Speaker 1: Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. These guys
Speaker 1: are your favor It's so like say subscribe and raid it.
Speaker 2: Live Stock and Me.
Speaker 1: Greatest Gone Yesterday and listening watching Lin always keep its watching.
Speaker 2: And now your hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bobo Fay Bobo.
Speaker 2: How are you doing today?
Speaker 3: Pretty good? Cliff, how's going with you?
Speaker 2: I'm pretty good, man. Things are all right. The museums
Speaker 2: humming along, which is great despite the rainy day. I
Speaker 2: spent four or five hours with the Long Term Witness
Speaker 2: yesterday up there across the river from Longview, Washington in
Speaker 2: that general area. Really interesting stuff is going on up there,
Speaker 2: but that is nothing at all compared to what we
Speaker 2: have in store today for the podcast. Yeah, hell man,
Speaker 2: I don't know how you feel abouts, but usually it pod.
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to it. This is gonna be great,
Speaker 2: but today I'm actually nervous.
Speaker 3: Oh dude. I skipped all my appointments today. I didn't
Speaker 3: want to get an offender, benders, anything that happened to
Speaker 3: making miss this. I was like, no way, because we
Speaker 3: got a giant in the field. His book's one of
Speaker 3: the top three books on like Relic Comin has ever
Speaker 3: written the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, his first book is one of the best
Speaker 2: books ever written in that The Images of the Wild
Speaker 2: Man in Southeast Asia. But he has a new book
Speaker 2: coming out in May. From what I understand, where he
Speaker 2: actually says pretty much straight out and wait, of course
Speaker 2: we'll get it from this gentleman in a minute, pretty
Speaker 2: much straight out, like, hey, there might be another hominoid alive.
Speaker 2: And for someone with degrees in anthropology to say that, well,
Speaker 2: that's sticking one's neck out pretty far. A little bit
Speaker 2: less so today because there is a paradigm now for
Speaker 2: religd hominoids. But twenty thirty years ago, I mean he
Speaker 2: would have been chased out of town with pitchforks and torches.
Speaker 2: So I am we are out of our minds with
Speaker 2: excitement to welcome doctor Gregory Fourth to Bigfoot and beyond.
Speaker 2: Doctor Fourth, Thank you so much for coming on our
Speaker 2: little podcast here.
Speaker 4: You're welcome, very welcome.
Speaker 2: When I saw in my news feed there was an
Speaker 2: article I think it was a New Scientist, that an
Speaker 2: anthropologist is suggesting that there might be another homanoid species
Speaker 2: alive and well in Indonesia, down in flores I immediately thought
Speaker 2: of your book, of course, and I started reading and
Speaker 2: I saw you were the author of the article. I
Speaker 2: was just over the moon, so thrilled that you've come
Speaker 2: out with another book on it seems like it's going
Speaker 2: to mostly be focused on the Ebugogo. I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's true or not.
Speaker 4: No, not quite this. Geographically, the focus of this book
Speaker 4: is a region towards the eastern end of Flores, very
Speaker 4: mountainous region towards the eastern end of Flores, which is
Speaker 4: inhabited by people called Leo l Io is how it's
Speaker 4: how it's usually spelt. And the creature that they recognize
Speaker 4: as an animal that lives in their forests, especially their
Speaker 4: mountain forests, is called now I glossed that as as
Speaker 4: ape man. I use the time ape man because local
Speaker 4: people who you know, some of whom claim to see
Speaker 4: these things, and many more who know something about them,
Speaker 4: tend to describe them as having a monkey like a
Speaker 4: monkey like a period appearance, especially as regards the face.
Speaker 4: Well that I know, apes on flurrees. Evolutionarily speaking, of course,
Speaker 4: apes preceded hominins and so so eight man seems you
Speaker 4: know the best very much. I mean, it's not direct
Speaker 4: translation of the Leo name, but it's very much in
Speaker 4: the spirit of that of that name, so we're stuck
Speaker 4: with stuck with ape man. Of course, I lived towards
Speaker 4: the western end of Flores and there they are relevant
Speaker 4: as well. That The main difference, I guess you could
Speaker 4: say between the Leo eight Men that the Laiho and
Speaker 4: the Abu Gogo of the Nagae region further west, is
Speaker 4: that the Abu Gogo are supposed to be extinct, and
Speaker 4: all local people you talk to say that they were,
Speaker 4: you know, they ceased to be two hundred maybe three
Speaker 4: hundred years ago. But there's no point looking for one now,
Speaker 4: they say, because they're all all gone.
Speaker 2: The Leo in the eastern part of Flores, I remember
Speaker 2: in the previous book it was described as having an
Speaker 2: abductive HeLEX, like a grasping big toe. Does that still
Speaker 2: stand or because that would that would probably indicate something
Speaker 2: different than Home of Threesience's I believe, right.
Speaker 4: I would guess, so I do, you're right. I do
Speaker 4: briefly mention in in in the the general book the
Speaker 4: Images of the wild Man, but I don't remember any
Speaker 4: such toe. Maybe maybe I use more Layman terms in
Speaker 4: the book, or more likely I am as somebody else
Speaker 4: is perhaps you know, given that description of something else.
Speaker 2: Well here I have it right here in front of me,
Speaker 2: because I was perusing the book earlier, and it's on
Speaker 2: page sixty eight, this third paragraph. It says one man
Speaker 2: characterized Leah's feet as like hands capable of grasping.
Speaker 4: Oh, I see what you're getting at. Yes, thank you
Speaker 4: for translating for me. The point is that I have
Speaker 4: I have certainly heard that in that instance. Of course
Speaker 4: I did say one man, just one man. This is
Speaker 4: not a common, not a not a common, particularly common designation.
Speaker 4: In fact, most people don't really you know, can't say
Speaker 4: for sure anything. They can't say anything for sure about
Speaker 4: the about the feet, Yeah, there there there is. I guess.
Speaker 4: More generally you could say there is a notion that
Speaker 4: their feet, like other parts of them, are more monkey
Speaker 4: like than in physically physically modern uh, physically modern humans.
