Homo erectus in America?

 

In a previous post on Patagonian ogres and hairy giants, I suggested that this variety of Patagonian Bigfoot, might be a surviving Homo erectus, a direct ancestor of modern man (we are Homo sapiens).

Today I will look into this interesting subject. Interesting because, official orthodox archaeology does not believe that H. erectus ever reached America, and does not place modern man here earlier than some 20,000 years ago.

However, there is some controversial evidence (dismissed by mainstream archaeologists) that suggests an earlier peopling of America, roughly a quarter of a million years ago.

Recent survival of Homo erectus.

Homo erectus is an extinct species of humans that lived between 1,8 million years ago and at least 200,000 years ago (and probably even later than this last date). That is, during the Pleistocene Epoch. These hominids were intelligent creatures and manufactured stone tools, which we classify as belonging to the Acheulian culture. They were the first men to master fire. They were also explorers and were the first humans to break out of Africa, our birthplace and spread across the Old World.

Their remains have been found in Europe, Asia (as well as Africa). The oldest fossils are found in Africa, where they continued evolving into modern men. The African strain is different in comparison to the other H. erectus populations of the Old World and have been classed in a separate species named Homo ergaster. There is some debate whether H. ergaster or H. erectus is our direct ancestor.

Their use of a novel stone tool technology and fire, made them successful in spreading around the Old World and occupying different environments.

This may have been due to their larger brain size in comparison to our other older and more primitive ancestors. Their cranial capacities ranged from between 700 cm³ to 1,250 cm³, averaging 900 cm³. Their skulls had a thick cranial bone and large browridges over their eyes. Their braincase was long and low, with a receeding forehead.

They were not small like their ancestors, an adult H. erectus could weigh over 45 kg (100 lb) and measure 1,67 m (5 ft. 6 in).

Fossils of H. erectus found at Ngandong, Java, have been dated to as recently as 53,000 to 27,000 years ago. These dates were obtained by Carl Swisher of the Berkeley Geochronology Center and colleagues. [1]. This is interesting because, it indicates an overlapping with modern man who arrived in that area roughly some 40 to 50 thousand years ago. So, if they managed to get to America, they could have also overlapped with modern man during some 20 to 30,000 years (which, would mean that they may have survived until a relatively recent date, or even still be alive somewhere out there).

In America?

During the late 1960s, at a site close to Mexico City, Mexico, named Valsequillo Reservoir, in the State of Puebla, some geologists of the United States Geology Survey (USGS) dated possible hominid remains as being 250,000 years old!. The team was led by archaeologist Cynthia Irving-Williams, and the results were published in a reputable scientific journal in 1969 [5] but were quickly dismissed by mainstream archaeologists as being ridiculously old (nearly ten times the accepted dates for human presence in America - the Clovis First theory). [2]

Click to see Photographs of the excavations and the artifacts.

These remains are part of a:

"rapidly growing dating evidence from fission- track, U-series, diatoms extinct by the end of the Last Interglacial Stage (Sangamonian), etc. for (pre-Wisconsinan) humans in America (>80,000 yr BP), which has been ignored or denied by members of the American archaeological establishment " . [3]

So, they may be modern human (i.e. Homo sapiens) remains that predate the orthodox time-frame of some 20,000 years for human arrival to America.

Other ancient remains of stone tools have been found at Calico [4] in California, US at around the same time. They have been dismissed by mainstream archaeology as natural (not human) artifacts.

Conclusions

As far as I am concerned, the case remains open and undefined. The evidence is interesting and definitively points to an early peopling of America.

H. erectus had the brains and the physical aptitude to trek from China (his known northernmost habitat) to America through Beringia, just like modern man would do later. He could also have rowed along the coastal waters of Asia, Beringia and America all the way down to Southern Chile.

Lack of interest and funding (specially in South America, where research is restricted due to lack of governmental or private support) to look into these non-conventional ideas may delay the final proof, but it will surely be unearthed in the near future.

