ORAL STATEMENTS CONCERNING LIVING UNKNOWN HOMINIDS:
ANALYSIS, CRISTICISM, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR LANGUAGE ORIGINS
Jordi Magraner
Association Troglodytes, Valence, France
ABSTRACT
North Pakistan is close to Asian regions already known to be rich in stories of wild hairy men, identified by eye-witnesses as being different from modern men. A study was carried out in 1987-1990 in the Chitral district, a region that had not been surveyed before, in order to locate the existence of possible eye-witness accounts and perhaps actually see one of the beings concerned. A method was devised which included, among other things, preparing a questionnaire concerning their anatomy, based on descriptions of a corpse examined in 1968 by Heuvelmans in the United States. After a 19 months exploration, the expedition came back richer by 27 eye-witness accounts and a composite portrait. According to the collected information, no articulate language was noticed, but rather, powerful guttural sounds were reported. The synthetic result of these reports does not enable us to support the hypothesis that it is of purely mythical origin without any natural grounds. Both anatomical data of fossil men and the prehistory of central Asia do not contradict the existence of prehistoric populations in high altitudes of Pamir and Hindu Kush. This was true at least until the first millenary B.C. The question is whether oral statements could not be relative to survivors of these very late prehistoric populations, already described by the Iron Age populations of Sakas, the first sheperds of the Bactriane.
Introduction
The importance of unknown living hominids for the debate on language origins, arises from the fact that the witnesses systematicaly claim that these beings are deprived of any articulate speech. The most important part of the present contribution is based on the results of an expedition organized in Northern Pakistan from 1987 to 1990 and a scientific study developed on the field (Magraner, 1991). These results can be correlated with the central Asia prehistory and the process of hominization specific of these eurasian lands.
PART 1
Problematics of the relic hominids' existence.
Without a scientific background, the mention of oral statements about the existence of apparently unknown hominids, different from anatomically modern Homo sapiens often gives rise to suspicion. This is legitimate. Only a systematic study conducted in a rigourous way can allow scientific inferences about these unknown hominids.
The question of the existence today of prehistoric hominids is made more difficult by the continuous convergence of negative conditions, connected with the history of the theory of evolution and of the Eurasian civilization during the 20th Century. In the Western world, there has been no research programme, planned and financed by a scientific institution, or research laboratory. Such was not the case, however, in the U.S.R.R. and Mongolia, the two countries most directly concerned with these huge tracts of wild territory and the areas which may well provide shelter for such groups of prehistoric-looking hominids. The Soviet records on the existence of these people in Central Asia are considerable. There is a report of about 400 pages entitled "present situation concerning relic hominids," written by the Soviet Commission for the "Study of the Snow Man", created in 1958 upon the insistent requests addressed by Professor Porchnev to the Praesidium of the Soviet Academy of Science. In addition to this report, there are eight "Data Books" on the subject, in Russian, also compiled by the Commission. The latter had two main objectives. The first was to gather a maximum amount of information, collected on Soviet soil and near Soviet frontiers, and the second was to organize an expedition to Pamir to find witnesses, and possibly one of the beings concerned. The expedition took place in 1958, with the participation of several groups of research scientists, including zoologists, theologians and archaeologists. Unfortunately, the expedition which was not directed by Porchnev, wound up in a number of sub-expeditions, each of them focused on a participation group study, bearing no relation to the initial subject. In January 1959, the Praesidium decided not to renew the expedition. The official pretext was that paleolithic sites had been discovered in these lands, implying that the wild hairy men could not possibly have lived there for tens of thousands of years due to "the well-known law of incompatibility concerning the co-existence of neighbouring species on the same territory" (Porchnev, 1974). It was not a matter of discrediting the existence of these beings, which was not in fact denied. It was simply a necessity imposed by the conditions of an enormous organization that had lost sight of its initial objective. Historical truth never lies, however, and we shall see that prehistorical research in Pamir finally confirmed the views of Porchnev, making the Praesidium's argument obsolete.
The world "relic" was first used by Porchnev to define these people, who belong to a very late stage of an evolution prior to that of modern man. The anatomical details correspond to a hominid and not to a big ape. So it is wiser, in the specific case of Pamir-Hindu Kuch, to speak of relic hominids.
The fact that there are no publications available in English probably explains why so little is known of this report, or rather these "reports," since the same applies to those relating the investigations of two other Academies, the Mongolian and the Chinese, directly concerned with the accumulations of stories. They set up research programmes and reported the findings to Porchnev in 1959 (Porchnev 1974).
