Pangboche Yeti Finger Found: DNA Results Given
Posted by: Loren Coleman on December 27th, 2011
[First posted at midnight, December 27; new content as of 9:24 am Eastern, December 27, 2011. If you’ve read the background content, revised below, and are looking for the new results, see the end of this posting for updates.]
The Pangboche Yeti finger was rediscovered while on display at London’s Royal College of Surgeons. The late Dr. William Charles Osman Hill, a consultant to the Tom Slick expeditions, bequeathed it to the Hunterian Museum, which is a division of the Royal College of Surgeons.
Primatologist Ian Redmond (below) examined the anatomical specimen (above) labelled “Yeti’s finger.”
The alleged Yeti finger from the Pangboche hand was found by the UK’s Daily Mail reporter Matthew Hill, several months ago and has undergone DNA testing. This certainly has been a year of surprises coming forth from the Tom Slick expeditions of the late 1950s.
Today, on a BBC program, the results of a new DNA test were broadcast. The result of the DNA analysis were announced on a program entitled “Yeti Finger” on BBC Radio 4 on December 27, 2011, at 11 am local time. (We have been posting the results as soon as we heard about them, in the “Comments” section below.)
The Pangboche Hand, the so-called Yeti Hand, has been the point of much discussion since 1959, which I summarized in Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology (Fresno, CA: Craven Street-Linden Press, 2002). I began further researching the material when I noticed early in my Yeti research that Tom Slick expeditions, the evidence he found, and any results were generally ignored in the “Abominable Snowman” literature. This appeared to be a combination of the Slick family’s need for being out of the limelight, the secrecy behind the Slick-Johnson expeditions, and the general outcome of the harsh skeptical debunking that occurred during the Hillary-Perkins-World Book Yeti expedition of 1960.
After the first edition of my Tom Slick book was published in 1989, and my 1991 filming with George Agogino and Peter Byrne by NBC’s Unsolved Mysteries, the interest in the Pangboche Yeti Hand and the Slick expeditions increased.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75cYxUOc59o
The actor Jimmy Stewart is seen here, as he appears in one of his most occult films, Bell, Book, and Candle in 1959, the same year Stewart found himself enmeshed in the search for the Yeti.
Jimmy Stewart arranged the transport (for the friend, Tom Slick, of his personal friend, F. Kirk Johnson) of the Pangboche Hand from India to London.
The International Cryptozoology Museum has on display a letter from Jimmy Stewart about this episode of his life, as well as original Slick-Johnson expedition materials and fecal/hair samples.
The BBC adds more about what Osman Hill forwarded to the Hunterian that were originally part of the Slick Expeditions:
…in 2008, work on Prof Hill’s collection turned up something very odd: a box of items apparently relating to his interest in crypto-zoology, the study of animals not proved to exist.
It contained plaster casts of a footprint, hair, scat (dropping) samples and an item recorded as a yeti’s finger.
The specimen was 9cm (3.5 inches) long, 2cm wide at the widest part, curled and black at the end with a long nail.
According to the notes in the box, it was taken from the hand of a yeti. Its origin was listed as Pangboche Temple in Nepal.
Now comes breaking news of a new chapter in this story, published in the Daily Mail.
Here are parts of Matthew Hill’s story published moments ago, which specifically detail the Pangboche story mostly from Peter Byrne’s point of view:
…in 1957, Tom Slick, a wealthy American oilman, funded a series of expeditions to investigate Yetis.
He became obsessed after hearing about them on business trips to India.
It was a year later, during one of the expeditions funded by Slick, that the Irish-American explorer Peter Byrne heard two Sherpas mention the word ‘Meh-te’.
When quizzed, they told him about the ancient Yeti hand preserved in the Pangboche Monastery. Days of trekking through treacherous passes with the ever-constant threat of avalanches followed as Byrne made his way to the magnificent monastery.
He remembers walking the halls by candlelight and being led to the room which contained the Pangboche hand. ‘It was covered with crusted black, broken skin,’ Byrne says.
He sent a runner over the border to India with a message for Slick about his find. It took three days for the return telegram to arrive with instructions from Slick to obtain the hand and to bring it to London.
