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http://bizarrezoology.blogspot.com/
Showing posts with label Homo gardarensis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homo gardarensis. Show all posts

Friday, 6 December 2013

Yowie and Eastern Bigfoot, the Solo connection

The article below refers to the Australian Yowies but the first illustration is a "Marked Hominid"-Which calls to mind the curious circumstance that the type specimen for Marked Hominind is a skull that has a braincase that resembles the so-called Solo Man of Java, a presumptive ancestor for Australia's Yowies. This skull is sometimes claimed as a late Homo erectus but is more usually considered the local counterpart to the Neanderthals. It also seems to be similar to the "Homo erectus" element detected in Latin America and spoken of by Austin Whittall.

Above, the normal-sized and larger (to giant-sized) Yowies, Wildmen and Bigfoot all seem to be basically similar to each other in Australia, in North America, and in fact all the way around the pacific. Below: this category also seems to have a smaller subtype that is generally comparable
 (But not necessarily identical to) the Flores Island "Hobbit" 
 
Ivan T. Sanderson in Abominable Snowmen, Legend Come to Life :
Even if we don't know where "sub-man" ends and "man" begins we do know that, quite apart from myth, legend, and folklore, there was once [and in some cases still seems to be] a group of not-quite-humans spread all over a vast area from Morocco to the Pacific, and from the southern border of Eurasia [which, incidentally seems to have remained the domain of the surviving Neanderthalers]..., southern Arabia, Ceylon, the East Indies, New Guinea, and the greater islands immediately beyond. Everywhere we go throughout this vast swath of the earth's surface we find traces of peoples so primitive that they are variously alleged to have been hairy, to have had tails [a mere profligacy, as we have explained], to dwell in trees, have had no proper language, be cannibals, lack fire and even tools, and generally to be "Those who lived in the land when our ancestors first came from …" Osman Hill has brought to light some exceedingly interesting facts about one of these races called the Nittaewo in Ceylon.
These little, mostly Pigmy, primitives that seem once to have inhabited the whole of the tropical belt of the old world, provide us with most suitable candidates for our Proto-Pigmy Class of ABSMs ... the Sedapa [and] Teh-lmas of the Orient. These little ones are alleged to be really very human in many respects and their footprints are as human as they can be. The facts that they are hairy and gibber do not, as we have seen, necessarily put them into any bestial class nor even out of the human. They could just be leftovers; the "Devil-Sakai" that can really use the trees as highways. If there really are such Proto-Pigmies in the New World, represented by the Dwendis and the Shirus, they must have traveled around the long way by the Bering Straits land-bridge at an early date, and become isolated. [There are also such Pygmies reported in Australia-DD]
And Earlier:
II. PROTO-PIGMIES (Orient,... and possibly Central and Northwest South America). Smaller than average humans, to tiny; clothed in thick black or red fur but with differentiated head-hair that usually forms a mane. Go about in pairs or family groups; wary but inquisitive; apparently a very primitive form of language; toes sub-equal and heels small or pointed; good tree-climbers and swimmers; tropical forests down to seashores and swamps; omnivorous, insect, fish, and small animal eaters plus fruits, leaves; very nervous. 
 [I am leaving the ones from Africa out of this for now since they seem to be something else-DD]
And then there are the more obviously bestial Sub Hominid (=Pongid)  types also present in Austraila:
IV. SUB-HOMINIDS (south central Eurasia—i.e....Himalayas, and [Central China]). In every way the least human. Somewhat larger than man-sized and much more sturdy, with short legs and long arms; clothed in long rather shaggy fur or hair, same length all over and not differentiated. Naked face and other parts[reddish brown to] jet black; bull-neck and small conical head with heavy brow-ridges; fanged canine teeth; can drop hands to ground and stand on knuckles like gorilla; ... color, dark brown; nocturnal and somewhat inquisitive; usually flees but may make simulated attacks if scared, and carry them through if the person gives ground and is alone; temperamental and bestial when aroused, being destructive like an ape; foot extremely un- or non-humanoid [Descroibed as "Handlike" with an opposed big toe] Omnivorous but with a preference for insects, snails, and small animals; will [occasionally also] kill larger game. Lone hunter and food collector; wide traveler like all carnivores.
And to all appearances the actually-Ape types in Austrailia are most likely to be displaced orangutans

 
 

