China Challenges Johor Bigfoot Theory
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 2nd, 2006
Raymond Goh of API gives permission to mirror his blog here:
Chinese Experts questioned Johor Bigfoot Homo Erectus Reverse Evolution Theory
Model of Shennongjia Bigfoot at Shennongjia Museum
Illustration of Shennongjia Bigfoot (picture courtesy of Sina News)
On July 3, the China News Network reported an article, entitled "Malaysian researchers new discovery :" Johor Bigfoot "is the" Peking man. The article reported that reported that : "Malaysian Nature Society Johor branch adviser Vincent Chow to the reporters on that he was collecting the latest evidence that ‘Johor Bgfoot’ is very likely to be an ancestor of modern human, and may be the "Peking Man"
Thousand of miles away, "Johor Bigfoot" is a descandent of Peking Man found at Zhoukoudian? To find out more, the reporters interviewed a Chinese expert Huang Wan Po from the China Institute of Paleoanthropology and Nanjing Paleontology Institue Koh Han Kuei for their expert opinion.
"Johor Bigfoot" maybe subspecies of orangutans
As a "Mt. Wu", "Lam Tin person" and other hominid Discovery, Researcher Huang Wan Po can be said to be an expert in the study of paleoanthropology.. The first sentence he told the reporter is "every species’ extinction can not be separated from the environmental impact, but equally, the every new species also have a certain environment need. Modern human retroactive search to the past need to establish conclusive evidence.
Based on what evidence, data did "Malaysian Natural Society Johor Advisor Vincent Chow determine ‘Johor Bigfoot" has link to Peking Man? Huang has doubts on this.
"State of Johor National Parks Director Yusoff described: ‘Johor Bigfoot (Orang Lenggor) is divided into three groups, and know each other. They live in the Bigfoot Happy Garden, and usually after wandering along certain routes they will return to the Happy garden; their height is up to four metres high, facial hair is brown or black, mostly red eyes, broad chests, long arms, and very agile.
At Semanggok Orangutan Protection Center there is actually a smaller version of Orang Lenggor, actually an orangutan who is wild and difficult to track also.
From the news, it is not difficult to see that the data and evidence comes from local eye witness reports.
Are the local eyewitness’s reports reliable? Huang Wan Po did not comment directly on Vincent Chow theory, but he described to reporters his own experiences. In the summer of 1975, there was a report that a Bigfoot was seen in Hubei Shennongjia, he immediately rushed to investigate. However he did not have any sightings. The day before he was about to return, a local peasant woman named Gongyulan make a report, at about 19:00, as she return home on the hillside, she saw a bigfoot with bright eyes rubbing its itch on a tree trunk, She got scared and run away to make the report.
Huang Wan Po immediately hurried to the tree and found some hair samples at the height of 1.5 metres high on the trunk. He returned back to Beijing immediately to do experiments on the hair, comparing with orangutan, bear, Antelope, human etc. After the comparative analysis of the samples he came to the conclusion that the hair belong to primates.
Huang Wan Po told reporters that Shennongjia Bigfoot may be a species or descandents of orangutans. In the evolution process, genetic variations occur, such as taller height, longer hair etc.
Although he has not gone to Johor to track the Bigfoot, based on his investigation in Hubei, he thinks it is not difficult to trace the roots of Johor Bigfoot also.
"Peking Man" can only evolved higher intelligence, and not regress into hairy hominids. Huang Wan Po pointed out. It can be said that ‘Johor Country’ and ‘Peking man’ have no link, but if the ‘Johor Bigfoot’ is a descendent/species of Orangutan, it can be debated and studied further as Orangutans are also human cousins!
Johor Bigfoot and Peking Man belong to different era, Nanjing Institute of Geology paleontological reseacher Koh Han Kuei told reporters.
From the perspective of human evolution, we must first define each stage in human evolution, for example, ape man appeared in 2 million years ago to 200,000 years ago, in 200,000 years ago to 11,000 years ago – there is higher hominid, from 11,000 years ago to the present, we are called modern people, now referred to as the "Johor Bigfoot" should belong to the modern era of this, which is different from the era of Peking Man, 400-500,000 years ago.
Because so far we only see and hear, but nobody really caught the "Johor Bigfoot," nor found in any cave such as bones or more conclusive evidence, no one has also done any positive DNA scientific tests.
Migration direction that is inconsistent with the "Peking man" actual migration routes.
Malaysian Nature Society Johor branch adviser Vincent Chow state, "In the early 20th century, Peking Man was found in North China.
From the evidence that the relocation preferences from one area to another area, most likely, is in the migration from China to the Malay Peninsula, because it seems from today’s geography, prehistoric the Malay Peninsula and the Chinese mainland has not been separated by ocean, but are joined together. "In other words," Peking man migrate to the north of Malaysia.
Although he endorsed the prehistoric land connection of Peninusular Malaysia with China, Huang Wan Ho has always believed that "Peking man" "home" is not in North China, but Peking man is relocated from South China to North China, although, later settled in North China "Peking man" might move south as climate change at home. But if the "Johor Bigfoot" is linked to "Peking man" it would be better to link "Johor Bigfoot" to Indonesia "Java man." as it is nearer!
