Ordinarily I do not like to reprint items from the Cryptomundo site. In this case it was necessary to draw attention to something I had known about personally for a long time and I needed to share.Recently, Loren Coleman posted this notice at the usual sources:
Russian Hominologist Dies
Alexandr Fedenyow, 46, has died suddenly.
http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/fedenyow-obit/
Via Loren Coleman, International Cryptozoology Museum, Portland, Maine
And the article includes these two artworks with the introduction:
Tommy Shirley shares these two images created by Alexandr Fedenyow, who was also a graphic artist, of the Russian Almasty variety called Leshiy:
And at one of the places where the notice was posted, I added this reply:
Tue Dec 20, 2011 10:42 am (PST)
It is unfortunate that the man died so young (in his mid 40s)
To the other group members: Fedenyow was also an artist and the Cryptomundo notice has a couple of his productions on display. I was interested in this because what he depicts seems unusually close to what is being reported in our neck of the woods as "Eastern Bigfoot" and I have depicions from American artists that are almost identical to his. He would have been a valuable person for me to have talked to because I would have wanted to convey this information to him.
Best Wishes, Dale D.
PS, "Leshiy" is used indiscriminately to denote anything strange or unusual in the woods and it has also been used to refer to possible surviving wooly mammoth reports.
Above is the first posting of a Russian Almasty that I noticed to be showing the "Bigeye" feature I had been discussing with member Wolfen (See "Portrait" below) at the Yahoo group Frontiers of Zoology. At right is another similar Bigfoot portrait from Texas, and below that one another "Bigeye" Wildman or Almasty. When Wolfen posted his portrait painting below and noted that the witness insisted that the eyes were that big, I countered with the "Bigeye" artwork by a Bifgoot witness found on the internet and labelled "Figure 4"
Bigfoot "Figure 4" Artwork by witness Sue Lindley emphasizing the very large eyes of the female Bigfoot she saw.
"Wolfen's" painting "Portrait" submitted to the group Frontiers of Zoology in 2007 and beginning the discussion by noting the very arge size of the eyes as insisted upon by the witness describing the Bigfoot for him to represent. Actually all of these representations are also remarkable for the fairly high dome of the cranium above eye level in most of them, not the same as in "Patty" or the far-Western "Conehead" Sasquatches proper.
Once again, the "Them or Us" reconstruction of a bestial Neanderthal man that has among its features outsized eyes with a large dialation for night vision like a cat has. This is the same thing as is insisted upon by the Russian "Leshiy" witnesses. And actually there is some reason for this when you look at the Neanderthal's skull: the eye sockets are distinctively large and unusually rounded. Also the nasal passages are hugely enlarged and there are peculiarities about the ear opening as well. It would seem Neanderthals had immensely developed senses far beyond the senses used by civilized Homo sapiens and one could well categorize their senses of sight, smell and hearing as Superhuman (or animal-like if you prefer) Which would only go towards confitming what the witnesses say about the extreme caution about showing themselves and the heightened senses characteristic of the Almases and the Eastern Bigfoot in most of the sightings.
"Southern Sasquatch" [or "Bigfoot" rather] illustrating the reported effect of the very large eyes glowing from reflected light. This could well be something of an exaggeration and possibly partly because the irises of the eyes are coloured reddish, but many witnesses insist on the effect that the eyes are huge, both relatively and actually.
It is not certain whether the actual Sasquatch of the far West shares this trait or exhibits an eyeglow anything like this large.
