FRONTIERS OF ZOOLOGY Dale A. Drinnon has been a researcher in the field of Cryptozoology for the past 30+ years and has corresponded with Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson. He has a degree in Anthropology from Indiana University and is a freelance artist and writer. Motto: "I would rather be right and entirely alone than wrong in the company with all the rest of the world"--Ambroise Pare', "the father of modern surgery", in his refutation of fake unicorn horns.
Above are some Australian rock art representations supposedly showing the Yowie.
Below is an exceptionally good Yowie track. it is 14 inches long and nearly
five inches wide, and compares well in size with many of the "Bigfoot"
type tracks found in the colder parts of the Northern hemisphere. Attributons are to yowiehunters.com.au buty my server will not connect to the site for verification.
There is a famous article published in CRYPTOZOOLOGY stating that Yowie reports referred "Only" to stray individuals of wandering "Wild" Robust Aboriginals as misundersood by the witnesses. There is some merit to stating the problem in such terms because some of those Robust
fellows were unusually big and unusually hairy, and very well used to living off of the land. Furthermore a still-popuolar theory holds that they were at least partly descended from types
of earlier fossil men known from the island of Java in Indonesia.
Mungo Man burial. This man stood at least 6'6" in life.
The genetics of Mungo Man were unusual, as shown in the chart below.
Both of these illustrations are from Mathilda's Anthropology Blog.
Mungo Man turns out to have come from an older branch of humanity than most of the rest of us, at least on his mother's side. That branch is more closely related to the Neanderthals than us but not related to tyhe specifically European Neanderthals (A distinction wich we also see in the Denisovians) In this case this brings to mind the "Tropical Neanderthals", the Solo Men of Java
Compartison of some "Robust" fossil skulls to Solo Man from Indonesia. KS marks one of the Kow Swamp skulls. certain other skulls from Kow Swamp seem to have been artificially deformed instead.
Photograph of one of the mostly extinct "Robust" Murrayan Aboriginals.
These were large, powerful and stocky aborigines with a lot of body hair.
They were mostly wiped out by smallpox in the early days. Their populations were concentrated more in the area now more heavily inhabited by White Australians, in the South.
Illustration of a Yowie from a Bigfoot Discussion board:
unfortunately the original board cannot be located currently.
This is another certainly "Robust" individual but human looking enough.
Impression of a Yowie living around bog holes, from recent reports
It seems like just about every culture on the globe comes with its own legend of a hulking, apelike semi-human or proto-human creature – from the Yeti (or Abominable Snowman) of the Himalayan mountain range to the Sasquatch (aka Bigfoot) of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, and literally dozens of others. Australia is no exception to the rule, as there are many legends about a simian beast believed to dwell in the wilderness in all parts of the continent. Known by many names depending on the region and culture, it's most commonly referred to as the “Yowie,” or “Yahoo.”
Tales of this creature can be traced back to ancient Aboriginal folklore, where they are described as a hairy, ape-type species, with some legends adding eerie details like clawed feet and unnatural speed. European colonists documented their accounts of similar ape-men in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and Yowie sightings are still being reported today all around the continent, as recently as last year. According to the Australian Yowie Research site, some Yowie studiers theorize the creature could be a form of the hominid species Australopithecus.
Alleged Yowie Claw (c/o Yowiehunters.com.au)
[This is obviously nothing to do with the Yowie]
Much like Bigfoot and the Yeti, accounts of the Yowie have been documented in heavily-researched books, covered in various fiction and nonfiction media (there are hundreds of Yowie-themed YouTube videos out there) and fully entrenched in Australia's popular culture. The creature was recently the subject of an award-winning comic short, which you can watch right here:
The Yowie - short film from Jens Hertzum on Vimeo.
"A very hot four day shoot in the magnificent Blue Mountains with limited time and zero budget. The crew were superb and two pick up days were added to the initial four days shooting.
Despite a number of production issues, it was worth it in the end, so far we have bagged two international awards (one for our brilliant Cinematographer Callan Green and another Merit Award for the film itself) at the 2010 LA Cinema Film Festival for our troubles!"
For ealier information about the yowie on this blog please go to this link:
Yowie is the term for an unidentified hominid reputed to lurk in the Australian wilderness. It is an Australian cryptid similar to the Himalayan Yeti and the North American Bigfoot.
The origins of the yowie (also "Yowie-Whowie" and yahoo) may lie in a mythological character in native Australian Aboriginal folklore. This creature's characteristics and legend are sometimes interchangeable with those of the bunyip.[1] According to some writers, reports of yowie-type creatures are common in the legends and stories of Australian Aboriginal tribes, particularly those of the eastern states of Australia.[2] Origins of the term
The origin of the term "yowie" in the context of unidentified hominids is unclear. Some nineteenth century writers suggested that it simply arose through the aforementioned Aboriginal legends. Robert Holden recounts several stories that support this from the nineteenth century, including this European account from 1842;
“
The natives of Australia ... believe in ... [the]Yahoo ... This being they describe as resembling a man ... of nearly the same height, ... with long white hair hanging down from the head over the features ... the arms as extraordinarily long, furnished at the extremities with great talons, and the feet turned backwards, so that, on flying from man, the imprint of the foot appears as if the being had travelled in the opposite direction. Altogether, they describe it as a hideous monster of an unearthy character and ape-like appearance.[3]
”
Another story, collected from an Aboriginal source, seems to confirm the creature as a part of the Dreamtime.
