Then in 1985 came the second capture, at first excitedly announced as a wildman. This time the animal had been discovered in Chengbu, Hunan. It had started throwing rocks and sand at two young girls who were out in the foothills. They had run home to tell their parents, who had organized a party which succeeded in capturing the animal. Chinese researchers are now involved in attempting to classify both creatures, which certainly seem to be a new species.
The fact that local people’s accounts of the small ‘wild-man’ had been so swiftly and precisely justified, despite much academic scepticism, encouraged Zhou to pursue his analysis of the large ‘wildman’ sightings. These presented an altogether more fearsome picture. There have been hundreds of reports, but two in particular seemed worthy of note because they came from scientists.
Back in 1940 a biologist, Wang Tselin, had been travelling in the Gansu area. He had seen a ‘wildman’ killed by local hunters. He had no camera and no means of preserving or transporting the body, but his description is precise and extraordinary. The body was a female with very large breasts. It was 7 ft (2.1 m) tall and covered with grey-brown hair. Above all, Wang was struck by the primitive but human configuration of the face, which reminded him forcibly of the famous (and then newly discovered) Peking man.
Ten years later a geologist, Fan Jingquan, was out with a group of local guides in the forest near Baoji in Shangsi Province. They came across two wildmen – apparently mother and son. The description was similar. Fan was struck by how tall they were. Even the child seemed nearly 5 ft (1.5 m) tall.
In 1977 there was another spate of reports of wildmen in the mountains of Tabai in Qinling. Villagers who had encountered the creatures reported that they were 6 1/2 ft (2 m) tall, walked upright, and were covered with hair. They left huge footprints.
Zhou and Professor Wu Dingliang are now convinced that there is an unknown large species living in the Chinese-Mongolian border area. Zhou concludes: ‘I am of the opinion that it is quite possibly a descendant of Gigantopithecus which was thriving in the mainland of China in the middle and later Pleistocene period.’ He points out that the panda and the orang-utan are survivors of the fauna of the Pleistocene which managed to remain in middle and western China – the panda right up to the present day. ‘It is not impossible that Gigantopithecus, as the dominant member of this Pleistocene fauna, could also have changed its original habits and characteristics and survived to the present.’
Some anthropologists have even made a connection between Gigantopithecus and the famous Ice Man exhibited by showman Frank Hansen in the Minnesota area in 1968. This ape-like corpse, frozen in a block of ice, was denounced by some as a rubber fake concocted in the environs of Hollywood. But Dr Bernard Heuvelmans, the ‘father’ of cryptozoology, who examined it over three days, was convinced it was genuine – certainly a hominoid, perhaps Gigantopithecus. He believed from his inquiries that it had been shot in Vietnam during the war and smuggled back in the ‘corpse bags’ used by the United States Army to return the remains of their casualties. Vietnam was certainly an area where Gigantopithecus flourished.
Fittingly, twenty years on, one of the first scientific ventures between the old enemies was an investigation of Gigantopithecus at Lang Son in the north of Vietnam. Early in 1988, Russell Ciochon and John Olsen of the University of Arizona were due to start an excavation at a cave where bones have been found with a view to determining how near to modern times the great 600-lb creatures might have survived.
Russian and English anthropologists, notably Boris Porchnev and Myra Shackley, have proposed the most daring hypothesis for the ‘wildmen’ of Mongolia and the Altai Mountains. They suggest that there may be surviving groups of Neanderthal man, who supposedly died out 30,000 years ago.
Myra Shackley, a Leicester University lecturer, made a 2,000-mile expedition to Outer Mongolia in 1979. In 1983 she published her review of the expedition. She had found a number of Neanderthal tool kits in open-air sites on the river terraces in the Altai Mountains. They included scrapers, rough chopping tools, and small flakes which had been used, then re-sharpened. They were made from jasper, agate and chalcedony, rocks much favoured by Neanderthals.
Myra Shackley estimated the Mongolian sites to be less than 20,000 years old. ‘They may indeed be even more recent,’ she says, ‘since many of the tools are fresh and surprisingly unworn if they have been resting on the surface for that length of time.’ She reports:
My first line of approach was to show examples of Neanderthal tools to the people and ask whether they had seen anything like them. I obtained the same answer from a number of widely separated groups. All agreed that the tools had been used by people ‘who used to live in this area before us’ and who now ‘live in the mountains’. The name given to these people never varied; the locals called them either the people of Tuud or, when asked to elaborate, gave them the name Almas or one of its local variations.
Shackley was convinced by the stories of the people she met. ‘For me there is no question of whether the wildmen exist -I find the evidence compelling – but only of how they should be classified.’
Across the border in the Soviet Union, almost annual expeditions are taking place, concentrating particularly on the Pamir Mountains, in pursuit of the continuing reports of Almas. A member of the 1981 group, Vadim Makarov, found one of the biggest footprints ever discovered. The plaster cast shows a four-toed foot measuring over 19 in (50 cm). There were several distant sightings on this expedition, but none so vivid as the one made the previous year by an eighteen-year-old student, Nina Grineva.
She had set up camp near a sandy riverbank where she had earlier noticed footprints. She was awoken one night by the sound of stones being knocked together. ‘Sixty feet away stood a very hairy person about 7 feet high. His figure was massive, almost square. He stooped and had a very short neck. His arms hung loosely. I was not scared and began slowly to advance towards him.’ Nina had a toy rubber bird in her hand which she squeaked to attract the creature’s attention.
It was this that spoiled our contact [she said]. He made a sharp turn and quickly went down the slope to the river and disappeared beyond the steep bank. I noted the softness and grace of his walk, though he moved very fast. It was not a human walk, but as of an animal, as of a panther. Despite boulders and other obstacles, he moved quickly, softly and even gracefully. He must have a perfect sense of balance, and, to him, a steep and uneven slope is like a paved road to us.
The reports of these expeditions, collated by the Darwin Museum in Moscow, continue to generate controversy inside the Soviet Union. These are scattered sightings in the Caucasus, and even in the Yakut area of eastern Siberia.
The case for continuing research and exploration is championed by Dimitri Bayanov at the Darwin Museum, who points out that wildmen are prevalent in Russian and Mongol folklore and mythology. ‘We say that if relic hominoids were not reflected in folklore and mythology, then their reality could truly be called into question. Of course the reality of relic hominoids cannot be supported by recourse to folklore alone. But the folklore is a valuable reinforcement of the other evidence we have.’
In 1983 Bayanov led an expedition to Tajikistan. He visited the site near Lake Pairon where two women, Geliona Siforova and Dima Sizov, had reported seeing a wildwoman sitting on a boulder 10 yards (9 m) from their tent. It surveyed them for a long time, making munching sounds. They did not dare to approach it, and in the morning there were no traces of footprints or hairs.
Bayanov also visited the area of Sary Khosor and talked with Forest Service workers, who said they often had reports of wildmen. Two years previously, a shepherd had driven his sheep back down from the mountains two months early because he had seen a big black ‘gul’ or wildman near his pasture. It had frightened his dogs and he had not dared to stay. Another Tajik had told the officers of an encounter five years earlier with ‘a giant hairy man, very broad in the shoulders, with the face like that of an ape’.
The Forest Service takes these reports seriously enough to prohibit its employees from spending the night alone in the mountains, for fear of these wildmen.
Bayanov had no personal encounter with wildmen, but he concluded his 1982 expedition report by saying: