Manimal – The Conclusion
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 23rd, 2006
Is Manimal More Man Than Animal? by Dmitri Bayanov © 2006 International Center of Hominology Moscow, Russia
Conclusion
It is said that the significance of a scientific theory can be measured by the time it impeded scientific progress. Let’s hope the “ape model” theory won’t go down in history as very significant in this respect. Still it plays a major part in causing the Bigfoot research community to turn the blind eye to the Carter Farm case and the book 50 Years with Bigfoot: Tennessee Chronicles of Co-Existence.
In my opinion, after this book business as usual is not on the cards for hominology. The idea that the North American homins may be people is coming full circle, from the reports of J. W. Burns and Albert Ostman of Sasquatch in British Columbia to Janice Carter Coy’s story of Bigfoot in Tennessee. Should the idea be confirmed, all our books will turn into short introductions to the subject, while 50 Years with Bigfoot will become the first text-book in hominology. Admittedly, its drawback and limitation are in the fact that the authors are lay persons, not scientists. Let’s hope that a second or a third text-book will be authored by diplomaed hominologists. In the meantime many thanks should go to John Green for publishing Albert Ostman’s story and to Mary Green for publishing the story of Janice Carter Coy.
While mainstream science is turning its back on hominology, primatologists lost no time in altering the meaning and taxonomic level of such useful terms as “hominoid” and “hominid”. “When scientists use the word hominin today, they mean pretty much the same thing as when they used the word hominid twenty years ago. When these scientists use the word hominid, they mean pretty much the same thing as when they used the word hominoid twenty years ago. (…) If you’re more confused now than you were before, you are just about where you should be. We scientists really need to clean up shop in this area” (Thomas M. Greiner, Associate Professor of Anatomy/Physical Anthropology, “What’s the difference between hominin and hominid?”).
But this muddle of terminology doesn’t concern the problem we’re discussing here. And the banter about “naked apes” and “hairy apes,” mentioned by Loren Coleman in his book, is good only for fiction, not science.
There are two notions and terms in science, which have not changed their meaning so far: “human primate” and “nonhuman primate”. Russians and Americans are human primates, chimps and gorillas are primates nonhuman. The clear question, in need of a clear answer, is this: What kind of primate are such homins as Bigfoot — human or nonhuman? My answer is this: If they have a language as mentioned by Albert Ostman and described by Janice Carter Coy, they are definitely human (let us recall that back in the 18th century Linnaeus proclaimed two kinds of man: Homo sapiens and Homo troglodytes). I would hold this true even if the words of their language are largely borrowed from Homo sapiens. How this could have happened is another question and mystery.
If they don’t have what can be called human language, then they must be nonhuman primates on the threshold of humanness. This judgment is based on the independent evidence of those who claim to have seen or even interacted with Sasquatch, and dared voice their unpopular accounts and opinions even if they are at loggerheads with the prevailing opinions and theories of those who have never seen these hairy bipeds.
Hominology came into being in a no-man’s land of science between zoology and anthropology. It has been shifting ever since from the zoological side of the area to the anthropological side. Accordingly, there is reason for hominologists to be shifting from cryptozoology to what could be called cryptoanthropology. Frankly speaking, I’ve always felt that the partnership between hominology and cryptozoology is a marriage of convenience rather than of love and mutual understanding. It has been good for cryptozoology and, under the circumstances, good for hominology, but for the latter not good enough. And this because the partnership relegated hominology to pure zoology, concealing its paramount anthropological and philosophic aspects. The International Society of Cryptozoology and its good journal let hominology down by completely ignoring hominology’s major asset, the Patterson/Gimlin film, and one of its major problems, the Iceman. This was so because the Society and its journal were fully focused on “mere animals” and zoology, while the majority of academic cryptozoologists found it too risky for their reputations to plunge into hominology. What world science and humankind itself badly need, without realizing it, is The International Society of Hominology and its journal, Current Hominology.
Finally, let me remind you of these words by Grover Krantz: “It might be argued that we don’t really know enough about Sasquatch behavior to be absolutely certain about this judgment as to its animal status. But if we are in error, isn’t it imperative that we find out as soon as possible?” (Big Footprints, p.12) .
