“AAARRGH! The yeti, “Abominable Snowman,” or
mirgu, as it’s called in Bhutan, has been a legend throughout the
Himalayas for centuries. They are even depicted in ancient Tibetan and
Bhutanese manuscripts.
The Kingdom of Bhutan has set aside an area specifically for the yeti,
the Sakten Wildlife Sanctuary—a sanctuary for a creature that local
lore claims is invisible! While in Bhutan, I was told that not only is
the yeti invisible, but his feet point backwards to avoid being tracked.
On their unsuccessful attempt to climb Mount Everest in 1923, a British
expedition spotted a line of creatures moving along a cliff face. When
they arrived at the location they found huge humanoid footprints in the
snow. Twenty-six years later, Tenzing Norgay, who along with Sir Edmund
Hillary, was the first to reach Everest’s summit, saw a Yeti playing
in the snow.
The yeti has been described as a wildman, half-man half-beast, covered
with reddish brown hair but with a hairless face. The descriptions are
similar to North America’s “Big Foot.” Many theories
have been advanced as to the identify of this “abominable snowman.” Some
scientists believe that the yeti is a form of ancient man, a “missing
link.” It has been theorized that it is a form of Homo Giganticus,
an unproven subspecies of humans. So far expeditions which have set out
to capture or photograph the yeti have returned without positive proof
of the creature’s existence.
Reinhold Messner is a writer, film maker, and a member of the European
Parliament. He is also considered to be one of the world’s greatest
mountaineers, having climbed all of the world’s 8,000 meter peaks,
and being the first man to climb Everest without oxygen and to climb
it solo. In 1986, while leading an expedition in Nepal, he encountered
a yeti.
“I thought it was a fairy tale (until) I saw a yeti for myself.
I could only see a shadow because it was very late. When I approached
the place where the yeti (had) stood, I found a footprint of a two-leg-going
animal.”
This led Messner on a twelve year quest for the yeti. His conclusion, “The
yeti is the sum of many tellings of a legend. The local people have a
lot of fantasy creatures because they live without television and without
Hollywood, so they have to create their own myths. Most of these figures,
like the yeti, are built on real, existing beings out of nature. The
local people tell each other the story. And from time to time somebody
brings along a new part because they’ve been in touch, in the night,
with one of these creatures. So the yeti is the sum of this fantasy figure
and the zoological reality behind it—a Tibetan bear!”
The Tibetan bear, a rare species related to the grizzly, while traveling
through snow, puts his back foot in the footprint of his forefoot, giving
the appearance of a two-legged animal.
“The legends all describe the yeti as two and a half meters [eight
feet] high. If it’s big, they say it is black. If it’s very
small, they say it’s reddish, because the small Tibetan bears are
reddish. Everything matches perfectly. It goes on two legs when it meets
people, to show that he is big and strong.”
Messner came across the footprints of a yak, followed by the footprints
of a yeti. He followed them to the carcass of the yak, killed by a single
blow. It had been stored underground in the same manner a bear stores
his kill.
He journeyed to a remote village in Pakistan, where legends tell of a
woman who was kidnapped by a yeti and lived with it for two years. Traveling
with a local guide, Messner came across a sleeping “yeti” and
got to within 20 yards of it. It turned out to be a Tibetan bear, and
very angry at being awakened. Messner jumped and yelled and the bear
ran away.
Adolph Hitler sent an SS man, Professor Ernst Schaefer, to search for
the yeti in the hope that it would turn out to be the progenitor of the
Aryan race. Schaefer reached the conclusion that the yeti was the Tibetan
bear, but kept this theory to himself, “If I had said this to the
Nazis, they would have killed me.”
And what about our own Big Foot or Sasquatch? Messner believes it is
probably a grizzly bear.
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