The Australian Hairy Man, Australian Gorilla, Australian Bigfoot, Yahoo or Yowie

http://garyopit.com/yowie-bigfoot/
Big Hairy Man, Bigfoot, Yowie, Australian Bigfoot
This cryptozoological animal is an unknown species of hominin using both quadrupedal and bipedal perambulation to access its habitat. It is known in English as the Australian hairy man, Australian gorilla and yowie. Occasional descriptions and illustrations of it had appeared in newspapers, books and memoires from the early day of European settlement. Because specimens were not obtained, to be examined and classified by zoologists, and because so few reports were received of it, this remarkable species has been almost forgotten.
Consequently, it was almost completely unknown until Graham Joyner, interested in the history of science and employed as an archivist in Canberra, unearthed several references to yowies and yahoos in old documents and 19th century newspapers. He published a book The Hairy Man of South Eastern Australia in 1977, which contained 29 early references to the animal, dating from 1842 to 1935, listed some of the names that Aboriginal people used for it and succeeded in bringing it to the awareness of some members of the scientific community.
However, it remained unknown to the general-public until naturalist Rex Gilroy of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains behind Sydney began writing articles for newspapers and magazines in the 1970s, describing his research and requesting reports of observations into the animal. The name yowie was recorded by P. J. Gresser in his 1964 article entitled Manuscripts Relating Principally to the Aborigines of the Bathurst District in which he wrote that the Aborigines of south-eastern Australia, particularly the mountain tribes, feared “the Yahoo or Yowie … an animal of large proportions whose body was covered with masses of long hair…” (Gresser, 1964).
Hair samples, excellent footprints with detailed dermal ridges, photographs and video footage have been obtained. However, no bodies or skeletal remains, essential for identification, have been found.
Homo erectus and Homo palaeojavanicus have been found in Indonesia as million year old fossils, though Homo floresiensis fossils from Flores, on the Australian side of the Wallace Line, are only 13,000 years old.  Homo neanderthalensis is known from fossil evidence to have existed throughout Eurasia until about 28,000 years ago. The Australian, New Guinean and Solomon Island bigfoot and the much smaller njimbin / junjadee are most likely related to these species and may have reached these shores as survivors washed out to sea by tsunamis.
In May 1975 at the base of the Cougals, to the east of Springbrook, on the Queensland / New South Wales border, I heard the roaring voice of an unknown animal, which greatly surprised me. I knew the calls of every species and was amazed that I was hearing something completely unknown. It was a short series of loud distinctive roars that emanated from the rocky, steeply sloping cliff a hundred metres away. I attempted but was unable to climb the cliff from where the call came and then the call was repeated. It was most likely the warning roar of a yowie telling me that I was approaching its core territory, though at the time I was quite unable to imagine what kind of animal could produce such a powerful call and remain completely unknown to science.
A close encounter at 2 pm on 5 March 1978 at Best of all Lookouts on Springbrook by national park head ranger, Percy Window, was very interesting because he was a government employee and in charge of a large and popular national park. The witness was a work colleague of a friend of mine, John Duncan, who was able to relate to me a detailed description. A bipedal, gorilla-like primate standing 2.5 metres (8.2 feet) high was clearly observed in Antarctic Beech rainforest in good light from a distance of 4 metres (13 feet). It had a distinctive odor, a grunting voice, a body covered in long black hair, a flat, shiny-black face, large yellow eyes, a sagittal crest, and huge hands. Several other previous sightings on the same mountain and in surrounding districts were reported in local newspapers.
Then in June 1978 at 3 a.m., on a very quiet night with a full moon, I was awakened by a very powerful, continuously repeated roaring-bellowing call. The voice came from lowland subtropical rainforest in Joalah National Park on Tamborine Mountain 300 metres (984 feet) from our house at an altitude of 500 metres (1,640 feet).
The call was a deep-throated, booming “Yee-yee-yee-yee-yee” that continued without a break for 5 minutes. I could clearly hear the sounds being pumped out of a massive chest and the vocalization sounded more like a big primate call. After approximately 2 minutes, three dingos (Australian wild dogs) broke into their characteristic howling. Two of the dingos were approximately 80 metres (260 feet) to one side of the mysterious animal and the third was howling at a similar distance on the opposite side. The sound of these 4 animals in full cry was the most remarkable natural sound that I have ever heard. I was able to accurately judge the call of the unknown animal with the calls of the dingos that I regularly heard.
The yowie’s call was at least twice as loud as and much more powerful than the dingos and after their howling finished the yowie continued its repetitive bellowing for perhaps another minute. Then only the sound of Curtis Falls, Cedar Creek and the chirping of the crickets remained.
The next time I heard the calls of the yowie was at 3-30 a.m. on 1 June 1996 on the slopes of the Koonyum Range at an elevation of 200 metres (656 feet) at Main Arm in north-eastern NSW. I had walked outside for a view of the full moon illuminating a crystal clear night and heard 100 metres (328 feet) away, near a dry creek bed in eucalypt forest, a series of some 90 loud bark-like calls. The calls were always in a series of three, the middle call was always the loudest and it was followed each time by softer call “arroo-ARROO-arroo.”
The beginning of each of the three barks “ARR” was sudden and intense while the final “oo” portion was cut short as it fell off in volume. Between the sets of three barks, a time of about 5 or 6 seconds, a disturbingly strange soft gurgling call, “gu-gu-gu-gu,” could be heard. It continued with very little variation for about 5 minutes with the last couple of series of calls appearing less loud as if it had begun to move off. It was quite unlike the calls of foxes or barking deer that I had heard in Southeast Asia and once again had more of a primate feel to it. The next day I found 3 toe prints in the earth of a creek bank where it had climbed up the slope and each toe was about the same size as a human big toe, slightly reducing in size as if it were a right foot.
At dusk on 3 November 2008 in the Billinudgel Nature Reserve, Wooyung, I had a yowie, approach me to within 10 metres, as I was walking along a track in coastal bushland with a dense tea tree & sedge grass understorey. I was with my dog Banjo near my home when I heard something moving towards me through thick vegetation.
We could hear the gentle sound of a large body quietly pushing through the dense lower stratum of vegetation, 1 to 2 metre high and once every 30 to 40 seconds we could hear a loud crack sound as if two sticks had been hit together. As it drew closer, after 4 or 5 minutes, my dog suddenly gave a double warning bark. I hissed at him to be quiet.
I was surprised that it continued to approach us with the same sound of sticks being hit together. Then after another 4 or 5 minutes my dog suddenly barked a second time, and again I hissed at him to be quiet. This second bark also failed to deter the approaching animal & it continued to get closer with the same cracking of sticks for another 3 or 4 minutes. I had been carefully viewing through binoculars & saw a brown upright animal 1.5 m tall moving carefully parallel to the track I was on and about 6 metres away and then it moved quietly off.