Find out how? By killing one of them? No way! To find out the truth as soon as possible we would need a repeat of the Ostman adventure, but with an anthropologist, says Dr. Jeff Meldrum, in the shoes of Albert Ostman.
© 2006 Dmitri Bayanov International Center of Hominology Moscow, Russia
For the other sections of this essay, please click here on Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
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.
Wow. The article is wonderful, but there are some statements that I find difficult to accept. There seem to be some wobbly leaps of logic. But a very well-informed & thought provoking article it is.
The issue of whether Bigfoot (or chimpanzees, for that matter) are ‘men’ or ‘animals’ is just a very old-fashioned & outdated question, it seems to me, quite apart from begging the question about Bigfoot existance.
The goal posts of differentiation between man & other species have been moved a few times, & nobody told Bayanov: tool use is not specific to man, shaped tools are used by other primates & even Corvids! Culture-like behaviour has been seen in apes & cetaceans. Language of a sort is used by cetaceans also, plus we know that apes can learn human-constructed sign language, so our language-use is nothing special. Recently there has arisen (disputed) evidence that the rudiments of language can be grasped by a very intelligent species of bird, the African Grey parrot. Yes I know, it sounds wacky, but there’s more evidence for it than the tales of Ostman & Carter, that’s for sure.
Bayanov wonders why US hominid research took the “ape” paradigm instead of the “wild man” paradigm, citing Ostman. Well, hello, it’s because zero evidence supporting Ostman’s observations of Bigfoot behaviour turned up anywhere else, but tons of stuff supporting the ape-like hypothesis did.
So really, the subject of the ‘man-ness’ of Bigfoot is somewhat of a non sequitur. The creature’s status as a sentient being is irrelevant at this stage, since it doesn’t make any difference to the legal & ethical approach to studying them. We wouldn’t shoot one even if it *was* just a stupid animal, because it is likely desperately rare. Whether a Sasquatch can speak or not, well.. we won’t know until we can prove they actually exist, right?
The rest of Bayanov’s article is inscrutably Russian. The Carter tale is bonkers. I can’t tell if Bayanov is being tongue-in-cheek when he waxes lyrical about it or not; if the latter & he’s taken seriously by anyone in the field, then I’ve got my answer why we’ve never gotten clear footage or solid physical evidence yet.
I always loved the Albert Ostman story…ya gotta love the Carter/Fox story too…JMHO
I’ll have to order the book to get the Sasquatch perspective….
much obliged…Loren for sharing the Bayanov essay…
dumb ole bub and Sheba…the dawg
For Chymo.
You write: tons of stuff supporting the ape-like hypothesis did.
My answer:
How a creature with an human foot can be an ape?
I shared Dmitri’s essay because it is thought-provoking, yes, however, I tend to agree with others that Bayanov’s notion about “apes” being so different from “humans” is extremely old-fashioned. Humans are naked apes, and there is no fiction in that logic.
Our feet and that of the Sasquatch are merely evolved and modified ancient ape feet that are now used by mostly bipedal apes which we, as humans, quite arbitrarily, have decided to label with the names “humans,” “Sasquatch,” and “Bigfoot,” among other monikers.
I, myself, and several colleagues of mine have spoken with Janice on several occassions. I remember talking to her before she ever mentioned anything about her story, let alone writing a book. She asked a lot of questions. So far every piece of evidence that I’ve read about involving people other than Janice could have easily been hoaxed. One main problem I have is why aren’t people investigating her place after all this time at least actually seeing one for themselves? I’m sure there’s some answer out there about how “they dont like to show themselves to strangers.” It baffles me how so many true scientific minds in this field can actually take these claims seriously. There is nothing extraordinarry about being able to make up a story like this. People do it all the time when writing fiction. Star Wars has much more detail and in depth languages and behavior in it’s characters and we certainly don’t believe it’s a true story. Even from this very essay there are obvious screw ups in the story and claims. I’ll use the brief amount of “translated dialect” as an example.
“132. Nicinca Tonape He? = Do you have children? (Fox asked me this and I asked him to repeat the question in English, as I didn’t know what he asked me). In 1990 I was 25 and this is when he asked me this question. (Janice then did not live on the farm. D.B.)
