Patagonian Bigfoot?

 

I have been asked if there is a "Bigfoot" in Patagonia.

The correct answer is: no. Bigfoot is a North American creature. But, Patagonia does have its share of strange beings (dwarfs, monsters, the gigantic "Patagons") and these include "wild men" or hominids.

In today's post we will look into the Patagonian "Bigfoot".

The Fuegian Yagans feared several man-like "ogres" that lived in the forests: the Selk'nam's one was Hashi, very similar to the Yagan's "Hannush", also known as "wild men".

Reverend Thomas Bridges described Hannush as:

a sort of demented or wild man of the forests […] similar to man in shape, living alone or in groups, but without wife or children; they were always stalking, trying to come upon men, women or children to kill them.[1][2]

A very credible witness mentions them; English naturalist Charles Darwin (of evolutionary fame) who in 1833 visited Tierra del Fuego aboard Captain Robert FitzRoy’s H.M.S. “Beagle”. Darwin wrote:

What the "bad wild men" were, has always appeared to me most mysterious […] I should have thought that they were thieves who had been driven from their tribes; but other obscure speeches made me doubt this; I have sometimes imagined that the most probable explanation was that they were insane.[3]

FitzRoy also wrote about the “wild men”, pointing out their “black” color: “A great black man is supposed to be always wandering about the woods and mountains […] who cannot be escaped”.[4]

He also reported that among the Chono his pilot Mr. William Low recorded that: “[They] believe in an evil spirit, called Yaccy-ma, who they think is able to do all kinds of mischief, cause bad weather, famine, illness, &c.: he is supposed to be like an immense black man”.[4]

Could these evil dark (i.e. black) men be some kind of fur clad hominid?

“Mwono” the southern abominable snow man.

The Yagan’s neighbors, the Alakaluf, feared Mwono, a “snow man”. Theirs was a land of jagged fjords and islands where the glaciers reach the sea calving icebergs into treacherous waters. Mwono reigned supreme inhabiting “the summits of the mountains and glaciers” where his tracks could be found.[5]

Chilean ethnolinguist Oscar Aguilera believes that this “‘snow man’ is a fabulous and mythical animal that the [Alakaluf] say lives in the glaciers and whose footprints they say that they have seen”.[6] What these prints look like, unfortunately, no one knows.

Potentially dangerous, its reclusive nature made it quite harmless; Mwono was a reclusive and peaceful being that would only hurt those who dared to enter his territory.[7]

Further north, the Mapuche believed in several gigantic beings; one was the Trauko -do not mistake with Chiloé’s Trauco dwarf which we will describe in a future post- which dwelled along the banks of Collón Curá River -stone mask in Mapuche language- in Neuquén (40°00’ S, 70°49’ W). This was a monster, a “terrible giant, man eater” described as hairy and having “a very long beard and his hair that seemed like rush stalks were fire red color”.[8]

Their myths also included the Chilludo, Carcancho and Huitanalhue.

The Chilludo is a very large and hairy creature. A bearded “bogey man”. Ape-like and covered with a long sheep-like fleece, it may be frightening, but is said to be harmless. It can be found in the isolated mountain regions of northern Patagonia in Chile and in western Neuquén province, Argentina.[9]

The Carcancho. These hairy men led a solitary existence in the mountains and meadows feeding on tubers. They could measure up to 2 m (6 ft. 7 in.) tall in the mountains, but were dwarfish (1 m – 3.3 ft.) in the lowlands, where they lived burrowing underground. This may indicate that they were two different kinds of being or that perhaps they were not men but some kind of wild animal.

They walked in the snow and their large foot-prints were the only clues of their existence (exactly like the Mwono but 2.000 km further towards the north - 1,240 mi.).[10]

Huitranalhue is a kind of undead, a zombie, described as a big man, which like a vampire attacked people to drink their blood or eat their flesh.[11] Its name means “alien ghost” (huitran = stranger, alien; alhue = spirit, ghost).

This hermit carried a wooden sword (perhaps a club), and did not speak. It was easily concealed as it kept to the forest and was dressed in dark clothes (perhaps animal furs). Later the Mapuche would “Europeanize” it giving it the appearance of a well groomed Spaniard riding a horse.

I have already mentioned the "Tailed men" of Patagonia, which are another variety of "primitive men".

Wild men, what were they?

We could, as Darwin, believe that these “wild men” were just that, crazy wild men; it is also very plausible that the Hannush and the Hashi were simply “homeless” Yagans living alone in a very harsh environment or even displaced Selk’nam, Alakaluf or Haush who had wandered into their enemies’ territory and tried to remain concealed to avoid attack and if necessary for survival, murdered any potential threats.

Apes and Homo erectus

Another option, not as far-fetched as believing that wild men are enormous bipedal apes that evolved separately in America, involves our distant relative, Homo erectus, which became extinct worldwide when modern humans, Homo sapiens, moved out of Africa about 100,000 years ago.

Erectus moved out of Africa and spread into Asia about 1.2 million years ago. There are no traces of erectus in America, so we do not know if they reached this continent.

However, it may be possible (though this theory is unproven)that H. erectus, our distant ancestor, entered and settled in America, adapting to its particular environment and surviving there for 200,000 years in splendid isolation until the arrival of modern men. An event that would have sealed H. erectus fate as it did all over the world. Unable to compete with man they disappeared.

Club wielding, fur clad H. erectus, with perhaps a limited capability for vocalization could easily explain all of these mythical wild men (Chilludo, Carcancho, Huitranalhue, etc.), and account for the dark "black" wild men reported by FitzRoy and Darwin.

Bibliography.

[1] Bridges, T., (1893). La Tierra del Fuego y sus habitantes. Informe de Thomas Bridges publicado por el Instituto Geográfico Argentino. B. Aires: Instituto Geográfico Argentino. 06-08.1893.
[2] Bridges, T., (1998). Los indios del último confin. Sus escritos para la South American Missionary Society. Ushuaia: Zaguier & Urruty Publications. pp. 152.
[3] Darwin, C., (1987). The Voyage of the Beagle. Ware: Woodsworth Editions. pp. 205.
[4] FitzRoy, R., (1839). Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle between the years 1826 and 1836…. London: Henry Colburn. v. ii. pp. 180+ and pp. 191.
[5] Emperaire, J., (1963). Los Nómades del Mar. Santiago: Ediciones de la Universidad de Chile. pp. 156.
[6] Aguilera F., Lenguas y culturas de Chile – Kawéscar. Online.
[7] Grebe, M., (1974). La música alacalufe: aculturación y cambio estilístico. Revista musical chilena. Nº 126-127 pp. 80-111.
[8] Koessler-Ilg, B., (2000). Op Cit. pp. 71.
[9] Eberhart, G., (2002). Misterious Creatures: A guide to Cryptozoology. S. Barbara: ABC Clio. pp. 82.
[10] Batic, L., (2005). Seres mitológicos argentinos. Diario 1. Patagonia. B. Aires: Ed. Albatros. pp. 119.



Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters

South American Wild Men an Index

My recent series posts on "Wild Men" in the Amazonian jungles and surrounding areas of South America has grown considerably and I think it is a good idea to create a small index to link all the posts together in one place, for future reference and to make it easier to navigate through the posts.

I will be adding more posts to the series and place this index in the left sidebar under the heading "Wild Men".

An index on South American Wild Men

• CURUPI and YASY YATERE, Paraguay.
• CAAPORA, Paraguay
  Caapora - another wild man
• SAVAGE MAN, Venezuela
  The "Savage" Man of Venezuela
• SAVAGE MAN, Tucuyo, Venezuela.
  Ape men and Water Tigers in the 1620s
• CORUPIRA and BORARO, Amazon
  Korupira, the red haired Amazonian man
• SACHARUNA or CHULLACHAQUI, Peru.
  Sacharuna or chullachaqui the “jungle men”
• MAYAN GORILLAS and LOYS APE MAN (Colombia)
  De Loÿs ape-man or Montandon's hoax
• WILD APE MEN, Peru
  Cieza de Leon and his hairy beings
• BLEMYE, Guyana.
  More on the Blemye in Guyana
• BLEMYE, Piri Reis.
  Blemye on Piri Reis map
• BLEMYE: EWAYPANIOMA, Guyana
  Sir Walter Raleigh's Blemyes
• DIDI and NON DESCRIPT, Guyana
  Ape Men (Neanderthal?) sightings in South America

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2012 by Austin Whittall © 

More on the Caaiguá wild men

My recent post on the Caaiguá people, wild men, left me a bit intrigued, so I did some more research and came across the original texts written by contemporary witnesses: Jesuit priests from the Missions in the jungles close to where these people lived.