Figure 14. Yowie researcher Pixie Byrnes is sitting in the position where she first obtained clear views of the yowie that she named ‘Humpty’, at 11.30 am on 10 March 2008. The male yowie squatted on the grass in the small clearing towards the top of the photograph before moving off. With Pixie sitting in the same position the next day at 12.30 pm ‘Humpty’ walked out of the trees towards her, and then turned away.
Pixie’s first encounter with a yowie was even more exciting. She states “I was in a paperbark tree lined creek bed, cooking potatoes and steak on a fire that I had made in the river sand, along a lovely shady bank. I never realized that I was not alone until a mob of dogs came rushing in on the other side of the creek only 15m or so away. Up popped a massive yowie from the long grass above the creek, I had no idea it was there at all. I climbed up into a paperbark tree with a pot lid in my hand. By the time I got up the tree I saw three dogs racing around and around this yowie and another dog was already in the yowie’s hand. It was holding it by the muzzle and head and it looked very dead in a very short time.
The yowie, holding on to the dead dog, flung it around at the other dogs and struck them over and over again until they were yelping. The next thing I saw was that those big ugly, horrible dogs ran away from the struggle with their hair all mattered and with the bristles on their backs standing upright. One of them seemed to have part of his face missing. Then the big dark-haired yowie turned and holding the dog in its hand, walked across the flat ground to a big tree. Then it flung the body up into a fork of a tree. The torso of the large golden dog or dingo seemed to be empty or crushed flat.”



Figure 15. A drawing of ‘Humpty,’ watching wild bush turkeys while holding three sticks in his right hand, by Yowie researcher Pixie Byrnes. This was drawn immediately after the encounter at 11.30 am on 10 March 2008.