146. Waste Ce Dake = I love you (Papaw and Fox said this to each other when Papaw was in the road that time right before he died. Papaw said it means I love you in Bigfoot).”
Here we have two completely different phrases, both containing the word “you” yet there is no common word in either phrase. So the words change completely depending on the phrase? That doesn’t exactly work for a language.
Easy answer to the stupid question:Man or Ape!?!? THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES US HUMAN IS THAT WE ARE JACK@$$#$! Nothing else deliberately destroys the environment, or is so proud of it! A few other weak points in the essay, but that’s the biggest.
Matt K’s observation that two Bigfoot sentences both supposedly containing the word “you” have not one actual word in common does not necessarily work for a language is not conclusive proof that it is not a real or workable language. Many languages, including English itself, have pronouns that completely change form depending on position in a sentence–just look at English I/me, we/us, she/her, as well as the slightly less drastic he/him, they/them–or, say, Spanish yo/me, French je/moi, German ich/mich, or Russian ya/moya (I/me). my/nas (we/us)!Why can’t Bigfoot do the same for their “you” pronoun?
Janice Carter Coy’s No, 130, “Napi=God, the Lord God (It is also Sioux for Great Spirit)” however is a bit suspicious or at least odd. For one thing, Tennessee is a long long way from the Great Plains. On the other hand, most of Janice’s Bigfoot words and phrases look like amateur transcriptions of Native American words and phrases. Could the Bigfoot have borrowed and used various Indian languages?
This report from BFRO gives some insight into how ‘human-like’ Bigfoot appears, & I’ve seen this kind of commentary in many apparently authentic accounts, that Bigfoot “looks more like a man than he looks like an ape” – even in one from an experienced hunter who had the opportunity to shoot the animal he saw, but did not, because its similarity made him recoil from the act as from murder.
It is common for witnesses to compare Bigfoot more closely to man both in facial features & body shape. So I’m not ‘dissing’ the whole manimal thing at all, but we must be aware that this is an issue of how Bigfoot appears, not necessarily what he is actually like.
I suppose my reaction to Bayanov’s wonderful, thought-provoking essay is because I actually regard many more species other than man as being self-aware & sentient. Zoology is slowly coming around to this awareness, too, I am glad to note.
I found today via an article posted on The Anomalist that I share many of skeptic Michael Shermer’s views on filtering ‘high strangeness’ reports – it gave me a shudder because I despise the armchair skeptics of UFOlogy & Sasquatch research! I quickly rushed over here to make somewhat of a mea culpa. Please, Great Spirit, don’t let me turn out like them!
The Carter Farm story seems to be just that… a nice (if extraordinarly strange) story. I wasn’t there so I suppose I can’t say it didn’t happen… but it sure sounds like a made up tale to me.
I also have to agree with Chymo that there are several species out there that are likely self aware. Members of the Whale and dolphin family certainly seem like they could be. As well as some Octopi, parrots, and yes apes.
tpeter says “Many languages, including English itself, have pronouns that completely change form depending on position in a sentence–just look at English I/me, we/us, she/her, as well as the slightly less drastic he/him, they/them–or, say, Spanish yo/me, French je/moi, German ich/mich, or Russian ya/moya (I/me). my/nas (we/us)!Why can’t Bigfoot do the same for their “you” pronoun?”
True, but the WORDS change form. There isn’t two different translations for any of those words. I/me for example is two seperate independent words. I is I, just as me is me, and you is you. If the translations are both for the word “you” there can only be one word representing “you”. If I’m translating the word “me” I’m not going to translate it as the word “I”. And do we really want to think that if Bigfoot does in fact have it’s own language that it has such complexities as various pronoun usage?