The Jesuits's written accounts show that these people were quite singular:

• They spoke a language that was quite different from the Guaraní language spoken by the surrounding tribes.
• It had a "whistling" like sound
• The Caaiguá lived in caves and were stone-age hunter gatherers
• They were described as similar to both apes and men and with limited intellectual capabilities
• They were also very belicose and violent

I am inclined to believe that they were indeed a relict Neanderthal group, human yet not human enough, feature that led both natives and missionaries to consider them authentic wild men.

Wild Men in detail

Father Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, wrote several learned books on the native languages of North and South America, and, as could be expected, mentioned the language spoken by the Caaiguas. I quote him below (the bold font is mine):

"The Caaiguá Language.
The Caaiguá language is spoken by the nation of the same name that has settled to the east of the Uruguay River to the north, near its sources [Shaded in red in map below] it is a peculiar language of rough and difficult pronounciation as Techo correctly notes, and speaks about the Caaiguá tongue as follows: 'The Caaiguás use their own language which is hard to understand because when they pronounce the words they do not seem to speak but instead whistle or form unintelligible tones in their throats'.
The name Caaiguás is Guaraní and means wild and because the converted and civilized Guaraní usually give the name of caaiguá to some Guaraní tribes that wander about in the jungle, some authors have believed that the Caaiguá is a Guaraní dialect and have mistaken the true Caaiguás for the nomad Guaraní tribes..." [1]

This is very interesting, it clearly points out that these people are not Guaraní. That the also name applies to ethnic Guaraní people who live under their pre-hispanic conditions, in the jungle. But that the real Caaiguá people are a distinct group with their own peculiar language.

And a very strange language indeed, with whistling sounds!. I looked up the text written by father Techo, which Hervás y Panduro quoted, and it proved to be very interesting too:

Nicolás del Techo's text

He was born in Lille in 1611 as "du Toict" (which he modified to a Spanish version: "del Techo"), and died at the Mission in Apóstoles in 1687. He became a Jesuit in 1619 and came to America in 1640 working as a missionary, and historian in South America.

This text was published in Antwerp in 1654 as the "Relatio triplex de rebus indicis". It was a letter that he wrote in 1651 at the Mission of Santa María La Mayor, on the Uruguay River in the Missions of Paraguay.

Map showing the probable territory of the Caaiguás and the Jesuit Missions
Copyright © 2014 by Austin Whittall

The mission is located in Argentina, in the province of Misiones, Santa María municipality. It was founded in 1626 and abandoned in 1767. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has been restored.

Below I quote the intersting parts of the text (bold font is mine):

"We are taking care of here, the two of us, of two thousand six hundred indians [...] To this task we add another, not less difficult: the taming of the most ferocious Caaiguá people. [...]
The Caaiguá people are not very numerous and are the less apt for work among all the indians. They live in the jungles between the Paraná and Iguazú rivers [Shaded in Yellow in the map below] , and for this reason the surrounding tribes call them jungle inhabitants (which is the meaning of the name Caaiguá). They speak their own language, not very easy to learn, because, they when they issue their sounds, it seems that, instead of speaking, they whistled, producing a whirlwind of inaticulate explosions in their throats.
They have very few huts and these are very far apart. Most of these indians are happy living in hovels, like animals, and do not procure their food any better than them, so they do not practice agriculture or have any farming activities. The fish and hunt with bow and arrow. Nevertheless, most of the year they eat raw worms, mice, ants and other small creaturs that they can catch easily. The fight with tapirs [...] they kil them and eat them; climbing up trees they catch monkeys with such dextrity, as if they themselves were apes. They like monkey meat a lot and eat jaguar meat without flinching [...] They are physically deformed and are monstrous, similar to both monkeys and men, especially if you look at their noses, which allows you to fairly call them stub-nosed. As they live in the jungles most of them have their backs bent and hunched, making their gaze remain fixed towards the ground. They walk in a bent over manner. However many of them have a nicer appearance, especially the women, who born and bred in the shade keep the color of their body quite similar to that of Europeans." [2]

He also mentions that they were wild and fierce, muderding anyone who dared to go into their territory, that the Guaraní killed them whenever they could. And that when captured they were "difficult to tame [...] refused food and died in a few days". A missionary, Father Claudio brought up a Caaiguá boy and taught him the Guaraní language so that he could be an interpreter for him (a clear indication that Guaraní and Caaiguá spoke distinct languages) and went to their territory to convert them, enticing some to come down to the mission:

"So some of them came out of their caves and [...] canme to the town of Santa María La Mayor.[2]

They did this again and: "After a journey of nine days this illustious hunter of souls went into the caves of the wild men and through his interpreter managed to get eighteen of them to agree to be converted and follow him [...] he found the inept to retain and obtuse to undestand clearly." [2]

The Jesuits fought against a slaver raid by the Brazilian Mamelucos and freed several Caaiguá natives, earning their gratitude.

The Brazilians hunted natives to capture them and sell them as slaves. This decimated the native tribes of what is now Southern Brazil, Paraguay and the Argentine provinces of Misiones and Corrientes. The Jesuits organized armies to fight them off, but when the Spanish cronw expelled the Jesuit Order from America, their missions quickly dissolved and became ghost-towns, swallowed up by the jungle. The natives disbanded and returned to their old customs.

The region remained forgotten during the independence and civil wars of the early XIX century. It returned to the limelight during the war between Paraguay and Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina in the 1860s and its borders were drawn up during the late 1800s. At that time Argentine explorers such as Ambrosetti and Lista visited the region (which was part of a border dispute between Brazil and Argentina). Both of them mistook the ethnic "wild" Guaraní people for the original Caaiguá people.

Juan Ambrosetti (1886) called them Kaingangues, Caigua, Caingua and Ramón Lista (1883) Caayguás, but these were not the real Caaiguá mentioned by del Techo, who had probably already become extinct due to the slaving raids of the late 1700s.

Sources

[1] Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro, (1800). Catálogo De Las Lenguas De Las Naciones Conocidas, Y Numeracion, Division, Y Clases De Estas Segun La Diversidad De Sus Idiomas Y Dialectos: Lenguas Y Naciones Americanas. Rank, Vol 1. pp 296.
[2] Nicolás del Techo, (1654) Relación Sobre la Gente Caaigua que se empezó a convertir. Republished by Arturo Nagy & Francisco Pérez Maricevich, (1967), Tres Encuentros Con América. Ed. del Centenario, Asunción.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

The Caaigua Wild Man

I just came across another type of "wild man" that lived in the South American jungles, the Caigua (or Caaiguá). These creatures were people, since they were baptized and settled in Jesuit Missions. Unlike other putative wild men, these were not monkeys (they actually hunted monkeys).

These wild men were regarded by the more civilized Native Americans as people who lived in the jungle, savages.

Wild Men according to the Jesuits

In the late 1700s, the Spanish Jesuit missionary, Father José Guevara (1719 - 1806) wrote about these mysterious "Caaiguás" people: "their name in Guaraní [a Native American language] means wild people... men with noses like monkeys; hunchbacked that look towards the ground... short neck and so sunken that it barely protrudes above the shoulder... They live in the jungle and chase monkeys, jumping from branch to branch and from tree to tree with admirable dextrity and litheness."[1]

That these natives also known as Caiguas or Coaiguás were human is attested by the fact that they were considered, "nomad Guaraní natives" [2] some of them were even placed in a Jesuit Mission:

The Spaniards controlled the natives by gathering them and settling them next to a mission (most missions were run by Jesuits). They worked for the mission in its fields or craft shops, and were indoctrinated and converted to Christianism.

These settlements were known as "Reducciones" (from the Spanish verb "reducir": subdue, subjugate, pacify). There were other means of dominating the natives which the Spaniards copied from the Inca rulers that they had overthrown: forced labor, a serf system and communal work (Mita, Yanacona and the Encomienda systems).

Father Francisco Vázques Trujillo in a letter to his superior in the Jesuit Company, wrote about them: "they are known as Caiguaras. They are a nation that lives in the jungles, that seem like little lambs. They are always looking towards the ground. Father Juan de Porras, who is in charge of this Reducción, with his good manners has taken them out of the jungle..." [3]

The "lamb-like" allusion is not about their appearance, but about their character (peaceful and tame). Their other physical features are quite odd: hunchbacked, sunken head (like embeded deeply in their shoulders - short necked), a gaze fixed on the ground... What can that mean?