But the monks refused to let Byrne take their revered object, explaining that if they let it go, it would bring down a curse on the monastery. Slick was determined, however. He arranged to meet Byrne in London, where they were joined by world-renowned primatologist Professor William Osman Hill.
The venue was the restaurant at Regent’s Park Zoo, where the professor was employed dissecting and embalming dead animals.
During the meal, Osman Hill told Byrne that he had to get hold of at least one finger from the hand because he wanted it to be scientifically analysed.
The professor — who had links to the Royal College of Surgeons — then reached under the table and brought out a brown paper bag.
He tipped a human hand onto the table, and suggested Byrne replace the finger with a human one.
Slick could only exclaim: ‘I take it that’s not dessert?’
Byrne returned to the monastery, and although the monks were reluctant, they eventually agreed to part with the finger for £100 — only if Byrne could find a way of disguising the missing digit.
The mountaineer wired the human finger on to the relic, before painting it with iodine to make it look the same colour as the rest of the hand. He now faced a perilous journey home.
In the previous year, the Nepalese government — bizarrely — had brought in a law making it illegal for foreigners to kill a Yeti.
Thus, Byrne took a risk by trekking on foot over the border into India with the digit. The challenge was to smuggle it back to London by plane without the authorities finding it and asking awkward questions.
Slick, as ever, had a solution. An old hunting buddy of his was in India and might be able to assist Byrne. The friend turned out to be none other than the movie star Jimmy Stewart.
Slick knew that Stewart was on holiday in Calcutta and thought he might be sufficiently intrigued by the Yeti legend to help out. So a meeting was arranged in the Grand Hotel in Calcutta with Byrne, Mr Stewart and his wife Gloria.
His instincts were right. The Stewarts were happy to go along with it. In order to dodge customs, Gloria hid the finger in her lingerie case and they flew out of India with no trouble.
Back in London, the finger was handed over to Professor Osman Hill for examination. Chillingly, his tests — which involved comparisons with human hands — concluded that it was not human.
But there the story goes cold. No more was heard of it for many years, although it is known that Osman Hill eventually bequeathed it to the Hunterian Museum, where it languished until work on this collection brought the finger to light once more.
No one knows why, after all the effort to obtain the finger and bring it back to London, it was just handed over to the museum to be neglected and forgotten.
My discovery of the finger at the Royal College of Surgeons came quite by chance during a visit, and it kindled my interest in the mystery of this strange artefact.
Having learned the briefest outline of its history, I was able to track down the now 85-year-old Peter Byrne, who was astonished.
I took him to see it at the museum. After examining the object, he verified it as the same finger he had taken. The Royal College of Surgeons then granted my request for a tiny sliver of it to be analysed in DNA tests.
These were administered by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and the results will be revealed in a special BBC Natural History documentary on Radio 4 today.
In general, the results could have been any of the following,
(1) Inconclusive,
(2) Unknown primate,
(3) Human/origin unknown,
(4) Unidentified mammal,
(5) Neandertal,
(6) Yeti (meaning “an unknown large anthropoid or hominoid of Nepal,” i.e. still unidentified/open-ended in identification), or
(7) None of the above.
What will this piece of the Abominable Snowman mystery reveal?
The results being discussed on the BBC program, “Yeti Finger,” appear to discuss it as an artifact of a human. More published details are coming in…
The BBC stated at 6:24 their time: “A DNA sample analysed by the zoo’s genetic expert Dr Rob Ogden has finally revealed the finger’s true origins. Following DNA tests it has found to be human bone….Dr Rob Ogden, of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, said: ‘We had to stitch it together. We had several fragments that we put into one big sequence and then we matched that against the database and we found human DNA. So it wasn’t too surprising but it was obviously slightly disappointing that you hadn’t discovered something brand new. Human was what we were expecting and human is what we got.’
Primatologist Ian Redmond said: ‘From what we know of accounts of Yetis, I would have expected a more robust and longer finger and possibly with some hair on the back. If one had just found it without the story attached to it, I think you would think it was a human finger.'”
Harry Trumbore’s drawing of a Yeti from The Field Guide of Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide
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.
my moneys on human
I’m sure I don’t have to tell long-time students of Yeti lore how exciting this discovery is. I’ve often fantasized about rooting through the British Museum’s collection and finding this treasure. My prediction is that it will be determined to be from a serow, which Hillary found the “Yeti” skull cap came from. Tomorrow will be interesting- hopefully the DNA results will be definitive.
