovulation, long pair-bonding and prolonged mating, tool use, art, and "house" building.

The article includes the following phylogenetic tree:

Original caption: Phylogenetic and taxonomic implications of the human-orangutan relationship for selected fossil and living taxa (after Schwartz, 1986). The oldest fossil records for each genus are in bold. Daggers denote extinct taxa; solid circles, the approximately 40 uniquely shared features for humans and orangutans inherited by all hominid- and orangutan-related lineages; solid squares, primitive retentions of orangutan-like characters in earlyhominids that were later lost in Homo. Hominids (such as Australopithecus, Homo, and Orrorin) represent the sister group of orangutans and their fossil relatives (represented hereby Sivapithecus). These taxa comprise the sister group living thin-enameled great apesalong with potential fossil members such as Morotopithecus (Schwartz, 1983) comprising the family Panidae and various other thin-enameled fossil apes (Dryopithecidae). The lesser apes (Hylobatidae) and Old World monkeys comprise successively more distantly related anthropoid apes. From Grehan, 2006

My last post noted that the PtERV 1 repeat found in all African apes (chimps, gorillas, bonobos), and many Eurasian ones, is completely absent in orangutans and humans. This could imply a common trait in both species that shielded them from this retroviral infection, or even an isolation in Eurasia for both species that preserved them from the infection.

Interestingly, the DNA of orangutans differs from human and chimpanzee DNA, they split around 12 million years ago from the branch leading to us and chimps yet have undergone fewer mutations than the latter species: " the orangutan has evolved much more slowly than chimpanzees and humans. The orangutan genome has fewer large DNA sequence structural rearrangements than its chimpanzee and human counterparts. Large genome structural rearrangements are DNA mutations that result in large genomic segments being duplicated, deleted, inserted or inverted... "In terms of evolution, the orangutan genome is quite special among great apes in that it has been extraordinarily stable over the past 15 million years"" (Source), chimpanzees and humans "lose and gain new genes at twice the rate of orang-utans." (Source). This is indeed odd. Could it be possible that the split date has been calculated wrong? If the split date was more recent, say 6 million years ago, their mutation rate would be the same as that of the other great apes. It would also bring them closer to us.

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