Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

In the 1950s, Yu. I. Merezhinski, senior lecturer in the department of ethnography and anthropology at Kiev University, was doing research in Azerbaijan, in the northern part of the Caucasus region. From local people, Merezhinski heard reports of an Almas-like wildman called the Kaptar. Khadzi Magoma, an expert hunter, told Merezhinski that he would take him to a stream where the Kaptar sometimes bathed at night. In exchange, the hunter asked Merezhinski to take a flash photo of the creature for him. Merezhinski agreed, and they went to the stream, near which a few albino Kaptars were said to live. Shackley (1983, p. 110) stated: “sure enough Merezhinski saw one from a distance of only a few yards, clearly discernible on the river bank through the bushes. It was damp, lean and covered from head to foot with white hair. Unfortunately the reality of the creature was too much for Merezhinski, who instead of photographing it shot at it with his revolver but missed in his excitement. The old hunter, furious at the deception, refused to repeat the experiment.”

Here once more we have a report by a professional scientist who directly observed a wildman. As an anthropologist, Merezhinski was particularly well qualified to evaluate what he saw. It is reports like this that tend to dispel the charge that the Almas is a creature that exists only in folklore.

And as far as folklore is concerned, accounts of the Almas and other wildmen are not necessarily a sign that the Almas is imaginary. Dmitri Bayanov, of the Darwin Museum in Moscow, asked (1982, p. 47): “Is the abundant folklore, say, about the wolf or the bear not a consequence of the existence of these animals and man’s knowledge of them?” Bayanov (1982, p. 47) added: “Therefore we say that, if relic hominoids were not reflected in folklore and mythology, then their reality can be called into question.”

10.9 Wildmen of China

“Chinese historical documents, and many city and town annals, contain abundant records of Wildman, which are given various names,” states Zhou Guoxing of the Beijing Museum of Natural History (Zhou, G. 1982, p. 13).

Two thousand years ago, the poet-statesman Qu Yuan made many references to Shangui (mountain ogres) in his verses. Li Yanshow, a historian who lived during the T’Ang Dynasty (a.d. 618–907), stated that the forests of Hubei province sheltered a band of wildmen. Wildmen also appeared in the writings of Li Shizhen, a pharmacologist of the Ming Dynasty (a.d. 1368–1644). In the fifty-first volume of his massive work on medical ingredients, he described several species of humanoid creatures, including one named Fei-fei.

Li wrote: “‘Feifei,’ which are called ‘manbear,’ are also found in the mountainous areas in west Shu (part of Sichuan Province today) and Chu division, where people skin them and eat their palms. The You mountain of Sha county, Fujian province, sees the same ones, standing about one zhang (equal to 3.1 meters [ just over 10 feet]) in height and smiling to the people they come across, and are called ‘shandaren’ (men as big as mountains), ‘wildmen,’ or ‘shanxiao’” (Zhou, G. 1982, p. 13).

In the eighteenth century, the Chinese poet Yuan Mei made reference to strange creatures inhabiting the wild regions of Shanxi province, calling them “monkeylike, yet not monkeylike” (Yuan and Huang 1979, p. 57).

According to Zhou: “Even today, in the area of Fang County, Hubei Province, there are still legends about ‘maoren’ (hairy men) or ‘wildmen.’ A local chronicle, about 200 years old, says that ‘the Fang mountain lying 40 li (2 li equals one kilometer [.62 mile]) south to the county town is precipitous and full of holes, where live many maoren, about one zhang high and hair-coated. They often come down to eat human beings and chickens and dogs, and seize those who fight with them.’A lantern on which there is an ornament of a ‘maoren’ figure was unearthed in this area during an archaeological excavation. It has been dated at 2,000 years” (Zhou, G. 1982, pp. 13–14).

There have been many other reports of wildmen from the Hubei province in central China. In 1922, a militiaman is said to have captured a wildman, but there are no further records of this incident (Poirier et al. 1983, p. 32).