Inconclusive is the safer bet.
It’s interesting that this comes out shortly before the rumored time of the Ketchum Bigfoot DNA analysis public findings (heard this will come about December 31st of this year). Erickson said that 2012 will be the year of the Sasquatch.
Also quite interesting that this also occurred after the lady on the “Finding Bigfoot” show keeps writing hints that something big is in store shortly, as if they made a breakthrough while filming the next season, or something else.
And let’s not forget that, unlike the mysterious Ketchum project, this DNA test will be done and finished shortly for a noonish press conference. This is most likely due to the fact that Ketchum is not only seeking publicity for her results, but struggling for scientific recognition from colleagues in her field (i.e. with the journal article she wrote and is still being peer reviewed, as far as I’ve read).
Let’s get the popcorn, folks; tomorrow may be one of the most important zoological discoveries ever made. Or perhaps a big time media flop. Either way, the Pangboche hand mystery will finally be resolved.
Praise God! 🙂
I too say inconclusive…per usual.
It won’t be yeti, since there is no confirmed dead yeti to compare it to. Best case scenario would be “unknown primate”.
Hold on a second! You ask, “Will the results come back…” and then you list “(6) Yeti” as one of the possible results.
Given there there is no known sample currently in existence which the scientific community acknowledges as having come from a Yeti, there is no way for this finger’s DNA to be matched and proclaimed as a Yeti sample.
This problem has, of course, been an issue with past hair samples purported to have come from cryptids, so I’m surprised you didn’t take that into account.
Guy Edwards writes:”Link to BBC Radio Broadcast of the Pangboche Yeti DNA test results. The results will air at 3am PST (11am BBC time) fb.me/1o06I00mv
Facebook • 12/27/11 1:36 AM”
Thank you Guy, for your extensions and updates. But so readers in America won’t be too frustrated, let me leave a message here: we may not be able to hear the program live in the USA. Unfortunately, I got this kind of BBC 4 Radio message at the end of my online mobile cellphone goose chase: BBC Radio does not currently support the broadcast [online of these programs] outside the United Kingdom.
Oh well, as expected.
It’s come back as human. Oh well, at least they managed to get a firm answer.
I’m listening to the last 10 minutes of the show (didn’t stumble across Lorens post until 11:15 UK time), The DNA is reporting that the finger is definitely a human finger. Unfortunately the mystery is now solved and the finger will be most likely returned to the monastery from which it was originally obtained.
I just heard the live radio broadcast… they claimed it was human from the continent of asia. 🙁
Dang you evil monkey! I was trying to be the first to post the news, took me 10 minutes to get that damn captcha image for registering a new cryptomundo.com account. 🙁
By the way Loren, I was able to listen to the broadcast from the U.S. without a problem.
They say it’s a human from the asian continent.
Interesting results, of course, but not surprising.
In 1959, Osman Hill said the hand looked human-like, but with flat metacarpals that he compared to Neandertal.
I wonder if the results are going to be formally wriiten up, or is it a lab tech giving the results to a radio interviewer alone?
Thanks for the update from the UK.
They didn’t CLAIM it was human, they PROVED it was human. They also believe the probability is that it’s of Chinese origin, though that requires a different analysis.
More listeners report what they’ve heard on the BBC radio:
Stuart Paterson
Proven as human.
Probably a revered dead lama from the past couple of centuries. And so the search goes on.
11 minutes ago ·
Gordon Rutter
Yep human, the geneticist seemed genuinely interested in the topic and he’s based in Edinburgh – perhaps a future talk for the Edinburgh Fortean Society!
3 minutes ago ·
Added from Stuart Paterson
They didn’t CLAIM it was human, they PROVED it was human. They also believe the probability is that it’s of Chinese origin, though that requires a different analysis.
My guess is that it will be proclaimed human no matter what the actual results are.
Whoops. I should have read the rest of the thread before posting.
I know that the human DNA result will be accepted as the failsafe, definitive answer to this sample, but I have reservations. Assuming the fingerbone was the original and it is from a yeti then I think it quite possible its DNA characteristics could be humanlike which ties in with leaked results coming in about bigfoot samples are being looked at right now. Also over a long period , bigfoot samples have been reported as having human DNA.
