Bigfoot a Deaf Mute?
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on May 15th, 2013
Some people in the Bigfoot community feel that Gigantopithecus is the most likely candidate as the precursor for Bigfoot. Jeff Meldrum and Grover Krantz are in this camp.
But others such as Loren Coleman feel there is a more likely candidate, Paranthropus.
Everyone seems to be Gigantopithecus lovers, right? But what of the other major fossil choice, Paranthropus?
The general scientific agreement is that Gigantopithecus specimens were in the range of about 10 feet tall, in fully grown adults. Some of the fossil primate scholars most linked to Gigantopithecus even have interpretations that assume Gigantopithecus was not bipedal.
Other than mandibles and over a thousand teeth, no other bones of Gigantopithecus have been found. Despite this, the late Grover Krantz and others have constantly said that Gigantopithecus is the best fossil candidate for Sasquatch. The one major fossil candidate often overlooked by the Krantz camp is Paranthropus.Loren Coleman
Gigantopithecus or Paranthropus?
What does this news do to the Paranthropus theory?
Early hominins couldn’t have heard modern speech
Our australopith ancestors heard their world differently from modern humans.
Rolf Quam at Binghamton University in New York State and colleagues have discovered rare middle ear bones from two extinct southern African hominins – Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus.
A combination of ape-like and human-like features in the bones indicate some australopiths lacked sensitivity to the midrange frequencies that modern humans use for speech.
“Anthropologists are in general agreement that these early hominins likely did not possess spoken language,” says Quam – the new findings back that claim.
His team now plans to use CT scans of the fossils and 3D virtual reconstruction of the ear anatomy to work out more precisely what the world sounded like to our distant ancestors.
Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1303375110
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Until you kill, capture or biopsy dart one, IF they exist or ever have is the question.
I agree with Steve that you never know until you have a living specimen. However, based of eyewitness accounts and supposed data collected, I could see how both ancient species could be considered. I still find myself leaning more towards the Giganto as opposed to the Paranthropus do to the simple fact of height. Now given they were around millions of years ago lends credence to them evolving into a taller more nomadic creature, but based on documented science, they died out long ago leaving leaving no decedents. Giganto on the other hand leaves the door to interpretation more wide open as there is little to learn from the small amounts of remains found. This renders it more like it supposed living relative… elusive and hard to find! LOL!
There’s a big difference between being a deaf-mute and not being able to hear the frequency of human speech.
“Anthropologists are in general agreement that these early hominins likely did not possess spoken language,” says Quam – the new findings back that claim.
Huh? Paleoanthropologists question whether recent hominids like Neanderthal or Homo Erectus even had a spoken language! Let alone very ancient hominids…
Never mind that I think that it is at least likely that we haven’t found the direct fossil line of sasquatch yet.
This doesn’t bother me any, because I don’t buy that sasquatch use spoken language.
I don’t see that this seriously undermines the Paranthropus hypothesis. In the first place, we’re only talking about an evolutionary precursor. Does anyone seriously think Gigantopithecus spoke? And in the second place, any notion that Bigfoot utilizes ANY speech, much less conventional human speech, is far from established.
If you listen to the Sasquatch Ontario audio the subject does have a weird tone to its voice suggesting it has a different way of hearing like the sound of a siren traveling up and down the sound frequency and accenting different parts as if those are the only ones it can hear.
DWA:
You would if you ever heard it. Besides, the SIERRA SOUNDS recording are pretty serious proof of it. Two acoustics labs INDEPENDENTLY said it contained frequencies both above and below human voice range. To boot, they said the sounds were not produced or reproduced “electronically”. That leaves no wiggle room, the way I see it. I’ve heard it myself. Summer of 2006. Taos, NM.
A lot of this confusion stems from the assumption that we are dealing with apes. There is no fossil record of apes in the New World. It would be extraordinary if there were only one, wouldn’t you agree? These things are NOT apes. The closest descriptor is “people”.
Will this site have to post and pin an apology to deaf mutes? Lol
Goodfoot responded:
…the SIERRA SOUNDS recording …Two acoustics labs INDEPENDENTLY said it contained frequencies both above and below human voice range. To boot, they said the sounds were not produced or reproduced “electronically”.