Speaker 2: The work done on homofloresiensis so far seems to indicate
Speaker 2: that homofluoresiensis has a very flexible foot, probably probably no march,
Speaker 2: and probably a lot of flexibility in the mid tarsal
Speaker 2: joint in that area. So I could see how a
Speaker 2: brief observation of a even if you happen to notice
Speaker 2: the foot, you probably notice this a lot more mobile
Speaker 2: than say a Homo sapiens.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, I think you're right with regard to
Speaker 4: the analysis analysis of Homo foresiences that I will say,
Speaker 4: you know, among eye witness reports that there wasn't anything
Speaker 4: that that you know, pointed specifically in that that direction.
Speaker 4: But I do in the book, I do go into
Speaker 4: some deeptail about what people told me about the feet,
Speaker 4: and that they indicated the first of all, that they
Speaker 4: walked in around the peculiar manner, something approaching what's called
Speaker 4: the groucho walk, if you know how that goes. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and that I mean reconstructions of homoiences point in that
Speaker 4: direction as well. Also for resience's feet of course were
Speaker 4: relatively relatively large, uh you know, given the short legs
Speaker 4: and the overall small size of the of the body.
Speaker 4: So yeah, there are quite a number of things like
Speaker 4: that that that fit fit quite well. But as a
Speaker 4: statement I'm saying that they have feet like monkeys or
Speaker 4: feet just like hands. I didn't hear that very often,
Speaker 4: and in my recollection I never heard it from an eyewitness,
Speaker 4: but you can check in the book when it needed
Speaker 4: to course.
Speaker 2: Well, of course, of course I've already pre ordered it. Actually,
Speaker 2: I cannot wait to get my eyes on it. So
Speaker 2: I imagine a lot of our listeners are unaware because
Speaker 2: you know, images of this of the wild Men in
Speaker 2: Southeast Age is a very academic book in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways, and and you know it takes a special
Speaker 2: kind of person interested in bigfoot to read the academic stuff.
Speaker 2: Most of the time, it's a little bit more accessible
Speaker 2: to the public. So can you give our listeners a
Speaker 2: little bit of background. I know most of your work
Speaker 2: has been in cultural anthropology. I think it has on
Speaker 2: the island of Flores but you've been to all the
Speaker 2: islands in Indonesia, So tell us little bit about your
Speaker 2: anthropological background, please.
Speaker 4: Well, what you've just said is generally accurate. I decided
Speaker 4: to I decided to study ath forulge and University way
Speaker 4: back towards the end of the nineteen sixties, as a
Speaker 4: matter of fact, so that puts a kind of a
Speaker 4: date on me. And I was quite successful as an undergraduate,
Speaker 4: and I got a place that was in Canada, by
Speaker 4: the way, at Simon Fraser University and in British Columbia
Speaker 4: and Sasquatch Territory. As a matter of fact. After that,
Speaker 4: I got a place at Oxford University in England to
Speaker 4: do graduate work, and I for various reasons which I'm
Speaker 4: particularly interesting, I decided with my supervisor at the time
Speaker 4: that I should prepare for graduate field work on the
Speaker 4: island of Sumba. Sumba is very close to Flores, actually
Speaker 4: quite close due south also in eastern Indonesia. While I
Speaker 4: was on Flores, as a matter of fact, I did
Speaker 4: hear stories about hairy homonoids, but these were quite different
Speaker 4: from what I subsequently encountered on on on Flores itself.
Speaker 4: And for one thing, the the Sumbanese characters were mostly
Speaker 4: the topic of of myths. But anyway, to move along,
Speaker 4: I am yeah. So I finished my darktorate my PhD
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty and I got a position with the
Speaker 4: British Academy at because I'm still in England at the time,
Speaker 4: the British Academy with one of their institutes in as
Speaker 4: it was in Southeast Asia, that was in Singapore, and
Speaker 4: one of the requirements for me as deputy director of
Speaker 4: that institute was to start a new piece of field work.
Speaker 4: Well I didn't, so I didn't go back to Somber,
Speaker 4: but I didn't go very far away. For various reasons.
Speaker 4: I've always been fascinated by Flores Flores Island and there
Speaker 4: was one definite region part of that island, the one
Speaker 4: called Nage, which you know, nobody published anything to speak
Speaker 4: of about this area before, so I thought, right, you know,
Speaker 4: this will be the place to go and fill in
Speaker 4: some gaps. Well, it's very I arrived in Naga Country
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty four. That was my first you know,
Speaker 4: full field season there, and it wasn't It wasn't long
Speaker 4: before I got talking to my hosts, members of the
Speaker 4: Naga Naga tribe some people call it or it's not
Speaker 4: terribly accurate, And somehow the topic got on to you know, hormonoids,
Speaker 4: creatures that that aren't human, but they look a lot
Speaker 4: like them, and typically they're naked of course their area
Speaker 4: and all that sort of thing. And that's when I
Speaker 4: that's when I first heard about the bugogo. And yeah, no,
Speaker 4: it certainly a bugg sounded rather more naturalistically described than
Speaker 4: creatures I'd heard about previously on Somber and elsewhere. I yeah,
Speaker 4: I was going to say that at this time that
Speaker 4: sort of topic was by no means the main focus
Speaker 4: of my field research. In fact, as much as anything,
Speaker 4: I was interested in mapping indigenous social organization and seeing
Speaker 4: how that compared with what had been reported from elsewhere
Speaker 4: in Eastern Indonesia. I was, however, also interested in the
Speaker 4: indigenous religion, cosmology, all that sort of thing, which I mean,
Speaker 4: when I first arrived, I was told whether ein'ight none
Speaker 4: no more because in the specific region I was working in,
Speaker 4: specific part of Nagay, just about everybody had become converted
Speaker 4: to Catholicism, or you know, some twenty years or more
Speaker 4: previously in the nineteen sixties. I thought, you know, there
Speaker 4: has to be some kind of memory at least of
Speaker 4: local spiritual beings and how I'm supposed to deal with
Speaker 4: them and all the rest. And indeed, as I pushed
Speaker 4: the point a bit, more and more came out. And
Speaker 4: this is kind of a digression on homonoids, but it
Speaker 4: turned out that indeed the indigenous religion was still still
Speaker 4: alive originally well and coexisting with Catholicism.
Speaker 2: A lot of times the missionaries come in and they
Speaker 2: take elements of the previous religion and kind of show
Speaker 2: it to the people that are trying to convert, to
Speaker 2: make the transition easier on them, I guess, or something.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think they need to be a bit
Speaker 4: careful there. I mean that they have to somehow get
Speaker 4: across the differences as well, and my missionaries themselves. There
Speaker 4: are different opinions about the validity of that of that
Speaker 4: of that approach, But I mean, one thing I found
Speaker 4: out eventually in that context was that while there are
Speaker 4: these various categories of spirits, spirits, forest spirits, and so
Speaker 4: on in the Nagai region, according to local people, the
Speaker 4: go go, well, we're not We're not one of these.
Speaker 4: They were not They were not supernatural. They they you know,
Speaker 4: they were visible, they reproduced, they could be killed, all
Speaker 4: these sorts of things with which are natural creature can
Speaker 4: can do. And and indeed, that same sort of distinction
Speaker 4: I discovered among the that the Leo people much more
Speaker 4: much more recently, and well I should mention Leo and
Speaker 4: Nagae are somewhat related, have similar cultures, and their languages
Speaker 4: are related as well, So that resemblance isn't isn't surprising?
Speaker 2: So one that seems like one of the main differences
Speaker 2: between the eastern and western populations of humans, the Nagae
Speaker 2: and the Leo, was that the Naugae claimed that like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Ebu Gogos, we killed them all off, We put
Speaker 2: them in that cave, we burn them out. They're dead,
Speaker 2: they're gone, whereas on the other part of the island
Speaker 2: the Leo people say that, no, no, they're still here.
Speaker 2: They're walking around. We see them sometime.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very rare. They're considered to be very rare creatures.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 2: Bogo will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 3: What's the most recent was an account that you deemed credible?
Speaker 4: The most recent encounter, Well, I have a report from
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen, mainly from a woman, a woman in her
Speaker 4: forties I guess she is now, which it was very detailed.
Speaker 4: She was supposed to have seen this being in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: and in fact, when I spoke to her it was
Speaker 4: just weeks after the incident took place. Her husband at
Speaker 4: the time was at home or in a field hut
Speaker 4: a garden hat taken care of some business while she
Speaker 4: was on the other side of a field near a
Speaker 4: forest forest stream from where this harmonoid emerged in the
Speaker 4: late late afternoon. The way she described it was rather
Speaker 4: different from most other most other descriptions, and for that
Speaker 4: reason and one or two others, I didn't list it
Speaker 4: in the book, as you know, the best kind of case,
Speaker 4: even though even though it was, as I said, the
Speaker 4: most the most recent. This being was quite short, about
Speaker 4: sixty centibrators if you can translate down, and she described
Speaker 4: it also. She said it wasn't particularly hairy, which is
Speaker 4: not a problem, but she spoke of it as having
Speaker 4: a sort of white, whitish whitish area on its on
Speaker 4: its chest, which again is not typical these things I
Speaker 4: described as being dark skinned, much like local humans themselves.
Speaker 4: And there are one or two other reports about something
Speaker 4: white on the body, but this was most most definite
Speaker 4: about this. There was also a disagreement between her and
Speaker 4: her husband. She wanted to claim that she was the
Speaker 4: only one who saw it, that her husband was too
Speaker 4: scared to come out of the hat, which she was
Speaker 4: quite a bold woman, were outgoing, certainly by Leo's standards,
Speaker 4: and she well. He insisted that he had seen it
Speaker 4: from the hat, although not nearly as closely and as
Speaker 4: well as as she'd seen it. In the end, she
Speaker 4: relented and said, oh, yes, well he did. He did
Speaker 4: see it too, but I saw it better, and I
Speaker 4: saw it first, and so on. But then in the
Speaker 4: following year, twenty eighteen, they this cup. They claimed they'd
Speaker 4: seen it again, which which started to make me wonder
Speaker 4: a bit. But I didn't definitely definitely couldn't, didn't definitely
Speaker 4: discount it. So that's the most recent but as I said,
Speaker 4: not not the best example of a siting.
Speaker 3: When did that one person find that the corpsure when
Speaker 3: they claim they found a dead one?
Speaker 4: Yeah, where there were two people who observed said they
Speaker 4: observed corpses or carcasses if you prefer. It's a bit
Speaker 4: philosophical of course as to whether it's some kind of
Speaker 4: human or something else. But yeah, I both those reports
Speaker 4: by two quite different individuals, are in my chapter seven,
Speaker 4: where I discuss at length what I call three you know,
Speaker 4: particularly remarkable or compelling encounter. One of them was from
Speaker 4: an elderly guy who I met back in twenty eleven.
Speaker 4: That's when I first heard his story, and I was
Speaker 4: able to interview him again in twenty fourteen and twenty
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen. In twenty fifteen, I think he was getting
Speaker 4: a bit past it, And indeed, according my news, he
Speaker 4: died not long after that, in twenty sixteen. But all
Speaker 4: the stories in that chapter, by the way, chapter seven
Speaker 4: include more than one simultaneous eyewitness, which was another mark
Speaker 4: in there, another mark in their favor anybody anyway, the
Speaker 4: old man who I give him the name Voulu, he
Speaker 4: had been working on road and bridge construction. He wasn't Leo,
Speaker 4: by the way, it's from a neighboring a neighboring area
Speaker 4: called end Day. But anyway, being a member of a
Speaker 4: work crew, they were traveling through well, they're traveling on
Speaker 4: a stretch of road which is probably the highest point
Speaker 4: on the main highway that that goes from one end
Speaker 4: of Flores's Island to the other. In rather cloudy conditions,
Speaker 4: as during the rainy season, they're going through through jungle.
