Now, when what are your putting? I got a screen going on here
something just because my dog. Something killed your dog? My dog. We're
flying through the or over the trade. I don't know how it did it,
okay, damn, And I'm really confused. All as I saw was
my dog coming over the fence, and they did when you hit the girl.
I didn't see any car and all I saw was my dog coming over
the fence. Damn. Why what are you're putting? We got someone or
something crawling around out here? Do you see what it was? Or was
it was? Standing up? I'm out here looking through the window now and
I don't see anything. I don't want to go outside. Jesus point you
be hello. Get the body out here on the outs thought of a bit
about six foot nine. I don't know. Easy out there, yep,
I'm looking right out. Oh. I decided to share some articles that I
read recently that I feel may help shed some light on the potential origins of
Sasquatch and perhaps even explain how they may have traveled to North America based on
what we know about our known ancestors. These articles are a bit scientific and
are certainly a departure from the usual encounter stories I read during story time,
but I know that the majority of you that listen to this show are true
seekers of knowledge. I hope you enjoyed this dive into the origins of our
ancestors and how we can draw certain parallels between our bushy family tree and what
thousands have claimed to encounter right here in North America. It should be noted
before I read this first article written by Bruce Hardy, that I do not
agree with him or his opinions on doctor Krantz or his assertion that the cripple
footprints are a hoax. I share this article with you only in the hopes
that it generate thought provoking conversation about Sasquatch research and what we can learn from
those who came before us. I believe that it is important to engage in
conversation with those that disagree with us, Otherwise we learn very little. If
you have opinions about this or any of the articles in this episode, my
email address is Brian at Paranormal World Productions dot com. You can find links
to all the articles in this episode by visiting the Sasquatch Odyssey blog on our
website. Now, let's get into this first article, What Bigfoot Teaches Us
About Public Mistrust of Science. In the late nineteen sixties, Bigfoot seemed to
be trapesing all over the Pacific Northwest reports of footprints from an eight foot tall
bipedal primate. It came in from Washington to northern California. Chasing these footprints
and the creature who made them were a group of amateur naturalists, journalists,
and a few credential physical anthropologists. Science historian Brian Regal has called this group
the Monster Hunters. In late nineteen sixty nine, the Monster Hunters descended on
a town in northern Washington in bigfoot circles. This would become known as the
boss Burg Incident. The rivalry among the monster hunters was intense. Everyone wanted
to be the first to find or even capture a big foot, but they
also didn't want to fall for a hoax. When the desks finally settled on
the small town of Bossburg, we would see the pitfalls of combining science,
ego and arrogance, and how this cocktail promote pseudoscience and public mistrust of science.
After some early accounts in sidings, the twentieth century big Foot Frenzy erupted
when a set of footprints were found on the construction site managed by Ray Wallace
near Bluff Creek, California, in nineteen fifty eight. The prints looked human,
but were larger and suggested a stride length of between four and ten feet.
The creature was purported to be between eight and ten feet tall, with
footprints that could be eighteen inches long and eight inches wide. Over the course
of several weeks, more footprints surface near Bluff Creek. The construction crew attributed
them to a creature they called Bigfoot. Once the media picked up the story,
the search was on for North America's abominable snowman. In nineteen sixty seven,
two monster hunters, Roger Patter and Bob Gimlin, set out on horseback
to film Bigfoot. They were once again near Bluff Creek on October twentieth.
They recorded about a minute of grainy, blurry footage. To this day,
the Paterson Gimlin film is considered by many to be the best evidence of Bigfoot's
existence. Also known as Sasquatch, Bigfoot sightings have occurred in every US state
except to Wayi, and around the world. Other clandestine bipeds supposedly roam,
among others, the Yeddy climbs, the Himalayas, the Almas prowls Russia,
and the Yawie lurks in Australia. According to some, our planet is overrun
with towering primates. When tracks were found in northern Washington a few years after
the Patterson Gimlin film, everyone came running. A veritable circus of monster hunters
and media arrived at the small town of Bossburg. But I would just focus
on three rented Dahinden, Grovercrantz and Ivan Marks. The irascible Swiss Canadian Dahinden
was an amateur naturalist who had a reputation in the bigfoot community as a serious
investigator who was suspicious of most people involved in bigfoot research. A physical anthropologist
at Washington State University, Krantz saw himself as bringing real scientific training and acumen
to the search for this anomalous primate. Marks, a tracker, trapper,
and cougar breeder, had been involved in bigfoot investigations since the early nineteen sixties.
In November nineteen sixty nine, following up on local rumors, Marks located
footprints near the city dump and alerted fellow monster hunters that he had found Bigfoot.
Danndon joined Marks a few weeks later, and the two went searching for
more tracks. On December thirteenth, they checked an area where they had left
meat out as bait. Marks got out of the car, but returned almost
immediately having found footprints in the snow. This trackway comprised one eighty nine prints.
When Krantz finally arrived, most of the tracks had melted or been trampled
on, but a few were preserved under cardboard and newspaper. These would convince
Krantz that Bigfoot was real. The left foot, like most alleged bigfootprints,
was about seventeen inches long and seven inches wide. The right foot, however,
as curved toes and bulges on the side. As a physical anthropologist trained
in anatomy, Krantz believed that the right prints of normality was due to a
traumatic injury which led to a deformity in the foot and a severe let.