In order to measure the importance of these stories, too hastily shelved in the Western world on the pretext that they originated from native populations, steeped in legend, a list of scientific and military witnesses is given in Table 1. All these were witnesses who had been compelled to travel to these wild regions for their work. At this point, scientists, in all honesty, should begin to ask themselves what prompted the initial stories. Why should a marshall of the Soviet army or a radio-meteorologist take the risk of talking about something so obviously open to suspicion, if they had not seen, touched, or described a wild man in an official report?
Porchnev's principal concern was precisely to try and understand the origins of articulate language since these beings had none. The existence of prehistoric humans in central Asia directly affects the question concerning the origins of language.
Thus, relic hominids, better known under the name of "wild men" or "hairy men," seem to be living in different areas of Asia and especially in Central Asia.
Many stories originated from different lands, ethnic communities, civilizations and religions relate statements of encounters with these beings, as near to us as Europe (Tyson 1699, Linneus 1758, Latreille 1795, Schiltberger 1859, Satounine 1899, Porchnev 1963, Porchnev and Chmakov 1958-1959, Delamare Deboutville and Botosanéanu 1970, Gomez Tabanera 1978). For instance during the XIX century, numerous European scientific descriptions relate encounters with children or adults characterized by an abundant pilosity and a lack of articulate speech with some cases relevant to the existence of hairy wild children (Debay 1860).
Contrary to the stories which travel around the world (Elwes 1915, Sanderson 1961, 1967, Bordet 1955, Obroutchev 1957, Bawden 1959, Dyhrenfurth 1959, Hill 1961 ...), the consistency of the Central Asian statements, and their analyses, show that they may well go beyond folklore and myths (Khahklov, 1914, Porchnev, 1974 p. 108-109). In this case despite the important heterogeneity of the witnesses, many of the descriptions stay homogenous.
Victim of excessive media coverage which develop later in the fifties and mingled with the image of the Snow Man, the real problem, that is to say the plausible existence of unknown hominids in Central Asia, has not caught the attention of the Western scientific community. Nevertheless, these field investigations have created a renewal of strong interest in Tajikistan (C.E.I.) with the Tastl's expedition (Bayanov, 1984). But there were no sufficient data and no publications concerning the methodology.
The North Pakistan expedition
It was necessary to work out a scrupulous and methodic approach before reaching an opinion on this problem. So it occured to us to collect new oral statements, but this time with a full scientific method specific of zoological investigations. This study was done in Northern Pakistan, with the assistance of Yannik and Erik L'Homme for a period of nineteen months (Magraner 1991, L'Homme 1991, map 1).
This study was not only done to complete the proof in favour of the existence of hominids sensu lato. Its finality was to characterize in the field the elements that can provide proof of such an existence. These elements include on one hand the study of the ecological and human background, and, on the other hand, the use of an analytical system applicable to these oral statements. To complete such a project, it was necessary to elaborate a working base.
Thus a questionnaire concerning the presumed external anatomy of these beings was drawn up. From all the existing statements about all these relic hominids from Asia, only the meticulous examination of the frozen man, named "Homo pongoides" by Heuvelmans (1969), gives the most complete description of the physical characteristics of these beings (Heuvelmans, 1974).
The corpse was preserved in ice and shown on fair grounds in Minnesota (U.S.A.). It was already in a state of decomposition when Heuvelmans was able to examine it and to collect data from people who had seen it unfrozen. The orbits were empty and bloody, the limbs broken and wounded, the back of the skull was smashed in, revealing a part of the brain. Although the origins of the hairy dead body with unusual hands and feet for a modern man, were the cause of increasing disinformation concerning the value of the specimen, the genuine knowledge, derived from the first months of calm observation, confirms the keen scientific interest shown by the scientists who examined the photographs at great length. From December 17 to 19, during 11 hours, Heuvelmans described, noted, observed and photographed the corpse. On January 4, the anthropologist C.S. Coon examined the photographs and wrote: "It is a whole body and not a composite creation or a model. Moreover, not only is it a hominid but it is also a kind of Man, even if some of the anatomic features are altogether surprising, and of the utmost interest to specialists in physical anthropology" (Coon, 1969). The first scientific memorandum was sent on January 14 to the Belgian Royal Institute of Natural Sciences, where it was submitted to the Director, A. Capart, and to the head of the Institution's Anthropological Section, F. Twiesselmann. The memorandum was immediately sent for priority printing and was published less than one month later. On February 5 and February 9, a text on the study was sent to W.C. Osman-Hill and J.R. Napier, who was then director of the Primate Biology Program at the Smithsonian Institution. The latter announced that they were interested and a team was appointed to perform an autopsy. On February 20, the showman who owned the corpse was informed of its sudden importance and refused all access, once and for all. The secretary general of the Smithsonian Institute wrote him directly on March 13 stating that, according to Dr. Heuvelman's description and photographs, it was of "great interest to the scientific community" and could well "turn out to be an eminent contribution to human knowledge." On May 5, Professor Murril of the Anthropological Department of Minnesota went to examine the corpse in turn and told Napier of his stupefaction (Heuvelmans, 1974). But the travelling showman obstinately continued to refuse to give scientists access to the body, and the affair quickly died out. The discovery of the corpse remains valid, nevertheless. The scientists who were able to see it, or who examined the photographs thoroughly, have never had any doubt about its value and strangeness.