Impact on cryptozoology. Leaving aside Bigfoot for my North American colleagues, as it is not a Patagonian "monster", the presence of H. erectus could account for many native Patagonian myths regarding "ogres" or "man slaying" primitive men, it can also explain the "wild-men" legends and some "hairy" or "ape-like" creatures reported in Patagonia.

Continues tomorrow in Part 2, Homo erectus in America?

Sources.
[1] Mark Rose, (1997). Homo Erectus Survival. Archaeology. Vol. 50 Number 2, March/April 1997
[2] Christopher Hardaker and Charles Naeser, (2007). The First American: The Suppressed Story of the People Who Discovered the New World. Career Press.
[3] Sam L. Vanlandingham. Extraordinary Examples of Deception in Peer Reviewing: Concoction of the Dorenberg Skull Hoax and Related Misconduct. Online.
[4] Chris Hardaker, (2010). The Abomination of Calico. Pleistocene coalition news, Vol 2. No. 5 pp. 10. Oct. 2010.
[5] Barney J. Szaboa, Harold E. Maldea and Cynthia Irwin-William, (1969). Dilemma posed by uranium-series dates on archaeologically significant bones from Valsequillo, Puebla, Mexico. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Vol. No. 4, July 1969, Pages 237-244

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

Chelep, the hairy Patagonian dwarf

 

Orangutan, from an old engraving.

Some more information on the intriguing subject of Patagonian dwarves. In previous posts, I have written about the different kinds of dwarves that have been reported in Patagonia. Today we will look into the Chelep, a dwarf that was likened to an orangutan.

Chelep, monkey like dwarf.

Chelep is an interesting creature and shares several features with the Fuegian Yosi and the Chiloé Island Trauco. Both of which are dwarfish, hairy, carry sticks or clubs, and very monkey-like.

Chelep may also be the origin of the myth regarding the “first men” or Tachwull .

The source on Chelep is a diary written by a Santiago Dunne, a Chilean government official in 1845, at Punta Arenas. He jotted down reports from a man named Centurión, who was not a native, but lived among them.

Below I will quote extensively from this diary (I have translated it from Spanish to English respecting the style of Dunne):

“that between the Negro and the Santa Cruz Rivers, along the inland road which is where the Indians travel, there are two places where there are many stone homes painted with various colors, and which are inhabited by a race that as described by the Patagons [Aonikenk] have a lot of resemblance to the orangutans: these sites are [not] along the same road but [towards] the Andes. Small size, hairy body and a club or baculus always in their hand. The cover with a short guanaco fur in the same way those [natives] of Tierra del Fuego do.
The Patagons call them Chelep. Most of these groups of Indians have visited those places and have been in the same homes, but have never been able to take one of their inhabitants despite that they have seen them and ran very close to them and even been hit by stones thrown by them; which has led them to take them for witches and they do not go to their caves because they must not be other than [illegible] in great numbers.
It should be noted that the Patagons [Aonikenk] only when they go to the Negro River, which does not happen frequently, is when the chelep see them arriving, because they have always done so during daytime, run away and get lost in forests [*] abandoning their lodges in which can be found bones and guanaco hides and that sometimes those that have slept close to such homes, have been robbed and some of their horses killed” . [1]

[*] though the Spanish word “montes” can also mean “mountains”.

More on the Chelep. A close encounter.

Centurión, Dunne’s informant had not been to the Chelep’s country, but his wife had, and she told Dunne the following:

She was at those homes only accompanied by her elder sister, because all the others that were going with her [to the Negro River] had gone out to the fields, far away […] while alone with her sister, the dog that they had with them began to bark and then they saw coming towards them a woman carrying a child and her club; this frightened them and her companion hid among a pile of hides that were there, but that she could not do the same, she pretended to be dead;
The new arrival saw her and with the tip of her club moved her but the child she carried in her arms cried every time she touche her and that at last she left her without harming her and only to the dog, which had bothered her, clubbed it. [2]

What kind of creature is the Chelep? a Homo erectus?