He said, if someone faked these footprints with all the subtle hints of anatomy
design, he had to be a real genius, an expert at anatomy,
very inventive, an original thinker. He had to outclass me in those areas,
and I don't think anyone outclasses me in those areas, at least not
since Leonardo da Vinci, So I say such a person as impossible. Therefore
the tracks are real. These became known as the Crippled Foot Tracks. Unlike
Krantz, d Hendon had seen the entire trackway. It started at a river,
crossed a railway road, and fenced several times, and ended back at
the same river. It was an odd path. Mars also conveniently found bigfoot
evidence at will. Dahnden said of Marx, it seemed that every time he
called, Marks had found something a handprint here, a footprint there, always
something to keep the trail warm. A few weeks later, Marks claimed to
have filmed the creature. When others viewed the video, some thought it was
obviously faked. Evidence surface that Marx had recently bought scraps of foreign and neighboring
town they hand in strongly suspected that Marks also hoax the Cripple Foot tracks,
but Krantz refuse to accept that they were not real. What are the chances
that innate foot tall bipedal primate exists in North America? From an ecological perspective
slant. Large bodied animals eat a lot and then produce mounds of poop.
Surely hikers and naturalists would have encountered big foot droppings, whereover no one has
ever found bones, road kill, or other remains from a dead big foot.
Science purports to be a systematic way of gaining reliable knowledge about the world
around us. Science's authority comes from the fact that it relies on evidence,
which can be checked by others to ensure reliability. Done properly, science is
self correcting. However, the scientific process can break down if individual scientists see
themselves rather than the evidence, as the source of authority, then the evidence
becomes secondary or worse, unimportant. In the cripple foot case, Krantz's estimation
of his own intelligence, at least on par with that of da Vinci,
blinded him to the evidence that was before him. He believed that his knowledge
was so specialized in detailed that it was beyond the capacity of others to understand.
He was more like a medieval priest than a scientist. Day himself,
not a credentialed expert, was better able to recognize the evidence for what it
was. The amateur dahanden acted more scientifically than the PhD holding scientist Krantz.
The Bossberg incident serves as a warning against hubris amongst scientists. When the scientist
becomes more important than the subject being studied or the evidence being gathered, they
are no longer practicing science or producing reliable and useful knowledge, and scientific or
academic hubris is not limited to claiming genius level intelligence. He can also manifest
an opaque language. In later years, Krantz would say that he had two
secret tests that could determine whether a footprint was real he never revealed. Then
ultimately, not even the other monster hunters trusted him. When scientists behave as
Krantz did, as if they possess secret knowledge that is somehow unobtainable or in
comprehensible to those without specialized training, they open the door to public mistrust.
The public should have trust in science. It is the most efficiently reliable way
to learn about the world around us. But let Bigfoot be a reminder that
scientists are not more important than the quality and accessibility of their science. This
next article, written by Jackie Woodstock, raises the age old question that many
of us have asked ourselves for most of our lives. There are plenty of
people who have seen these elusive creatures, and therefore they have their answer,
But for some of us, the answer may not be as clear. Bigfoot
is it real or a figment of the imagination. For decades, stories of
a bipedal apelike creature have been circling the globe, and the Adirondacks has no
exception. Native Americans have talked about sasquatch for hundreds of years. Often considered
a West Coast phenomenon, sightings have also appeared all over the Adirondacks, from
Saranac Lake in the north to famous sightings in Whitehall. This creature has many
names depending on the geographical location of the sighting, but the most common names
for this creature in North America are Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yetie, and Skunkcate.
The one commonality of sidings, despite the location on the globe, is
the fact that the sightings occurred in remote areas with a large amount of vegetation
and that are not densely populated by humans. The sidings all describe Bigfoot as
very tall, often described as six to fifteen feet tall, covered in hair
and bearing an apelike facial appearance at a nasty stanch, hence the name skunkate.
They are said to knock on trees as a warning, and even throw
small stones at humans who ventured too close. The accounts of vocalizations vary from
a warlike sound to varying pitch groans. Witnesses observed these so called humanoids crossing
roads at night, striding furtively through forest and mountain terrain. Some people have
not actually seen Bigfoot in person, but claimed to have cast of giant sized
footprints and small tufts of hair they believe was left by this animal. Many
people are leary to share their sightings of this creature out of fear of looking
crazy or being questioned about their judgment and constant badgering, but they may have
misidentified the sighting and actually saw a known creature, such as a black bear.
As a nature lover and resident of the Adirondacks for nearly five decades,
I have not seen a creature that fits the description of those claiming to have
spotted this wild man. There are, however, residents here in the mountains
that do claim to have seen this creature, and festivals were born in celebration
of the elusive Bigfoot when such festival occurs in the town of Whitehall, where
visitors are afforded the opportunity to share their sightings with others who have had similar
experiences. Native Americans are no stranger to Bigfoot. On the Chilla River Indian
Reservation, a set of giant pictographs tells a two thousand year old story,
the creation tale of the Yoka people and the gatekeeper of their spiritual world,
a figure known as Hairyman. They believe when you see a Bigfoot, it's
not a good sign. It means he's coming to take somebody who's going to
pass over to the other side. There's even a Hairyman song that women sing
during a funeral to make sure he does take that soul over. The Yokut
are not the only tribe who speak of the Hairyman. There are stories of
Bigfoot like creatures in the oral tradition of dozens of North American tribes under an
array of names, Sasquatch and Scuokum among them, each giving different qualities to
the creature. For the Iraq and caruc Bigfoot is just another member of the
forest. The Miwok of the Yosemite area Bigfoot is a boogeyman snatching children from
their tribe and eating them. There's even a place in the Stanislaus National Forest,
Pinnacle Point Cave, where the tribe believes the Bigfoot consumed its victims.