Speaker 4: They something right in front of the truck. Now Volo
Speaker 4: himself was in the back of the truck standing up,
Speaker 4: so he was looking over the cab. He reckons. He
Speaker 4: got a better sight of this, of this creature than
Speaker 4: did anybody else anyway, that the driver himself couldn't stop
Speaker 4: in time. The road, by the way in Throat Florid's
Speaker 4: the roads are you'll you'll you'll never find much more
Speaker 4: than you know, maybe half a kilometer straight road going
Speaker 4: through that part of the Leo territory, so very windy.
Speaker 4: Turning a corner, this thing came down from a bank
Speaker 4: on the left and the truck, the truck went one
Speaker 4: went into it. So I was able to learn not
Speaker 4: just about Volo and his experience, but about the other
Speaker 4: people involved. Unfortunately, the driver and other members of the
Speaker 4: crew had all passed on so far as anybody knew
Speaker 4: by this time, and Volo couldn't. He knew the driver,
Speaker 4: and he knew the driver's name and all the rest
Speaker 4: of it. But these other workmates he he had, you know,
Speaker 4: very little memory of those. I tried to trace people down,
Speaker 4: but I was I was unsuccessful, So we kind of
Speaker 4: stuck with Volo. But indeed he you know, he spoke
Speaker 4: about the incident as it involved other people as well,
Speaker 4: and it was it was quite credible. They the driver's
Speaker 4: first inclination was that he should bury the creature. Now
Speaker 4: to understand this, you we'd have talked quite a bit
Speaker 4: about local culture and their views of humans versus animals
Speaker 4: and all the rest of it. So I won't go there.
Speaker 4: So that's all in the book. But anyway, he couldn't
Speaker 4: bury it because well mainly because they were due to
Speaker 4: arrive in there up in the mountains at this time.
Speaker 4: They were due to arrive before nightfall in the coastal
Speaker 4: town of Endy, So they decided. The driver decided to
Speaker 4: continue on and on the following day when he was
Speaker 4: due to come back that way to take care of
Speaker 4: the body. Then in the meantime he wrapped it in
Speaker 4: an old an old shirt. Now all this took place,
Speaker 4: as I think I said, in the early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 4: so we're going back aways now, you know, like about
Speaker 4: we're talking about fifty fifty years. But I mean, the
Speaker 4: story was compelling in various respects. For one thing, the
Speaker 4: main eye witness, my main eyewitness, Volo was as I said,
Speaker 4: from the India region, and he'd never heard of a
Speaker 4: lijo before. He wasn't familiar with the creature. But the driver,
Speaker 4: who was a leoman, said straight away, this is a liore.
Speaker 4: And apparently other members of the crew agreed with him,
Speaker 4: although they apparently you know, what is familiar with thaihoa
Speaker 4: and all the all the law surrounding these creatures, as
Speaker 4: was as was the driver. Yeah, you know, I questioned
Speaker 4: this guy over well, doing three different field seasons, and
Speaker 4: what I was getting it wasn't always the same, but
Speaker 4: by no means, but it was, you know, it sounded
Speaker 4: to all intense purposes like one of these creatures in
Speaker 4: terms of size, facial appearance, and ipial bipedality.
Speaker 2: By the way, what is the general description of these
Speaker 2: Is there a consensus? What is the general consensus of
Speaker 2: a size and all that sort of stuff of this
Speaker 2: particular flavor that the.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, they very somewhat as one should expect,
Speaker 4: especially between eyewitnesses and non eyewitnesses, although there's not such
Speaker 4: a distinction between those two groups two you know, calls
Speaker 4: calls calls a lum they are well might briefly say
Speaker 4: they look very much like Homo florisiensas, and that there
Speaker 4: is in chapter ten, I uh, I cite Mike morewood On,
Speaker 4: Australian member of the discovery team of Homo flerusiensis, who
Speaker 4: who said of the Go Go as a matter of fact,
Speaker 4: which he read about in in a book of mine,
Speaker 4: and he said, talking about the said these fit florisiensas
Speaker 4: to a T. Anyway, I I follow up that that
Speaker 4: quotation the remark that actually what fits thorisiences to a
Speaker 4: T is not the but these, if anything, even smaller
Speaker 4: they lie.
Speaker 2: Ore and how big are they? How big are these
Speaker 2: supposed to be?
Speaker 4: You know, most estimates go from I mean the tallest
Speaker 4: would be and I have a qualification on that moment,
Speaker 4: in terms of Irish witness sightings, the tallest would be
Speaker 4: about one point one may be getting on for one
Speaker 4: point two meters, so we're talking about somewhere between three
Speaker 4: and four feet.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 4: A lot of people, though, talk about them as being smaller.
Speaker 4: A lot of people just say a meter, you know,
Speaker 4: which is becoming a kind of conventional way of describing
Speaker 4: their height. But you know, going down you get eighty centimeters,
Speaker 4: fifty centimeters, sixty centimeters. The average, of course is much
Speaker 4: higher than that is it's around it, it's around a meter.
Speaker 4: These people are pretty clever, even people aren't gone to school,
Speaker 4: pretty clever with the metric system, by the way, and
Speaker 4: I've tested them, and yeah, you know, I mean they're
Speaker 4: not a is accurate by any means, and of course
Speaker 4: we're dealing with memory as well, so but but anyway
Speaker 4: that that would be, you know, I'm confident that we'd
Speaker 4: be talking around a nit a certainly very much smaller
Speaker 4: than than a modern modern human being, even the lear themselves,
Speaker 4: and though they are small by global standards, that they
Speaker 4: stay much taller than than Talking about memory, by the way,
Speaker 4: is interesting the question I considered for a while and
Speaker 4: made a bit of an investigation into human memory. It
Speaker 4: seems that that something that looks human but not human,
Speaker 4: if you will, somewhere in between, something ambiguous and anonymous
Speaker 4: like that would would would would stick in should stick
Speaker 4: in the memory for quite a long time. And I
Speaker 4: uh I realized that that that point was was relevant
Speaker 4: to many siding reports that I had received, you know,
Speaker 4: from like ten years ago, twenty years ago. Anyway, most
Speaker 4: people say that they okay, so they have body hair.