“
Old Bungaree a Gunedah aboriginal ... said at one time there were tribes of them [yahoos] and they were the original inhabitants of the country - he said they were the old race of blacks ... [The yahoos] and the blacks used to fight and the blacks always beat them but the yahoo always made away ... being ... faster runners.[4]
In the 1870s, accounts of ‘Indigenous Apes’ appeared in the Australian Town and Country Journal. The earliest account in November 1876 asked readers; “Who has not heard, from the earliest settlement of the colony, the blacks speaking of some unearthly animal or inhuman creature ... namely the Yahoo-Devil Devil, or hairy man of the wood ...”[6]
In an article entitled “Australian Apes” appearing six years later, a Mr. H. J. McCooey, claimed to have seen an "indigenous ape" on the south coast of New South Wales;
“
“A few days ago I saw one of these strange creatures ... on the coast between Bateman’s Bay and Ulladulla ... I should think that if it were standing perfectly upright it would be nearly 5 feet high. It was tailless and covered with very long black hair, which was of a dirty red or snuff-colour about the throat and breast. Its eyes, which were small and restless, were partly hidden by matted hair that covered its head ... I threw a stone at the animal, whereupon it immediately rushed off ...”[7]
”
McCooey offered to capture an ape for the Australian Museum for £40. According to Robert Holden, a second outbreak of reported ape sightings appeared in 1912.[8] The yowie appeared in Donald Friend's Hillendiana,[9] a collection of writing about the goldfields near Hill End in New South Wales. Friend refers to the yowie as a species of bunyip. Robert Holden also cites the appearance of the yowie in a number of Australian tall stories in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.[10]
Contemporary accounts
Yowie reports have continued to the present day with the trail of evidence following the pattern familiar to most unidentified hominids around the world – i.e., eyewitness accounts, mysterious footprints of hotly-disputed origin, and a lack of conclusive proof. Some recently reported yowie incidents claim that the death and mutilation of household pets, such as dogs, are the result of yowie attacks. Other people claim that the animals' deaths can be attributed to attacks by wild animals such as dingoes.[11]
Rex Gilroy
Since the mid 1970s, paranormal enthusiast Rex Gilroy, a self-employed cryptozoologist, has attempted to popularize the Yowie.[12] He claims to have collected over 3000 reports of them and proposed that they comprise a relict population of extinct ape or Homo species.[13]
Notes
^ Robert Holden (2001) Bunyips; Australia’s Folklore of Fear. P. 69. National Library of Australia, Canberra. ISBN 0642 107327
^ Tony Healy and Paul Cropper (2006) The Yowie: The Search for Australia's Bigfoot, p.6. Anomalist Books, ISBN 1-933665-16-5.
^ Anon.(1842)"Superstitions of the Australian Aborigines:The Yahoo" in Australian and New Zealand Monthly Magazine, Vol 1, No 2, February 1842. Cited in Robert Holden (2001) p.47
^ William Telfer in R.Mills (ed)(1980) The Walladabah Manuscripts:Recollections of the early days, p.55, cited in Robert Holden (2001) p.76-7
^Friend, Donald (1915-1989). A collection of Hillendiana: comprising vast numbers of facts and a considerable amount of fiction concerning the goldfield of Hillend and environs. Sydney: Ure Smith.
^Shuker, Karl P. N.. "The Alien Zoo". In search of prehistoric animals; Do giant extinct creatures still exist? (1 ed.). Blanchford. p. 189. ISBN0 7137 2469 2. "Rex Gilroy... collected over 3,000 sightings of a giant hairy creature sighted across the continent."
Various Witness' drawings of Yowies mostly from the Yowie Hunters' site: http://yowiehunters.com/
Below, some historical documents representivng Yowies:
Etymology
Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver's Travels” (1726) includes a subhuman race called the Yahoos. Hearing the aborigines' fearful accounts of this malevolent beast, nineteenth-century European settlers probably applied the name Yahoo to the Australian creature themselves. Sometime in the 1970s, the term "Yowie" supplanted “Yahoo," for reasons that remain as mysterious as the creature. One possible origin of the newer name is the aborigine word youree, described as a legitimate native term for the hairy man-monster. The Australian accent could easily contort "youree" into "Yowie." The word "Yowie" was also apparently a slang term for the Orang-utan in Victorian England. Description
The Yowie is described as being very similar to Bigfoot with a height of six to seven feet tall and a thick black or brown fear covering the entire body.
Yowie (or "Yowie-Whowie") is also the name of a completely different mythological character in native Australian aboriginal mythology folklore. This version of the Yowie is said to be a bizarre, hybrid beast resembling a cross between a human and an ape with big red eyes on the side of his head, big canine teeth and large fangs. It emerges from the ground at night to eat whatever it can find, including humans. This creature's characteristics and legend are sometimes interchangeable with those of the bunyip.He is bipedal but has been seen running on all four legs at times.
Place
The Yowie has been reported primarily in New South Wales, the Gold Coast of Queensland and in the wild bush country of the Moehau Range. In New Zealand, the North Auckland area and the West Coast are its favorite playground.
Sightings and Reports
Reports of ape-like Yowies go back as far as the 18th Century. The mid to late 19th Century saw a wealth of sightings, most describing a large, gorilla-like creature (albeit usually bipedal), which lived in remote mountainous or forested regions.
The earliest published reference to the word in its current usage is in Donald Friend's Hillendiana a collection of writing about the goldfields near Hill End in New South Wales. Friend refers to the "Yowie" as a species of "bunyip", an Aboriginal term used to describe monsters said to dwell in many Australian rivers and lakes.
The first recorded sighting of a Yahoo by a European came in 1881, when an Australian newspaper reported that several witnesses had seen a large baboon-like animal that stood taller than a man. In 1894, another individual claimed to come face to face with a "wild man or gorilla" in New South Wales bush. A 1903 newspaper printed the testimony of a man who said he watched as aborigines killed a Yahoo, which he said looked "like a black man, but covered all over with gray hair."