Since they are not described as hairy and being interned in a Mission we can safely guess that they were people, odd people, but humans. Their Tarzan-like dextrity (jumping from branch to branch) is amazing indeed.

Could they be a relict tribe of hominids? (i.e. Neanderthals or H. erectus), their "primitive" appearance would have been remarkable and noticed by the Jesuits, they would have noticed that they were humans, but not exactly like us.

Just as I was posting this I came across some more information on Caaiguas, I will post this once I have read it in detail. Thanks.

Sources

[1] Guevara, J. "Historia del Paraguay, Rio de la Plata y Tucumán", Ed. Pedro de Angelis (1836)Book 1, part 1.
[2] Azara, F. (1793). "Descripción e Historia del Paraguay y del Rio de la Plata". Vol. 1
[3] de Gandia, E. (1929). Historia Crítica de los mitos de la Conquista Americana. B. Aires, J. Roldan y Cia. pp. 34

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a"> Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

Ape Men (Neanderthal?) sightings in South America

 

The human-like "Nondescript", an ape-man from the early 1800s, former British Guiana, South America. From [1]

There have been many posts in this blog aiming at supporting the idea that perhaps some of our distant relatives, either Homo erectus or our close cousin, Neanderthal, somehow got into America long before modern humans did, and survived until recent times, and in the process, gave birth to the many native American myths about "ape men".

Today I will write about South American ape-men. Note, not the Canadian - American bigfoot, but instead, a creature sighted in South America, closer to Patagonia than those North American beings. Lets cover the strange nondescript ape-man.

Human like ape beings have been reported in South America since it was discovered. Today I will focus on the region of Guyana:

First Report, 1769

English naturalist Edward Bancroft wrote about them in 1769, [2]. He mentioned the creature that All the natives called “Wild Man” and it is clear that they were not “Apes”, which he dealt about in the following paragraphs.

These Wild Men were about 5 feet (1,5 m) tall, the walked in an upright position and had “human form, thinly covered with short black hair” the “Indians” “greatly dread them and instantly flee as son a sone is discovered”. They share some features with the Trauco hominid found in Patagonia: “they will attack themales, and ravish the females of the human species.” [2]

Second Report and a specimen

British naturalist Charles Waterton (1782-1865) described his four voyages to America in his book Wanderings in South America (1825) which has many observations of the American fauna. Among these creatures was one very peculiar one, an “ape-man” which he named “Nondescript”:

I also procured an animal which has caused not a little speculation and astonishment. In my opinion, his thick coat of hair and great length of tail put his species out of all question; but then his face and head cause the inspector to pause for a moment before he ventures to pronounce his opinion of the classification. He was a large animal, and as I was pressed for daylight, and moreover, felt no inclination to have the whole weight of his body upon my back, I contented myself with his head and shoulders, which I cut off, and have brought them with me to Europe....

[Footnote: My young friend Mr. J. H. Foljambe, eldest son of Thomas Foljambe, Esq., of Wakefield, has made a drawing of the head and shoulders of this animal, and it is certainly a most correct and striking likeness of the original.][1]

The drawing is the one shown at the begining of this post.

This incredible speciment which he brought with him to the UK, was obtained during his fourth voyage to America in 1824, when he visited the Demerara River in what is now Guyana.

The embalmed specimen can be seen at the Waterton Gallery at Wakefield Museum in Britain. [4]

According to the museum, the “Nondescript” was created by Waterton, who used his specialised taxidermist skills to fashion the head and shoulders from a howler monkey carcass. He worked on the face so that it looked just like the face of a customes officer who inconvenienced him when he returned from his 1821 trip. The man is said to be named Lushington.

Nondescript at Wakefield Museum. From [4]

Third report, 1868. The “Didi”

It was forty years later later, in 1868, that a British surveyour, who worked for the government of the colony of British Guiana, Charles Barrington Brown, reported these “ape men” once again, this time they were called “Didi”:[3]

The first night after leaving Peaimah we heard a long, and most melancholy whistle, proceeding from the direction of the depths of the forest, at which some of the men exclaimed, in an awed tone of voice, "The Didi." Two or three times the whistle was repeated, sounding like that made by a human being, beginning in a high key and dying slowly and gradually away in a low one.…

The "Didi" is said by the Indians to be a short, thick set, and powerful wild man, whose body is covered with hair, and who lives in the forest. A belief in the existence of this fabulous creature is universal over the whole of British, Venezuelan and Brazilian Guiana. On the Demerara river, some years after this, I met a half-breed woodcutter, who related an encounter that he had with two Didi—a male and a female—in which he successfully resisted their attacks with his axe. In the fray, he stated, he was a good deal scratched.[3]

Closing comments

So here we have some true and maybe some false reports concerning ape-men in Guiana, in north eastern South America. They are not the run of the mill South American monkeys, these are ape-men. Perhaps the remains of the original Neanderthal or H. erectus people that reached the Americas long ago.


Sources
[1] Charles Waterton, (1825). Wanderings in South America, the north-west of the United States, and the Antilles, in the years 1812, 1816, 1820 and 1824: With original instruction for the perfect preservation of birds &c. for cabinets of natural history .(Google eBook). Mawman. pp 293.
[2] Bancroft, Edward, (1769). An essay on the natural history of Guiana, in South America: Containing a description of many curious productions in the animal and vegetable systems of that country. Together with an account of the religion, manners, and customs of several tribes of its Indian inhabitants. Interspersed with a variety of literary and medical observations. (Google eBook), T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt. pp 131.
[3] Charles Barrington Brown, (1876). Canoe and camp life in British Guiana
[4] Waterton Gallery at Wakefield Museum.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall © 

The "Savage" Man of Venezuela

The snow of the Andes regions run down its eastern slopes and joining the rainfall of the Equatorial region, feeds the great rivers of South America: the Amazon, the Paraná and the Orinoco. This area, a vast portion of the South American continent is covered in parts by the Amazon rain forest, and in others by immense wetlands, savannas or mountain ranges. It is the ideal place for a relict race of humans to hold out against modern men.

In my recent series of posts I have covered several of these hominids that have been reported since the first Europeans set foot in the area. They are deeply entrenched in the native’s lore and as such may have been based on fact, their “wild men” or “hairy jungle men” may be in fact their distorted view on our ancestors (H. erectus, the Neanderthals or even some other hominid race that moved out of the Old World and in to America).

My post on the Corupira led me to a source mentioning “savage men” in Venezuela. Today I will write about them, and, as usual go to the oldest known sources and not just copy and paste rehashed information of unknown origin.

The Wild man according to Gilij

Filipo Salvadore Gilij was an Italian jesuit priest (1721-1789), who lived in what is now Venezuela at missions set up along the Orinoco River. He lived in touch with the natives and learned their languages. He returned to Italy when Spain expelled the Jesuits from its American territories in 1767 and wrote an “Essay on American History...” which, in several volumes, deals with the natural and human history of the areas he visited.

In particular, he described the “Savage” or “Wild man” of the Orinoco. Below is the Italian language text of the part of his work that deals with this creature: [1]

 

A rough translation is the following:

”In my history I said I had not met any Indians who told me that they had seen the “Savage” with their own eyes. But what did not happen over many years, happened recently when another missionary to whom I owe the following account.
At the Mission at the Falls of Aturi a child went into the jungle and with great pain to his relatives, did not return and though they searched for him. After 10 days the child reappeared, more dead than alive. The missionary called him in, gave him a substantial broth and heard the Indian boy’s account: The Savage took him by his hand and rescued him, took him to a cave in where he had food. On the the tenth day the food stash finished so the Savage went out to get more food, this gave Diego (the child’s name – James in English), the chance to return home. The boy was about ten years old. He said he was never left alone by the Wild man and that it was single, but gave no other details. He ignored or could not say what food the Savage ate. But being a wild animal, the abbot says a type of ape, I would believe it was fruit. But I cannot add more.[1]

These Aturi Falls, or, as they are known in Spanish, “Raudal Ature” or Ature Rapids are located on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, close to the town of Puerto Ayacucho, Venezuela as can be seen in the map below:

Map showing the location of Ature Falls, home of the “Savage”.
Copyright © 2012 by Austin Whittall

Humbold’s account (1800)

German explorer and scientist, Alexander Von Humboldt,(1769-1859) wrote about this creature. Between 1799 and 1801 he travelled around parts of Southern, Central and North America. He visited the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada (current Colombia and Venezuela) in 1799-1800 and again in 1801.