The indigenous peoples of coastal British Columbia share a similar legend of a cannibal name
Deson, the wild Woman of the Woods, who was often depicted on totem
Pole's whistling, which is mentioned often in Bigfoot accounts. Tribal members warn if
you hear whistling at night, don't go outside, because it is a Bigfoot
trying to lure you out. Rachel Plumber was a white woman captured by a
Commanche raiding party in Texas in eighteen thirty six. Two years later, she
was free and published an account of her time as a Comanche prisoner across the
Southwest. Included was a detailed rundown of the animals of the prairie is shown
to her by the Commanchee, including prairie dogs, mountain sheep, elk,
wolves, bears, and finally the man tiger. The Indians say they have
found several of them in the mountains. They describe them as being of the
feature and make of a man. They are said to walk erect and are
eight or nine feet high. Whether one believes in the legend of Bigfoot or
not, one must admit that if Bigfoot exists, the Adirondacks are an ideal
location for the species. The Adirondacks is home to diverse wildlife in a large
area of dense wilderness where animals can evade humans. But the eighteen thousand new
species of plants and animals being discovered every year, surely it's possible that an
animal species we are not familiar with exists and has no will to have humans
interfere with their lives. Seth Breedlove, a well known filmmaker, set out
on a journey in the Adirondacks in search of evidence that the creature called Bigfoot
is in fact a living animal. This series on the Trail of Bigfoot contains
his findings. One of my favorite fictional movies about Bigfoot, Harry and the
Henderson's, is a heartfelt movie about a family who accidentally hits a Bigfoot with
their car and their comical interactions when they bring it home. If you haven't
seen it yet, it's worth the time to check it out. This next
article, written by cobstre at The forty End, is entitled last Word on
the Yaui. Last month, my crypto colleague Tony Healey and I launched our
fourth book, The Yowie File, Encounters with Australian Ape Man. It's a
companion volume to The Yawi published by Anomalous Books in two thousand and six,
with many more historical cases and a stack of additional modern air reports. It
is available in hard back, soft cover and evel versions on Amazon US and
Amazon Australia. The Alley File took around nine years to complete, but we're
very happy with how it turned out. In The Alley we devoted an entire
chapter to indigenous Yaoui lore, showing that many, if not most, Aboriginal
people from Cape York Peninsula ride down the east coast of Victoria, across to
South Australia, Western Australia and up to the Northern Territory strongly believe in the
existence of hair covered man like or apelike creatures. Their many cultures have different
terms for them dulagal Fu, Lagal, Newcuna, Jimbra, t Jingara,
Puddican and Jurawar, to name, but a few nowadays went to gusting them
with people outside their own language group. Indigenous people often employ the term hairyman.
Our files now contain considerably more Indigenous lord than they did back in two
thousand and six, and we have included much of that additional material in the
new book. Equally pleasing for us are the many additional colonial air cases we
managed to unearth. One of the big changes over the last few years has
been the availability of digital records. Trove, the online repository of Australian newspapers
and journals, is an amazing research tool and it's free. Plug in the
right search terms and you will find a plethora of cases. It's a vast
improvement on how things were back in the nineteen seventies and eighties, when I
spent hundreds of hours waiting through bound copies of smelly old newspapers in the State
library. Why is this older material important? Well, by detailing the long
history of hairyman sightings by non Aboriginal Australians from the early colonial era onwards,
we finally put paid to the notion that the phenomenon is simply the result of
fantasy prone Australian zepeg, their bigfoot hunting, American cousins. Indigenous hairy man
traditions certainly predate the European experience, and Tony and I have always assumed that
Indigenous lore and European traditions are describing the same phenomena. After all, many
Indigenous informants explicitly state that such as the case. But I do think we've
been looking at the Aboriginal lore from a European viewpoint and it deserves deeper research.
So after four books and over forty years of research, what is my
verdict on the alley. In the early nineteen seventies, I was convinced that
flesh and blood ape like creatures were tramping around undiscovered in the Australian bush.