Dunne wrote that the natives frightened their children with these stories, but he believed that they may have some truth behind them, and that the Chelep were probably some "lost" tribe of the Tehuelche group.

However, their pre-human appearance, their monkey-like features may indicate some kind of non-human homind (i.e. a homo erectus or, if tiny and dwarfish, even a variety of Flores Island "hobbit") in southern South America. The cross cultural similarities (the creature appears under different names among all the Patagonian natives from Tierra del Fuego to Central Chile) also support this idea.

See this Map for a clear idea of where the different varieties of Patagonian dwarves lived.

Bibliography

[1] Martinic Mateo, (2005). De la Trapananda al Aysen: una mirada reflexiva sobre el acontecer de la Región de Aysen desde la prehistoria hasta nuestros días . Pehuén. pp. 29.

[2] Martinic Mateo, (2000). Informaciones Etnográficas extraidas del diario inedito de Santiago Dunne, Secretario de la Gobernación de Magallanes (1845). Anales del Instituto de la Patagonia: Serie Ciencias humanas, Vol. 28., Instituto de la Patagonia. Pp. 49 -50

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall © 

“Tachwüll” the first men

 

JJust north of Tierra del Fuego in southern Patagonia, is the land of the Aonikenk natives. They believed in the existence of an evil midget, Tachwüll[*], the maker of bolas, the stone balls of the boleadoras.

[*] As is frequent with reducing an unwritten language into writing, the different chroniclers translated the words phonetically into their respective languages. Though spelt differently, they all retain the original sound (i.e. Tachwüll, Chelule, Chechuelli, Chahuelli, Táchul, Talwulli, Sechu, etc.). This will be seen repeatedly in my book and these posts.

The name boleadora derives from the Spanish word “bola” (ball); they were stones balls sheathed with leather and attached to strong tendon straps that were whirled above the head to gain momentum and then thrown so as to entangle around the hunted animal’s legs.

The name Tachwüll was first recorded by Pigafetta in 1520, who noted that the Patagones (Aonikenk Tehuelches) called their lesser devils Chelule.[1]

The Poya, a Tehuelche group that lived in northern Patagonia gave it a similar name Chechuelli or Chahuelli[2] and their Mapuche neighbors also believed in the evil elf, which they called Sechu.[3]

The same-sounding name reflects a common origin for the Sechu - Chelule - Chechuelli - Tachwüll dwarf.

The Aonikenk’s Paleo-Indian ancestors had hunted guanaco on foot during milennia using bolas as well as bow and arrow. However, when they adopted the horse after the Spaniards introduced them into South America, they took to hunting with bolas again. The reason was simple: aiming and shooting an arrow at a running guanaco while riding a horse was much harder and less effective than whirling and hurling boleadoras to tangle its legs.

Once they lost the art of making the solid spherical hard stone bolas, they took to recycling the ones that they found strewn on the ancient Paleo-Indian hunting grounds or molded new ones in softer and less durable soap-stone.

Having forgotten about their Paleo-Indian ancestors, the Aonikenk believed that these tough bolas had been made by Tachwüll, whom they pictured as a small animal-like dwarf that lived in the Andes. The fact that they considered it an animal may imply a simian aspect – perhaps a monkey relative of the Fuegian Yosi ( See our post on him Here).

They said that he could often be heard chipping stones in the rocky gullies, and scratching the centerline groove that surrounded the bola with its sharp nails (the boleadoras’ leather strap was firmly fixed to this groove to hold the ball).

These Tachwüll were primitive (in certain ways pre-human), and were considered by the natives as the first men to inhabit the Earth, eons ago, before “real” men appeared.