Figure 16. A drawing of ‘Humpty’ sitting beside a water hole after having washed himself in the early morning during rainy weather, by yowie researcher Pixie Byrnes. This was drawn immediately after an encounter in March 2008.


Figure 17. Cryptozoological researcher and artist John Opit, 14 May 2012 at Limpinwood, examining a small rainforest tree which a yowie had torn open with its fingers to obtain the wood boring grubs. Two yowies had been heard giving their distinctive howling calls from this exact position within heavily vegetated undisturbed rainforest the night before. Yowies use their fingernails to rip the wood away and the result is more efficient and less destructive than the beak ripping employed by black cockatoos in more open forest.
John encountered a yowie nearby on his property at night in the forest and it ran off. His son Simeon saw a 6 foot tall black-furred yowie early one morning near the house.

Wednesday, 20 November 2013

Eastern Bigfoot Comparisons and Identity

The following chart was started by a friend on Facebook and I have added copies of the skull to all of his outlines as a constant point of reference. He works primarily with sightings in Ohio.

He has based his profile of "Ohio Sasquatch" on Trailcam photos (Nightvision-enhanced)



Ngandong cranium (Solo man) -Clearly similar to both Kansas skulls and Gadar man skull
Below, overlay of Kansas and Gadar skulls (Reversed so lettering reads normally. and this drawing reconstructs the Gardar Man face, which was missing. The indicated landmarks on both skulls are lined up here, bregma to bregma and so on) I find both of these skulls to be a good parallel to different skulls of the "Solo Man" series, some of which seem to be males and some females.


Below is the same Friend's painting representing one of the Ohio creatures.
(I am waiting for word back from him but right now I have not got permission to use his name)


             And below, comparative silhouettes showing A) "Littlefoot" or ProtoPygmy type,
B ) Ordinary human and C ) Eastern Bigfoot, generalised composite, compare to above (Males).

Some more of the characteristically burly body shapes below: 
(The first one is I believe from Western Pennsylvania)

 
"A beautiful painting of Rich LaMonica's Bigfoot sighting near Kimbolton, Ohio from 1988. This is a picture of the actual painting that Rich made after his encounter"

Below, a painting made for the Kentucky Bigfoot Research team

Ohio Bigfoot in Winter
"Actually, if its the Tim Peeler I believe it is, hes carrying a stick, and he stood up to the Sas, and said "Git!!". This is based on an encounter out of Cherokee County, NC"

Below are some more portraits of the type (Males) including a selection of beards

 
Model of face emphasizing the large eyes
 
 
Trailcam capture of face image


Neanderthal-like with prominent goatee beard

 
An exceptionally good Neanderthal type portrait 
 
Eating a Honey Comb by Rob Roy Menzies
Below, a roadside sculpture from Oregon


 
A Baby Bigfoot portrait by Thomas Finlay
 
A related report also just posted by Tom Marcum at The Crypto Crew:



Thomas Marcum at The Crypto Crew posted this video link
http://www.thecryptocrew.com/2013/11/possible-bigfoot-howls-recorded-in.html

"This was recorded in Grahn, KY by Tabatha Steagall and she was nice enough to give me permission to use it and enhance the audio.
Now I don't know for sure if this is a bigfoot but there has been a lot of activity coming out of Carter county Kentucky for many years now, so it is very possible it is a bigfoot.
Tabatha told me about the time she let her young son makes some bigfoot calls and was awed when they heard replies.  That event happened about 1 year ago.

Thanks
~Tom~"

Kentucky is another place where physical remains of Bigfoot  have been reported in the form of teeth, skulls and skeletons. The form of these remains is  consistent with the information as given above. And incidentally if these creatures ARE some form of Archaic Homo sapiens, then they are NOT Cryptids, they are NOT unknown:  they are members of our own species.