I felt like a zoologist. But after a few years, like many others,
including Tony, I began to suspect there was something decidedly uncanny about the
crutters. Quite apart from their ability to avoid being shot dead run over by
trucks are clearly photographed. There was the inconvenient truth that very similar creatures have
been reported for centuries in many other parts of the world, all of them
apparently and vulnerable to gunfire and camera traps, and maddeningly elusive. So for
a time I was a para psychologist. After that, I favored for a
while the notion that the Yawi phenomenon was simply a sociological or psychological constrat,
an amalgam of myth, mass, hysteria, hoaxes, and misidentification of common
wildlife. That skeptical stands, however, was always difficult to sustain in view
of the huge body of compelling eyewitness testimony. Far from being seen only by
loan motorists in the dead hours of night, at least fifty percent of Yowie
encounters occur in broad daylight, and approximately one third involved more than a single
witness. In fact, some of the hundreds of informants I've interviewed over the
past four decades have described events involving not just one or two, but multiple
witnesses. I invite doubters to consider the billow Chee case or even the Nundery
case as good examples multiple people in broad daylight. I no longer think there
is a simple explanation. There is no doubt that people across Australia really do
encounter creatures They consistently describe as large, sometimes very large, bipetal hair covered
ape like men or man like apes. I don't, however, believe that
Yowe's are real in the same way that kangaroo or EMUs are real. Unlike
our normal fauna, they can't be trapped, poison, killed by four wheel
drives, are shot dead, they cannot be clearly photographed, and they don't
leave consistent tracks. That said, they are regularly encountered across the entire continent,
even on the edges of our major cities. So am I saying it's
all paranormal. I believe that yowie sightings are one part of our world spectrum
of weird experiences. The creatures certainly have a real physical presence, at least
some of the time. They kill animals, rip branches from trees, create
stick formations, purl rocks, exude nauseating odors, but when people armed with
guns or cameras set out in pursuit, they simply fade away. For decades,
the Yowie field has been trapped between two main schools of thought. On
one side, the flesh and blood crowd, who say the creatures must be
real, albeit extremely elusive, animals, and on the other the skeptics who
insist that the entire phenomenon is nothing but mass hysteria, hoaxes, and wishful
thinking. The flesh and blood crowd focus on parts of the phenomenon that align
with their view and exclude anything that's too weird. The skeptics simply ignore the
mountains of compelling eyewitness testimony, point to the scarcity of physical evidence, and
state that it's all nonsense. Neither has proven their case, and the sightings
continue, it must be time for some new thinking. I'm a big fan
of forty and author Jeron Clark's position on similar reports and other high strangists,
anomalies and unexplained. He puts it like this, The question really is this,
Is it possible to have the experience of encountering bizarre beasts and entities?
And the answer is yes. To respond affirmatively is only to acknowledge modestly the
obvious, which is, as folklorists Bill Ellis puts it, weird stuff happens.
We are in no way conceding anything about what all this weird stuff means.
We can grant that people see fairies are murfolk without for a moment believing
that fairies are mrfolk are real. We simply acknowledge that such sightings are an
experience it is possible to have, even though the actual dynamics of the experience
remain unknown. So far, science is currently constructive, therefore has little to
offer in the way of elucidation, and occultism has only obfuscation. The nature
of these experiences need not remain forever inexplicable, but the ever accelerating accumulation of
knowledge in all areas we may presume it will be possible sooner or later to
place these experiences in a rational perspective. Either is here too four unsuspected perceptual
anomalies, or as glimpses of an otherwise undetected larger reality. Whether the solution
comes from the micro or macro side of the existential ledger, it is sure
to teach us something new. Until then, these events should be regarded simply
as curiosities that represent some of human experiences more peculiar and unclassifiable aspects, and
about which it is difficult to say more. In other words, they should
not be seen as the foundation of a new science or a new religion,
and they ought not to threaten anyone who does not need to believe late twentieth
century science has accounted for all the interesting phenomena of mind and nature. I
remember trying to explain this position to good friend Bill Chalker, to which he
responded, krap, that's a cop out. I know, it's an explanation
that effectively avoids explanation, But right now, that's where the phenomenon leaves us.
Now. He's sightings are genuine experiences, currently unexplainable yet totally fascinating.
They are currently beyond our understanding, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep investigating
the phenomena. Perhaps in fifty years or maybe a hundred, it will all
make perfect sense. In the meantime, I feel privileged to have been able
to document this curious and puzzling part of the human experience. Stay tuned for
more Sasquatch Odyssey will be right back after these messages. This next section is
from an interview with Professor Chris Stringer. He is one of the leading experts
in human evolution. As Professor Stringer tells us, there's a paradigm shift underway
in our understanding of the past four million years of human evolution. Ours is
a story that includes combinations with other Homo species spread unevenly across today's population,
not a neat and linear evolutionary progression. Technological advances at a growing body of
archaeological evidence have allied experts in the study of human origins and prehistory to offer
an increasingly clear, though complex outline of the biohistorical process that produced today's human
population and cultures. For the most part, the public is presented with new
findings as interesting novel the items in the news and science coverage. The fore
picture, and the notion that this information has valuable implications for society and our
political arrangements doesn't usually percolate into public consciousness or in centers of influence, But
there is an emerging realization in the expert community that humanity can greatly benefit from
making this material a pillar of human education and gradually grow accustomed to an evidence
based understanding of our history, behavior, biology, and capacities. There's every
indication that a better understanding of ourselves strengthens humanity as a whole and makes connection
and cooperation more possible. The process will realistically take decades to take root,
and it seems the best way at this point to accelerate that process is in
articulating the big picture and giving people key footholds and scientific reference points for understanding.