In 1912, George Summerell was riding on horseback between Bombala and Bemboka when he saw a strange creature on all fours drinking from a creek. The animal rose up on its hind feet to a height of seven feet and looked at Summerell. Then it disregarded the horseman, finished its drink, and peacefully walked away into nearby woods. The following day, Summerell's friend Sydney Wheeler Jephcott rushed to the scene of the sighting and discovered an abundance of handprints and footprints. Jephcott described the footprints as humanlike but huge, and having only four toes per foot. He said he made plaster casts of the tracks and turned them in to a local university, but there is no record of a scientific analysis being rendered.
In 1971, a Royal Australian Air Force helicopter carrying a crew of surveyors landed atop Sentinel Mountain, a remote and inaccessible peak. Much to their surprise, the team discovered fresh footprints in mud, much larger than human footprints, in a place where no known biped could possibly be present. Yowie sightings continued steadily throughout the '70s. In 1976, backpackers in New South Wales reported seeing a five-foot female Yowie whose fur stank to high heaven. Also in New South Wales, Betty Gee reported seeing a giant creature covered with black fur outside her home in 1977. Shortly thereafter, her fence was knocked down and large footprints surrounded the scene. A man in the Gold Coast city of Springbrook said that a"big black hairy man-thing" appeared before him while he while chopping wood in 1978. "It just stared at me and I stared back," he said. "I was so numb, I couldn't even raise the axe I had in my hand."
In 1997, a woman residing in Tanimi Desert was awakened at 3 a.m. by a horrible animal-like noise just outside her bedroom window. When she went out to investigate, she was confronted with an unbearable stench that sent her into the dry heaves, and she saw a seven-foot hairy creature tear through her fence as it made a hasty retreat. The next day, police discovered a number of giant footprints and a somewhat shredded irrigation pipe that had seemingly been chewed upon.
Theories
Self-proclaimed Australian cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy has attempted to popularise the scientific term Gigantopithecus australis for the yowie.[verification needed] He claims to have collected over 3000 reports of them and proposed that they comprise a relict population of extinct ape or Homo species. There is, however, no evidence that Gigantopithecus ever existed in Australia.
Researchers have likewise scoured Australian aboriginal mythology for evidence of the ape-like Yowie (as oppose to the hybrid creature described above), but definitive references to anything remotely similar are few and far between.
An aborigine folk tale (Murri and Koori tribes) of eastern Australia explains that when their people first migrated to Australia thousands of years ago, they encountered on the new continent a savage race of ape-men. The aborigines' ancestors went to war against the ape-men, and in the end the humans triumphed, thanks to their ability to make weapons. Some have wondered if this tale might contain some element of truth, and it is a few diehard survivors from this unknown primate species that would later be known as the Yahoo and the Yowie.
References
Friend, Donald "Hillendiana", 1956, Ure Smith, Sydney
Gilroy, Rex and Heather [2001]. Giants from the dreamtime : the Yowie in myth and reality. Katoomba, N.S.W.: Uru publications, 379 p.. ISBN 0957871600.
Healy, Tony and Cropper, Paul The Yowie: The Search for Australia's Bigfoot, November 2006, Anomalist Books, ISBN 1-933665-16-5.
"Now Esau, my brother, was an hairy
man and I am a smooth man." Genesis 27:11
The Enigma of
Kow Swamp
Abstract of an article to appear in the
Cryptozoology
Review : Recent discoveries relating to the presence of Homo erectus in Java
during the late Pleistocene are summarised. The implications of their presence
in relation to the colonisation of Australia are explored. A description of Kow
Swamp and a brief history of the 'archaic' human fossils discovered there
are presented. Is there any relevance to the present day legend of the
"Yowie" the article indirectly hints at? Well now, that's the $64,000
question really ...
In Search of Australia's 'Archaic'
Humans .
Back in May, 1999, I
travelled to Kow Swamp to take some pictures and have a general look
around. The story of Australia's "archaics" has me so thoroughly intrigued that
I have been collecting the original papers relating to the discoveries and I
wanted to view the actual sites for myself. Read the attached article, linked
below, to see what I've got so far.
Let me assure interested parties that my approach was strictly
on the basis of "looking but no touching". While I
have the greatest respect for aboriginal Australians and their ancient
culture, I think the question of whether the people found buried here can truly
be said to be the ancestors of local indigenes is highly doubtful.
However, certain lobby groups appear to have so claimed them and I have no
special desire to buy into the argument.
Kow Swamp lies in northern Victoria near the town of Cohuna on the
Murray River. It is a large, roughly oval shaped, body of fresh water which
supports a rich population of water fowl. Thick marshes make its northern end
impenetrable. A snake's idea of heaven, by the look of it. The surrounding
country is open farmland, flat as a billiard table from horizon to horizon :
we're standing in the Murray River's flood plain after all. The only high ground
visible in any direction is Mount Hope, a rocky outcrop a few miles to the south
west of Kow Swamp.
The lake's level is maintained by Taylor's
Creek, which supplies water from the Murray River: The creek has been
extensively reconstructed by irrigation earthworks. Water is drained from the
swamp by means of irrigation channels at its western and northern sides and,
after supplying irrigation to farms, is returned to the Murray River. Virtually
the entire length of the Murray, from Albury to the South Australian border is
an irrigation district. The river's water is used and re-used before it reaches
the sea.
Why here?We made the trip up here because, beginning in the 1920's and
culminating in the 1970's, a series of remarkable palaeoanthropological
discoveries were made on the shores of this swamp. Before the coming of
Europeans, the Murray Basin supported, by hunter gatherer standards, a dense
population of Native Australians. These people are, of course, fully
modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, the same as the European immigrants.
