Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Diaries and other papers of British officials residing in the Himalayan region of the Indian subcontinent during the nineteenth century contain sporadic references to sightings and footprints of wildmen called Yeti. The Yeti were first mentioned by B. H. Hodgson, who from 1820 to 1843 served as British resident at the Nepalese court. Hodgson reported that in the course of a journey through northern Nepal his bearers were frightened by the sight of a hairy, tailless, humanlike creature.

Many will suggest, on hearing a report like this (and hundreds have been recorded since Hodgson’s time), that the Nepalese mistook an ordinary animal for a Yeti. The usual candidates for mistaken identity are bears and the langur monkey. But it is hard to imagine that lifelong residents of the Himalayas, intimately familiar with the wildlife, would have made such mistakes. Myra Shackley observed that Yeti are found in Nepalese and Tibetan religious paintings depicting hierarchies of living beings. “Here,” said Shackley (1983, p. 60), “bears, apes, and langurs are depicted separate from the wildman, suggesting there is no confusion (at least in the minds of the artists) between these forms.”

After reviewing the available reports, Ivan Sanderson (1961, p. 358) compiled the following composite description of the Yeti: “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 jet black; bull-neck and small conical head with heavy browridges; fanged canine teeth; can drop hands to ground and stand on knuckles like gorilla. . . . heel very wide and foot almost square and very large, second toe longer and larger than first, and both these separated and semi-opposed to the remaining three which are very small and webbed.”

During the nineteenth century, at least one European reported personally seeing a captured animal that resembled a Yeti. A South African man told Myra Shackley (1983, p. 67): “Many years ago in India, my late wife’s mother told me how her mother had actually seen what might have been one of these creatures at Mussorie, in the Himalayan foothills. This semi-human was walking upright, but was obviously more animal than human with hair covering its whole body. It was reportedly caught up in the snows. . . . his captors had it in chains.”

During the twentieth century, sightings by Europeans of wildmen and their footprints continued, increasing during the Himalayan mountain-climbing expeditions of the 1930s. In 1938, H. W. Tilman followed a trail of footprints for a mile on a glacier, at an elevation of 19,000 feet. Speaking of one of his Sherpa guides, Tilman stated: “Sen Tensing, who had no doubt whatever that the creatures . . . that made the tracks were ‘Yetis’ or wild men, told me that two years before, he and a number of other Sherpas had seen one of them at a distance of about 25 yards at Thyangbochi. He described it as half man and half beast, standing about five feet six inches, with a tall pointed head, its body covered with reddish brown hair, but with a hairless face. . . . Whatever it was that he had seen, he was convinced that it was neither a bear nor a monkey, with both of which animals he was, of course, very familiar” (Heuvelmans 1962, pp. 136 –137).

During the Second World War, a man named Slavomir Rawicz escaped from a Siberian prisoner-of-war camp and made his way by foot to India. In The Long March (1956), a book describing his experiences, Rawicz stated that while traveling across the Himalayas, he encountered two wildmen, six feet in height and covered with long reddish hair. However, explorers familiar with the region traversed by Rawicz have pointed out some inconsistencies in his account of his journey. For example, he took an inordinate amount of time to travel a certain section of the route—even at his own stated rate of progress. Critics thus insinuated that Rawicz’s book, including the story of the wildmen, was largely if not completely fictional (Shackley 1983, pp. 54–55).

In November of 1951, Eric Shipton, while reconnoitering the approaches to Mt. Everest, found footprints on the Menlung glacier, near the border between Tibet and Nepal, at an elevation of 18,000 feet. Shipton followed the trail for a mile. Already well known as a mountaineer, Shipton could not easily be accused of publicity-seeking. A close-up photograph of one of the prints has proved convincing to many. Myra Shackley (1983, pp. 55–56) wrote: “Indeed, even the doubters admit that Shipton’s famous footprints, seen on the Menlung Glacier in 1951, cannot readily be explained away.”