I reached out to discuss some of the bigger conclusions that are emerging from
the research with Professor Chris Stringer, who has been at the forefront of human
evolutionary understanding for decades. Stringer helped formulate the Out of Africa model of our
species origins and continues to pursue pioneering projects at the UK Natural History Museum in
London as Research Leader in Human Origins in the Department of Earth Sciences. A
good place to start is that we know that today's humans produced fertile offspring with
relative Homo species that had separated from us hundreds of thousands of years ago,
and this went on with ancestor species for as far back as scientists are able
to trace. This is against a backdrop that for primate species it was possible
to produce fertile offspring with other species sharing a common ancestor as far back as
two million years, with a generally decreasing chance of success across the passage of
time and divergence between Homo species. We know that our species produced some fertile
offspring with Neanderthals and with denis even we also have negative evidence that there were
limits on infertility between some of the Homo species because we don't find a lot
more evidence of it in our genomes. Thus, matings between more distantly related
species either didn't occur, we're not fertile, or we can detect them at
the level of our current technology. There are barriers, and we know that
in our genomes today there are areas of deserts where there's zero neander tall and
denisive in DNA, and we know that some of those deserts are in areas
that influence things like speech and vocalization and how the brain works. There are
also suggestions that male children may have been less fertile or infertile compared with the
female children of those hybrid matings at the level we can detect it. There
is no strong evidence so far of infertility between Homo sapiens and our more distant
relatives such as Homo floresiensis or Homo nildy. So we don't yet know all
of the Homo species which could have hybridized or did hybridize during the last two
million years, but certainly some of them would have been into a fertile Unpacking
what you've said here, it changes the coordinates of how we explain human evolution
to ourselves. Not a linear progression, but a series of combinations of different
groups that occasionally produced advantages for survival. In some cases, survival for a
migrating home of population could be assisted by hybridizing with a residant species that had
survived in a region for hundreds of thousands of years or more, picking up
their adaptations of the immune system, their ability to process oxygen, or other
traits, not to mention the informational exchange of culture and lifestyle. The more
one learns about this, the easier it is to see that the passage of
time is better thought of as just an ingredient in the human evolutionary story.
With this in mind, it's easier to grasp how far astray the concept of
primitive can take us in understanding ourselves and our evolutionary process. As the world
begins to put this information at the center of human education, it's so important
to get the root words right as best we can. Archaic and modern.
They're all loaded terms, and there are many different definitions of what a species
is there are some people who only use human for sapiens, then the Neanderthals
worth of be human. I don't agree with that because it means that we
mate it with non humans in the last fifty thousand years, which I think
makes the conversation very difficult. In my view, the term human equates to
being a member of the genus Homo, so I regard the Neanderthals, road
Saensis, and Erectus as all being human. And the terms modern and archaic,
these are difficult terms and I've tried to move away from them now because,
on the one hand, the term modern is used for modern behavior and
it's also used for modern anatomy, so these terms get confused. For example,
some ancient human fossil findings have been described as anatomically modern but not behaviorally
modern. I think that's just too confusing to be useful. When we look
at the early members of a Homo species, instead of having the term archaic
as in having archaic traits, I think it's clear if we use the term
basil. Basil puts us on a path without the confusion and baggage that can
come with terms like archaic, primitive, and modern. In this usage,
basil is a relative term, but at least one where we can come up
with criteria to delineate it. It helps here to consider the evolutionary process outside
of Homo sapiens. Neanderthals had a process of evolution as well, from the
period they split off with our common ancestor. Neanderthals at the end of their
time were very derived, quite different from how they started potentially six hundred thousand
years ago, and yet under conventional thinking they are called archaic. Over the
period of hundreds of thousands of years, they developed a number of new physical
features that were not there in the common ancestor with Homo sapiens. For example,
they developed a face that was pulled forward at the middle, a spherical
cranial shape, even some of the earbones were a different shape, and like
us, they evolved a bigger brain. The derived home on Neandertal senses looked
quite different from their ancestors three hundred thousand years earlier. So let's scrap the
verbal framework of primitive and archaic and modern and go with basal and derive along
both our and the Neanderthal lineage. Another recent shift and understanding is the story
of how we learned to walk. A growing body of research suggests it happened
on tree branches and that our arms had a role to play in providing balance.
When you look at orangutans and gibbons, who are our close living relatives
over in Southeast Asia, we see that when they're in the trees, they
already are walking upright, and they branch walk. Some of the tenderest leaves
and fruits are out on the ends of branches, so using their longer arms,
they will actually walk along the branches, supporting themselves by holding on with
one or two hands to the branch above, and then they can also jump
across easily from the ends of the branches to the next tree to carry on
feeding. So the view is that this is a physique that is pre adapted
to bipedalism. Their bodies are already part adapted to an upright posture, and
the pelvis is already in a situation where they can support themselves on two legs.
The working idea would be that our ancestors went through a similar stage where
they were branch walking feeding in the trees, beginning to regularly get their body
into an upright position, and then when they come down between trees. The
trees maybe start to thin out if areas become dry, and they stay upright
as they walk between the trees until they get to the next clump of trees.
I don't think we really have a very convincing evolutionary alternative scenario. Consider
that this adaption to bipedalism takes place over millions of years. If you imagine
a creature that is law fours, what's going to make it start walking upright
and do it for long enough for the skeleton to be modified by evolution to
become fully bipedal. They have to survive along the way of that process.
Very difficult to imagine. People like Darwin originally speculated that bipedalism came out of
the need to use tools or carry things, and it's certainly useful to do
those things once you are bipedal. But what's going to modify a skeleton,
modify the musculature and all of that, and the way that evolution tells us
that primates evolve over the course of generations. Taking that point as to the
origins of learning to walk, it leads into the discussion on two Homo fossil
groups found in Southeast Asia. Homoforesiensists on the island of Floors Indonesia and Losonensis
in Calow Cave on the island of Luzon and the Philippines. Enforce insists with
an adult height at somewhere only a bit over a meter tall. Forceensus caught
the attention of the world public back in two thousand and three, we were
presented with the discovery of a primitive creature. The more curious members of the
public who dig deeper into this discovery are usually told that these hobbits were a
product of evolutionary dwarfism, often found on islands where larger creatures are reduced in
size from resource constraints and smaller gene pools. Always present in discussions about Floorsiensis
is a focus on their small primitive brains. We're beginning to learn that size
may not matter as much as the layout of the brain when we compare ourselves
to our ancestors and their core capacities. More recently, in twenty nineteen,
archaeologists announced a fossil discovery found almost two thousand miles away in the Philippines.