Dear Loren and all,
One skeptical commentator on Bayanov’s article in Loren Coleman’s blog, Matt K., cited what he considered a linguistic implausibility in Janice Carter Coy’s list of Bigfoot words and phrases. He quoted the Bigfoot phrases 132, “Nicinca Tonape He? = Do you have children?” and 146, “Waste Ce Dake = I love you,” and then remarked: >
As a matter of fact, however, many languages–including English!–have personal pronouns that change completely depending on their position in a sentence, on whether they refer to the Subject or the Object of the sentence, the Agent or Patient of an action. In English, for instance, “you” happens to be invariable–but we have I/me, we/us, and she/her–while a somewhat less drastic change is illustrated by he/him and they/them. Similarly, we have French je/moi, Spanish yo/me, Italian io/mi, Portuguese eu/me, German ich/mich, Russian ya/moya, all “I/me.” In German, the polite & plural second-person pronoun “you” takes the alternate forms Sie/Ihr. In Russian, English we/us is paralleled by my/nas. Of course, we have no way of knowing whether Bigfootese (if it exists) is an inflected language like English, French, German, Russian, etc., or not. My own personal hunch–but I freely admit it’s just an educated personal guess–is that Bigfootese (if it exists) might be what some linguists call a “Proto-Language,” such as may have been spoken by _Homo erectus_ and _Homo neandertalensis_, i.e., a “primitive” language somewhat rersembling modern pidgins in structure, consisting of a few dozen or couple of hundred hundred invariable words loosely strungtogether in “me Tarzan, you Jane,” “me Ugg, me big hunter, me hit you head, you die” fashion.
Cheers,
T. Peter
Dear Matt,
In reply to my earlier comment, you wrote: >
I think you may have ben unconsciously using the modern English word “you” as a universal norm,assuming that if English uses the same form “you” for both the subject and object of a sentence in contrast to the different subject and object forms represented by I/me, we/us, she/her, that this is true of all languages. Well, it isn’t. That modern English “you” is invariable for singular and plural and for subject and object, in contrast to some of the other personal pronouns, is just an accident, an idiosyncrasy of English. In German, for instance, as I just wrote a few minutes ago, the polite “you” pronoun is “Sie” for subject and “Ihr” for object. Now, I suspect Bigfootese doesn’t have a familiar/polite “you” pronoun distinctuion like German–but couldn’t the ordinary familiar Bigfootese “you” pronoun take a “Sie” type form “He” and an “Ihr” type form “Ce”?
–Peace, T. Peter
My problems with this story, as stated in other posts here also, include the following:
1) Where is other physical evidence outside of the hair sample?
We have 50 years and in all that time not even ONE detailed photograph? What about the bodies of their dead? If they are buried, where are those graves?
2) Bayanov admits that Carter-Coy has confided in him that some of the MORE unbelievable material, such as psychic communication, was edited out of the book. This bothers me. If what we are looking at here is REAL, then we should look at all evidence, regardless of the believability. If this were a hoax though, and Carter-Coy is feeding Bayanov that which he expects to hear. Perhaps the psychic episode is something he expected and, being intuitive, Carter-Coy gave him what he was fishing for.
There is also the possibility of schizophrenia if she is hearing disembodied voices (I know of one schizophrenic lady who was convinced President Clinton and the “Gay Mafia” were out to close down certain energy plants all as part of her homosexual brother’s scheme to put her out of work and compound her financial problems, and whose irrational fears were “supported” by reams of evidence culled from newspaper stories and television reports.)
There are numerous possible explanations, but withholding evidence doesn’t help us come to ANY conclusion.
3) Bayanov’s zeal for this subject. Although he has not been to the farm himself, Bayanov seems to have abandoned any prudent objectivity and, on no evidence other than the story at hand, begins to discredit the research of others. This is no way to expand the field. While stories like the Otsman story are invaluable to the field, and should not be discarded simply because they do not fit into current paradigms, likewise research that points toward a more “animal” view of Sasquatch should not be discounted simply because they do not fit Carter-Coy’s and Bayanov’s world-view. Until we have conclusive evidence of the reality of Bigfoot type creatures, and their culture, it is only fair to remain open minded (even if, as in my case, it is a skeptical openness).
4) As for language, I haven’t read the book, and don’t know all of the intricaces of the language, as reported by Carter-Coy. But if we accept the reality of Sasquatch merely on the linguistic evidence reported by Carter-Coy, then we must accept the reality of the “Dero” living inside the earth based on Richard Shaver’s Mantong alphabet, or the fact that southern Ohio is the location of the Lost Kingdom of Atlantis and that the town of Portsmouth’s Mound Park is the location of creation, based on the “Harmonic Keys to Home on the Range” as proposed by Jackson Judge.