Historian Federico Escalada, calling them Táchul says that these original inhabitants were “small people […] something like the ‘gnomes’ or ‘dwarves’ of our fairy tales”.[4]

Although, according to the natives, most of them died in the terrible geological cataclysm that formed the Andes, a few had managed to survive and continued living in the mountains where, according to Patagonian historian Casamiquela (who called them Talwulli), he lived with his wife, the monstrous Elëngassën (we will post about her later).[4][5]

Aonikenk Chief Papon, who died a poor drunkard in 1892, at the end of his life he was so poor that he sold at Punta Arenas a set of boleadoras that he believed were made of brass but were actually pure gold. When asked about where he found the nugget, Papon said that he found it by an ancient city that was buried under the recent lava flows of a nearby volcano (some believed that the city was the famous lost Patagonian City of Caesars[*], a fabulous El Dorado which is a tale that deserves a book of its own). This city, according to Papon was inhabited by dwarves.[6]

[*] The legend of the City of Caesars began in the mid XVIth century. It revolved around an incredibly wealthy city set in Patagonia (i.e. its roads were paved with gold) and was inhabited by people of European origin who led secluded lives there. Several expeditions were sent to find it, and it was not until the late XVIIIth century that it lost credibility


Though his tale was dismissed as nonsense, there is some documentary evidence written by the early Patagonian explorers that mentions dwarfish beings in the area close to the Strait of Magellan.

Contemporary chronicles.

1591 Anthonie Knivet wrote about strange small men at Port Famine close to Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan.[7]

A few years later, in 1614 Joris van Spilbergen uncovered at Tierra del Fuego a grave holding the body of “a being […] not longer than 3½ feet [107 cm]”.[8] It is likely that it was the body of a child, but the Dutch preferred to believe it was that of a pygmy.

In 1633, according to historian priest Diego de Rosales at Culacoya close to Concepción in Chile’s northern Patagonia, a dwarf was seen.[9]

In 1646, Jesuit priest Alonso De Ovalle in his history of Chile wrote that there were “pygmies” at the Straits of Magellan.[10]

Closer to our time, in 1845, Santiago Dunne, secretary to the governor of Punta Arenas, wrote that the natives had told him of a strange city with “stone houses inhabited by hairy pygmies like dwarves, called Chélep”.[6] This over was half a century before Chief Papon saw his lava covered city of dwarves.

Post with more information on the Chelep.

Closing comments.

Myth? Fantasy? or some now disappeared dwarfish creature? It has not been reported since the end of the XIXth century. Could it be related to Trauco or Anchimallén? or to the intriguing Fuegian monkey, the Yosi? Perhaps.

Bibliography.

[1] Pigafetta, A., (1899). Primer Viaje Alrededor del Mundo. Madrid. 1899. pp. 16.
[2] de Olivares, M., (2005). Los jesuitas en la Patagonia: Las misiones en la Araucania y el Nahuelhapi 1593- 1736. B. Aires: Continente pp. 182.
[3] Latcham, R., (1924). La organización social y las creencias religiosas de los antiguos araucanos. Santiago: Cervantes. pp. 580.
[4] Escalada, F., (1949). El Complejo Tehuelche. B. Aires: Coni. pp. 327.
[5] Casamiquela R., (1988). En pos del gualicho. B. Aires: Fondo Edit. Rionegrino-EUDEBA. pp. 120. Citing: Bormida, M. and Siffredi, A., (1969). Mitología de los Tehuelche Meridionales. B. Aires: Runa. v.xii.
[6] Martinic B, M., (2007). Los Césares de la Patagonia: ¿Otra Fuente Indígena para la leyenda o hasta ahora desconocida creación del imaginario Aónikenk? Magallania. v.35, N° 2: pp. 7-14.
[7] Purchas S., [Comp] (1625). Haklvytvs posthumus or, Pvrchas.... London: H. Fetherston. v. 4. pp. 1232.
[8] Van Spilbergen, J., (1906). The East and West Indian mirror: being an account of Joris van Speilbergen's voyage round the world (1614-1617).... London: Hakluyt Society.
pp. 41.
[9] de Rosales, D., (1878). Historia General del Reyno de Chile. Flandes Indiano. Valparaiso: Impr. del Mercurio. Tomo ii. Libro IV. Cap. I.
[10] de Ovalle, A., (1646). Histórica Relación del Reyno de Chile.... Roma: Francisco Caballo. pp. 100-101.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2010 International Year of Biodiversity Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall ©