Review: Dr. Jeff Meldrum Presents at Utah Valley University

The room was overflowing with people sitting in the aisles as students, professors and community members gathered to listen to Jeff Meldrum discuss the possibilities of Sasquatch being more than a myth. The lecture sponsored by the Humanities department was held Friday, Nov. 11, and received much curiosity on campus.

“There is the traditional legend of Sasquatch, but is there evidence behind the lore?” Meldrum said as he began his presentation. Meldrum is a physical anthropologist and currently teaches at Idaho State University. He dedicated a large portion of his life to studying the history, folklore and evidences surrounding “big foot.” Along with traveling to Russia and parts of China, Meldrum has tracked the Sasquatch figure around the U.S. as well.

Meldrum walked the audience through the history of different interpretations of Sasquatch, or “the wild man,” beginning with Enkidu and Gilgamesh and going into the myth of Grendel and Beowulf. He laughed about the different movies and depictions of the Sasquatch figure.

Meldrum also discussed the ancestry and evolution of monkeys and how that potentially ties in with Sasquatch by showing several different slides.

“There have been several different humanoid species at a time in history,” Meldrum said. “There is evidence that Neanderthals coexisted with the human species, and there have been six different humanoid species in the last 20,000 years.”