I’m not saying that there are NO Sasquatch in Tennessee. What I am saying is that Bayanov doesn’t present enough compelling evidence in his article to convince me that Bigfoot are, in fact, human, and that there are huge holes in the entire story (that, I will concede, could possibly be patched up in the book).
The whole thing, right down to the limited speech that doesn’t sound human even when human words are spoken, just smacks toomuch of “Harry and the Hendersons.” (I’m sure you will recall the ending scene where “Harry” tells the family “OK” to the surprise of the Bigfoot hunter played by David Suchet.)
Dear Loren and all,
My own biggest problem by far with Janice Carter Coy’s story of the Carter farm Bigfoot family is the claim of language for hominids that seem to anatomically resemble _Gigantopithecus blacki_ or _Paranthropus boisei_, more than any known type of genus _Homo_, modern or prehistoric. I would have a bit less of a problem associating language with hominids resembling palaeoanthropological reconstructions of _Homo erectus_, _Homo heidelbergensis_, _Homo neandetalensis_, or _Homo floresiensis_, i.e., with a human-habituated band of _kaptar_, _almas_, _orang pendek_, _ebu gogo_, or _nuk-nuk_, representatives of Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe’s “Erectus Hominid,” “Proto-Pygmy,” and “Neandertaloid” types in _The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates_ (Anomalist Books, 2006). But with a relict _Gigantopithecus_ or _Paranthropus_ clan, from Coleman and Huyghe’s “Neo-Giant” category? As I wrote earlier, language use of some sort has indeed been traditionally ascribed in local folklore to Sri Lanka’s _nittaewo_ and Flores Island’s _ebu gogo_, both “Proto-Pygmies” in Coleman and Huyghe’s classification.
However, be all that as it may, the likelihood is that if any “Manimals” or “Hairy Hominids” use language, it would probably be some sort of “Proto-Language,” as contrasted with fully developed language. “Proto-Language,” as used by linguists, anthropologists, and palaeontologists speculating about the origins and very early history of human language, designates a presumed primitive and rudimentary form of language, intermediate between animal grunts and cries on the one hand and fully developed human languages like Latin, Greek, English, Russian, Finnish, Estonian, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Swahili, Yoruba, Malay, Hawaiian, Inuit (Eskimo), Navaho, Cherokee, and Lakota on the other. “Proto-Languages” in this sense consisted of a few dozen or couple of hundred basic words loosely strung together with no connectives (prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc.) and next to no grammar or syntax. They would have closely resembled the “me Tarzan, you Jane,” “me Ugg, me big hunter, me hit you head, you die,” “meat bad, me stomach hurt” type language stereotypically attributed to “cave-men” in science-fiction and exotic-adventure literature and movies. No normal human languages in our time have this rudimentary character–not even languages of so-called “stone age” groups like the Australian Aborigines, Southern African Khoi-San “Bushmen,” or Andaman Island Negritos. Native Australian languages, indeed, are noted for their great grammatical complexity. Native American languages, too, almost invariably show extreme grammatical complexity. However, “pidgins” used in sporadic contact situations typically have a “Proto-Language” type structure. A good description of “Proto-Language,”and its differences from fully developed language, is given by University of Hawaii linguist Derek Bickerton in _Language and Species_ (University of Chicago Press, 1990).
Anyway, it is widely believed by linguists, anthropologists, and palaontologists that pre-sapiens species of genus _Homo_, like _H. erectus_, _H. heidelbergensis_, and _H. neandertalensis_, most likely used some form of “Proto-Language” in this sense. Fully developed language is generally believed to have first been created by our own species _Homo sapiens_, evolving in East Africa between 100,000 and 150,000 years ago out of _H. erectus_ or _H. heidelbergensis_ precursors. _Homo sapiens_ then introduced fully developed language into the rest of the world in its “Out of Africa” migrations starting about 60,000 or 70,000 years ago. The use of fully developed language is believed to have been the main competitive advantage of _Homo sapiens_ versus other hominid species in southern Africa and in Asia, Europe, Oceania, Australia–and maybe also the Americas. The greater scope for social cooperation, cultural advance, and technological innovation conferred by fully developed language helped _Homo sapiens_ to displace and virtually eliminate hominids restricted to using “Proto-Language,”reducing them to small relict groups of Bigfoot, Yeti, _kaptar_, _almas_, _orang pendek_, _ebu gogo_, and the like hiding out in remote corners of a _H. sapiens_ dominated planet.