Naturally, aboriginal grave sites are to be found in many places along the
Murray.
However, burials have been uncovered in many sites
around south eastern Australia whose occupants appear to possess a cranial
morphology reminiscent of a much earlier species of humanity, Homo
erectus. The remarkable thing about these people is the recent dates
attached to such burials: anything from 13,000 up to 6,000 ybp. It means that
there was a population living in southern Australia up until comparatively
recent prehistoric times who appeared to have retained traits deriving from an
ancient human forebear1.
Moreover, the oldest accepted dates relating to the occupation
of Australia by modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, appear to be in
excess of 50,000 years1. Thus we have a paradox here : the
"archaic" humans of Australia would appear to be younger than the
"moderns".
This is the enigma presented to us by
Kow Swamp.
Who were these people? What was their relationship, if any, to
Homo erectus? One school of thought holds that they merely represent one
end of a spectrum in the morphology of modern aboriginal people. Maybe. That did
not seem to be the opinion of the palaeontologists who first described them.
Times change. Perceptions accommodate to new realities. I don't really want to
get into a political bun fight : go to the link below, download the images and
just stand back and look at them. Modern?
Another, even more perplexing, question is - could any of them
still be around? Hell, not around Kow Swamp, that's for sure, but ...
somewhere? Is the story of Homo erectus and these mysterious
archaics truly over? More on that below.
With the help of Thorne's
and others' articles1, I located
the original dig sites without difficulty. The irrigation bank, below which one
of the tool sites is located, has been greatly cut away by wave action. Many
large logs have been thrown up on the shore. Obviously, the lake can present
quite a different face from the placid aspect it showed us on our visit. Not
surprising : the water is shallow and the surrounding country is flat, offering
no protection from strong winds. This water body is deceptively tranquil, I'd
say. A fishing excursion in a small boat could quickly turn deadly.
In 1975 Wright
described excavations performed near the mouth of Taylor's Creek which yielded
quartz artefacts in association with the "KS14" burial site. The area has since
been greatly rearranged by wave action, exposing large numbers of quartz and
granite stones. It was possible to triangulate the original TC 3/1 to
TC 3/5 locations following Wright's directions. Many stones had been
revealed by wave action. To my untrained eye, the one shown here appeared to be
have been artificially worked and possessed of a cutting edge. But whether this
or any of the others represented a genuine microlith I'm not really qualified to
judge.
Besides, although Wright shows that the pieces were worked at
the site, the question of whether they were worked by the same people who buried
their dead there is less certain. That means we have no clear proof that Kow
Swamp type people were in command of a lithic technology comparable to their
"modern" counterparts who inhabited the same district.
Out of Africa?(See NOTE
#1)
It is, I hope, a part of general knowledge
that the first hominid to make it "out of Africa" was Homo erectus, the
type specimen of which was collected in Java in the late 19th century. H.
erectus remained a stable form for about a million years. The most recent
known survivors held out till a mere 27,000 ybp in islands off the coast of
Timor. About 200, 000 ybp, the Neandertals, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
appeared. They are supposed to have have arisen from H. erectus and
formed a distinctive group specifically adapted to tolerate the harsh conditions
of ice age Europe. The most recent known Neandertal remains date to about 28,000
ybp.
[Untrue.Readers of ths blog will have seen purported Neanderthal remains ranging right up to the 1800s] African Eve ... (See
NOTE #1)
If the molecular biologists and the story told
by our mitochondrial DNA by are to be believed, about 150,000 ybp, a very
special woman lived somewhere in Africa. In her life she may have suffered
trauma and heartbreak for all her people and all her people's children died.
Well, so one possible scenario goes. But she, and at least some of her children
did not die out. They lived on, they went forth from Africa and their
descendants took possession the Earth. They are us, Homo sapiens sapiens,
and that woman alone was the Mother of our race.
Thus it was that, a mere 30,000 ago, three distinct
species, as distinct from modern day races, of humanity inhabited
the Earth. However by 10,000 ybp, at the transition from the Pleistocene to the
Holocene era, only one kind of human remained : Homo sapiens sapiens,
modestly the "doublewise man". By the beginning of the Holocene
we had spread to all land masses on the planet, save for Antarctica, and, in a
few places, were beginning to experiment with farming.
What happened to those
others, to our cousins left behind?
For, it seems to me, something truly extraordinary took place
at the close of the Pleistocene. The great Ice Age ended, the glaciers melted,
seas rose by hundreds of metres and flooded the land. Animals such as mammoths,
sabre tooth tigers, diprotodons, the giants which are collectively called the
Pleistocene Megafauna, almost all died. And quickly too. All
continents felt the holocaust, some catastrophically, others less severely. In
North America, the extirpation of the megafauna took place in less than 1000
years, a blink of an eye, geologically speaking. Perhaps even quicker, for the
resolution of the fossil beds and C14 dates don't allow us to
discriminate more finely.
It's held by some that our forebears out competed, out hunted,
out fought and replaced the others, the primitive, slope-headed,
beetle-browed, dim-witted ape-men and women who could not compete, who were
unfit in the darkest Darwinian sense.
The fact that our own direct ancestors are usually heroically
portrayed as high browed, white Anglo-saxon types, if not Protestant then at
least blond and Teutonic looking, is taken as a matter of course. Like
Aylar and Jondalar in Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear
novels. Agreeable flattery regarded as only proper by the self satisfied
victors.
The Pleistocene
ExtinctionsBut ... what if it's not
true that we inherited the world because of our superiority? What if, instead of
our agency, the extinction of the others, along with the
megafauna, was due to a global climate catastrophe? In that case, we may owe our
presence here, today, not to our having theright stuffbut to mere good luck. To a few wanderers in the wilderness who,
through pure chance, were spared and were able to outbreed the decimated
remnants of the cousins.