It was during his first trip that he explored the upper Orinoco River reaching San Carlos in May 1800. It was during this trip that he passed by the Ature Rapids and wrote about the Savage. Below are his comments (full English language text can be seen following the link at [1] in our Sources):

It was among the cataracts that we began to hear of the hairy man of the woods called salvaje [Savage is the translation] that carries off women constructs huts and sometimes eats human flesh The Tamanacks call it achi and the Maypures vasitri or great devil The natives and the missionaries have no doubt of the existence of this anthropomorphous monkey which they singularly dread.
Father Gilij gravely relates the history of a lady in the town of San Carlos who much praised the gentle character and attentions of the man of the woods She lived several years with one in great domestic harmony and only requested some hunters to take her back because she was tired she and her children a little hairy also of living far from the church and the sacraments [2]

Humboldt is skeptical as can be seen in the paragraphs that follow. Where he calls the story a “fable which the missionaries the European planters and the negroes of Africa have no doubt embellished with many features taken from the description of the manners of the ourang outang the gibbon the jocko or chimpanzee and the pongo” [2]

He noted that this “belief is particularly prevalent among the people such are the banks of the Upper Oroonoko [sic] the valley of Upar near the lake of Maracaybo the mountains of Santa Martha and of Merida the provinces of Quixos and the banks of the Amazon near Tomependa [2] and that if after centuries of Spanish occupation nobody had ever hunted one of these great monkeys. He suggested the following reasonable explanations:

• The capuchin monkey with its human-like appearance originated the myth.
• A bear. He writes: "It may be also and this opinion appears to me the most probable that the man of the woods was one of those large bears the footsteps of which resemble those of a man and which is believed in every country to attack women" [2]

Humboldt concludes with a piece of advice for those who might follow his steps and explore the upper Orinoco jungles: “ continue our researches on the salvaje or great devil of the woods and examine whether it be some unknown species of bear or some very rare monkey analogous to the simia chiropotes potes or siruia satanas that can have given rise to such singular tales”[2]. The monkeys he mentions is the Black Bearded Saki. For photographs of this monkey see below [3].

Sources
[1] Filippo Salvadore Gilij, (1784). Saggio di storia americana: o sia, Storia naturale, civile e sacra de'regni, e delle provincie spagnuole di Terra-Ferma nell' America Meridionale . L. Perego erede Salvioni, 1780. pp 315 note XXII.
[2] Alexander Von Humbodt and Aime Bonpland. (1827). Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the New Continent, during the years 1799-1804. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown... and H. Colburn, pp 81+
[3] Photos of the Black Bearded Saki.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2012 by Austin Whittall © 

Cieza de Leon and his hairy beings

 

Pedro Cieza de León, (c.1520 - 1554), was a Spanish explorer, born in a well-to-do family who set off at the young age of fifteen on a voyage to the newly discovered continent of America.
He stayed there, taking part in several expeditions in Colombia and Peru. After his return to Spain in 1551, he became a historian and geographer and wrote an account on his adventures (Crónica del Peru), he died shortly after at the age of thirty four.

His "Peruvian Chronicle" (that is the meaning of its title in English) is very interesting and is a good source of information for historians and researchers delving into the first days of the American conquest and the way of life of the American natives.

The Ape-men

I have found some sources that mention Cieza de León's account saying that in it he includes a reference about ape-men that went around in pairs and had a very sharp moan or howl. I decided to check out the "real" and original sources, his Cronicle. Below is the relevant text:

In these mountains and jungles they assert that there are people so wild that they do not have home or clothes and go around like animals, killing birds and animlas with arrows which they eat.
That they do not have lords or captains and that they live in the hollows and boughs of trees in most of which, they also say (though I have not seen them), are female monkeys so large that they move about the trees, and with whom, tempted by the devil, (who always seeks the ways and places for men to commit the worst and gravest sins), these men use them as wives.
And it is said that some give birth th monsters with the heads and limbs like those of men and the hands and feet ape-like. They are, they say, small bodied and with monstrous proportions, and hairy. It seems, alas, they resemble (if it true that they exist) the devil, their father.[1]

He goes on writing that he can not understand why ignorant men “soil themselves” with other beasts, and then mentions that while visitng the region of Charcas in 1549, he spent one night in the tent of a Spanish nobleman who told him the following:

That he had seen with his own eyes, in the mountains, one of these monsters, dead, its shape and sizes as described [above]. And Juan Vargas, a neighbor of La Paz [Bolivia. See map] told him that at Guanuco the Indians told him that they heard the howling of these demons or female monkeys”[1]

Comments

We can clearly see that he is mentioning primitive men (maybe H. Sapiens) native Americans that lived just like they do until this day in the Amazonian jungle, hunting with bows and arrows. These primitive people however lacked huts and lived in the trees.

Furthermore it seems that he is attempting to explain the existence of some odd sightings of dead ape-men reported by the natives to the Spaniards. His explanation: unnatural mating between men and female apes resulting in ape-men offspring. Of course a sixteenth Century Spaniard would blame the devil for these sins.

Finally the howling and moaning part may be true if applied to monkeys: they may well be howler monkeys, which belong to the (genus Alouatta) and comprise fifteen species. They are one of the largest monkeys of South America. They measure up to 90 cm (3 ft.) long and have a prehensile tail. There is no other fit ape in America to play the part of seductress she-monkey.

I guess that the natives had some myth regarding ape-men and that they were the outcome of cross species mating between apes and men. This probably points at some relict homind group of men living in secluded jungle areas of South America during the early days of the Spanish Conquest.


Sources

[1] Pedro de Cieza de León. (1552) Obras completas CSIC, 1984 pp. 120.

The quote above is shown below in Spanish:

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2017 by Austin Whittall © 

Homo Erectus in America. Full information

 

All that you wanted to know about Homo erectus in America will appear in this post, it includes my previous posts on the subject, and, all new ones will be indexed here. I believe that our not-so-distant relative is the most plausible explanation for many Patagonian cryptids (i.e. giants, ogres and wild men).

The first Asians were not H. erectus. This opens the door to an intriguing possibility, that more archaic hominids such as H. habilis reached Asia and... peopled America later on...

Calico remains, proof of Homo erectus in America
Controversial stone tools discovered at a Calico site in California, USA, dated to 200,000 years ago, could only have been made by H. erectus. Some believe that the "tools" may have a natural origin and were not man-made...

H. erectus a sailor and navigator.
There is evidence that erectus sailed across open stretches of sea in Indonesia from Java all the way to Flores Island some 800,000 years ago. Could they have developed this skill and used it to reach America?

More proof on H. erectus as a navigator
Crude stone tools found in Crete, Greece dated to some 130 - 700,000 years ago indicate that H. erectus crossed at least 65 km (40 mi) of open sea to reach Crete from the mainland.

Minnesota remains Neanderthal or erectus?
Skull remains allegedly found in 1968 in Minnesota belonged to hominids with receding foreheads and thick Neanderthal-like brows. Could they have been H. erectus?

Modern presence of H. erectus in Patagonia
Native American's art (pottery, wood sculptures and stone masks depicts hominids with thick brows, deep set eyes and a low receding forehead very similar to H. erectus...

Lice may prove that modern man and H. erectus met in America.
Modern humans have a variety of lice which evolved on H. erectus, as lice can only survive on their human hosts, this means that modern men and archaic erectus came into "close" contact, and I believe that the encounter happened in America...

Puebla, Mexico: Dorenberg skull 80 - 220,000 years old.
A strange skull with H. erectus features was unearthed in Puebla Mexico in the 1890s and has been recently dated as having 80 - 220,000 years of age.

Hairy pre-human dwarves: Chelep
Hairy cave dwellers that resembled orangutans and threw stones at the Natives may be H. erectus

Out of Africa and into America across the Atlantic
H. erectus could have reached Brazil crossing the Atlantic Ocean aided by trade winds and sea currents that have a westerly direction. This is a shorter and easier journey than the Beringia route...

Patagonian bigfoot
Club wielding, fur clad H. erectus, with perhaps a limited capability for vocalization could easily explain all of these mythical wild men (Chilludo, Carcancho, Huitranalhue, etc.), and account for others such as Mwono…

Homo erectus in Argentina?
Ancient remains from the Tertiary Period such as a Pliocene Toxodon bone with an embedded stone spearhead and evidence of man-made fires over 1 million years ago point at a possible presence of H. erectus in Argentina at that time.