Clearly even though efforts were made to isolate an uncontaminated sample from the fingerbone it was not certain it was done or possible. It is not surprising that samples of this nature are often contaminated because of the habit of so many sample handlers to lovingly caress and fondle their samples rubbing in their human DNA grease!
But again making an assumption, that the sample was not contaminated and a human DNA results obtained one must question the depth of the analysis and interpretation. In the broadcast the lab scientist, who seemed generally unenthusiastic, did mention that DNA science is in its infancy in ascribing function based on Dna. This might not reveal the effect of recent re-discovered scientific theories stemming from lamarkianism that experience can shape an organisms characteristics directly other than by Darwinian evolution. This does raise the possibility that bigfoot is a human with altered characteristics not based on changes in hard wired DNA. Out of this we might be looking at what is in effect a feral human.
I know this is a tall order and will certainly give Occam an outing but is something to be considered!
What informs my outlook is that I am fairly sure that relic hominds exist so there must be physical evidence! I am also dubious about interpretation of DNA evidence, illustrated by the fact that neanderthal DNA according to most scientists was not until recently in the human genome now it is and another one to boot, ie Denesova!
I do think there is something very special about bigfoot, the yeti etc and it mighty yet break all the rules. It would be nice and simpler if it does turn out to be something completely different but that seems unlikely at present.
What is also interesting about this panboche sample is that it has turned up in a museum where it has long gathered dust a scenario often proposed by cryptozoologists. In the huntarian museum there are 3500 samples (including possible bigfoot scat and hair). In other museums artifacts run into millions,(like the Ontario museum 3,000,000 plus).
I was hoping it was the hand of a rather large Assam macaque, but Human does make more sense. However just the size alone of the mummified hand precluded a Yeti in mind.
Bummer
I may be alone in my take but to me the results of the test concluding the sample is human only raise more questions. For example, the skin that was attached to the hand was described as blackened but there is no mention of any hair being attached. I find it odd that there would be no hair attached to a Yeti hand which does lend credence to it being a human hand. However has a “hand” anatomy expert every analyzed the hand itself to check for abnormalities similar to how Dr. Meldrum analyzed casts of tracks/footprints and determined the midtarsal break? Also, what about the thumb on the hand, has anyone analyzed it to see if it was human-like? I also worry that with the age of this thing and all the handling it could have been contaminated with human DNA as others have suggested. Just way too many questions to write off as human – case closed for me.
One logical explanation is that it probably is a sacred hand of a formerly well-known monk whose story was lost to the ages and then a Yeti tale attached to the relic.
That seems most likely Loren. Still, it IS exciting news. There is an air of tension about things…….hopefully 2012 wll be a year of enlightenment.
I agree that Loren’s possible explanation is not only logical, but if I was a betting man, the one I would place my money. However, after watching the old video footage provided here, specifically the black and white view of the hand, there does appear to be hairs protruding from some of the skin that was (at least back then) still attached which looked more animalistic than human hair (IMO). So again, this seems to still be unsolved in my view and at the very least, certainly not a slam dunk that it is simply a normal human hand or finger bone.
Assuming an omniscient authority existed to give a final ruling, I would bet a large amount of money on Loren’s interpretation being the correct one.
This object, while important in the culture and sociology of cryptozoology, is no longer important in the hard science of new species identification. The right kind of investigation has been done, the origin of the specimen confirmed, and, in this sense, the investigation has been a success, just as the identification of the ri as a known mammal was a success. What evidence to exclude is very important in narrowing down the avenues of future study. The Yeti may exist, this object just didn’t prove it. So we move on to other possible evidence.
I am not surprised that the results confirmed the bone to be of “human origin”, however, I will always be very intrigued by the myth of the Yeti. This most recent news will not in any way convince me 100% that the Yeti does not exist. I truly hope that the search for any further evidence of this elusive creature will always continue.
Even with researchers taking a very serious look at any form of evidence that has been submitted, you will always have to deal with people who will do anything they possibly can to make a joke out of the entire legend of this creature. I am speaking of the Hillary-Perkins expedition in 1960. This expedition had only one goal in mind and that was to totally discredit all evidence of the creature’s existence!