Currently given a species name, Homo luzon insists that has a lot of similarities
to Floresiensis. Until their discovery, it was thought that the first hominins or
humans to arrive in Southeast Asia were Homo erectus, who is known to have
left Africa about two million years ago. It's notable that some experts argue Floorsi
insists was able to walk but not run, and that Floorsiensis humorus the upper
arm bone was longer than its femur. This is typical of a body type
adapted for climbing. The wrist bones also point to climbing. That kind of
evolutionary branch goes back closer to somewhere beyond two and a half to three million
years ago and would force a rethinking about which Homo species locomotion style first left
Africa and possibly set the stage to influence and hybridize with African relatives who came
after. FeSi insists and Luzon insists are an area where there is no consensus
among the experts, and the public might find the schools of thought illustrative about
the frontiers of our understanding about the human evolutionary story. Some experts argue that
the most convincing scenario is that the Floresiensis material is derived from Homo erectus,
that this is a dwarf form of Homo Erectus that somehow got to flores underwent
dwarfing and retained some erectus characteristics. We know Erectus left Africa approximately two million
years ago. Some of the dental features of Floresiensists have been suggested to be
clear evidence of an Erectus ancestry. For this idea to work, foresi insists
would have needed to have an ancestor who independently developed or redeveloped basal features features
which look more like ancestral features of previously developed species in Africa. As you've
mentioned the body proportions, the upper body that seems to show adaptations for climbing.
Perhaps Floresiensis may have gone back into the trees for feeding. That's a
possibility. This dwarfing process would have had to occur subsequently in the island migration
process in Southeast Asia. That is a scenario which some people who know their
Homo Erectus fossils will argue as there that's one school of opinion on Floresiensis.
And on the other hand, you have some experts working along the lines you've
alluded to that actually this is evidence of a pre erectus exit from Africa.
A Homo habilis or even an Australopittho scene grade came out of Africa somehow got
all the way over to Southeast Asia. In terms of fossils we know about
and maybe on luzon in the Philippines as well. For Homo luzon ensis.
In favor of that, we've got these basal features and the wrist bones and
in the pelvis and the shoulders and the smaller brain. That's a pretty convincing
scenario. But if you agree with that, then you've got to conclude that
some convergent or independently similar evolution in their teeth toward Homo erectus had to happen.
Aspects of the skull look. Erectuslike Floresiensis, has a small face that's
tucked under the cranial vault, which required some derivation. Fooresiensis would have had
to have both independent similar evolution to erectus and it returned to some more basal
elements of their ancestors. There is a compromise view that Foresiensis is the product
of a basal erectus. Some of the erectus skeleton fossils found at a site
called Dmanassey in the country of Georgia. They're much smaller brained. One of
the fossils has a brain size not too different from Floorsiensis. We could be
starting from an erectus that's smaller bodied, smaller brained, and maybe than it
could have gotten across to Flores eventually and evolved and survived there for more than
a million years. We have to bear in mind that we actually don't know
the full anatomy of erectus anyway. So what were the wrist bones like in
Demanasse where they like those found in Flores. We simply don't know yet because
they're not preserved so far. In any of these cases, you've also got
the mystery of how they even got to Flores. There are no land bridges
that appear when sea levels dropped during ice age. The people who argue Foresi
insists was more closely related to humans via the erectus line suggest there was a
capability of maybe using watercraft to get to Flores, But the other option is
that its arrival on Flores was accidental. Tectonically, this part of Indonesia is
one of the most active areas in the world caused by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
There was a major tsunami in the Indian Ocean in two thousand four.
People were found at sea days later, surviving on clumps of vegetation. That
was something that happened in the last twenty years. When you've got a time
scale of thousands or hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions of years, these
rare events can happen. We know that's how many other animals must have gotten
across to these islands between Java and Papua New Guinea Australia. It's possible that
some ancestors of Floresi insists, were maybe foraging in mangrove swamps on the coast,
and a tidal wave ripped a whole area away, and their left in
there and somehow miraculously, a few weeks later they arrived on Flores or on
another island. Because it could have been accomplished in stages. It doesn't have
to be straight all the way to Flores, whether rafted by design or accident.
There is this other piece of evidence that we identify with human advancement.
