February 7, 2006

John Green: Sasquatch Closer to Ape Than Man?

This article was originally presented at the 2003 International Bigfoot Symposium by John Green. This is the 4th part of more to come. Posted with John Green’s written consent.

The first part is available on Cryptomundo here.
The second part is available on Cryptomundo here.
The third part is available on Cryptomundo here.

I call these big creatures sasquatch because that is the name for them where I come from, far older than “Bigfoot”, and not so suggestive that there is only one of them. But why do I call them animals? Not just because of what I have learned about them in the last 46 years, but more because of what scientists have learned during that period about human origins.

Fossil finds have established that more than a million years ago our forbears had already lost the primate’s best natural weapons, fighting teeth. And for evolution to reduce their dental armament until it became no better than our own must have required a similar previous period when those small, slow bipeds had weapons in their hands.

That gives some idea of the almost unimaginable amount of time that human ancestors spent relying more and more on mental adaptions, mastering the use of weapons and tools, precise communication and group co-ordination, in order to survive on the dangerous African plains and become what we are today.

The idea that creatures, which emerged from that time period, equipped with magnificent physical adaptions also acquired mental abilities similar or superior to our own may have romantic appeal but it is evolutionary nonsense. 

But they walk upright like us, so they must be our close relatives. Something as unusual as upright bipedalism couldn’t have evolved twice. That is a compelling common-sense argument, but science has recently blown a huge hole in it.

Among the few higher primates known to exist there are two very unusual methods of locomotion, one is upright bipedalism, the other is knuckle walking. We are the only recognized bipeds, but there are two knuckle-walking groups, chimpanzees and gorillas.

Although chimpanzees are far more arboreal than gorillas their feet are very similar, and like gorillas they have special pads for walking on the backs of their fingers.

Common sense says that such odd adaptions must have a common origin, so chimps and gorillas must be each other’s closest relatives. Immune reactions and DNA analysis, however, both say that the chimpanzee’s nearest relative is us.

Knuckle walking, therefore, must have evolved after the gorilla’s ancestors started their own branch of the family tree, and chimpanzees and gorillas must have evolved it separately.

I am not submitting that as proof that humans and sasquatch evolved upright bipedalism separately, but it does prove that it could have happened, and considering that our DNA is almost identical to that of chimpanzees and bonobos, the chance that we are even more closely related to sasquatch seems to me to be a very slim one.

To be continued tomorrow…

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