Speaker 4: This would be particularly noticeable, of course, since that they
Speaker 4: you know, they don't have clothes. There's a certainly area
Speaker 4: than local people there they had hair, though it isn't
Speaker 4: isn't now long, it's not not much longer than they
Speaker 4: say than the body hair. And some people say that
Speaker 4: that you know, there's no not not much distinction at
Speaker 4: all between head and bodies. It's continuous. Two sorts of
Speaker 4: hair are continuous. Not always the same color, by the way,
Speaker 4: So you don't see somebody with black body hair or
Speaker 4: a specimen with black body hair and you know red
Speaker 4: dead hair or anything like that. That the hair is
Speaker 4: generally dark, although it can be lighter, much lighter. It
Speaker 4: can be kind of gray silvery. They identify those as
Speaker 4: the old specimens are not not not not unreasonably.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 2: Bobo will be right back after these messages. What kind
Speaker 2: of build do they have? Are they? Are they say,
Speaker 2: robust versus grass style like in the austral epithe scenes.
Speaker 2: You know, Sasquatches, for example, are uniformly are generally described
Speaker 2: as very robust, thick animals. So what about these the
Speaker 2: lituh are they are they more? Are they thin? Or
Speaker 2: are they on the thicker side of things?
Speaker 4: You know, I think in terms of the skeleton for
Speaker 4: his ensas to speak about phrasiences for a minute. They
Speaker 4: are in is generally generally a robust but but but
Speaker 4: how that kind of translates into flesh is perhaps a
Speaker 4: bit a bit unclear. I is something I when I
Speaker 4: was finishing the book or something I came across in
Speaker 4: a book by Daniel Lieberman, whose name you're probably familiar with,
Speaker 4: a biological anthropologist. So he was talking about Homo erectus
Speaker 4: and who is also robust, of course, and I might
Speaker 4: just mentioned there that that parisiensis other other primitive hormonins
Speaker 4: found on Florence in fossil form. Uh. You know, according
Speaker 4: to one view, at least I recond be related to erectus. Anyway,
Speaker 4: to get on with with Homo erectus, Lieberman says that
Speaker 4: they probably would have been skinny because of you know
Speaker 4: that dietary factors that they wouldn't you wouldn't get a
Speaker 4: fat one or one that was particularly I can't remember
Speaker 4: his exact words, but the impression I came away with
Speaker 4: is that, you know that the creature he was describing
Speaker 4: would would appear quite gaunt. And indeed, descriptions of various
Speaker 4: sorts of of the eight Men do suggest to something
Speaker 4: that is rather skinny or gaunt. At the same time,
Speaker 4: you know, there are other suggestions that they are more
Speaker 4: more robust than you know, gaunt would suggest at any rate.
Speaker 4: So I look at informant statements, leo statements, you know
Speaker 4: that there isn't really a clear a clear picture. Also,
Speaker 4: of course, if you're just talking about if you're just
Speaker 4: talking about eyewitness accounts, generally speaking, we're talking about one
Speaker 4: person who's seen one of these at one time, and
Speaker 4: that's it. You could imagine that there would be some
Speaker 4: difference in as regards gender, sex, or age, or what
Speaker 4: have you. You would imagine there would be some internal apparent difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there'd be a lot of genetic diversity I think
Speaker 2: within individuals within a species of course.
Speaker 4: Well depend But what do you mean by a lot
Speaker 4: of genetic diversity? But which comes up against you know,
Speaker 4: questions of population size and density and all that that
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff. But yeah, anyway, this is an
Speaker 4: issue I discussed in the book. Is it difficult to generalize?
Speaker 4: Is my point. I never never had one that could
Speaker 4: be described as fat or was described as fat.
Speaker 3: Have they ever described as being escepsionally athletic, like fast
Speaker 3: for their size or strong from the eye witnesses.
Speaker 4: Yes, some people mentioned that with regard to eye witnesses,
Speaker 4: there are well, I'm trying to think of how many
Speaker 4: are not? Not many described seeing the things moving quickly.
Speaker 4: I mean the one, the one I can recall off hand,
Speaker 4: or the one report I can recall. What it was
Speaker 4: was at night, so not a great time to see something,
Speaker 4: and in other respects as well, it was a bit
Speaker 4: a bit unreliable, so it wasn't my my most credible account.
Speaker 4: But ye're generally speaking that they well, there's two things
Speaker 4: here that they are described as being able to move fast,
Speaker 4: not not just running on uh, you know, on on
Speaker 4: the flat, but but moving up inclines as well, you know,
Speaker 4: scrambling up banks, which it have been quite good at
Speaker 4: doing in a place like Flores is very very very
Speaker 4: mountainous accidented, so that there are descriptions of descriptions of
Speaker 4: the eight men doing that. Also their feet, in so
Speaker 4: far as the feet correspond, feet and way of walking
Speaker 4: correspond somewhat to what's been described. As for what's been described,
Speaker 4: I should say for floresiensis that that would that would
Speaker 4: fit with an ability to move quickly and efficiently up
Speaker 4: in clines, also to to climb climb trees, which most
Speaker 4: most hormones, even humans as a matter of fact, are
Speaker 4: quite good at.
Speaker 3: So the people that have seen them. They must not
Speaker 3: be that afraid of people, then I guess. Have they're
Speaker 3: just seen strolling or casually walking away? Is that the
Speaker 3: most witnesses report, Well, they do.
Speaker 4: They tend to. They might first be seen, you know,
Speaker 4: moving slowly, but even when they become aware of a
Speaker 4: human presence a presence, they'll they'll move out of the way.
Speaker 4: They go into the bush most most likely. But yeah, no,
Speaker 4: I mean I can say that there are descriptions of
Speaker 4: these things, if not eyewitness reports and second hand reports
Speaker 4: or what have you, of the things moving away, they
Speaker 4: are generally they're genuinely described as being afraid of human beings,
Speaker 4: and human beings are they say, equally afraid of them?
