Cryptozoology’s Future Men: Bald or Bearded?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 22nd, 2012
Yes, today notes a time of renewed football madness in North America. As we have said before at Cryptomundo, Super Bowl Sunday has become a minor (maybe major) unofficial holiday in the USA, in which people abandon the internet to watch commercials, cheerleaders, halftime fashion malfunctions, and apparently some football. This weekend’s playoff games actually may rate a greater following that in years past because of the battles looming.
Okay, have you noticed the trend in football players ~ who are males, of course ~ to be bald, oftentimes on purpose? Or cryptozoologists to be bearded?
I often wonder about where humans are evolving, where we have come from, and will cryptozoologists of the future look like football players or professors. What does this have to do with football? Probably nothing, but then this Sunday and the one in two weeks has little to do with football any longer. It’s about celebrity, money, ads, and people, people, people. The men on the field are a portion of the day, so why not speculate on what future cryptozoologists will look like today too?
It started for me, growing up in the 1950s, reading articles on what future humans – mostly males it always seemed like – would look like. The drawings of the men would invariably be shown to be someone with a huge hairless head, as if we would evolve into “brain man.”
H.G. Wells imagined the men of the future as all brains, and with little hair. Later one would talk of them as atomic mutants.
Other images of bald men who are football players can also be found, but they are illustrations from our past, such as the imagined (without hair) reconstructions of Java Man (at top) and Neanderal Man (below).
At top is Java Man, Homo erectus Sangiran 17, reconstructed by sculptor Yoichi Yazawa, under the direction of Hisao Baba, Curator of Anthropology at the National Science Museum in Tokyo. Was the image of future man created by thinking too much about the past?
In my quest for the image of future man, I started noticing something strange. Modern men, some who have searched for Chupacabras, Lake Monsters, or Bigfoot, some who are rap stars, some who are football players, began appearing on my radar that looked similar to my 1950s’ remembrances of these future men. Had tomorrow’s brainy males already arrived, on the football field and nearly within cryptozoology?
Take skeptic Benjamin Radford:
Here is a comparison between Matt Crowley, skeptical Bigfoot foot cast investigator, and Ben Radford, managing editor at the Skeptical Inquirer:
Click image for larger version, if you wish.
Radford, at least, has called himself a cryptozoologist.
How about guys that appear on television shows about cryptozoology, like Animal X host Bill Kerr? Is he the aging future man?
Then there’s also those who are unique beyond classifications, of course, like Todd Disotell (below), the usually very skeptical DNA expert on these shows.
Do cryptozoologists tend to have beards and sometimes wear hats. What does our future hold?
And what of future females in the field of cryptozoology? What appearances generalize them?
Just a couple days ago, by coincidence, the Smithsonian’s Paleofuture column by Matt Novak looked at the concept that by now all women would have been Amazons. If future women are suppose to have been Amazons in the 21st century, what does that say about fieldworthy cryptozoologists who are female today?
Future Man is here, and he/she may assuredly be a football player or a cryptozoologist, it seems. So, the answer to the question about whether cryptozoologists ~ male or female ~ will look like football players or professors is, well, they both already look like each other now. We seem to be in the future. Enjoy the commercials.
P.S. @paleofuture. Happy 5th anniversary.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
One should also note the increasing number of football players on the opposite end of the hair spectrum, with long flowing locks!
Is the man supposed to be getting smaller, or is the woman supposed to be getting bigger? Or both?
As the man continues to look wimpier and more nerdy, the image of the woman remains the same. Are we to conclude that evolutionary changes like that can occur in a 100-year period? Or that only men will evolve? Did women reach a state of evolutionary perfection in 1954, remaining the same since?
The poor guy winds up looking like the “90 lb. weakling” in the Charles Atlas bodybuilding ads of the same period.
And what about that “Quickie” article?
This whole thing requires further analysis.
Well I, for one, welcome our future mutant giant over-mistresses! 😉
Click the Paleofuture link. I’m actually astounded at how close Dorothy Roe was to totally on the mark.
(I personally have women playing all pro sports no later than 2030.)
Did anyone happen to notice that the drawing of the Neadertal looked almost exactly like the movie actor Vin Diesel? LOL.