Diprothomo and Lagoa Santa remains
A strange skull unearthed in 1896 (Diprothomo) in Buenos Aires with archaic traits and a Tertiary Period dating as well as a robust skull with thick brow ridges from Lagoa Santa in Brazil may belong to H. erectus.

Some evidence of H. erectus in Mexico and its survival in Asia until recent times
Stone tool remains dated to 250,000 years ago at Valsequillo Mexico could only be the work of H. erectus as no humans were alive at that time. H. erectus may have been alive in Indonesia 27 thousand years ago, overlapping with modern humans.

Erectus footprints in Mexico 1.3 Million years old?
Footprints found in volcanic ash at a site close to Valsequillo, Mexico have been dated do 1.3 million years ago. As this date is too old for modern human tracks, it has been disregarded by science...

More on H. erectus in America. Denisovans
Analysis of the DNA from H. erectus remains from Denisova, Siberia, shows that in the genomes of people now living in Melanesia, about 5 percent of their DNA can be traced to Denisovans, a sign of ancient interbreeding. Furthermore, southern Patagonians share many traits with Melanesians that have led researchers to believe that these may have peopled that part of America

Some more information on the Denisovans
The remains at Denisova are not those of modern humans or Neantherdal, they are very likely those of the descendants of the ancient H. erectus.

The Yuki natives of California and their “thick brow ridges”
Yuki cranial traits suggest an erectus relationship. Their language and unique culture is also quite startling and totally different to any known in America.

H. erectus genes survive in modern humans
RRM2P4, a specific region of our X chromosome may indicate that H. erectus may have still been alive in Asia some 30,000 years ago, and mixed with modern humans there.

Skull shape: Paleo Indians, Patagonians and H. erectus
America’s oldest inhabitants, the Paleoindians, had long and narrow skulls (i.e. dolichocephalic morphology). The later Indians have a short and wide cranial vault, along with wide faces (i.e. brachycephalic morphology). Patagonian natives exhibit "the most robust and dolichocephalic crania" among a sample of South American natives (Paleoindian-like) and: Homo erectus developed a dolichocephalic shape of skull. Could

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia

2011 International Year of Forests Copyright 2009-2011 by Austin Whittall © 

Caapora - another wild man

This is another entry in my series on “Wild men” in Southern America. Also related to the Curupira, it has a very similar sounding name:

The Paraguayan Caapora. The word comes from the Tupí or Guarani language: and combines two different words: “caa” = jungle and “Porá” = inhabitant. So, the creatures name is quite simple “inhabitant of the jungle”.

This word, in English is pronounced CAH-POH-RA and sounds very similar to COH-ROO-PEE-RAH, the name of the Corupira. But, both names mean different things even though they describe a hominid living in South American jungles. (Perhaps even the same creature, or not –according to Father Joao Daniel).

Description of the “Caapora”

The Paraguayan natives (Guarani people) fear it and describe it as follows:[1]

”a ghost of the forest, with a hairy body, and very strong, that eats people and usually shouts in a very special manner.” [1]

Thoug the word Caapora is Guaraní, there is another native name for it (but the native group is not clearly identified): Kripándufuá [1].

In Southren Brazil, in the state of Paraná, it is depicted as: “a gigantic hairy man, with a large head; that lives in the jungle eating raw, the animals that men hunt and kill, but cannot find “ [1], in other words, he eats the game that wounded gets lost in the jungle.

A goulish feature of Caapora is that he smokes his tobacco in a pipe fashioned from a human skull

It has a horrid voice that sounds like a roaring storm and is very hairy [2]

Another view on the Caapora

We have a description in the Amazon region by a Jesuit missionary, Father Joao Daniel, who worked there among the Indians between 1780 and 1797 and wrote a book about his experiences there (Tesouro descoberto no rio Amazonas). He draws a link between the Caapora and the Curupira. Below he is quoted by Cámara [3]:

”It can be assumed that the Devil, disguised as a human, Coropira, has common communications with our gentle brothers and aldeados [civilized natives living in villages – i.e. aldeias, hence their name aldeados] and even more with the wild ones [uncivilized Indians], who are called Caaporas, inhabitants of the woods”.[3]

So Father Joao’s interpretation is that there are wild “untamed” natives living in the jungles and that they are the Caaopora. And that they and the civilized natives have close ties and communicate with the Coropira devil. They are then, two different creatures!

Sources

[1] Juan Bautista Ambrosetti, (1894). Materiales para el estudio del folklore Misionero. Compañia Sud-Americana de Billetes de Banco, pp 45.

[2] Boletín de historia y antigüedades, (1934). Vol 23, pp 394. Academia Nacional de Historia, Colombia.

[3] Luis da Camara Cascudo, (1972). Dicionário do folclore brasileiro, Volumen 1. pp205.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2012 by Austin Whittall © 

A Peruvian ape-man, Monkey or hominin?

After the discovery of America, its vast and inexplored area was the source of many myths: the fountain of youth, the golden cities of Eldorado, Ciudad de los Césares and Cibola. The tribe of warrior women, the Amazons, and the land where Jesus' brother, Saint Thomas had come to preach....

Mysterious creatures were described all over the continent, some were distorted accounts of actual real creatures, others were totally imaginary, others remain unknown until today, maybe they described creatures now extinct (like the Patagonian "succarath").

Today we will review one of them.

The Peruvian Apeman

Enea Vico (1523 - 1567), an Italian engraver whose speciality was depicting weird creatures wrote a book (Recueil de la diversité des habits qui sont de present en visages tantes pays d’europe, Asie, Afrique et illes sauvages. Le tout fait apres de natural), in French, which was published in París in 1562. It dealt with the odd things found around the world, and, among them, a strange American creature. His drawing is shown below:

The peruvian ape-man. Enea Vico.

As can be seen in the image above, this "ape" was quite singular: it wore clothes. We know that clothing is an exclusive attribute of mankind. Of all animals, only human beings weare clothes. The fact that it is dressed makes this ape quite unusual.

Vico wrote: "... pres le Peru par effect le voit on, Dieu a donné au Singe tel forme. Vestu dejonc, s'appuyant d'un baston, estat debout, chose aux homes coforme." [2].

As it is written in ancient French, my translation is rather rudimentary, but nevertheless, here it is:" Close to Peru they have seen an ape that God has given this shaped. It is dressed and supports itself on a walking stick, it stands upright, in a man-like manner."

The image that illustrated the text shows a bipedal ape-like man wearing a cloack and some clothes woven from rushes, carrying a walking stick. The word "singe" which Vico uses is also significant. It does not mean monkey, it means "Ape" or "large Primate".

Last year I ran a series of posts on South American Wild Men, but had not included Vico's ape-man.

You may have already guessed that I am inclined to believe that it may actually represent a (then) extant group of Neanderthals (they would have been considered wild men by the locals, and would also have worn clothes).

Source
Here is the link to the engraving.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall © 

2011 Neanderthal sightings in Kemerovo Siberia

Iwas watching a program on History channel that offered different explanations for the Himalayan Yeti (abominable snowman) such as its a bear, its a relict Gigantopithecus ape, its the footprints of deformed human feet, its imagination (Brocken spectre, pareidolia, or a shadow person), and finally, it mentioned some sightings of extant Neanderthals reported in the Kemerovo region of Siberia around 2011-2012, and investigated by Russian scholars. Which is indeed a new alternative,in line with what I have written about on the ancient Patagonian myths of "wild men" (sightings of surviving ancestral hominins in America). For these reasons, I decided to post about it, and look into these sightings and the scientists and organizations that are studying them.

The Kemerovo Sightings

An article published online in 2011 mentions a spike in sightings of the abominable snowman in Siberia in the Kemerovo region noting that it is 3,000 miles (4,800 km) from Moscow, and neighboring Altai (a place where Denisovans and Neanderthals lived for several hundreds of thousands of years, and overlapped there, admixing).

The article mentions an "International Centre of Hominology in Tashtagol, and cites its head, Igor Burtsev (his name was also cited in the History Channel documentary). Burtsey stated that: "When Homo sapiens started populating the world, it viciously exterminated its closest relative in the hominid family, Homo neanderthalensis. Some of the Neanderthals, however, may have survived to this day in some mountainous wooded habitats that are more or less off limits to their arch foes."