Speaker 4: So you know, they don't stick in one another's company
Speaker 4: for terribly long? Is the general point?
Speaker 2: Have you have they been observed carrying things that might
Speaker 2: be interpreted as tools?
Speaker 4: Very good question. I The general view among LEO eyewitnesses
Speaker 4: or not is that they don't have any kind of culture.
Speaker 4: If you had no material culture, that they don't have
Speaker 4: or employ tools or weapons. They sometimes described as throwing stones.
Speaker 4: In fact, two eyewitnesses witness reports mentioned mentioned that but
Speaker 4: any any one of them carrying a stick or you know,
Speaker 4: a club or anything like that. No, I have, I
Speaker 4: have done such a such account.
Speaker 2: I did read those articles two years ago, three years
Speaker 2: ago about finding mysterious tools on Sula Wisi, which is
Speaker 2: of course in the general area. I was curious if
Speaker 2: you if there's any connection between the two, the Suwelisi
Speaker 2: horminoids that made these tools that we don't know who
Speaker 2: did it, and then what's going on down in Flores.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, a few things to say about that. I first,
Speaker 4: I want you to talking about stone tools, which to
Speaker 4: an amateur your eye can look like just sharp bits
Speaker 4: of rock, right, the archaeological record for florisances that talk
Speaker 4: about them again, it's uh. I mean, there are dates
Speaker 4: of tools and dates of the fossils which see to overlap,
Speaker 4: but they can't definitely be.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 4: The floriances can't definitely be linked with the tools. For
Speaker 4: one thing, you have not much change over a long
Speaker 4: period of time on Flores of of two tool making traditions,
Speaker 4: so you can't say anywhere that, oh, you know, this
Speaker 4: was one group and these are the distinctive tools, and
Speaker 4: this is another group. You know, the species for them
Speaker 4: that matter and their distinctive tools, so that I mean
Speaker 4: the main place for well, in fact, this can't be overemphasized.
Speaker 4: Three iences known from only a single site, which you know,
Speaker 4: so that people say, oh, well they're extinct. You know,
Speaker 4: we don't have dates for them past you know, fifty
Speaker 4: thousand years ago or whenever it was. Well, that's true
Speaker 4: of that site. But you know, obviously this species which
Speaker 4: did survive on flories for hundreds of thousands of years,
Speaker 4: well certainly tens of thousands, maybe into the hundreds of
Speaker 4: thousands of years, depending on how you distinguish species. It
Speaker 4: was a bit of a survive So there's no reason
Speaker 4: to believe they could ever possibly have lived and just
Speaker 4: lived and become extinct in just one one cave.
Speaker 2: Nor is there a reason to think that that was
Speaker 2: the last of them, Like the chances of the very
Speaker 2: last individual the species being found as a fossils ridiculously,
Speaker 2: it's ridiculous. They certainly persisted for beyond that fifty thousand
Speaker 2: year mark that area.
Speaker 4: I suppose it's somehow possible that those are the most
Speaker 4: recent living individuals, but it's you know, it's not it's
Speaker 4: not that likely.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 2: Bogo will be right back after these messages. Because there's
Speaker 2: a there's a tradition of Harry harmonoids on Suluisi as well.
Speaker 4: I yes, you are, you are right in various parts
Speaker 4: of SULUESI but I should also say that that there
Speaker 4: is has been a theory and interpretation that Feruziens has
Speaker 4: got to Flores from from Sulues rather than coming from
Speaker 4: the west to Flores from neighboring islands like like Sumbaba.
Speaker 4: So there's there's a kind of a kind of connection
Speaker 4: there as well. But I don't think that the studies ethnographic, alphological,
Speaker 4: or otherwise have been done of you know, sulue homonids
Speaker 4: as have been done of the of the homonids homonoids,
Speaker 4: I should say, on mystery homonoids on on Flores and
Speaker 4: particularly of course the leo Ilio eight men.
Speaker 2: Well, I think a lot of the focus on Flores
Speaker 2: has been of course because of Homo floresiensis, which would
Speaker 2: bring about my next question. Do you think that more
Speaker 2: work either is being done? I mean, maybe it's not
Speaker 2: an opinion of obviously is more work being done on
Speaker 2: this sort of ethnographic study in light of the Homo
Speaker 2: leuson ensis discovery in the Philippines.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I I difficult to answer that one. I will say,
Speaker 4: kind of going back a bit, I will say that
Speaker 4: with regard to mystery homonoids like the eight Men and
Speaker 4: go on on Flores, that I I was convinced. I
Speaker 4: guess you could say I don't have any great stake
Speaker 4: in it. I mean, my natural or social inclination as
Speaker 4: a cultural anthropologist was to explain things like as as imaginary,
Speaker 4: although I yeah, a little bit of a qualification to that.
Speaker 4: But then when I heard about Homopharesiensis being discovered in
Speaker 4: Liangbo and in the western part of far western part
Speaker 4: of Flores, I was I was quite gobsmacked, actually, but
Speaker 4: as were a lot of people, and I started to think, well, now,
Speaker 4: hang on just a minute, you know, what exactly did
Speaker 4: these things look like? And and so on. And that's
Speaker 4: when I started to entertain seriously that the possibility that uh,
Speaker 4: these local, local stories, local legends in some cases reflected
Speaker 4: human experience of a living a living animal, a living species,
Speaker 4: and that this a living species was a hormone in
Speaker 4: like homophoresiensis and the Austropathesians and uh and so on.
Speaker 4: But talking about sort of taking up research, continuing research
Speaker 4: where there are ethnographically well attested cases of of human
Speaker 4: like beings, you know, inhabiting local areas. I think that
Speaker 4: was your question, Wasn't it?
Speaker 2: More or less? I think a broader maybe I was
Speaker 2: talking about specifically on answerts, but I don't think there's
Speaker 2: a need to be specific. I think in general, what
Speaker 2: maybe maybe a better, more broad question would be, what
Speaker 2: being a cultural anthropologist, what role do you think folklore
Speaker 2: and mythology and local stories and whatnot have in reflecting
Speaker 2: the native fauna of an area, And specifically, what does
Speaker 2: that have to do or how does that pertain to
Speaker 2: relict hominoids, you know, mystery homonoids.