Archaeologists found at two sites on the island of Flora's tools associated with butchering meat
that are seven hundred thousand and even over a million years old. With Flooresiensis,
we have a body that was perhaps enabled to run, yet able to
walk and was better suited for climbing. We have a brain described as tiny
yet able to make tools. Turning to the twenty thirteen discovery of Homo Niltti
in South Africa, we have two hundred thirty to three hundred thousand year old
evidence of another Homo species that had curvature on the finger bones that is associated
with primates who spend their time climbing, and also a hand bone structure that
allows people to bring complexity in their tool making and as a foot structure similar
to ours. Like Floresiensis, Niltti also has a brain much smaller than ours,
but also it has a similar brain structure. Tools have been found in
the area that the archaeologists believe may have been created by Niletti. The archaeological
team that is working on the Nolti site tells us there is evidence of a
culture with traits that we and our cousin species will recognize, returning to the
same cave to deposit their dead and using fire to navigate it. Neander Tals
left a record of depositing dozens of their dead in a cave in Spain called
Sima de los Jusos about four hundred thirty thousand years ago. Whether what we
are looking at in these caves are cases of mass murder or ritual or something
else, we just don't have the evidence to say. In Brunical Cave in
France, we have evidence of meander Tal use of fire and potentially habitation in
the cave at least one hundred seventy five thousand years ago. Remembering the debt,
of course, is not unique to US. Elephants visit and warn the
remains of their relatives and herd members throughout the decomposition process. Chimpanzee mothers will
carry their dead infants with them for days. Valtia is very intriguing. We
can explain the survival of foesiensis long term and its divergent evolution in isolation,
and Homo sapiens doesn't get there until maybe the last fifty thousand years, and
Floorsi insists disappears. But in the case of Milidi, we've got it in
South Africa, on a continent where we're pretty sure Homo sapiens had already evolved
where other Homo species were present, and yet Milidia is surviving in South Africa
with an ape sized brain, successfully and maybe spending its time deep in the
cave systems there. I have been one of the critics of the intentional burial
disposal idea because I've argued that how complex could the behavior be of a creature
with a brain the size of a chimpanzee or a gorilla. But I'm more
than happy to be surprised by much greater complexity and Homo niltti when peer reviewed
research makes the case for it. There's a big emphasis on the size of
the brains of our relatives in the public and expert conversation on human origins for
comparing ourselves to our ancestors and cousins. In the case of FLORESI insists in
la, the public conversation keeps returning to how small their brains are. Valetti
had a brain size of six hundred milli leaders each of us has around thirteen
hundred. Could that be a bit of a red herring in terms of their
core capacities? Should we be putting more emphasis on the layout of the core
brain structures? Does that deserve to get some more emphasis in comparison to us.
The whole question of brain size and complexity of behavior has been a long
running debate. Neanderthals and sapiens have relatively big brains. In the Homo family,
you can see a rough correlation between increasing behavioral complexity and stone tools and
the size of the brain. It's a rough correlation, not a one to
one. That's why I think the letty is going to be very important,
because if the research team demonstrates complexity of behavior, I think it will certainly
put a nail in the coffin of the idea that a small hominin brain can
accomplish complex things. Given that, and going back to some of the tree
dwelling morphologies retained, is it fair to wonder now whether the intelligence that humans
tend to prize about themselves and use as a marker of our difference from other
animals was developed in the trees rather than exclusively on the ground. We know
that young chimpanzee females make dolls, for example, with which they simulate child
rearing. I think even looking at chimps and guerrillas, they have clear intelligence
greater than most other creatures most of the mammals. Certainly it was there in
the common ancestor. So I think the common ancestor of us and chimps about
seven million years ago already had complex behavior and potentially even toolmaking behavior at that
early stage. So I think, yes, they could have started to develop
in the trees. And as I say, orangutans are intelligent too, so
I think the common ancestor would have had that degree of intelligence. But there
are arguments that by the time we get to Austrilla epiphocus, there has been
some restructuring of the brain, which implies maybe a reorganization for more complex thought.
We now know that there are at least as many as five distinct human
species that were living on Earth as recently as seventy thousand years ago, Homo
sapiens, neandertal Ensis, denisova, Forgiensis, and luzon Enzis, and we
can demonstrate through several lines of evidence that they not only had different anatomy,
but that they also had varying physical capacities and behavioral traits or tendencies. A
one meter tall human species in Indonesia had a foot that made running difficult.
Research tells us that Neanderthals tended to be aggressive, be mourning people, and
have depression, and that they have repetitive behaviors. On top of this,
we also know that Sapiens across the planet today carry genomic material from hybridizing with
at least six Homo species, some of whom we think when extinct as an
independent, separate species long before seventy thousand years ago. Two of these species
we can name Neanderthal and Dennis event and the other four science hasn't named yet,
but we have genomic evidence for these mystery ancestors. It's not yet part
of the public conversation, but can you see a future where people might identify
themselves and their behaviors as typical of their family, religion, regional origins,
and also of their inheritances from ancestor species in an environment where understanding ourselves strengthens
the bonds of cooperation and provides us with a universalizing framework of relatability. There's
definitely evidence of Sapiens interbreeding with Neanderthals, and that is still thought to be
one fairly closely related group of Neanderthals that hybridized with Homo sapiens. But for
Dennis events. It's at least three different population groups who diversified approximately three hundred
thousand years ago that interbred with Homo sapiens in different parts of Asia and Southeast
Asia. And back to your question about identity, Yes, I think that
we know from studies of what the neander tal dna is doing in US today
that bits of neander tal dna are related, for example, to whether you're
a morning or an evening person. We know that some bits of neander tal
dna have given protection against certain illnesses the age of menopause, in the start
of menstruation. Addictive behavior appears to be related in some cases to bits of
neander tal dna. There are suggestions that autism, schizophrenia, and certainly autoimmune
diseases they also are influenced to an extent by the presence of neander tal dna,
and probably we will find similar things for denisive in DNA. So it's
certainly affecting us our core biology, our personalities and for DNIS events. In
some populations, there's double the amount of dennisive in DNA than neander tal dna.
Populations in Southeast Asia have neandertal DNA at the same level as say Europeans
or Asians, but they've got an additional maybe four percent of dennis of in
DNA, So theoretically we imagine that it's going to have an even greater effect.