Admittedly, inheriting the family estate because our brothers
and sisters got hit by a truck is rather less flattering than the traditional
hero-battling-mammoth scenario. Still, the sheer randomness of the
survival stakes is put forward as a serious consideration by respected
authorities on evolutionary theory such as S.J. Gould.
The problem of the lost megafauna is two hundred years old, the
question of the ape men somewhat less, and the literature, by now, is
BIG. I'm not about to contest the various arguments : the interested
reader is referred to Quaternary Extinctions3. Suffice
it to say, if was only a cosmic lucky dip that saw us prosper, then it's
not true that the demise of the others was preordained. They may not have
been "unfit" at all. Maybe even, heretical thought, it was a case of the
relatively unfit who got lucky while the more deserving got the chop?
The Archaics ... In palaeoanthropology there exists a loose
end : a class of prehistoric people for whom no fancy Latin name has been
assigned. They are a class who, by reason of their
morphology, appear to stand somewhere between modern humans and H.
erectus. And yet they are neither. Nor are they Neandertals. They are the
archaics.
(NOTE: The appellation Homo
heidelbergensis has been gaining in
popularity as an inclusive species name for archaic
humans.)
The Multiregional Theory of human
evolution holds that modern humans arose from H. erectus stock
independently in various regions. These palaeontologists hold that the archaics
represent a transitional form leading to the same result everywhere. Of course,
this is patent nonsense : evolution simply doesn't work that way.
The Single Origin school holds that
humans arose at a particular time and place and, from there, spread around the
world. The theory draws strong support from studies of the human
mitochondrion and has come to be better known as the Out of Africa
theory. The molecular biologists claim to have genetic evidence that no
interbreeding between modern humans and pre-existing populations of Homo
took place as our kind spread to the Earth's four corners. That means the
earlier humans must have been displaced and made extinct without
issue.
Some palaeontologists, on the other hand,
see traces in bones that genetic intermingling did occur. They see the
archaics as part of such evidence. Although they adhere to the Single
Origin Theory, they take the same artefacts as the Multiregionalists and draw
diametrically opposite conclusions. But this is a
road down which I shall go no further. See NOTE #1 below.
Hybrids?
Could not a few of the others have
survived into more recent times? Actually, they were more than cousins, those
H. erectus people: they were, in a sense, our parents. Some of them,
after all, gave rise to us. Could we and they have interbred? Did some of our
kind have children by some of their kind? Would not the fruit of such a union
leave identifiable bones in testament? Are such hybrid bones to be found?
Would we call such a being an archaic human?
Well, yes. Maybe. Possible hybrid remains are to be found in
several places around the globe. One, not so well known, archaic
'homeland' appears to have been southern Australia1. See my
article in prep for the Cryptozoology Review for a list of references.
It is clear that, in comparatively recent times, Australia was
inhabited by two distinct types of human, one modern looking, the other
archaic. Moreover, it now appears more than possible that the Australian
continent was colonised by both H. sapienssapiens and H.
erectus1. Could the Australian mainland have seen the
hybridisation of two species of Homo to produce the results we see at Kow
Swamp and elsewhere?
Archaic Humans Still
Living? More intriguingly, could any such
people still be extant? The Kow Swamp remains date to about 13,000 - 9,000
ybp1. The ones from Willandra date to around 6,000 ybp. That's
well into Holocene times.
Are there any discoveries with a more recent date than these?
It appears there are.
In the 1970s a paper in a French language
journal indicated that remains of "archaic" humans found in New
Caledonia were a mere 300 years old2. That is to
say, it now appears there is documented evidence that archaic humans lingered on
into modern times. The question must therefore
be asked : if only three hundred years ago in New Caledonia, why not
elsewhere up till the present? (I haven't heard how solid the
C14date is on this one yet. If any reader knows more, by all
means speak?)
Obviously, the survival of "archaic" humans into the present
day, possibly a separate species arisen from intermarriage of our own kind with
H. erectus would be of extreme scientific interest. It would also carry
the heaviest ethical burden in terms of our behaviour towards them, should they
in fact be found still to exist.
Yowie = Living Archaic
Human? OK, let's ask it. Do Yowies
exist? Could the so called Yowie be a relict archaic human,
possibly a being we know as Homo heidelbergensis? (See NOTE #3
below.)
All I'll say
is that a scenario like that is about as unlikely as it's possible to get. This
side of the completely impossible, that is. On the other hand, check out the links below. All I know is that
sightings of a large, hairy biped in Australian forests are regularly
communicated to the general media and to web sites like mine. Inconveniently,
not all the reportees can be written off as drivelling ratbags. Tracks
are also regularly reported and photographed. All I will hazard is that if a seven or eight foot tall, hairy dude
suddenly popped outa the bushes in front of you, while you were strolling along
minding your own business as they say, how would you later
describe the event?
So why trouble to write this up if it's all a load of
malarkey?
Well, I guess, you never know. Serendip. The Australian
region is the only place where scientifically attested remains of relatively
recent date have been found which just might have something to say about
the unknown hominid phenomenon, a la Bigfoot, the Yeti and the
Yowie. The idea outlined here provides the only (more or less!) workable
mechanism whereby such a thing could come to pass.
OK, it's a big leap in the dark, (almost) completely unfounded,
scientifically dubious (extremely!) and (almost certainly!) utterly ridiculous.
All this I know already so please - don't bother to point it out.
But just remember this : if in the unlikely event it ever turns
out there really is something to the Yowie legend -you read it first while on the Quest
forThylacoleo.