Sketch of an Ohio Bigfoot
Alex Evans art of an Indiana Bigfoot emphasizing how large the dialated pupils are reported to be in such creatures. The drawing below is also by Alex (Owner of the Thunderbird Feather)
"Land Otter Man" of the West Coast (Alaska to Northern California) has been cited as a Native legendary creature comparable to Sasquatch: but actually the oversized eyes and double-arched browridge are more like the Eastern type. In Tennessee, some of them are said to drop to the ground to avoid being observed and to "Go from vertical to horizontal in notime flat"
Land Otter Man is completely hairy and somewhat smaller than the typical Sasquatch (still six to eight feet tall) and they are said to kidnap humans but not to eat them, instead intending "To make them into other creatures such as themselves"
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Scan of Dale's transparencies used in lectures demonstrating how the anatomy of the Iceman as depicted
by Ivan Sanderson is an exact match for what is known about Neanderthals. From the first, whenever I comment on this, I draw attention to the very large very round eye sockets on both the Iceman and on the Neanderthal skulls.
Bernard Heuvelmans independantly made much the same comparison by use of line drawings. In my lectures,
I would overlay the transparencies of the Iceman hand and face over the Neanderthal skeleton and skull,
demonstrating a nearly perfect match in either case. |
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| Iceman |
Heuvelmans' photo mosaic for the Iceman and the line-art reconstructions made at his direction by Alika Lindbergh both above and below, from his book on the Iceman and Surviving Neanderthals
(Le Homme d'Neanderthal est Toujours Vivant).
From the onset I was aware that the statements being made by the witnesses were not only internally consistent, they were also uniformly in agreement and flatly contradictory to Conventional Anthropological wisdom. For not only were they all in agreement that the Neanderthals were surviving up to the present day and the same throughout Europe and Asia, North and South America, they were all insistant about some things which do not fossilize: that the Neanderthals had a nocturnal adaptation of enlarged eyes with very large pupil dialation and unusually strong eyeglow (ordinarily red or orange, but not necessarily so). The question is now not so much to confirm that observation but whether or not that means they belong to the same species as the rest of us if they have such a unique adaptation.
Best Wishes, Dale D.
Tenneessee Bigfoot, Eastern Bigfoot or Southern Bigfoot, similar sightings in Georgia and West Virginia. Compare body conformation with Heuvelmans Iceman directly above and the "Leshiy" drawing from Cryptomundo that went with the obituary. The shape of the head, hands and feet are again just like the Neanderthals: teeth of this type have been found and also match Neanderthals but are of very large size.
"Southern Sasquatch" [or "Bigfoot" rather] illustrating the reported effect of the very large eyes glowing from reflected light. This could well be something of an exaggeration and possibly partly because the irises of the eyes are coloured reddish, but many witnesses insist on the effect that the eyes are huge, both relatively and actually.
Best Wishes, Dale D.
Your article is unclear- is there a Iceman skull and bigfoot teeth?
ReplyDeleteMakes me wonder how a hominid with super-senses lost out in competition with homo sapiens. Brain size? Do the photos and sketches suggest what a bigfoot brain would be in size?
I don't think I was being unclear. When I look at a head, I know what a skull looks like from the outside in. I can look in a mirror and make out the shape of my facial bones, especially the eye sockets. I could do the same with your skull or any other skull. In the case of the Iceman's skull, the illustrations are plain enough to show that. What I was referring to in particular was the shape of the eye sockets and in the Iceman at leat one of those is empty.
ReplyDeleteYES, there are alleged Bigfoot teeth. There are alleged Bigfoot skulls and pieces of skulls, and parts of skulls and teeth from the Eastern USA which are allegedly different from the Western Sasquatch. I have not seen any photos of the latter material and so I cannot make that assessment nor yet vouch for it. But there are photos of the alleged Bigfoot teeth out of the Appalachian area, they are much too large to be human teeth and are shaped like Neanderthal teeth. They are NOT bear teeth. I believe that the explanation given is that they are teeth of unusually large individuals buried in Indian mounds. There is no official analysis or study ever done for such teeth and I do not know of the current deposition of said teeth. It could be the authorities have been pressured to re-bury them: it is entirely possible that if any Bigfoot remains turned up anywhere in the country Native activist groups would pressure to have them re-interred as soon as possible. The common statement made by several tribes is that Bigfoot were only "Other" tribes that their ancestors had known and dealt with in the past.