Kemerovo is indeed close to Altai (see Google map), roughly 580 km (360 mi) north of the famous Denisova Cave.

Another article describes the sightings: one took place near a village called Misky (see map), where a fisherman called Vitaly Vershinin, who was sailing up the river, saw what he believed to be two people with a bear-like appearance drinking by a river, but when they saw him, they stood up, and walked away, so did he. The man, took a TV crew to the spot, and added that ""they just rushed away, all in fur, walking on two legs, making way through the bushes with two other limbs, straight up the hill, right there."

Some "yeti" hairs were found by an expedition in Kemerovo conducted by Burtsev the previous year (2011), who said that despite the violent interactions between modern humans and Neanderthals "Some of the Neanderthals, however, may have survived to this day in some mountainous wooded habitats that are more or less off limits to their arch foes. No clothing on them, no tools in hands and no fire in the household. Only round-the-clock watchfulness for a Homo sapiens around." I disagree. Neanderthals were sophisticated people, they knew how to make specializeds stone tools, dominated the art of firemaking, and fashioned clothes to protect themselves from the harsh Ice Age climate during the period they thrived in Eurasia, for several hundreds of thousands of years.

I posted about these sightings in 2011 and was looking forward to the outcome of the DNA tests of the tufts of hair recovered in Kemerovo. But these were never disclosed.

The article continues, and also mentions that "Sightings of the creatures in the region have increased three-fold over the past 20 years, prompting scientists at Moscow's Darwin Museum to speculate that there may be a small population of these creatures." (Neanderthals).

Another sighting took place in January 2013 (Source) when a state inspector spotted a yeti in the Shorsky National Park in the Tashtagolski district (see map). A local official, Sergei Adlyakov, said that it didn't look like a bear and vanished in the forest snapping branches off the bushes as it fled.

The final report of an encounter with yetis took plaxe in Kuzbass, when men on a boat navigating the Mras-Su River (see map) spotted, on a rock above the river, "some tall animals looking like people. Our binoculars were broken and did not let us see them sharply. We waved at the animals but they did not respond, then quickly ran back into the forest, walking on two legs."

A 2014 post quotes Igor Burtsev as affirming that "there is an active population of about 30 of the creatures living in the Kemerovo (the region of Mount Shoria) in Siberia to this day"

The "Yeti Expert"

Who is Igor Burtsev? and what is the International Centre of Hominology?

Burtsev is co-author of a research paper about a wild woman that was captured in a forest in the Caucasus (Margaryan A, Sinding MS, Carø C, Yamshchikov V, Burtsev I, Gilbert MTP. The genomic origin of Zana of Abkhazia. Adv Genet (Hoboken). 2021 Jun 14;2(2):e10051. doi: 10.1002/ggn2.10051. PMID: 36618122; PMCID: PMC9744565), in the paper he is credited as affiliated to the " International Center of Hominology, State Darwin Museum, Moscow, Russia." This museum is a serious institution (website).

The paper cites some refrences authored by Burtsev:

• Bourtsev I. A Skeleton Still Buried and a Skull Unearthed: the Story of Zana. In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman, Crypto‐Logos Publishers 1996;46–52.
• Burtsev I. Relict Hominoid Research Seminar. 1987.
• Burtsev I. Moscow Naturalists' Society. 1987.

Burtsev has appeared in some episodes of documentaries about cryptozoology (Cascade Bigfoot Blood Mystery, 2022, and in The Proof is Out There, 2025: Bigfoot Car Chase, Airport UFO, and High School Football Ghost, S.5;Ep. 12 and Siberian Yeti, Amazonian Alien Researcher, and Japanese Wolves Resurrected, S.5; Ep. 14.

A Russian language article states that Burtsev holds a History pHD, but then quotes him as supporting the weird theory put forward by Dr. Melba Ketchum (see my 2012 post about this quack story), who analyzed the DNA of North American samples of Bigfoots. Burtsev says that " It's been absolutely certain that the creature wasn't related to Neanderthals or Denisovans... Besides, 15,000 years ago, representatives of these human species had already disappeared from the face of the Earth—they went extinct... I don't rule out a hypothesis that might seem completely fantastic. Aliens who visited Earth could have been involved in the hybridization. Very unusual DNA was found in the samples analyzed in the United States." When UFOs and aliens are combined in a story involving Bigfoot, it becomes pseudoscience, and therefore placed in the same category as astrology, flat earth, creation science, Bermuda Triangle and similar nonsense.

I found his bio on the ICH website (more on ICH further down):

"Igor Burtsev, born in 1940, candidate of historical sciences, publisher, president of the Cryptosphere Fund for furthering scientific searches and explorations, director of the International Center of Hominology. Engaged in this investigation since 1965, participant and leader of many searching expeditions – in the North Caucasus (Kabardino-Balkaria, 1965), Azerbajan (Talysh, 1970-75), Abkhazia (1971, 1975, 1978, 2004, 2008), Mongolia (1976), Pamiro-Alai (1979-82), the Murmansk Region (Lovozero Lake, 1990); participant of investigations near St. Petersburg (1989, 2009) and in the Kirov Region (2002-2007), in the Novgorod, Tver’, Tula, Krasnodar regions (2009), in the Mountaneus Shoria, Siberia (2009-10). Since 1971 devoted several years to the study of the Patterson film. Author and co-author of many publications in the popular scientific magazines and in newspapers. In the fall of 2004 spent five weeks in Tennessee, USA, investigating reports of bigfoots visiting the Carter Farm. In 2006 visited the New York University concerning the analysis of the skulls excavated in Abkhasia."

International Centre of Hominology or ICH

Burtsev in collaboration with Bayanov (more on him below) created the International Center of Hominology in Moscow in 2003 (Source). Both are pictured below.

The ICH is listed in the Union of International Associations (link here) as a civil entity.

The UIA gives a website address for the ICH: https://hominology.narod.ru/eng.htm which is offline, however, the website can be seen in archive.org (a great tool, it has captured and saved one trillion web pages!), below is a screenshot of ICH's website as it looked back in 2013, when it was active.

ICH website in 2013, archive.org, Internet Archive Wayback Machine

ICH has a facebook page https://www.facebook.com/hominology which is currently active.

More on the Eurasian Hominoids

An interesting thesis exploring Soviet science and Darwinism touches the subject of hominoids and the Yeti. It mentions that these scholars believed that the Yeti was a missing link, a relict hominoid, but which one, was an open discussion. somt thought it was related to apes, like the gigantopithcus, while others like Boris Porshnev supported a hominin like the Homo erectus or a Neanderthal, and Petr Smolin thought it was an australopitecine. After deep studies of physical evidence, Porshnev "concluded that Yeti and Neanderthal shared too many traits to be incidental" yet the Yeti was an animal, it degenerated from the intelligent Neanderthal in a backward evolution. This seems to explain why Burtsev suggests that the Neanderthals in Siberia don't make stone tools, don't wear clothes or don't light fires, they are a reversion to an animal form, yet shaped like humans.

In my search about these Siberian sightings, I also came across the work of Dimitri Bayanov, who is the Science Director in the International Centre of Hominology. He is credited with coining the term "hominology" as the study of "hairy bipeds" like bigfoot, almasty, and yeti. For over 30 years he has headed the Smolin seminar focused on hominology at the Darwin Museum in Moscow.

In his essay, Bayanov Historical Evidence for the Existence of Relict Hominoids (The Relict Hominoid Inquiry 1:23-50, 2012) where he addresses the issue of which hominin has survived and embodies the current hominoids sighted in Eurasia:

"One final relevant question: How to correlate relict hominoids with the fossil record of paleoanthropology? According to Krantz (1980), Neanderthals had more traits in common with Homo erectus than with Homo sapiens, so that they “could all be classed with erectus.” He also wrote: “Homo erectus existed for over a million years with relatively little change – a kind of evolutionary plateau – and then was transformed rather quickly into Homo sapiens” (Krantz, 1980). Could it be that today’s wild bipedal homins are relicts of that evolutionary “standstill,” which lasted long enough for them to penetrate and settle the Old World before the advent of Homo sapiens? Adapting to local environments, these pre-sapiens must have more or less departed in their physique from the fossil erectus-grade forms presently known to science. I therefore propose that homins reported in central Eurasia are relicts of the Homo erectus-Neanderthal stage of evolution."