We know it affects the immune systems, but it may have other effects
as well. Stay tuned for more Sasquatch Odyssey will be right back after these
messages. In sasquatch research, footprints in the opinions of many is the best
evidence we have in the quest to prove the existence of the species. I
found this next article intriguing because it focuses on the world's oldest Homo sapiens footprint,
down on South Africa's Cape South Coast. This article is written by Chris
Helms. Just over two decades ago, as the New Millennium began, it
seemed that tracks left by our ancient human ancestors dating back more than about fifty
thousand years were excessively rare. Only four sites had been reported in the whole
of Africa at that time. Two were from East Africa we Dali and Tanzania
and Kubai, four in Kenya, and two were from South Africa, Bahoon
and Langebian. In fact, the Nahoon site, reported in nineteen sixty six,
was the first hominin track side ever to be described. In twenty twenty
three, the situation is very different. It appears that people were not looking
hard enough, or we're not looking in the right places. Today, the
African tally for dated hominin ignosites, a term that includes both tracks and other
traces older than fifty thousand years, stands at fourteen. These can conveniently be
divided into an East African cluster of five sites and a South African cluster from
the Cape Coast of nine sites. There are further ten sites elsewhere in the
world, including the UK and the Arabian Peninsula. Given that relatively few skeletal
hominin remains have been found on the Cape Coast, the traces left by our
human ancestors as they moved about ancient landscapes are a useful way to complement and
enhance our understanding of ancient hominins in Africa. In a recently published article in
IGNOS, the International Journal of Trace Fossils, we provided the ages of seven
newly dated hominin ignosites that we have identified in the past five years on South
Africa's Cape South Coast. These sites now form part of the South African cluster
of nine sites. We found that the sites ranged in age. The most
recent dates back about seventy one thousand years. The oldest, which dates back
one hundred and fifty three thousand years, is one of the more remarkable finds
recorded in this study. It is the oldest footprint thus far attributed to our
species. The new dates corroborate the archaeological record, along with other evidence from
the area and time period, including the development of sophisticated stone tools, art,
jewelry, and harvesting of shellfish. It confirms that the Cape South Coast
was an area in which early anatomically modern humans survived, evolved, and thrived
before spreading out of Africa to other continents. There are significant differences between the
East African and South African track site clusters. The East African sites are much
older Lee Doali. The is three point six million years old, and the
youngest is just over a half million years old. The tracks were not made
by Homo sapiens, but by earlier species such as australopithesines, Homo heidelbergensis,
and Homo erectus. For the most part, the surfaces on which the East
African tracks occur have had to be laboriously and meticulously excavated and exposed. The
South African sites on the Cape Coast, by contrast, are substantially younger.
All have been attributed to Homo sapiens, and the tracks tend to be fully
exposed when they're discovered in rocks known as the oleanites, which are the cemented
versions of ancient dunes. Excavation is therefore not usually considered, and because of
the site's exposure to the elements and the relatively coarse nature of dune sand,
they aren't usually as well preserved as the East African sites. They are also
vulnerable to erosion, so we often have to work fast to record and analyze
them before they are destroyed by the ocean and the wind. While this limits
the potential for detailed interpretation, we can have the deposits dated. That's where
optically stimulated luminescence comes in. A key challenge when studying the paleorecord, track,
wasts, fossils, or any other kind of ancient sediment is determining how
old the materials are. Without this, it is difficult to evaluate the wider
significance of a fine or to interpret the climatic changes that create the geological record.
And the case of the Cape South coastial lanites, the dating method of
choice is often optically stimulated luminescence. This method of dating shows how long ago
a grain of sand was exposed to sunlight, in other words, how long
that section of sediment has been buried. Given how the tracks in this study
were formed impressions made on wet sand followed by burial with new blowing sand,
it is a good method as we can be reasonably confident that the dating clock
started at about the same time the trackway was created. The Cape South Coast
is a great place to apply optically stimulated luminescence. Firstly, the sediments are
rich in quartz grains, which produce lots of luminescence. Secondly, the abundant
sunshine wide beaches and ready wind transport of sand to form coastal dunes mean any
pre existing luminescence signals are fully removed prior to the burial event of interest,
making for reliable age estiments. This method has underpinned much of the dating of
previous finds in the area. The overall date range of Our findings for the
Hominanites, about one hundred fifty three thousand to seventy one thousand years in age,
is consistent with ages and previously reported studies from similar geological deposits in the
region. The one hundred fifty three thousand year old track was found in the
Garden Route National Park, west of the coastal town of Nisana on the Cape
South coast. The two previously dated South African sites, Nahoon and Langeba,
have yielded ages of about one hundred twenty four thousand years and one hundred seventeen
thousand years, respectively. The work of our research team, based in the
African Center for Coastal Paleoscience at Nelson Mendeli University in South Africa, is not
done. We suspect that further Homan and ignosites are waiting to be discovered on
the Cape South coast and elsewhere on the coast. The search also needs to
be extended to older deposits in the region, ranging an age from four hundred
thousand years to more than two million years. A decade from now, we
expect the list of ancient homan and ignosites to be a lot longer than it
is at present, and that scientists will be able to learn a great deal
more about our ancient ancestors and the landscapes they occupied. This article makes me
wonder will those that come after us be studying the footprints of the Sasquatch that
are found here in North America fifty thousand years from now. If nothing else,
I have learned that anything is possible. They say, you don't wantta
go home, but you can't stay. I don't want to be We're all
out that chiest job, chime everything, color, bride, baby Joy for
me to stay right there. You call it right away, says side says
about time out right for men call it also fassssssssssss