Speaker 4: Good question, quite a lot to it. I will say
Speaker 4: first of all, that ethnographic reports, ethnographic interpretations such as
Speaker 4: as mine uh tend not to be followed up by
Speaker 4: biological scientists, paleoanthropologists, or well, let's just leave it with
Speaker 4: biological sciences, because we're talking about possibly some some organism
Speaker 4: still being alive. Yeah, and indeed did right. The individual
Speaker 4: inclinations of academic scientists and researchers that there there would
Speaker 4: be institutional problems standing in the way of somebody saying, look,
Speaker 4: you know, there's this guy forth who has written this
Speaker 4: incredible book about local people's uh uh views, detailed descriptions
Speaker 4: of you know that this animal, they call it an
Speaker 4: animal which corresponds very closely to Homo flusiences which you
Speaker 4: know also at one time at least inhabited the same
Speaker 4: the same island. It's simply it simply wouldn't fly. Although
Speaker 4: I said, nothing like that has happened, has happened so far.
Speaker 4: You know, some biological sciences, some of my acquaints anyway
Speaker 4: are very open minded. But but some are not. And
Speaker 4: there is has been for a long time an inbuilt
Speaker 4: to tendency to say, oh, and these things are just
Speaker 4: folklore whatever that is, or they're you know that that
Speaker 4: they're mythical. In other words, they're entirely imaginary, and people
Speaker 4: are not necessarily lying to you, but that they you know,
Speaker 4: they're talking about something which is more like a forest
Speaker 4: spirit than an animal, but talking about you know, culture
Speaker 4: more generally. Yeah, I mean a concern of mine for
Speaker 4: a long time on floor is not just among leo
Speaker 4: but well more among the Naga and other people. Actually
Speaker 4: is to is to investigate what they know about local
Speaker 4: animals of of of all sorts. And I well, their
Speaker 4: knowledge is impressive, and I find that most of it,
Speaker 4: most of it is it comprises nowtrualistic descriptions of empirical
Speaker 4: features and behaviors of species which are you know, otherwise
Speaker 4: recognized or recognized by academic zoologists as inhabiting inhabiting the island.
Speaker 4: Of course, that their knowledge is is broader than the
Speaker 4: the empirical facts, and that they know a lot, of
Speaker 4: course about the practical uses of of local animals and
Speaker 4: animal products. They they have a symbolism of of animals,
Speaker 4: where whereby animals that are otherwise represented, you know, like
Speaker 4: long tailed macaques, and which are indeed long tailed macacus.
Speaker 4: We'll also figure in uli which don't don't don't stand
Speaker 4: the test of uh of of for academic zoology certainly. Now,
Speaker 4: for example, in the Leo that there are two creatures
Speaker 4: that people say they've seen seen very rarely and which
Speaker 4: gave them a hell of a fright in both in
Speaker 4: both instances, one is a kind of fresh water turtle.
Speaker 4: And I use this case in the book as a
Speaker 4: comparison a fresh water turtle which hasn't been documented but
Speaker 4: by scientists as residing on on Flores, but hydrological surveys,
Speaker 4: for example, indicate there's no good reason why it shouldn't
Speaker 4: be there because it's on other islands around and about right,
Speaker 4: So this is of orts but but you know, not not.
Speaker 4: It's not in the same league as as the lockss
Speaker 4: locknest monster. Anyway, from Leo and from other regions as well,
Speaker 4: further to the east, I've found people who have seen
Speaker 4: these and I particular times. Again, they're probably probably extinct
Speaker 4: by now because you know, they they don't seem to
Speaker 4: be seen very much any longer. But there's good evidence
Speaker 4: for them, you know, being on the island. Local people
Speaker 4: recognize it. At the same time, because of their their rarity,
Speaker 4: I'm being about the turtles now, there's fresh water turtles.
Speaker 4: Because of their rarity and because only certain people have
Speaker 4: seen them, they're they're reckoned to be. They are represented
Speaker 4: as being more supernatural than natural, and for that reason,
Speaker 4: they are fearful because they are believed by people in
Speaker 4: the know to be linked with as spirits, which are
Speaker 4: invisible beings that can can do do people can do
Speaker 4: people harm before I forget the other. The other creature
Speaker 4: locally reported by just a few people, it's even more spectacular.
Speaker 4: This is something called the coconut crab burgos later is
Speaker 4: the Latin name uh And these are actually the world's
Speaker 4: largest land crustacean. So like pincher to pincher, we're talking
Speaker 4: about a width of all but a meter, which is
Speaker 4: far bigger than any you know, any crabs terrestrial or
Speaker 4: aquatic that the Leo are familiar with. And they see
Speaker 4: this as a supernatural manifestation whenever somebody comes across one,
Speaker 4: and which can be dangerous.
Speaker 3: They seem like it though, because they're claws. I've messed
Speaker 3: around those things. Their closet the most powerful clause in
Speaker 3: the world. I mean, they're so they can crack coconuts,
Speaker 3: rock coconuts.
Speaker 4: There's been some controversy over that. But yeah, they are
Speaker 4: pretty pretty big, and those clothes are are pretty pretty effective.
Speaker 4: I should I should say they again are They are
Speaker 4: known academically, They are known from other parts of Indonesia,
Speaker 4: and in terms of existing currents and the way they
Speaker 4: reproduce and so on, that there's no reason why they
Speaker 4: shouldn't occasionally not every year, but occasionally show up and
Speaker 4: thrive and continue to grow, and all the rest on
Speaker 4: floreses or in one or two parts of Florid. So
Speaker 4: these things have a supernatural aspect. Certainly they're connected with
Speaker 4: forest spirits, as I said, but the descriptions of them
Speaker 4: are thoroughly naturalistic, and they fit very well with known
Speaker 4: known space species. We know who are amboinetsis in the
Speaker 4: case of the turtle, and as I said, the coconut
Speaker 4: crab in the case of bergolatrisy, the the giant crabs.
