The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 27th, 2009
Chad Arment’s Coachwhip Publication has published The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas: Collected Papers on the Curious Anthropology of Robert Grant Haliburton.
“Haliburton proposed the existence of a small-statured tribe in the Atlas Mountain range, using legends, stories, and eyewitness sightings to support his theories. Sadly, after he died, his theories disappeared without any further proof or disproof,” notes Arment.
Congratulations to Arment for the publishing of this fine source material regarding an important anthropological question.
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 was in Morocco just this past April. If I’d known about such stories, I might have done a little digging into the legend.
Stories of dwarf humanlike creatures are pretty universal. One has to wonder if the Flores Hobbits weren’t part of a Homo Erectus type expansion that left few fossils. People don’t realize how rare fossils are. Few Homo Erectus fossils have been found outside of Africa even though they spread through China into Indonesia. A lot of species are known by one or two fossils and new species are found all the time. Even on Flores few Hobbits were found inspite of them being there for at least 80,000 to 400,000 years. If they mostly kept to the shores during the expansion then all their old territory would be underwater. The old stories all indicated that the little people lived apart from humans so they kept to areas people didn’t frequent. They were never numerous if they existed but there seemed to be pockets of them from Europe into Asia and even as far as the Americas so they might have crossed the land bridge or been part of an earlier migration. They seem to be extinct now but isolated groups appear to have lived until recent times. Most of them might not have been related to the Flores Hobbits and may have been yet another branch group. I think a lot of the stories are simply old legends so they may not have been that wide spread. Point being the stories in Hawaii may have been remembered from a time before they Left Asia. The same with stories in the Americas. All the stories may have spread from a few pockets in eastern Asia and Europe. Oral histories often go back thousands of years. That could explain the stories on Flores but 14,000 years is a long time and the stories talk about a few generations back. Oral histories can potentially go back tens of thousands of years. Australian aborigines legends talk about the dream time which is thought to be when they first came to Australia as much as 80,000 years ago. One thing to always consider. The vast majority of mythical cities have already been found. Several of the remaining may have been found but not formally identified. Why is this important? Most legends seem to be based in fact. The facts are some times not as impressive like Unicorns being Indian Rhinos but there’s still a grain of truth in even the most outrageous legends. The little people may have simply been a way to explain dwarfism which would be somewhat common in small inbred populations or it could be fragments of old stories from a time when there was another group of primates. Knowing that Hobbits existed means they came from somewhere and the fact that they made it to Flores means they were at one time fairly wide spread. Where were the rest of them and when did they die out? We already know they existed.
Why are we always looking for the biggest creatures?
Great post, Loren.
As Always.
Coelacanth1938: You have a point there. 🙂