By Knute Berger from The Crosscut:
Sasquatch — also known as Bigfoot — continues to be a symbol of the great Northwest. Fifty years after the famed Patterson-Gimlin film of an alleged Bigfoot walking along a northern California creek, the creature is most frequently seen as a piece of chainsaw folk art. Just outside of Index, on the way to Stevens Pass, the Chalet Espresso stand welcomes customers with a giant wooden Bigfoot holding a snowboard. On the Olympic Peninsula near Moclips, Sasquatch is a carved figure with a surfboard tucked under his arm. His image once evoked mystery and wonder. Now, he’s just another thrill-seeking bro.
Part of the reason for his loss of serious enigma status is that many scientists have scoffed at the idea that Sasquatch is real: No dead or live specimens have been recovered or captured, the woods aren’t full of bones or abundant recovered DNA evidence. Hoaxes abound, and many of today’s Bigfoot believers have adopted paranormal explanations for the lack of solid evidence of his existence. Some believe he’s an interdimensional being; others, that he’s a shape-shifter. The choices are that he’s fictional, supernatural or a hoaxer’s bid for attention.
One writer critical of the current state of Bigfoot speculation described the popular ideas of the creature as being relegated “to mere myth and legend at best, or to the delusions of socially threatened, working, middle-class male schmucks, at worst.” In short, Bigfoot is a dead apeman walking in a limbo of kooky kitsch.
Mainstream science either considers the subject of Sasquatch’s existence as fraud or a topic not worth investigating.
Emblematic of this state of affairs is the fate of one of Bigfoot’s scholarly boosters, the late Washington State University professor Grover Krantz. An anthropologist who was convinced of Bigfoot’s existence, Krantz spent decades researching the creature. He died in 2002 and willed his own skeleton to the Smithsonian with the stipulation that it be put on display, a wish that was granted. Thus, the great Bigfoot hunter became a museum specimen long before his quarry, who remains at large.
But all is not lost for those who want to believe. There are a few scholars who take the phenomenon seriously and indeed argue that, from an anthropological perspective, hunting for Sasquatch should be a respectable activity to answer a key question of human evolution, not one consigned to oblivion or left to crackpots.
Foremost among these academics is Jeffrey Meldrum, professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University. In a 2016 paper in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Meldrum argues that creatures like Sasquatch, yeti and other “wild men” spotted around the world might not be anomalies, but rather what might be expected, given recent archaeology. Discoveries of ancient humans show that we modern humans overlapped with Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo floresiensis (also known as the diminutive “Hobbit Man” found in Indonesia) and other human species. As recently as 30,000 years ago, he says, modern humans might have overlapped with as many as a half-dozen other species. Meldrum reminds us that the human family tree is “bushy,” with many offshoots, many still unknown in the fossil record.
If Homo sapiens have historically co-existed with other human species, might that not still be occurring? Sightings of what he calls “relict hominoids” could reflect that reality, which our expanding knowledge of human history suggests has been the norm even in recent millennia. We might not be alone.
Part of the reason for his loss of serious enigma status is that many scientists have scoffed at the idea that Sasquatch is real: No dead or live specimens have been recovered or captured, the woods aren’t full of bones or abundant recovered DNA evidence. Hoaxes abound, and many of today’s Bigfoot believers have adopted paranormal explanations for the lack of solid evidence of his existence. Some believe he’s an interdimensional being; others, that he’s a shape-shifter. The choices are that he’s fictional, supernatural or a hoaxer’s bid for attention.
One writer critical of the current state of Bigfoot speculation described the popular ideas of the creature as being relegated “to mere myth and legend at best, or to the delusions of socially threatened, working, middle-class male schmucks, at worst.” In short, Bigfoot is a dead apeman walking in a limbo of kooky kitsch.
Mainstream science either considers the subject of Sasquatch’s existence as fraud or a topic not worth investigating.
Emblematic of this state of affairs is the fate of one of Bigfoot’s scholarly boosters, the late Washington State University professor Grover Krantz. An anthropologist who was convinced of Bigfoot’s existence, Krantz spent decades researching the creature. He died in 2002 and willed his own skeleton to the Smithsonian with the stipulation that it be put on display, a wish that was granted. Thus, the great Bigfoot hunter became a museum specimen long before his quarry, who remains at large.
But all is not lost for those who want to believe. There are a few scholars who take the phenomenon seriously and indeed argue that, from an anthropological perspective, hunting for Sasquatch should be a respectable activity to answer a key question of human evolution, not one consigned to oblivion or left to crackpots.
Foremost among these academics is Jeffrey Meldrum, professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University. In a 2016 paper in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Meldrum argues that creatures like Sasquatch, yeti and other “wild men” spotted around the world might not be anomalies, but rather what might be expected, given recent archaeology. Discoveries of ancient humans show that we modern humans overlapped with Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo floresiensis (also known as the diminutive “Hobbit Man” found in Indonesia) and other human species. As recently as 30,000 years ago, he says, modern humans might have overlapped with as many as a half-dozen other species. Meldrum reminds us that the human family tree is “bushy,” with many offshoots, many still unknown in the fossil record.
If Homo sapiens have historically co-existed with other human species, might that not still be occurring? Sightings of what he calls “relict hominoids” could reflect that reality, which our expanding knowledge of human history suggests has been the norm even in recent millennia. We might not be alone.
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