Staking my claim is all.
See the attached Article in prep for the Cryptozoology
Reviewfor a, more or less, complete list of references
relating to Australian archaics and the settlement of the continent by H.
sapiens and, possibly, H. erectus
Stone Artifacts from Kow Swamp, with notes on their Excavation
and Environmental Context. R.V.S. Wright, Archaeology & Physical
Anthropology in Oceania, Volume X, No. 3, October 1975, pp 161-180.
300 yo archaic
humans? l'Homme de Peu: un squellette
"archaique" a Mare (Nouvelle Caledonie). M.J. Dubois, Bulletin de la Societe
d'Etudes Historiques de Nouvelle Caledonie, 27, 1976, pp 34-36.
Click here ARCHAICS.ZIP for a scanned set of JPEGs (ZIP, 600K) of
the article. Copyright is retained by the relevant authors and/or
publishers.NOTE: My thanks toMichel Raynal for alerting me to this
one.
NOTE #1 : When I get the time, and if anyone presses me, I may
write up something about multi-regionalism vs Out of Africa. But, really,
there's no need. Much has already been written so better leave it lie?
NOTE #2 : A book that definitely should be on your shelves is
Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution, Paul S.
Martin & Richard G. Klein, eds. University of Arizona Press, Tucson
1984. Available from Amazon.
NOTE #2A : One that I'd recommend for an overview of human evolution is The Fossil Trail by Ian
Tattersall.Available from Amazon.
NOTE #3 : The appellation Homo heidelbergensis was, I
think, proposed by the noted palaeoanthropologist Ian Tattersall as a
catch-all species name for those hominids dating from after about 500 kybp who
are neither H. sapiens, nor H. neanderthalensis nor H.
erectus. In other words for the archaics. The trouble is that the
term is then inclusive of beings who, in all likelihood, were the ancestors of
modern H. sapiens, as well as others who assuredly were not. It is a
group that shows a lot of variability for a single species. Rather too
much I'd say. There is also the time frame of half a million years to take
account of.
For example, the Jebel Irhoud 1 cranium may well belong
to an ancestral human. But what about utterly weird looking creatures such as
the Petralona specimen? At a date of possibly 400 kyb, it can't belong in
the sapiens line, if the Out-of-Africa school is correct, and it can't
represent a hybrid between sapiens and erectus either. A line of
erectus morphing into neanderthalensis maybe? Whatever the case,
it's obvious that archaics dating from before, say, 150 kyb don't
represent sapiens/erectus hybrids. If outside Africa they can only be be
representatives of populations diverging from erectus stock. Diverging
into what, though? Not modern sapiens, that's for sure.
On the other hand, what can we say about archaics who
date from after the time when H. sapiens were in the world? Those who
lived more recently than about 150 kyb that is?
MORE REFS : Multiregional Evolution: the Fossil Alternative to Eden. In:
The Human Revolution: Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origins of
Modern Humans, edited by P. Mellars and C.B. Stringer. Edinburgh University
Press, Edinburgh. pp. 62-108. Wolpoff, M.H., A.G. Thorne, J. JelÃnek, and Zhang Yinyun
1994 The Case for Sinking Homo Erectus. 100 Years of Pithecanthropus is Enough!
Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg 171:341-361. Hawks, J., S-H. Lee, K. Hunley, and M.H. Wolpoff 2000
Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution. Molecular Biology and Evolution
17(1):2-22. Wolpoff, M.H., J.D. Hawks, D.W. Frayer, and K. Hunley 2001
Modern Human Ancestry at the Peripheries: A Test of the Replacement Theory.
Science 291:293-297.
http://www.occultopedia.com/y/yowie.htm Occultopedia entry on Yowies: Alternatively known as Yoser, Tjangara,
Yay-ho, Koyoreowen (southern Australia), Jimbra,
Jingera, Turramulli, and Lo-an (western
Australia).
Yet another cousin of
the Bigfoot, this time
from down under. Reports of a Sasquatch like creature are also numerous
throughout Australia, ever since European settlers first entered the continent.
Before the coming of the settlers, Yowie sightings were made by the Aborigines and
remembered in their folklore. An earlier name for the
creature was 'Yahoo', which according to some accounts was an aborigine
term meaning "devil", "devil-devil" or "evil spirit." More likely, the indirect
basis for the name was Jonathan Swift, whose Gulliver's Travels book (1726)
includes a subhuman race named the Yahoos. Learning of the aborigines' fearful
accounts of this malevolent beast, nineteenth-century European settlers in all
probability applied the name Yahoo to the Australian creature themselves. The
term "Yowie" stared to be used in the 1970's, apparently because of the
aborigine word 'Youree', or 'Yowrie', apparently the legitimate
native term for the hairy man-monster. One can easily assume the Australian
accent could distort "Youree" into "Yowie." Sightings of the Yowie
have taken place mostly in the south and central Coastal regions of New South
Wales and Queensland's Gold Coast. In fact, according to local naturalist Rex
Gilroy, the Blue Mountain area west of Sydney is home to more than 3,200
historical sightings of such creatures. In December 1979, a local couple (Leo
and Patricia George) ventured into the region for a quiet picnic. Suddenly, they
came across the carcass of a mutilated kangaroo; moreover, said the couple, the
apparent perpetrator was only forty feet away. They described a creature at
least ten feet tall, and covered with hair, that stopped to stare back at them
before finally disappearing into the brush
Jonathan Swift's Yahoos from Gulliver's Travels (Possibly intended to be placed where Australia actually is, the geography is vague and could also mean South Africa or South America) This is the description from Wikipedia:
A Yahoo is a legendary being in the novel Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift.