Now we all know that Malaysia and Indonesia is the homeland of the Orangutans, this is accepted scientific fact. And therefore there is a clear link between Johor Bigfoot and the orangutan. But to say that the Johor Bigfoot is a reverse evolution of the Peking Man, is contrary to the conclusions of scientific knowledge.
-Translated from Sina News Jul 26, 2006, Text / reporter Tang Yi
Remarks by API:
Shennongjia is a nature reserve 200km (124 miles) from Yicheng in northwest Hubei, China and has wild and unspoiled scenery. Its forests and mountains are exceptionally rich in plant life and home to the endangered Golden Monkey.
The mountains reach up over 3,000 meters (9,840ft) and contain a large and diverse selection of plants, many of which do not grow anywhere else.
In recent years, Shennongjia has also gained fame as the home of a mysterious "wild man", a Chinese Bigfoot. Sightings suggest that the creature is very tall, has red hair and leaves only footprints and chewed corn cobs in his wake. Rumors abound and stories of the "wild man" have only added to the appeal of this remote area.
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API Malaysian bigfoot mirror website
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For a complete rundown on all the August 4th breaking news on the “Johor Hominid” hoax discovery, please see:
More Johor Fallout: Peter Loh Reacts.
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.
I don’t know, there’s a lot of speculation here. Dr. Po (I’m assuming he’s a professor, I might have picked the wrong name as his surname.) states that the “Shennongjia Bigfoot” is likely a relative of orangutans, yet the upright model of it in the top picture above shows a foot with the five toes in line. This is much closer to a human foot than an orangutan’s, so if they are related they would seem to be very distant cousins. (Assuming the model is accurate – I assume it is likely to be, as least as the feet are concerned if that is the type of footprint they have found.)
Now the “Johor Bigfoot” as a relative to the orangutan is much closer, as far as the feet are concerned. The casts made of alleged footprints there show four toes in line with a fifth toe that appears to have recently evolved from an opposable digit. But even here the feet are not very orangutan-like: feet are longer, toes are shorter and not fingerlike, etc.
If either of the two Bigfoot are orangutan relatives they appear (at least from the alleged feet) to be fairly distant ones, with the Johor bigfoot being the closer.
I’d assume there are some problems with translation here. Bigfoot Happy Garden?? Also some of the information is incoherent or just plain wrong. “Ape man” has no anthropological meaning… and physically, or even culturally, modern people are much older than 11,000 years.
As deluded as this Johor episode has become, there is a grain of logic behind the Homo erectus speculation. Many researchers, including myself and Scott Marlowe are beginning to support erectus offshoots as candidates for many worldwide hominids. The argument is too long to make here, but suffice it to say that erectus was extremely widespread and adaptable. Also, if we believe that Flores man sprang from erectus, then its descendents were definitely living as recently as 27,000 to 12,000 years ago in parts of Asia.
Tense issues in the translation all over the place. Was it done by software?
The Maoists have a different view of evolution than that of western science, including the notion that they evolved separately from h. erectus, and therefore are not related to us and are racially superior to us.
Which probably explains some of the strange terms and dates in the report.
I say Bring on the pic’s and lets end all guess work.
jayman and sschaper made the point I was going to make. I work as a content developer and have had to make sense of English scripts written by non-native English speakers on more than one occassion, but some of this is beyond even my ken to decipher.
Are there copyright issues that require you to use specific translations Loren, or could someone (possibly someone on this list?) fluent in both English and Mandarin (or whatever language this was initially issued in) make some sense of the original article for us?
Translation criticisms aside though, I’ve thought from the get go that the physical evidence we do have to examine (the Johor plaster cast) seems more pongid than hominid, so the idea of unknown orangutan populations or sub-species sounds plausible.
As it is a fairly long article, I initially use a translation software and then I correct the sentences that seem out of place to save time. I suppose I should correct/translate it more conscientiously.
Bigfoot Happy Garden is correct translation. The Chinese pinyin is “Yiren Le Yuan” which means Bigfoot Happy Garden
The time period of 11,000 years is what is written in the news article.
Chinese like to use Apeman in the description, eg Peking Apeman and our preferred phrase of Bigfoot is Yiren (Wildman).
As for the upright model of the Yiren at the museum, I believe it is put up by the Chinese news to give visual impact to Shennongjia Yiren. Huang (This is his surname) has his own theories about Shennongjia Yiren, which differs from other researchers of Shennongjia Yiren.
There is a whole bunch of Chinese reports out there on Shennongjia Yiren, including some documentaries and supposed evidence including scat, plaster casts of big footprints, hair samples etc.
I would say that both of these “experts” are really grasping. Ok, so the gentleman from china has seen, but has he captured one? That’s the only way to truly study them. So, I say, “Until one has been found/captured/documented etc…we, meaning anyone at all, have no way of saying anything about what or who these creatures are related to.
Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t the second picture on this article look a lot like the alleged photos as they’ve been described? Is it at all possible that one of the “photos” is in fact this image?
I also think the statue in the first image looks a lot like the descriptions as well, particularly the crazy hairstyle.