Friday, 10 February 2012

Troll Skulls

This is a case where we have "Persistently Primitive" skulls on record since the 1800s and compared to Neanderthal skulls back before there was such a thing as human paleontology , and mentioned by le likes of Thomas Huxley in his writings. The skulls in question include the ones on the left and are skulls similar to each other from Denmark and England from the Neolithic and early Bronze Age, the Megalithic period










A comparison of the traits of a Neanderthal skull compared to an "Early Modern". The "Early Modern" in this case is similar to one of the skulls from Skhul, and both are possibly halfbreed Neanderthals also. In this case the skull at the top (Which is not identified by name in the source) is from the bronze age about 1000 BC and shows distinctly [East-Asian!]Neanderthaloid traits. The Borreby skull below is more like the Neanderthal- halfbreeds such as the Skhul types from Israel(Palestine). It DOES have an even lower, flatter forehead than the Skhul types, too.
The more widely known of these is one of the skulls from Borreby, Denmark, shown here and in an alternate interpretation by Charles Lyell below. The very low brow and very heavy jaw look Neanderthaloid but the rest of the skull is a novel combination of traits. Carleton Coon calls this skull and others like it CroMagnon/Neanderthal crosses and identifies the type as persisting in parts of Northern Europe including Sweden and Ireland. (Races of Europe)
The shape was also reminiscent enough of the Gardar Skull in Greenland that I thougt I should review it here to clear away any hint of confusion. And of the series of skulls at the Left, the one at the top is most Neanderthaloid, so it is possibly a "Wudewasa" skull, the Borreby skull being possibly a halfbreed variant of the same "Troll" type.


Man of Gardar

Photo: Egil Skallagrimson[A "Half Troll" Berserker]

What manner of man was the Man of Gardar?
Was he a surviving neanderthaloid type, thousands of years out of his time in the middle ages? Was he a freak Eskimo, living with the dwindling colony of Norsemen on the unfriendly coast of Greenland in the twelfth or thirteenth century?
Or was he a degeneration type arising from the inbreeding of a malnourished group of white men cut off from the rest of the world?

These questions have been roused by the recent discovery in the medieval Christian cemetery at Gardar, southwest Greenland, of a most extraordinary skull, that has many of the characteristics of the low-browed, heavy-jawed Neanderthal race that inhabited mainland Europe scores of millennia ago.

The find was made by Prof. F.C.C. Hansen of the University of Copenhagen, and is discussed in the scientific journal Nature by Sir Arthur Keith, noted anthropologist.
Sir Arthur is inclined to look upon the strange skull as a result of a disorder of growth, somewhat like the fairly common and distressing type of giantism known as acromegaly. This disease is due to a glandular failure, and frequently results, says Sir Arthur, in the assumption, "in a bizarre form, of all the characteristics of the skulls of ancient fossil man" particularly Neanderthal and Rhodesian characters. [Emphasis added-DD]

"Homo gardarensis must have been the subject of a particular disorder of growth, the kind of disorder which causes giantism in man, but whereas in most giants growth soon becomes irregular, in Homo gardarensis it remained regular." ..July 19, 1930 Biofortean Review

Perkins M. (1931) Acromegaly in the far north. Nature 128 (No 3229) p. 491-2.

Acromegaly in the Far North


Heidelberg Jaw
Discovered by gravel pit workers in 1907 near Heidelberg in Germany the Jaw of Heidelberg Man as shown is approximately 40% to 50% larger by volume than the that of "Modern" man. The Gandar Jaw being discussed on this page is even larger than the Heidelberg Jaw.

In his letter in NATURE of Aug. 8 on the pituitaristic character of Egil Skallagrimson, Prof. Seligman has brought forward a remarkable subject which made a forcible impression on myself some years ago.

His opinion of the Gardariki skull confirms the existence of pituitary disorder among the Viking Scandinavians, but he does not allude to the very peculiar features which distinguish Egil's case from common clinical conditions, nor to the interesting heredity which the sagas record.


 

Egil closely resembled his father, Skallagrim, and paternal grandfather, Kveld Ulf, in "growth, appearance, and bent of mind " (Egla S. xx., xxxi.); while the name of the latter suggests that he recalled his maternal grandfather, Ulf the Fearless, who was ancestor through a son, Hallbjorn, 'Half-Troll' (half-giant), to the equally remarkable family of Ketil Haeng, culminating in Grettir the Strong, whose bones, like Egil's, were dug up in a churchyard and admired for their astonishing size (Gretla S. lxxxiv.).[Emphasis added]

Gigantism seems to have become endemic in the Fyrdafjord district of Sogn (Norway), where Skallagrim was able to find a dozen near his home who were "more like giants in growth and seeming than mortal men . . . all the strongest men and many shape-strong ", men who, like their chief and his father, used to run, 'berserk' in fits of uncontrollable rage followed by exhaustion (Egla S. xxv., xxvii.).