Someday, maybe there will be some concrete evidence to support this legend!
Ahh…
Monky hand, not Monkey hand!!!
This finger bone has been examined several times by scientists and most results were only probably human. One would think it easy to have been fairly positive in the event of it being human? The anatomist who recently looked at the bone thought it was ‘very likely human’. Given the importance of this sample should not a proper examination of the bone have been made?
One would like to have known if the DNA result of human DNA included both mitochondrial and nuclear Dna and the extent of their correlation with the genbank samples. In view of the stated good correlation it is surprising that Dr Ogden could not be more specific about the ‘Race’ of the DNA donor.
This does leave matters open in that it is now being suggested bigfoot is close to human or actually human and it would be probable the yeti is similar thus a human result for the sample may be correct for the yeti if more of the DNA detail was known, along with a wider view of possibilities. I note that Dr Ogden was expecting human Dna before he did the analysis and that is really the default position in these matters, meaning it is difficult for a lab to find anything else.
There is another possibility that the DNA was irretrievably contaminated with human DNA. There is a clue to this as Matthew Hill suggested that a getting the analysis done would destroy the bone but he got special permission to take ‘a sliver’ from the inside of the bone and this produced the human DNA result. This may suggest the sliver sample was inadequate.
While I think it a possibility, I don’t see a ‘logical’ case for assuming the bone was part of the remains of a revered monk. The ‘yeti’ skull that was kept with the bone was said to have been given to the village as a form of compensation and had been punted disrespectfully along the road to the village. I expect there is a story of how the hand got to the village but I am unaware of it.
Looks like in recent years the value of the artifact to the village has lapsed from cultural to commercial and maybe the story will too.
There is evidence of hairyness in China… Su Kong Tai Djin
So it’s coal in the stockings for the ‘true believers’ this year… followed perhaps by ashes and cinders a week later, if rumours are correct.
You’ve all been very naughty, one can conclude.
I shall have to send Dr. Redmond a photograph of my date for New Year’s Eve’s knuckles. We’ll crack this yet.
Not at all surprised. Personally, I always gave the Yeti a 0% chance of existing. It’s the least believeable cryptid from where I’m standing. Most of the sightings, what few there are can be contributed to bears, rock formations and lack of oxygen in the Himalayas, while the footprints are also probably bear.
Since the full history of the finger can’t be documented it’s possible–maybe even likely–it’s not from a Yeti or was contaminated. But suppose it was from a Yeti and wasn’t contaminated, then what? That would mean the Yeti/Sasquatch/Bigfoot/Swamp Monster are human.
There are examples from all over the world of extremely hirsute people. The condition is called hypertrichosis. It’s rare but is genetic and can be passed on from parent to child.
Over the tens of thousands of years homo sapiens has been around what do you suppose happened to individuals born that way? Human nature being what it is they likely were outcast, if they were allowed to survive at all. Given it’s genetic, although it’s rare in the general population, it could result in its own self-sustaining population. Indeed several populations could have arisen separately in different parts of the world.
As isolationed populations they would have had their own evolutionary path and may have developed traits to better survive in the places they’ve been seen, which seem to be the colder places on the planet. So maybe reports of increased size and body mass compared to normal humans makes sense.
Makes sense to me. What do you think?
This in essence proves absolutely nothing. So for everyone out there who is dissapointed or who is shaking their heads saying that they knew it was going to be human. This doesn’t prove much of anything to those that have been following all recent updates on current bigfoot news. According to the most recent reports commenting on both the Smeja sample and the Ketchum samples, the DNA is coming back homo sapien on the female side. At least for the first 3 of Ketchums samples. This would account for the scientists conclusions in Britain. Upon first inspection for decades now, viable bigfoot dna evidence has been dismissed as human when the dna first comes back homo sapien. They then believe that its simply a modern human and they go on with their buisness. Rarely, if ever, until now, has nuclear dna been run on the samples. With Ketchum, however, nuclear tests have been run, and on smejas sample. And the results were far from human. And this is just from the little info that has been leaked. So the yeti hand could very well be from a yeti and it test human on the mitochondrial side. That is exactly what the Ketchum study is saying. I can almost guarantee that nuclear dna was not run on the yeti finger. Therefore, youve already got a biased scientist who is looking for it to be human, and the mtdna comes back human, and no further research is done.