Swift describes them as, filthy and with unpleasant habits, resembling human beings far too closely for the liking of protagonist Lemuel Gulliver, who finds the calm and rational society of intelligent horses, the Houyhnhnms, far preferable. The Yahoos are primitive creatures obsessed with "pretty stones" they find by digging in mud, thus representing the distasteful materialism and ignorant elitism Swift encountered in Britain. Hence the term "yahoo" has come to mean "a crude, brutish or obscenely coarse person".[1]
American frontiersman Daniel Boone, who often used terms from Gulliver's Travels, claimed that he killed a hairy giant that he called a Yahoo.[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo_(Gulliver%27s_Travels)
Below, two illustrations of Swift's Yahoos.
Below, a couple of stills from "Yowie" videos
The Canovanogram Research Paleoanthropology Report
PINTUBI-1, A Modern Australoid Points To The Past by jim vanhollebeke 2002
An anthropological paradox
The controversial Pintubi-1 skull of Australia (pictured above) is
a paradox of paleoanthropology. As a hominid fossil, its so young that it has
been assigned to a tribe that survived into the last century. A modern
aboriginal skull. Yet its morphology could be described as archaic. The skulls
history is shrouded in mystery (not unlike others from the down under). Even
without documentation, its age and Australoid identity are indisputable. The man
it inhabited lived An anthropologic paradox very recently (in paleo-terms),
likely in the 1800s or later. It is in perfect condition and shows no signs of
antiquity. The skull was discovered or obtained around 1905 near the lower
Darling River in New South Wales, Australia. Beyond that, all we are able to
determine is that it is said to be a large adult 50 year old male from the
Pintubi tribe.
Pintubis
The last of the Pintubis (also called Bindaboos) surrendered
their nomadic Stone Age life styles in the 1960s. They were probably the final
example of unaltered stone age culture in Australia. They were an incredible
people who could live under the most unlivable conditions ever encountered by
humanity. Their culture, simple at first glance, was incredibly complex as was
their intimacy with their surroundings.
Australian origins - An enigma
Scientific speculation of Australian aboriginal ancestry has
lately gotten bogged down with the Out of Africa vs. Multiregional Evolution
debate. Almost universally accepted is the Out of Africa theory which states
that fully modern man emerged out of Africa only 100,000 years ago, spreading
across the globe and wiping out the (obsolete) archaic humans. Out of Africa
insists that early human species such as Homo erectus and Neanderthal became
extinct - evolutionary dead ends - and had nothing to do with the development of
Homo sapiens. That we are, therefore, all descended from this recent wave of
African humanity.
The not so popular multi-regional counter theory suggests
many regional pockets of gradual evolution throughout the old world with
emerging races or groups of humanity - groups that would remain closely related
through constant migratory or cross fertilization. This globular gene flow would
keep the entire group together as it evolved over millions of years.
Employing the multiregional scenario for the origin of the
Australians, scientists have used fossils to demonstrate a continuity beginning
with Asias classic Java man through Ngandong (Solo Man), Wadjak and on to
Austalias present aborigines.
Much of the evidence for tracing them back to
South East Asia and all the way back to the extinct Indonesian archaics has been
the cache of recent fossils in Australias Kow Swamp locale. They were initially
described as very reminiscent of Javan Homo erectus. But a strong case was made
of the likelihood that artificial deformation was responsible for their
seemingly robust and primitive appearance. Even though many of the specimens did
NOT show signs of deformation, they all became tainted with the label and were
relegated to an area of relative unimportance. The fact that these Kow Swamp
bones were estimated to be only 20-30,000 years old added to their seeming
incongruity, the vintage being much too young.
And of course, a sensitivity
to racial considerations made the subject all the more difficult if not
taboo.
New developments
Only recently has sensational evidence come to light that may
force scientists to re-examine this issue and tilt the scales on this human
evolution debate.
Briefly these developments are:
In the last couple years, it has been established that the Solo
River (Ngandong,Java) variety of late Homo erectus may have survived to as a
mere 30,000 y.a.(years ago) in Java. It had previously been thought to be
extinct for a hundred thousand years or longer. This prompts the revelation that
Homo erectus and Homo sapiens could have existed on Earth (and in the same
region) simultaneously.
Prehistoric cave paintings have been discovered at Australias
Jinmium . Some tests indicate they might be 120,000 years old. Australia had
previously been thought to be inhabited by humans for perhaps 40,000 years.
Traces of what have been perceived to be man made fire have lately
been documented and dated at 100-150,000 years.
New regional testing of human mitochondrial DNA has indicated that
the oldest sequences or versions of the human gene are coming out of Asia and
Australia (not Africa as expected) with dates of 200,000 years ago.
The sum
of these addendums would indicate human habitation in Australia before the wave
of African humanity could possibly have gotten there. It also indicates that
Homo erectus may be the first sea farer by forging the strait from Asia to
Australia ( if Man inhabited Australia 200,000 y.a., Homo Erectus was the only
model available!).
These stated developments are not fully tested but are certainly
sending a buzz through the paleo-anthro community.
All this, coupled with the
fact that occasional Kow Swamp characteristics are still observed in some
present day aborigines lends credence to the argument that the multiregional
S.E. Asian ancestry scenario has renewed validity. The evidence is
intriguing.
Returning to Pintubi-1
The subject skull, modern in age, yet archaic in structure is a
relevant example and deserves the following brief description.
Even if a
pathological oddity it would demand attention but an anthropologist at the
University of Michigan assures us that this is not the case and that this
specimen isn't that unusual.
The present proprietor of Pintubi-1 (Canovan Researchs
designation) for study is not known. An excellent cast was supplied by Bone
Clones Inc. (http://www.boneclones.com/) for this description.