After having discussed this matter with Heuvelmans and examined the original color pictures of the frozen man, the above mentioned scientists had no doubt about the study and the genuineness of the corpse.
In conclusion, if such individual has indeed existed, it would be logical to use its descriptive features as basic reference data. This basis has to permit the field confrontation of the statements in order to invalidate or confirm the anatomical convergence of both descriptions (table 2).
In addition to these previous observations, we know the existence of a Tibetan zoological dictionary discovered by the paleo-
anthropologist Vleck (1959), who seriously studied the question after having seen an anatomical description of a hairy wild man (figure 1). During the nineteen-twenties a little military unit under the control of the soviet officier Topilsky, killed a hairy wild man in the mountains of Pamir (Yazgoulem valley, map 2). The medical assistant wrote a forensic report giving meticoulous anatomical details of the body and the head (Topilsky, 1964).
Thus the most important thing was to develop a basis for the research investigations, so that, in the present case as in all other scientific process, one would have the use of as complete a set of morphological criteria as possible attributed to the wild and hairy man.
For the study area, the selection was Northern Pakistan where the district of Chitral seems to be the wildest part, seldom visited by tourists. This district, at the gate of central Asia, whose old name was Little Kachgar, is adjacent to the Chinese Kachgar or Great Kachgar. The latter was defined by Porchnev (1974) as one of the most favourable permanent habitat zones of the Wild Men. Moreover this area was never submitted to intensive research on the question. The population could not have been influenced by previous investigators. All the oral statements we investigated were original.
Northern Pakistan constituted an unknown land both from the ethnological and the ecological point of view (fauna and flora). Two prospections were made in the district of Chitral, one from December 1987 to September 1988, and the other from January to October 1990. Each of these field trips was carried out by a team of two persons.
Methodology
In the first step the ecoligical and ethological data were defined so that one could visualize the context in which these statements were made. This methodology allows us to establish a confrontation between the natural and human environment and the credibility of statements about the existence of the wild men. The second step was to select the reliable witnesses. Two types of informants were retained :
- first the "direct observer," i.e., a person who says he has seen such a being
- and second the "direct informant," the one who heard the information directly from an observer.
Experience has shown that a piece of information ceases to be plausible beyond the direct informant. No money was ever offered. On the other hand, we were able to keep the oral statements which provided no real answer to different questions concerning the important features. This was a way to accept their good faith.
The third step was the collection of the statements. The finding of witnesses was a great time consumer. It was necessary to speak the local language in order to eliminate the interpretations and/or deformations by translaters. The stories were directly collected in khowar (or chitrali) and written in a report with:
1 - The basic information on the informant (the name, age, address, ethnic origin, and profession) with description of the place of observation (local name, natural environment, elevation, date and hour ...). The record also included the contents of the oral statement itself with the kind of observation (presence clues, or observation of one or more individuals, sex, age, distance and duration of the observation, number of individuals and their size...).
2 - the spontaneous story of the witness repeated several times without any stimulation from the investigator.
3 - A questionnaire with sixty three points related to the external anatomy specific to these hominids. This is the questionnaire that comes from the descriptive characters given by Heuvelmans.
4 - A first identikit picture based on intervention-free responses and indications spontaneously given by witnesses.
5 - A final identikit picture made out on the basis of iconographic indicators chosen by the witness, namely, different species of living primates Homo sapiens, great apes and the local Macaca mulatta, bears and drawn reconstitutions of hominids and fossil primates and also three representations of wild and hairy men, including "Homo pongoides".
(cont)
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