After the emigration to Iceland three of these giant families, can be recognised by the same features reappearing in their descendants: that descended from Skallagrim, that of Giant-stead, and the descendants of Ani, among whom we may note a grandson, Steinar, who was "of all men the biggest and mighty of strength, an ugly man, crooked of growth, long-legged and short of body . . . quarrelsome and headstrong" (Egla S. lxxx.).

Here again, are signs resembling pituitary disorder, coupled with a morose, uncertain temper. Thorir, 'Long-chin', one of the most famous berserks, and Ofeig, 'Clumsy Foot', are other cases where characteristic pituitary features appear in a berserk family.

 Egil and his father were noted for premature greying of their black hair with baldness at twenty-five. The father and grandfather of Grettir, in the line of Ofeig, 'Clumsy Foot', were also prematurely grey.

The precocity, both mental and physical of Egil and his brother may be associated with this premature senility, and possibly indicate a correlated excess Of' either adrenal or pineal function.

Skallagrim had several children who died young, but there is no suggestion that they suffered from a total premature senility, and in such case the father and Egil the surviving son would scarcely live to the ages of 88 and 81 respectively, or perform astonishing feats of strength on the day of death.

Grettir, far from being precocious was distinctly backward, and seems unexpectedly feeble in the development of genitalia (Gretla S. xiv., lxxv.): possibly in his case pituitary disorder passed into a stage of hypofunction, but he was in full vigour when killed at 35.

Although mentally very alert and a clever poet like Egil and Skallagrim, Grettir like his father, was noted for laziness, which also suggests hypofunction. On the other hand, the Egil family were unusually brisk; but Thorbjorg the Fat, a granddaughter of Egil, may have developed pituitary hypofunction.

Egil had also, and Grettir was credited with a son who died at 17, after promising to develop into something altogether extraordinary (Gretla S lxvii.)

The tendency to berserk (hamask), so obviously resembling the running amok of Malays, was closely interwoven with "shape-changing" or being "shape strong" (hamrammr, vide T. R. Eddison, 1930, "Egil's Saga", notes, p. 245 ff.; and Du Chaillu, 1889; "Viking Age", ii. p. 425), The latter may broadly be regarded as peculiar behaviour in the dusk, such as sleepiness and surliness (Kveld ,Ulf), berserk fits (Skallagrim), mad drinking fits (Egil), dusk prowling, supposedly in animal shape (Storolf Haengson), terror of the dark (Grettir).

We may imagine that evening terrors would provoke an adrenal release which might become translated, in those with constitutional adrenal excess, into a fit of berserk rage. Berserk fits, being involuntary, may also be compared with the 'uncinate' epileptiform seizures of pituitary hypertrophy, and, there seems to be a strong hysterical element, because the subject was believed to be impossible to wound, which may mean that he was insensible to pain and did not bleed from non-arterial traumata.

As regards heredity, I have traced 52 male and 19 female descendants of Ulf the Fearless in 12 generations. Seventeen of the males are recorded as peculiar in one or more of the above ways, 6 others probably were so, but details are not available in the sagas at my hand, and of these 4 males evidently transmitted the heritage; 4 males transmitted without being noticed as unusual themselves.

Females naturally have attracted less attention, but 3 of the 19 seem to have been unusual and 8 transmitted. Skallagrim and Grettir were each the offspring of berserk families on both sides among 14 members of the associated families, 7 seem to have been peculiar; while the two other berserk families from Fyrdafjord referred to above include 7 peculiar among 9 individuals.

 


In brief, half, of both sexes, may be believed to have had a peculiar hereditary constitution; and the condition seems not to be sex-linked.

These details are drawn from the well-known sagas of Egil, Grettir, Laxdale, Burnt Njal, and the Norse Kings: lack of space makes publication of the genealogical table inadvisable, while it may yet be improved by reference, to the sagas of Ketil Haeng, and others not yet translated.

It is certain that descendants of Ulf the Fearless settled in Greenland, because, soon after its discovery, fourteen ships reached that land from Borgafjord of Skallagrim's settling and Breidafjord the home of Grettir's mother, through whom he derived from Ulf: it is therefore quite possible that the Gardariki skulls include some of Ulf's descendants.