Description: Excepting its missing
teeth, the skull is complete and quite robust. Quite long and somewhat low, its
general measurements include a total length of 8 ¼, by 5 ¼ in width, and a
height of 8 ¼. The moderately low vault has a marked frontal slope with a well
developed saggital keel along the midline. Despite the dramatic contours, there
is no hint of artificial cranial deformation. Although cranial capacity remains
unmeasured, the vault appearance doesnt indicate anything of obvious note with
the possible exception that it appears large. A nearly unbroken but fairly well
developed supraorbital torus is very evident. Its development and prominence is
complete over the nasal area (medially) but has a more gracile lateral portion.
Also notable is the distinct nuchal torus (occipital bun) at the rear area of
neck muscle attachment. Measured horizontally, it is a good 3 ½ and very
pronounced with much expansion at the center. Above the torus is a well defined
groove. There is some thickening and angulation at the temporal lines. The
pentagonal shape of the vault from the rear is quite remarkable. This same view
does not show an obvious maximum vault width at the top or at the bottom but
callipers give a slight edge to the bottom (5 vs. 4 ¾).
Top view indicates a
well defined post orbital constriction (calipers indicate 3 5/8 front vs. 4
¾back).
Orbits are quite square and nasals are recessed at base as in typical
australoid morphology. The zygomatic flare is very wide and pronounced. And the
nasal aperture is notably broad.
The face is large, wide and forward
projecting (prognathic) with very large maxilla. The palate measures 2 7/8 in
width x 2 ¾ long (roughly equivalent to pithecanthropus IV). By comparison, our
(pictured) typical Euro-male sample measured 2 3/8wide x 1 ¾ long. All teeth are
exceedingly worn but massive. The molars are exceptionally huge. Most upper
teeth are present. They include all 6 molars, the 2 right pre-molars, left
canine (massive but worn at line of occlusion), 1 lateral right incisor heavily
worn, and 2 partial but heavily worn central incisors. There does not appear to
have been any diastema (gap) between canine and incisor.
Mandibular (lower
jaw) teeth consist of all 6 left and right molars, 1 left rear pre-molar, and 1
right) canine. All intact and all radically worn at occlusion. All four
lower incisors are absent. In both lateral views, there is an obvious gap
between the third molar and the front of the ascending ramus. Ramus of mandible
is moderately wide but somewhat gracile when considering the robusticity of the
general skull. Mental eminence (chin) is moderately weak with minimal forward
projection.
Affinities
Although we are describing differences that might seem to approach
speciation, we must remember that these are differences in grade only.
Affinities suggested by these descriptions are all Homo sapiens, to be sure.
Let no misinterpretation be made here.
There is, however, enough variance
from the norm to suggest some carry-over morphology from earlier or archaic
anscestry. A continuity or link to the past, as it were.
The link might be
inferred to the influence of robust hominids of late Pleistocene Asia. The
obvious candidate for this backward probe would be the aforementioned Homo
erectus Soloensis of Ngandong, Java.
In a previous investigation, I was able
to inspect casts of 2 calvarias - a 20,000 year old Australian aborigine
(WLH-50) and an Indonesian (Ngandong, Java) Homo erectus Soloensis and was
amazed at their nearly identical proportions.
A picture is worth a thousand...
This same Javan Ngandong
sample will be shown in the photo section for comparison to Pintubi-1.
The
photographs are the meat of this essay. They are the evidence that allow the
reader to make his/her comparisons and judgements. And so ...
Is this skull an argument for gene flow and continuity pointing
back to ancient Java?
It would seem so for this writer.
It is hoped that
the scientific community will fully recognize the data discussed here.
Perhaps an official and full description of Pintubi-1 can be
published.
We are graced by a unique, endangered, and valuable people in once
isolated Australia.
They have always deserved better. As they return to
their dreamtime, one would hope they finally receive recognition and
dignity.
Solo-6 calvarium cast (late Homo erectus,Ngandong Java)"Solo
Man"
Pintubi-1 cast (Homo sapiens, Australia)
Pintubi-1 compared with average modern. Note contrast of
morphologies.
Literature Cited
Bates, Daisy : The Passing of the Aborigines, 1938, London:John
Murray Baker, John R. : Race, 1974, Oxford University Press, NY Barnes,
Dan, CNN : Recent
Dates for Javanese Homo Erectus. Internet Internet: Coon, C.S. : The
Origin of Races, NY: Knopf, 1962 Day, Michael H. : Guide to Fossil Man,
1986, University of Chicago Press Dubois E. : The Proto-Australian Fossil
Man of Wadjak, Java. Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam B
23:1013-1051 Howells, William W.: The Pacific Islanders, NY, Scribner, 1973
Jones R., Stringer C., and others : BBC-Horizon, Out of Asia
(Programme Transcript) Lockwood, Douglas: The Lizard Eaters,(Pintubi
culture), Cassel Melbourne, 1964. Thorne, AG and Macumber P (1972)
Discoveries of Late Pleistocene Man at Kow Swamp, Australia. Nature
238:316-319 Tindale, N.B.: N.B. Tindale's
Aboriginal Tribes of Australia (1974) Vanhollebeke, Jim: Kow Swamp, A
Counterpoint. 1998 Internet article: Vanhollebeke, Jim: Australia's
Unique Survivors. A Photo Essay. Wolpoff, Milford: Paleoanthropology,
1980, Alfred A. Knopf, N.Y. Wolpoff, Milford H., 6th.: Journal of Human
Evolution Vol. 39 No.1, 7-2000, An Australasian Test of the Recent African
Origin Theory Using the WLH-50 Calvarium
An excellent and extensive glossary of terms is provided by ArchaeologyInfo.com