Linguists and palaeoanthropologists have also become increasingly sympathic in recent decades to the view that all known modern and historically recorded languages are decended from a single “Proto-World,” “Proto-sapiens,” or “Mother Tongue” spoken by the first “Out of Africa” _Homo sapiens_ migrants 60,000 or 70,000 years ago. “Proto-World” is considered the common ancestor alike of Native American, Australian Aboriginal, Andamanese Negrito, and Khoi-San “Bushman” languages, as well as of languages like English, Russian, Arabic, Swahili, Yoruba, Chinese, and Japanese. As _Homo sapiens_ had almost certainly already developed a fully developed “modern” language by the time they started leaving East Africa to overrun the rest of the world 60,000 or 70,000 years ago, naturally, all the subsequent descendants of “Proto-World” would be fully developed languages in the modern sense–including the languages of “stone age” groups like the Australian Aboriginese, Andamanese Negritos, and Khoi-San “Bushmen.” Their vocabularies, too, would reflect many still recognizable “Proto-World” words. Representative “Mother Tongue” words still recognizable in modern languages all over our planet include _KU_ or _KUN_ “who?,” _MI_ or _MIN_ “what?,”_AQWA_ “water,” _KUNA_ or _KWENA_ “woman, wife” _KUAN_ or _KWINYA_ “dog, wolf,”_MENA_ “think, feel, like, love, practice magic,” _MANA_ “stay, remain,” _KWEN_ or _GWEL_ “neck, throat, swallow,” _PUR_ “fly, feather, wing,”_TIK_ “hand, finger, pointing, one, five, ten,” and _PEL_ or _PEN_ “two, pair, couple, half, side.” A good recent overview of the “Proto-World” or “Mother Tongue” hypothesis was given by Stanford University linguist Merritt Ruhlen in his two 1994 books, the semi-popular _The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue_ (New York: John Wiley and Sons) and his similarly titled but much more technical _On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy_ (Stanford University Press). However, a couple of still interesting early works in the same vein include Alfredo Trombetti’s _L’Unità d’origine del linguaggio_ (Bologna, 1905) and Morris Swadesh’s The Origin and Diversification of Language (Chicago & New York, 1971).
However, all of these “Mother Tongue” words just cited were originally the local regional words of a small population in what is now Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania 60,000 or 70,000 years ago. It would thus be not at all surprising if relict hominid groups using “Proto-Languages” as described by Derek Bickerton had words for basic concepts quite different from those of “Proto-World.” If Jane Carter Coy’s Bigfoot vocabulary bore no discernible similarity to the “Mother Tongue” reconstructed by linguists like Alfredo Trombetti, Morris Swadesh, Vitaly Shevoroshkin, Joseph Greenberg, and Merritt Ruhlen, that would not itself invalidate her list! If Bigfoot indeed spoke a “Proto-Language” as defined by Bickerton, it could well have been locally well-established in North America a couple of hundred thousand years before the comparatively Johnny-come-lately “Out of Africa” emergence of the _Homo sapiens_ “Mother Tongue” a “mere” 60,000 or 70,000 years ago!
This, of course, this still leaves the possibility of ancient _Homo sapiens_/”Manimal” linguistic contacts in the Americas in the last few thousand years. Early Native Americans might have borrowed some Bigfoot words from their big, hairy neighbors–and ancient Bigfoot may have similarly borrowed some Native American words and phrases. The same may well have taken place in other parts of the world as well. Thus, the Crô-Magnons may well have borrowed some Neandertal “Proto-Language” words and phrases 35,000 years ago and incorporated them into the earliest _Homo sapiens_ languages of Western Europe. It is possible that some modern Basque, French, German, English, Welsh, or Gaelic words for “ghost,” “witch,” or “ogre” may ultimately reflect Neandertal words for “mammoth,” “cave bear,” “woolly rhinoceros,” or “shaman’! Similarly, many modern East and Southeast Asian languages may still preserve words ultimately of “Peking Man” or “Java Man” origin. Might, say, a Vietnamese , Thai, or Indonesian word for “dragon” ultimately reflect a “Java Man” word for “crocodile” or “giant monitor lizard”? Likewise Southern Africa’s Khoi-San “Bushman” and “Hottentot” languages may still preserve words borrowed from the somewhat Neandertal-like _Homo rhodesiensis_. Could even the celebrated Khoi-San “click” sounds themselves be a _Homo rhodesiensis_ borrowing?