Neanderthals did have larger brains on average than modern Homo sapiens, one of the factors in favour of classifying the two of us together. Evidently a large part of this brain expansion was in sensory impressions and motor skills-the middle and side parts of the brain developed more than the forebrain. And there is good evidence that we breed faster than they do. A LOT faster. Those would be two areas where we would be strikingly different.
Best Wishes, Dale D.
Loren had added "variety called Leshiy:".
ReplyDeleteThank You very much for honoring Alexandr in sharing his art work of the Almasty that he experienced in the Urals. Alexandr was a great Friend & even with our Language differences he earned my utmost respect. I am so glad that we were able to use a translation Program to correspond.
At the time I posted, I included the current wording, quoted in the blue. I added a comment about the term Leshiy in the reply, it is spelled several different ways in transliteration to English. Leshiy is also used to refer to "A sort of red elephant" to the North of Kazakhistan. Coincidentally, Jayasree (One of my guest posters on Frontiers of Anthropology) tells me that in the very old vedic texts, this area of South Siberia is called "The land of Elephants" and wich he takes to be a reference to Wooly mammoths.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment about Alexandr, I am sure he would have been happy to have heard that there were reports in America which agreed with his description and his artwork. Unfortunately I could only get to post this information after his death.
Best Wishes, Dale D.
You should know, friends, that Almasti name is used only in a very small location in North Caucasus, not in all over Russia. And not in Mongolia, where they call it Almas, not Almasti. In Russia more suitable name could be Leshiy, meant "Forest man", but tyhis name was also used for a mithological character, used in fairy tales.In Russia the name Snow man is more wide used and known.
ReplyDeleteAs to late Alexandr Fedenyov he used mostly url name "Yet'ka" originated from Yeti. But his portrait he called "Leshiy".
By the way he gave to the creature the scientific name "Homo naturalis"
The name of Igor Burtsev is indeed highly esteemed in these matters and I am honored that you chose to call us your friends. Although our paths have crossed before, these are the first words to pass between us, so far as I can recall.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a baby Cryptozoologist growing up in the 1970s, the situation was that "Almas" or "Almasty" was the common-usage term for the "Russian Snowman." Now it seems the matter has become more complicated. For one thing, Myra Shackly's book Still Living came out some time ago and identified the "Leshiy" sightings as being like the Himalayan Yetis. Since then a trend has started in calling the "Snowmen" of these areas also "Yeti". This is misleading, and the term "Yeti" can refer to several different creatures, one of which seems to be the same as the Siberian Snowman However, the term does not refer to ONLY the one type, or to ANY one type in particular. Tibetans prefer the term "Mi-go" which means "Wildman"
Igor, had you seen my materials on the CFZ blog or reprinted in last years' CFZ yearbook? Among the things printed there was a map listing locations for where the various terms were in use (Native) to the Central-Asian area.
As to the propriety of ANY names given to Cryptids, you should know that I do not consider them to be particularly meaningful. They are not to be thoufght of as exact equivalents of Linnean binomials. "Homo naturalis" is a perfectly splendid name, but we have a long list of prior suggested scientific names for them. And the most troubling one-the one I personally spend the most time on-is whether or not they are the same species as us (Homo sapiens) on the grounds that some Anthropologists regularly classify Neanderthals as a type of Homo sapiens (and not only that, but also Heidelburg man and those other types formerly known as Neanderthaloids)
In this case, I think the sensory arrangement of such creatures is different enough to warrant a separate-species status. That is only a suggestion and not a final determination. And the "Leshiy" reports are some of the ones where the feature of the eyes was first noticed and strongly insisted on.
BTW, had you known that "Leshiy" was also used in reference to the possible Mammoth reports? I was quite unprepared for that information when I first heard it.
Best Wishes, Dale D.