Closing Comments

The idea that surviving Neanderthals, Denisovans, or even Homo erectus have inspired the stories of wild men, or similar hominoids is exciting. It is extremely unlikely yet possible that in the vast wilderness of the Siberian hinterland there are a handful of our ancestors still living in the stone age. The same could apply to South America, or North America. But we need serious science to sift facts from pseudoscientific rubbish (like alien hybrids and similar nonsense).

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

Tailed Men in Patagonia

 

Part of my book. The image shows “Tailed Man”. Detail of Ovalle’s 1646 map. [1].
Copyright © 2007 by Austin Whittall

Patagonia was at one time considered home to one of the strangest hominids ever described: tailed men.

Their existence was put forward by Father Alonso de Ovalle (1603-1651) in the map of Chile Tabula Geográfica Regini Chile, part of his book Histórica Relación Del Reyno De Chile (1646). The map shows on Tierra del Fuego Island, a man with a short tail sprouting from the small of his back, with the Latin caption “Caudati homines hic” [men with tails live here].[1]

Ovalle based his map on one now lost, drawn by Father Gregorio de León which showed a Rio de los Rabudos (Tailed people River) named “after a nation of Indians, that they say are born there with a tail”.[1]

Historian Diego de Rosales wrote in 1674 about these Rabudos stating that they were:

Puelche Indians with tails, that are at war with these others and when they fight or want to attack, they show the tail and shake it threatening and despising the enemy. And at Chalipen, in a fight that the Puelches had with our Indian friends, among them remained a dead Indian with a tail, as was told to me by Lieutenant Manuel Méndez.[2]

After Ovalle’s map, a river now named Aysén, which flows into the South Pacific at roughly 45°S, became known as Rio de los Rabudos;[3] and the region between 45° and 47°S was known as “Potrero de Rabudos” (Empty land of the tailed men).[4]

Nearly three centuries later, Father Beauvoir incorrectly wrote that Charles Darwin had seen in Tierra del Fuego “hairy men that still had part of their tails”.[5]

Darwin did not believe in such follies though he did think that the Fuegians were cannibals and ate their old women in times of famine.

Could there have been men with tails in Patagonia?

Beauvoir, trying to provide an explanation, wrote that in Tierra del Fuego he had seen “these coludos [Spanish synonym for tailed men] surprising them on a return trip from Rio Grande to San Sebastián, who when spotted, took off, showing me, running against the wind, the tails of the guanaco skins with which they covered themselves”.[5]

So it was the furs they dressed in that seemed like tails to the unwary explorers. This seems the most plausible explanation, however on the other hand, they could be something else: American apes.

At Madagascar Island, the tiny “lesser Primates” or Lemurids evolved just before the arrival of man 2,000 years ago into large semi-terrestrial ape-like creatures resembling gorillas which disappeared when humans arrived.[6]

Perhaps American Primates may have evolved, just like the Lemurids of Madagascar did, into a local variety of hominid-like apes that later became extinct. Could the American monkeys with prehensile tails have evolved into a larger sized tailed “wild man”? The chances for this are extremely slim, but not impossible.

Bibliography.

[1] De Ovalle, A., (1646). Histórica Relación del Reyno de Chile…. Roma: Francisco Caballo. Tabula geográfica Regini Chile. pp. 521.
[2] De Rosales, D., (1877). Historia general de el Reyno de Chile. Valparaiso: El Mercurio. v. i, ii. pp. 277.
[3] Steffen, H., (1910). Viajes de Esploracion I Estudio en la Patagonia Occidental 1892-1902. Santiago: Imprenta Cervantes. v. II, pp. 74.
[4] Ortega Parada H. and Brüning Lalut, A., (2004). Aisen Panorama Histórico y Cultural de la XI Región. Santiago: Fondo Regional de las Artes y la Cultura. LOM Ediciones. part 3.5. pp. 9.
[5] Beauvoir, J., (2005). Aborígenes de la Patagonia. Los Onas. Tradiciones costumbres y lengua. B. Aires: Continente. pp. 128 - 129.
[6] Orlando, L. et al., (2008). DNA from extinct giant lemurs links archaeolemurids to extant indriids. BMC Evolutionary Biology 2008, 8:121.

Copyright 2009 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters

Aboriginal New Zealand Natives (before the Maori)

The article published in 1910 that was shared in a recent post mentioned moa bones in middens that were discovered in New Zealand in the mid to late 1800s. These were attributed to a pre-Maori people. Nowadays such notions are frowned upon, having been effectively silenced by the Maori people. Let's look into this and other information about an "original" ancient population living in New Zealand. People who arrived there long before the 1600s, when the Polynesian Maori people reached these islands.

Julius von Haast in his Geology of the Provinces of Canterbury and Westland, New Zealand A Report Comprising the Results of Official Explorations, published in 1879, mentions these original people which he calls "Moa Hunters". Below is a quote starting on page 424 of his book, I highlighted some parts of the text by underlining them.

"Considering the Moa hunters from an anthropological point of view it is of the utmost difficulty at least for the present to state with any degree of exactness if they belonged to a race different to the Polynesians who according to the traditions of the natives now inhabiting these islands immigrated to New Zealand some six hundred years ago in a number of canoes from Hawaiki or if the mixed character exhibited in the Maoris has been imported with them this having been caused by intermixture with Melanesians and Negritos on their advance towards New Zealand.
It would be beyond the scope of this chapter to bring all the evidence forward which has been adduced from both sides to prove the one or the other some of the principal traditions are however here given The late Rev Richard Taylor states in the second edition of Te Ika a Maui from what he considers reliable traditions that the Hawaiki immigrants not only found when they landed on the coast of New Zealand a black Melanesian population but they also discovered kitchen middens with Moa bones and flint implements.
If these traditions can be relied upon it shows at any rate that the black race before the arrival of their successors had been hunting and probably extirpating the Moa. So, when relating the tradition of Manaia Taylor quotes from Sir George Grey: "-When he arrived at Rotuhu at the mouth of the River Waitara, he stopped there and behold there were people even the ancient inhabitants of the islands but Manaia and his followers slew them. They were killed and Manaia possessed their abode, he, his sons, and his people of those men that Manaia and his followers slew, that the place might be theirs."
According to Taylor the same is recorded of Turi who "went on shore and dwelt at Patea and slew the inhabitants thereof" (page 14). This aboriginal race was remembered as the Maero and Mohoao or wild men of the woods (page 15). Enumerating on page 290 the arrival of the original canoes in New Zealand he adds a footnote to No 12: Te Rangi ua mutu which came to Rangatapu: "On the arrival at that place they saw stones like English flints and Moa bones. It is there that I also discovered a large quantity of the bones of the Dinornis. The stones were the stone flakes used as knives which are still there found by the side of the ancient ovens a proof of their having belonged to a more ancient race than the Polynesian"
The Rev W Colenso FLS in his excellent essay 'On the Maori races of New Zealand' Vol I, Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, on page 394 answers the question, Were there autochthones? -as follows. "Possibly or rather very likely- (a) From the fact that no large island like New Zealand however distant from the nearest land is uninhabited. (b) From the fact that nearly all the numerous islands in the Pacific though vastly smaller in size teem with population. (c) From the fact of a remnant at present existing in the Chatham Islands the nearest land to New Zealand of a race which is allowed by the present New Zealander to be truly aboriginal and before them in occupation. (d) From their traditions and fear of wild men in the interior. (e) From the allusions and even direct statements in their traditionary myths of their having found inhabitants on their arrival in the country both at Waitara on the west coast of the North Island and at Rotorua in the interior. But if there were which appears very probable they have been destroyed or become amalgamated with the present race".
So far for the Northern Island. The traditions of the South Island according to the valuable researches of the Rev James W Stack, published in Vol X of the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute" are not so distinct. but it is nevertheless evident that before the Waitaha went to dwell in this Island other tribes of people had been in existence. Mr Stack calls the traditions concerning the first fabulous and the second uncertain. He states that the Kahui Tipua or ogre band, a mythical race, are said to have been the first occupants of this land, they are described as giants and sorcerers They were succeeded by Te Rapuwai or Nga ai tanga a te Puhirire, who have left traces of their occupation in the shell heaps, found both along the coast and far inland. Then follows Waitaha one of the original immigrants from Hawaiki, the founder of the tribe who came in the canoe Arawa; he or his immediate descendants peopled the South Island. they are consequently the first inhabitants claiming to have been immigrants from Hawaiki...
To sum up the evidence as to the presence and mode of life of quaternary man in this part of New Zealand the following points may fairly be considered to have been so far proved:-
1. There existed in quaternary times an autochthone race in New Zealand having like the present inhabitants more or less strong affinities with the Melanesian type.
2. This race hunted and exterminated the Moa including in this native word all the different species of the Dinornithiae.
3. Banks Peninsula was at that time either an island or if already a Peninsula the driftsands now fringing the sea shores north of the Peninsula were in some localities several miles narrower than they are at present.
4. The quaternary population did not possess a domesticated dog.
5. A species of feral dog was contemporaneous with the Moa hunters and was killed and eaten by them. No gnawed bones of any kind were ever found in the kitchen middens.
6. The total absence of any bones of Ocydromus Australis Weka in the kitchen middens is very striking.
7. The Moa hunters used both polished and chipped stone implements.
8. They cooked their food in the same manner as the Maoris of the present day do.
9. They were not cannibals.
10. They did not possess implements of greenstone Nephrite.
11. There are some native traditions although of a mythical character that one or several races inhabited this island before the arrival of the first immigrants from Hawaiki if such an immigration is admitted
12. A considerable period of time elapsed as evidenced by an examination of the deposits in the Moa bone Point Cave and in some other localities before the shellfish eating population appeared on the scene.
13. The kitchen middens of the Shellfish eaters following a line nearly parallel to the present coast line are also ascribed to have been formed by a somewhat mythical people."