Plus, of course, there also still remains the possibility that, even if Janice Carter Coy is “on the level,” her friendly neighborhood Bigfoot family might actually have spoken a “pidginized” form of a Native American language! Maybe the Bigfoot weren’t quite “smart enough” to invent a language all on their own–but, they might still have been “smart enough” to notice the advantage conferred by language on the Indians, and to have picked up simplified versions of one or several Indian languages for their own use!This may well have initially taken place on the West Coast, Rockies, and western Great Plains, and spread by “cultural diffusion” to Bigfoot bands and clans further east! If this is true, there would naturally be nothing all that strange in Tennessee Bigfoot using words of ultimately mostly Kwakiutl, Kalispel, Nez Percé, Yakima, or Lakota rather than Cherokee or Shawnee origin! As I wrote earlier, all this has _Homo sapiens_ linguistic parallels–e.g., the use of their full-sized neighbors’ Bantu languages by African Pygmy groups who presumably originally spoke languages almost as different from Bantu as the Khoi-San languages! I still maintain that it might be interesting if some specialists on Native American languages examined Ms. Coy’s Bigfoot wordlist.
The growling, guttural, not-quite-human quality of Bigfoot speech, even when speaking English, recalls the suggestion of many linguists and palaeoanthropologists, including Derek Bickerton and Philip Lieberman, about _Homo erectus_ and Neandertal speech. The reconstructed vocal tracts of pre-sapiens species of _Homo_ were indeed somewhat “cruder” for producing fully human speech than our own–but could have still sort of “done the job” in a crude, rough-and-ready way! Yes, Philip Lieberman and Derek Bickerton would have had no serious quarrel with Janice Carter Coy’s description of the way the Carter farm’s Bigfoot guests talked and sounded!
Of course, maybe all that this really shows is that Ms. Coy was very much “up” on all the possibly relevant linguistic, palaeoanthropological, and hominological literature when she concocted her hoax! How many linguistics, palaeoanthropology, and Bigfoot/Yeti books does she own or has she checked out from her library?
Cheers,
T. Peter
Good morning ya’ll….the solution seems simple enough….assemble some qualified folks….visit the Carter Farm and determine the veracity of her story….If I was twenty years younger…”wild horses couldn’t drag me away”….
Might be a good idea to find some one fluent in the language of the realm….most “country folks” are put off by “city folk”….
Beats the hell outta chasing a shadow blobsquatch….three weeks after the fact…JMHO
There are plenty of folks here and on the Yahoo board….competent to participate….in a fact finding visit….assuming Ms. Coy would invite a small group….if she genuinely wants to preserve and protect her “tenants” she might be open to a logical proposal.
Those who know….want to protect….those who believe…want to know….IMHO
buena suerte…
ole bub, Sheba dawg, and a new rescue dawg with no name…yet
I would LOVE to be one of those folks to pay a visit to the Carter farm… and I speak FLUENT Appalachian.
My geologist “cain’t” understand how an operator finds more oil and gas than he does….sometimes I have to remind him whose signature is on his check….you have to drill a few dry holes to make a discovery….JMHO
Let the non-scientists do the heavy lifting and leg work…the experts can take the credit….it ain’t about the glory…JMHO
If Loren and others with credentials and experience… respect the Russians and their preliminary research…why shouldn’t we…IMHO
seeing is believing…
ole bub, Sheba and the new rescue dawg with no name
Jeremy….
Linguistically…the phonetic phrases in the Bayanov essay sound a lot like proto-Arkanasawyer to me…..LOL
ole bub