Now it very well could be just a human hand. People have said that it was very small to be a supposed yeti hand. So who knows. One scientist examined it when it first came back though and he said it wasnt human. Another examined it around the same time and said that it looked human but had some neanderthal characteristics. So its really hard to say what it is. They would have to do nuclear dna to figure that out and thats not gonna happen in less erickson buys it. The world doesnt want to believe in this animal, at least the government doesnt want us to believe in it, and therefore its going to take a dead body to confirm it.
As idiotic as it sounds even when hair, blood, saliva, bone, feces, and even flesh is found, people still dont care. If this was any other animal science would be spending millions in research and would have already acknowledged the animal. But the gov knows for certain that if this animal is proven than that means a huge hit on the timber industry not to mention make alot of scientists embarrassed and alot of people who live in the woods scared. Ketchum should change things but it wouldnt surprise me if the gov does step in and dumb things down so much that the study is dismissed. Take for instance the ivory billed woodpecker. The gov closed down a huge area and spent millions when one person took a blurred photo of an ivory billed somewhere down south. this bird was thought to go extinct, so all kinds of scientists converged based on this one pic and eye witness testimony. Yet when you have warehouses full of evidence in the physical form, thousands of pics and videos, footprints galore, and eyewitnesses out the ying yang, not one penny of scientific evidence is spent that the public knows about. Its ludicrous. Why wont scientists take a look at this. Thats a bigger mystery than the whole question of whether their is a bigfoot or not? Its ludicrous. and INfuriating.
The comparable dimensions of the “yeti” finger to human led me to doubt its yeti origin.
filangies, dancing filangies!
how can that “look” anything?
what does the DNA say?
An early example of the thievery and dishonesty that surrounds Bigfoot/Yeti “hunters/researchers,” and this involving an old beloved moral icon – Jimmy Stewart. Who do Euro-descendants think they are in relation to the world, or monks? The arrogance of this Yeti/Sasquatch legacy is embarrassing. The sample not tested/found until just recently, had they only asked permission. Certainly by now they would have obtained it. I am surprised so few seem to notice or be bothered by how the sample was obtained or where it remained forgotten. That might explain why a whole BF community would put up with MM allowing so many to believe he was a lawyer for a decade, or any of the many shenanigans I ave come across in my short attempt to find an altruistic BFer….there are a few, but as poor and as trounced as me…
Shameful really, in every way. Perhaps if everyone gets so excited about this they might try a formal request to NA Tribes to test some of the skeletons in the basement of the Smithsonian. Am I being a moral prude? Look at how the current groups and individuals behave and I don’t think so. I think the moral lines of theft and dishonesty should be our minimum. How does one boycott such information? Not possible, but the monks, and many others won’;t forget.
In response to “Zilla’s” post above: how can you so summarily discount all the eyewitnesses to the Yeti, including the Sherpas who reside there? I presume you watched the video where they were provided detailed drawings of bears, gorillas, and prehistoric man and without fail always pointed at the more human figure. You are claiming these Sherpas who live there are so stupid they cannot tell a rock formation or a bear from a Yeti? I find this to be a very condescending view of these people, not to mention the climbers who have sited these creatures. Would they also be such poor observers to confuse a bear for a Yeti, when bears normally traverse with four legs not two???
Also, rock formations do not move. Most sitings by climbers report moving figures rather than stationary ones. Not to mention the piercing calls that have been reported? How do bears and rock formations explain those?? I think the Yeti is as probable as the Skunk Ape or the Sasquatch, but I do believe they may be lower in numbers and that is due to the conditions they survive in.
Me own suspicion why Slick’s family kept quiet over the years, Loren, was because it was acquired under the most dubious of circumstances.
And since finger bones all round the world are considered tantamount to powerful magic wands in the hands of the right/wrong shamanic operator, then this guy Slick must’ve been mighty persuasive to get them to part with what some Tibetans would view as a ‘vajra thunderbolt’ extracted from a kind of god.
Saying that I’m most struck by the superficiality of the BBC’s investigation of the DNA.