Portrait of a Maori man, before 1880. Source

Genetics and the Maori People. Y-Chromosome, the male lineages

A paper published in 2006 (Manfred Kayser, et al., Melanesian and Asian Origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y Chromosome Gradients Across the Pacific, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 23, Issue 11, November 2006, Pages 2234–2244, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msl093) suggests an early Melanesian presence in Polynesia:

"The fact that there is extensive sharing of Asian haplotypes, but not Melanesian haplotypes, between Polynesians and Melanesians today, therefore, could indicate that Melanesian haplotypes were present earlier in Polynesia (perhaps in Fiji), leading to greater divergence between Polynesians and Melanesians for haplogroups of Melanesian origin than for haplogroups of Asian origin".

The typical Y-chromosome haplogroup found in Melanesians and also in Polyesians at high frequencies is C2a-M208, formerly known as C2b (Source).

An article published in 2022 (Tätte K, et al., Genetic characterization of populations in the Marquesas Archipelago in the context of the Austronesian expansion. Sci Rep. 2022 Mar 29;12(1):5312. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-08910-w. PMID: 35351918; PMCID: PMC8964752.) confirms this genetic marker found in Polynesian men, as Melanesian:

"The most abundant Y chromosomal haplogroup in the Marquesas Islands of Nuku Hiva, Hiva Oa and Tahuata is C2a-M208 (37.9%) of Melanesian origin ... considering that C2a-M208 is the most abundant Y-chromosome haplogroup in West and East Polynesian, we performed a Median Network analysis ... In addition age estimations were generated. The Median Network exhibits a star-like topology made up of one central and two secondary major nodes from which individuals from different populations radiate-out in multiple lineages to generate the network ... No intra- or inter-population substructure is seen with the exception of the Maoris in which most of its individuals segregate distinctly into one specific sequential lineage ... The age estimations of the C2a-M208 lineage for the populations in the Network analysis provide equivalent values except for the Maoris of New Zealand, which exhibit values approximately twice or more than the other groups (Supplementary Table 22). The age of C2a-M208 based on Y-STR variability data for the Maori is incompatible with the radiocarbon dating of archaeological sites, which indicate that Polynesians settled New Zealand by about 740 ya. Data indicating rapid spread of populations over 12,000 km of coastline and high diversity in the mtDNA of first generation settlers suggest that New Zealand was the target of a planned mass migration out of East Polynesia during the first decades of the fourteenth century. It is likely that such colonization by large number of individuals may have carry high levels of genetic variability within the Y-chromosomes reflected in the high diversity levels of C2a-M208 chromosomes in the Maori population relative to the other Polynesian and Polynesian outlier groups examined."

The final paragraph tries to explain the highly diverse and old age of the Melanesian haplogroup found in Maoris by suggesting a massive migration with many people (to overcome a founder-effect and bottleneck in the population). A simple explanation is that they met an ancient, diverse population of Melanesian original people. The older age of the New Zealand C2a-M208 confirms the presence of an original population there.

There is additional support for an early Melanesian presence, suggested by a paper published in 2006 (Kayser, M., Stoneking, M., et al. (2006). Melanesian and asian origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y chromosome gradients across the Pacific. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 23(11), 2234-2244. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msl093). Below is the relevant information:

"However, no haplotype sharing between geographic regions was observed for haplogroups C-M208 and M-M4, which are of Melanesian origin, and only one haplotype (2%) was shared between one Fijian and one Melanesian for K-M9, suggesting a more ancient spread of those NRY haplogroups from Melanesia to Polynesia."

mtDNA, the maternal lineages

A similar discrepancy was reported by a paper published in Nature this year, but instead of studying male markers, it focused on the matrilineal mtDNA markers (Almeida, M., Gandini, F., Rito, T. et al. Leveraging known Pacific colonisation times to test models for the ancestry of Southeast Asians. Sci Rep 15, 37044 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-20856-3), the authors noticed two sets of data where the appearance of the "Polynesian Motif" is older than expected, for New Zealand the age was calculated at 2,060 years BP, while archaeological sites are not older than 675-700 years (See Table 2 in the paper).

"The two sets of exceptions are in Near Oceania, prior to the Lapita expansion, where the emergence of the motif predates the emergence of Lapita, and Niue, Tuvalu and Aotearoa/New Zealand...
In the case of Aotearoa (New Zealand), the situation is different, as these islands have one of the best-defined chronologies for settlement in Oceania. We suggest two possible explanations for the discrepancy in this case. One is that we lack data from what may have been important stepping-stones between the available genetic source populations and Aotearoa, such as the Kermadec Islands, which could have been a direct source, although archaeological or oral historical information suggests settlement from Central East Polynesia (Cook Islands, Society Islands). There are no genetic data available within a radius of up to 2,000 km around New Zealand. Some diversity might have emerged in an intermediate source, some source diversity might have been lost due to partial resettlement, and specific haplotypes might have increased in frequency due to founder effects when moving south into Aotearoa. Another strong possibility is that the data might contain some sequencing or transcription artefacts (i.e., artificially induced “mutations” introduced by error) that have raised the founder estimate. For example, the rare non-synonymous mutation 6261 A appears twice independently in two different subclades of the Aotearoa dataset of only 22 samples."

When facts are explained away suggesting they are artifacts due to error, or insufficient data, then there is something weird in the theory. The other discrepancy, Niue (2,400 km - 1,500 mi. north of NZ) also has older dates than expected.

Kayser, M., Stoneking, M., et al. (2006) mentioned further up (Melanesian and asian origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y chromosome gradients across the Pacific) also noticed an ancient mtDNA of Melanesian origin among Polynesians:

"With respect to mtDNA haplogroups, there is again sharing of haplotypes between Polynesians and Melanesians for Asian haplogroups B4a and PM, whereas there is no sharing of haplotypes between Polynesians and Melanesians for the Melanesian haplogroup M28, suggesting a more recent spread of mtDNAs from Asia into Polynesia and a more ancient spread of mtDNAs from Melanesia into Polynesia."

Closing Comments

Kayser, M., Stoneking, M., et al. (2006) summarize these differences clearly and explain these apparent "discrepancies":

"If Polynesian ancestors did migrate to coastal/island Melanesia from Asia, mixed with coastal/island Melanesians (thereby obtaining Melanesian Y chromosomes and mtDNA types and leaving behind "Asian" Y chromosomes and mtDNA types), and then left Melanesia and colonized Polynesia, then the degree of haplotype sharing should be the same for haplogroups of Asian versus Melanesian origin because there was a single "separation" of an ancestral group of Polynesians from ancestral Melanesians. The fact that there is extensive sharing of Asian haplotypes, but not Melanesian haplotypes, between Polynesians and Melanesians today, therefore, could indicate that Melanesian haplotypes were present earlier in Polynesia (perhaps in Fiji)"

It seems pretty clear that Melanesians reached the islands of New Zealand long before the ancestors of the Polynesian Maoris. When they arrived will remain a mystery until serious research is conducted on the field, looking for remains older than the 17th century. It is exciting to imagine Melanesians reaching NZ on boats 10,000 years ago. They could have also headed east, spreading into the vacant islands of the Pacific, and who knows, continued on to South America.

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