WOW! And those two acoustic labs were Dreamworks? Pixar? As dumb as all the squatch videos are on youtube, squatch “voice” sounds are even dumber. Thousands of animals can produce loud sounds outside the range of human vocalization. Maybe it’s proof on “Finding Bigfoot” but then TV is never reality and very seldom science.
I have two problems with this posting: First is the idea that, just because we modern humans can’t hear, see, smell, touch, taste, or otherwise sense something, then nobody can. Just because paranthropus couldn’t hear in the range of the human voice doesn’t mean that it couldn’t do just fine in those ranges that were native to it. I’m more than a foot taller than my wife; there are things and perspectives she sees that I will never see and there are things and perspectives that I see that she will never see, at least without a small ladder. Doesn’t mean those things aren’t there.
The other problem I have with Paranthropus is their size. Sasquatch are reported to be six to nine feet tall. Paranthropus was less than five feet tall. Where did the extra height come from? Why did the extra height come along? I can more easily see Paranthropus shrinking down another couple of feet and becoming the basis for the First Nations’ little people. Its easier to grow down than up; less birth canal problems for one.
Oooh. I REALLY wish you hadn’t brought that up.
Some observations: eye witness accounts, and to some extent video, do not match up with either giganto or paranthropus based on facial features. Specifically, the nose structure of these ancient creatures are not hooded, a much later evolutionary development. Not being able to hear in the human vocal range, relatively large, would be a significant disadvantage. While not a sound expert, I would then assume that paranthropus couldn’t hear some birds, wolves and other animals who “vocalize” roughly in that range. I also agree with graybear, size is the gorilla in the room (pun intended) paranthropus is too small. Going out on a limb, and say what you will, but I think FB/FB has promoted one of the better theories, namely that if bigfoot exists it is a very close relative of human beings and has over the centuries interbred with them.
I commented about this under one of the “Bigfoot speaks” threads and wondered why that had not appeared. Anyhow, apparently most apes lack the human “sensitivity to the midrange frequencies that modern humans use for speech,” so this is a primitive feature that would likely have been shared by both Paranthropus and Gigantopithecus. In spite of this, apes can certainly hear human speech; they can even be trained to respond to vocal commands. Presumably they just hear it sort of like we would with water in our ears. The lack of adaptation probably does mean that Australopithecus and its close relatives did not use language, which no one really expected them to anyhow. If Bigfoot has not evolved more sensitive ears — and a present-day Bigfoot would have had as much time to do so from Paranthropus as we have from Australopithecus — this would probably mean that the range of Bigfoot vocal communications is limited, likely a series of growls, yelps, and howls. In other words, “noises”, not “speech”. But again, this is exactly the situation in non-human primates, so it’s not a surprising conclusion, and there has been time for Bigfoot to potentially evolve in parallel with us.
@mandors — The one thing you can bet on is that any animal that survived long enough to be found in the fossil record was able to sense what it needed in the environment, so that it would be able to detect both predators and prey. At least since the extinction of the megafauna, there would be nothing in North America that could prey on an adult Bigfoot, with the possible exception of a grizzly — though in most stories, even bears are afraid of Bigfoot — or maybe a pack of wolves on an isolated, sick Bigfoot. That was certainly not the case for the pint-sized Paranthropus, though; he surely needed to use his eyes, ears, and nose to stay alive, and would even then often be taken by leopards or birds of prey. His hearing may have been more attuned to cracking twigs than to speech, but that does not mean he was *deaf* to the frequencies we use for speech, only that these frequencies were not so important for his survival.
So what frequencies would a Bigfoot need for survival? Unlike man, he does not appear to be by nature a “political animal”; he does not appear to live in large camps, let alone settlements, and appears to be a mostly solitary creature. What good would speech be to a solitary animal? He would not need to worry much about predators, and although he is expected to eat salmon and probably a little meat (like a grizzly, or for that matter a chimp), he does not seem to be specialized as a predator himself. Vision would help him distinguish ripe from unripe berries, as would smell, but I’m not convinced there would be much evolutionary pressure on him to develop especially good hearing.
I HAVE heard him…a series of ape like whoops punctuated about every two minutes by a prolonged, drawn out howl; seemingly filled with both loneliness and pain, it washed over me like a wave of despair and paralyzing fear; this was no “relative of man”. I was humbled to be in the presence of such a massive, magnificent animal…and quite petrified, i can assure you.