They simply pronounce it human, not even bothering to find out if it’s, say, Tibetan, Chinese, European, or even Denisovan.
As is usually the case with such programmes, one’s always left with the impression they didn’t want to look too deeply into it in case they found something Dawky and the boys might pull them up over.
Although I am dissapointed with the results (I wished we had proof), I’m glad this Pangboche hand mystery is solved. Now we can move on to other things in the quest for the Yeti.
I have no reason to doubt the results. There have been occasions in Cryptozoological research where a “Case Closed” situation occurred which sounded, to say the least fishy. On the MonsterQuest episode about Cryptid bears the skull of the original McFarlane’s bear (not to be confused with the bear character on the Cleveland Brown show, produced and voiced often by Seth McFarlane) was given to a researcher to examine, and it turned out to be a normal Brown Bear skull, not even a big one, totally at odds with the original writings of the discoverer. Almost as if the skull had been accidentally switched around in the archives where it was kept (not an impossibility). Perhaps McFarlane’s bear skull was a victim of a mishap in records and is still gathering dust at a university somewhere.
But this DNA result, until someone comes forwards with evidence that undermines it, should be accepted.
Don’t you people get it? Yeti’s, Sasquatch, etc. ARE human. At worst they’re a subspeciies without enough genetic variation for their DNA to be distinguished from ours–at least with the test that was run.
It’s so simple. If evidence is to be believed they walk upright with human-like feet (as in ‘not ape-like’). Most close encounter reports from those that keep their wits usually state the face is not ape-like. Give one an all-over body wax and with their oft reported 7-foot stature he could hide in plain sight as a basketball player.
DAVEINCAPS “Greater faith I have not seen”. Your categorical statement that “Yetis ARE human” while unscientific (and certainly unproven) is REFRESHING. One knows where you stand.
But the only conclusion we can draw from descriptions of the Yeti is that it is “human-like” in some ways.
It may be MORE than human (as in that Peter Cushing/Forrest Tucker movie where Forrest is playing Tom Slick—more or less.
Okay…the Yeti may be more than human…it may also be less.
OR it may be simply “other”.
One cannot conclude from a superficial physical resemblance that the DNA of a Yeti will be the same as that of a human…and it certainly should NOT be the same as, say, homo sapiens (“modern human).
I am afraid we must conclude that this hand did not, after all, belong to the Yeti.
The results point to two equally valid conclusions–the hand was from a human or the hand was from a Yeti and Yetis are human.
Everyone seems willing to accept the former but not the latter. Why?
True, the non-apelike characteristics of these creatures are not proof they are human or a human subspecies but it is certainly suggestive of that. And dismissing that possibility out of hand as you do is just as silly as… well my insistence that they are human.
But I have no doubt what when (if?) a creature is captured or recovered and decisive tests can be performed on it that I will be proven right.
I wish there was an edit feature for these postings. My typos keep sneaking in.
I didn’t mean any disrespect to anyone, William. But you’re right: my post was a little mean spirited and vague, looking back on it. Let me explain. At heart, I am a skeptic. I do believe in a number of cryptids, with Bigfoot leading the way. But these cryptids tend to have a smoking gun of sorts: proof I just can’t argue with and therefore must believe. Bigfoot has the Patterson film. There is little to say about that thing other than I highly doubt it’s a hoax. The Yeti has no such proof. It is mostly reliant on eyewitness testimony. Many sightings are compelling, but they are just that: sightings. I have seen exactly one Yeti photo in a book I once read, and it was a rock formation (hence my comment.) I don’t doubt the Sherpas, but I have nothing but their word to go on. There are no photos, videos or DNA samples to look at and give opinion on. As it is, Yeti sightings are rare, and bears can account for many of them, as can the footprints. The Shipton prints are interesting, but not conclusive for me to believe in the creature. I’m just naturally skeptical towards cryptids with nothing but sightings to study. I could be wrong, there is no doubt. It’s just how I feel about the Yeti at this time. If I see something to prove me wrong, I’ll recant everything I said here. It’s just my current feelings. And yes, I have seen that video, and it is interesting indeed, and is one of the things that does bring me back to the Yeti every so often. But again, it’s not conclusive. You can’t just say there is a new species based on that. I hope this answers your post and again, I meant no disrespect to anyone.