John Kirk on Zana DNA Test Results
Posted by: John Kirk on November 1st, 2013
Well, we at the BCSCC were the first to say it and now Bryan Sykes confirms what we brought to you in the BCSCC Quarterly a couple of years ago. We stated our belief that Zana, the unknown hominid of Abkhazia was of possible Australoid descent and carried an article on the Africans who lived in Abkhazia in the 19th century.
It turns out that Bryan Sykes has identified sub-Saharan ancestors in the lineage of Khwit, Zana’s son and therefore in Zana herself.
Sykes’ findings are to be found here: Bigfoot Files: Zana DNA Test Results Are In
This paragraph is extremely telling: “And Sykes has raised the bold theoretical possibility that Zana could be a remnant of an earlier human migration out of Africa, perhaps tens of thousands, of years ago. If correct, Zana could be evidence of a hitherto unknown human ‘tribe’, dating from a distant time when the human species was still evolving and whose ancestors were forced into remote regions, like the Caucasus mountains, by later waves of modern humans coming out of Africa.”
This ‘tribe’ is ancient because Zana’s son Khwit has features that first the Russians and then Sykes have indicated are quite ancient. His skull actually contains an extra bone we do not have. Zana is African, but not modern African.
Once again, the BCSCC has beaten everyone to the punch and we did it without DNA. Simple due diligence, thoroughness and common sense were what we employed. This puts another nail in the coffin of those who think bipedal hairy hominids are pongids.
If Zana’s lineage was out of Africa many eons ago, then what is to say that the north American Sasquatch may not be. Only time and DNA will tell.
About John Kirk
One of the founders of the BCSCC, John Kirk has enjoyed a varied and exciting career path. Both a print and broadcast journalist, John Kirk has in recent years been at the forefront of much of the BCSCC’s expeditions, investigations and publishing. John has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of unknown aquatic cryptids around the world and is the author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (Key Porter Books, 1998).
In addition to his interest in freshwater cryptids, John has been keenly interested in investigating the possible existence of sasquatch and other bipedal hominids of the world, and in particular, the Yeren of China. John is also chairman of the Crypto Safari organization, which specializes in sending teams of investigators to remote parts of the world to search for animals as yet unidentified by science. John travelled with a Crypto Safari team to Cameroon and northern Republic of Congo to interview witnesses among the Baka pygmies and Bantu bushmen who have sighted a large unknown animal that bears more than a superficial resemblance to a dinosaur.
Since 1996, John Kirk has been editor and publisher of the BCSCC Quarterly which is the flagship publication of the BCSCC. In demand at conferences, seminars, lectures and on television and radio programs, John has spoken all over North America and has appeared in programs on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, TLC, Discovery, CBC, CTV and the BBC.
In his personal life John spends much time studying the histories of Scottish Clans and is himself the president of the Clan Kirk Society. John is also an avid soccer enthusiast and player.
I was expecting disappointment, some kind of blind alley. Instead, I come here and find the result of the tests if Zana is exciting news indeed! Zana may indeed be a human cryptid!
We don’t often get news as exciting as this at Cryptomundo, do we?
Shouldn’t it be straightforward to tell from Khwit’s mitochondrial DNA (inherited fully from his mother) how Zana relates to existing human mtDNA haplogroups, and therefore how she fits into the human mtDNA phylogenetic tree? This type of thing is done routinely, even by genetic genealogy companies like Family Tree DNA. If she’s from an archaic homo sapiens branch, Dr Sykes will know.
derek: This is a real question. Is the human mtDNA phyogenetic tree considered a settled matter? And if so, why?
paleolinguist responds:
February 29th, 2016 at 2:55 am
Zana, the end of a fairy tale.
It’s absolutely clear since several years: Zana wasn’t a neanderthal or any other non-sapiens hominid. And she wasn’t any kind of non-human wild woman. This is the result of the DNA testing of the skull of Zana’s son Khwit, found by Igor Bourtsev in Abkhazia, done in the US.
Hard to explain why Igor even today declares: The examination of the skull hasn’t finished and the question is open yet. Scientific nonsense. There were so many comments, publications and speculations about Zana over the years and now it came out: Just the early critical voices on Zana’s neanderthal origin were true. They underlined already 30 years ago Zana’s negroid physical characteristics: black skin, woolly hair, flat nose and thick lips. Eyewitnesses never described Almasty with thick, negroid lips.
And there is a another explanation for Zana’s african genes: Arab traders sold african slaves on the Abkhazian coast in the middle ages. Some of these slaves succeeded to flee into the forests and survived there in the semi-subtropical jungle as THE BLACK FOREST PEOPLE – so called by the native Abkhazians until in present time. In summation, from a scientific point of view, all Almasty believers, especially in Moscow, should learn not to ignore critical voices, based on historical facts and genetic proof as well.
Nevertheless, with the end of the fairy tale about the Almasty called Zana, streched over 40 years of investigations and speculations, the game should be open for a further critical check of other Russian Almasty findings and investigations. Comments are welcome.
A hairy woman of sub-Saharan descent taking swims in icy rivers. Far out, huh?