The description of the unusually tall Grettir as "a handsome man. . . . with a face rather broad and short, red-haired and somewhat freckled." (Gretla S. xiv.), places him at once as that well-known German-resembling Caledonian type which attracted the attention of Tacitus; it also suggests the much more ancient Cro-Magnon with dysharmonic face a conspicuously giant type.

On the other hand, the Egil family, with its, black hair, great height, thick skull, prognathism, precocity, and fits of rage, is curiously parallel to the tall negroid in everything except indolence, which was certainly displayed on the Grettir side, and pigmentation of the skin.[The physical traits are Australoid and not African and the reference is mistaken-DD]

Hamrammr may even be compared with the 'Leopard Society' prowling of West Africa. This parallel is interesting, because rock-tracings at Tanum in South Sweden introduce us to sea raiders and settlers who were familiar with the leopard, the camel, the ostrich, and the turtle, as pointed out by Du Chaillu ("Viking Age" ii. p.124).
Some are represented of immense size, many are prognathous with a suggestion, of the acromegalic chin some have unusually long legs and short bodies like Steinar, several are remarkably fat; often pictured fighting with vigour, they might well represent ancestors of Egil.

Also the Fomorians, supernatural giants, who exactly parallel the Scandinavian Trolls in Irish tradition and played the part of vikings in their earliest history, were explained as "sea-raiders from Africa" by the medieval scholarship in Keating's well-known "History of Ireland". [Emph Added]


As a hypothesis, the tall and fair Scandinavian, or even taller red Caledonian, raiding up and down the Atlantic coasts in very early days, might conceivably contact with the tall negroids of Jaloff, and thus acquire with captured women the seeds of a black-haired stock unbalanced in many ways and marked by excessive height, such, as that producing Egil Skallagrimson.
MICHAEL PERKINS, Little Cloisters, Westminster Abbey, S.W.I.

A Different Opinion on Acromegaly Related to Gardar Skull


As one sees on these two radiographs of acromegalic patients, the deformations relate to the facial part of the head, and nothing justifies that this disease can cause the shape of the occipital part of the skull of Gardar.

Quite to the contrary, the assumption which seems to impose itself here, and that most reject because of the recent character of these remains, and their
localization, is that it appears to be those of Homo erectus bones."

 ...Sources: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/vnh/gardar.html
....
Illustration of an Acromegalic by Keith and compared to the newspaper announcement of the Gardar skul below it. The Gardar skull bears little resemblance to the Acromegalic andless so in the lower jaw than in the rest of the skull. On the other hand it does have some striking resemblances to the skull at the top of this page that opens this article. The Gardar skull is a much "Lower" type than any modern acromegalics and is much more similar to the skulls of fossilmen, except that it is also much larger and is the head of a giant posibly between 6'6" and 7' tall.


The Gardar skull and the one at the top also bear a resemblance to the skull of the half-Almas Khwit, son of Zana the captive Almas woman in Anatolia. It seems that later on there was a fast shuffle under the table and other skulls were changed and represented as the skulls of Zana and Khwit, but the skull in the photograph bears no resemblance to the substituted skull.
Zana with Human Child.

Romantic View of Berserker (Note Bear Head Headdress)

As for the part about the halfbreed Trolls turning into families of berserkers, there were both wereolves and werebears invoked tto explain their ferocious behaviour.  Werewolves have been with humanity pretty much from our humble beginnings right up to the modern day, where they are common enough to become tame and at times even humorous. However, back in the day, people were really, really scared of werewolves.
Viking berserkers were a little different: they wanted to BE werewolves. The name actually comes from Old Norse for “bear shirt”, which means they wore bear pelts into battle. But bears would be ashamed of how these bear shirts acted. Even rabid bears. Berserkers are among the few types of people who don’t have a good reputation in Viking mythology. ...by 1015 Berserkers had been banned. Berserkers get a bad rep among Vikings because they got Vikings a bad rep among everyone else. The Vikings, for all their raiding and pillaging reputation, were actually a fairly law-abiding and orderly people. When some of your population is running around pretending to be bears, and worse, chewing on magic mushrooms that made them immune to pain, fear, or common sense, there is a chance people will talk. So, this really helped push along the legend of the werewolf. After all, it wasn’t just a legend; people really DID see a big hairy guy shrug off terrible wounds and rip people to shreds with their bare hands. It just got a little garbled. .