Speaker 2: Is there any reason to think that the Homo fluesiensis
Speaker 2: and Homo louse on encess from the islands to the north,
Speaker 2: and I know that there are different species, there's some
Speaker 2: different there's some differentiation between that I don't know what.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is because so far I
Speaker 2: haven't read anything. I haven't read very much at least
Speaker 2: about Homo lose on incests. I haven't found a study
Speaker 2: or anything they really get into. Maybe you can address
Speaker 2: are you aware of the differences between those two species
Speaker 2: and why weren't they weren't lumped into one?
Speaker 4: Good question? I mean, often taxonomic categories, taxonomic labels are provisional.
Speaker 4: You know, any of these things work. We do change
Speaker 4: very quite regularly. I think, well, I think the evidence
Speaker 4: for well, now, since it's the geological redating, I guess
Speaker 4: the most recent dates for fences are further back in
Speaker 4: time fifty sixty thousand years ago, whereas, if my memory
Speaker 4: serves me correctly, I could check my own book. But
Speaker 4: andy that at present, I think there are more recent
Speaker 4: and they lose on answers, so maybe not maybe well,
Speaker 4: just leave dates out of it. I think that they're
Speaker 4: somewhat bigger. And the evidence for lose on Ensis is is,
Speaker 4: you know, not as not as rich as as as
Speaker 4: as regards specific physical, geological, et cetera. Differences between the two,
Speaker 4: I can't. I can't comment off hand. But there's also
Speaker 4: caused the Red Deer Cave people in in China, which
Speaker 4: is both lose on Exis and the Red Deer Cave hormonins.
Speaker 4: They they were unearthed after after Parisiensis, and they but
Speaker 4: they added also cause to the same trend what seemed
Speaker 4: to be becoming a trend in in paleontological thought, and
Speaker 4: that was that the you know that the the human
Speaker 4: or hominin family tree is is far bushier than was
Speaker 4: previously supposed. I mean, when I was an undergraduate decades ago,
Speaker 4: the view basically was that you had these things called ostropithesnes.
Speaker 4: They you know, that they evolved into Homo by way
Speaker 4: of Homo habilists, which may be an ostrol policine itself,
Speaker 4: but yeah, anyway, eventually you got Homo Homo ergostare and
Speaker 4: sometimes called and as it's called now as pertains to Africa. Anyway,
Speaker 4: so you got erectus, and then you know, you had
Speaker 4: Heidelbergiensis and Neanderthals and then finally humans that these things
Speaker 4: succeeded one another in a single line like yeah, so
Speaker 4: you didn't have much if any overlap. But now that
Speaker 4: I mean certainly going back millions of years to the
Speaker 4: appearance of the first hormonins and the first the first
Speaker 4: species of Homo, as well as in more recent times,
Speaker 4: you see that our ancestors were just one of a
Speaker 4: number of hominids knocking about places like Africa. But now
Speaker 4: also we're increasingly learning Asia as well, where you had
Speaker 4: discovery of the the also somewhat mysterious Dennis Oven HORMONI. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and it's was once thought that Neanderthals, of course, were
Speaker 4: exclusive to Europe, but it seems they, you know, there
Speaker 4: are a few other players, so many.
Speaker 2: Uh, Western Asia as well, apparently some degree now with
Speaker 2: the proliferation, I guess maybe that's not the right word,
Speaker 2: with the increasing number of members into the genus Homo,
Speaker 2: and also australopithesies the horminins in general, and and with
Speaker 2: so many of them persisting into almost modern times really
Speaker 2: and and I would, I would strongly argue into modern
Speaker 2: times also, whether it's we're talking to gogos or sasquatches
Speaker 2: or any number of things. Certainly the attitude amongst academics,
Speaker 2: particularly the younger academics, must be changing to some degree,
Speaker 2: a little bit more open mind did for things like
Speaker 2: for what you're you're you're suggesting that there actually are species,
Speaker 2: at least one, and if there's one, there's probably more
Speaker 2: than one species of horminin or hominoid still walking around.
Speaker 2: Do you see that in the academic world.
Speaker 4: It's hard to say. I mean, I know, I've come
Speaker 4: across a number of paleoanthropologists, biologists and so on who
Speaker 4: are sympathetic, very sympathetic to my my research in other
Speaker 4: wise they think it's you know, it has value and
Speaker 4: that it is relevant to their own paleontological logical interests
Speaker 4: as well. But typically that is uh that that that
Speaker 4: understanding of things is separated from from their own academic
Speaker 4: their own academic work. And I think you know from
Speaker 4: the case of Jeff Meldrum that you know on Sasquatch,
Speaker 4: that that things can be very, very tough for somebody
Speaker 4: who actively researches as a as a physical apologist a
Speaker 4: pale anthropologist in the way that that he does.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 4: But you're talking about younger peeping people being more open
Speaker 4: minded just.
Speaker 2: Well, just with the new discovery based not not just
Speaker 2: on younger people being open minded, but based on the
Speaker 2: paradigm shift that happened in prelawanthropology over the last fifty years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I think I think you're right, but I
Speaker 4: I you know, it's got some way to go. I
Speaker 4: think there's this shift before it it really allows the
Speaker 4: views of people might like myself being fully taken advantage
Speaker 4: of by natural scientists. If I am hoping things will
Speaker 4: continue to get better as as time goes by, so
Speaker 4: that you know where like I don't know whereas thirty
Speaker 4: forty years ago, perhaps you you know, somebody zoologist or
Speaker 4: pinion told just reading my book would just say, well,
Speaker 4: this guy is you know, is it not? You know
Speaker 4: Looney tunes sort of thing. Nowadays are saying, well, you know,
Speaker 4: it's really very doubtful that you know, the environment on
Speaker 4: Flores would would support you know, another another species of harmony.
Speaker 4: And in fact, that's a kind of a kind interpretation
Speaker 4: of something that was said by what's his name Hawks,
Speaker 4: John Hawks in an online piece I read I read yesterday.
Speaker 4: So val is growing milder. I guess this is what
Speaker 4: I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2: By and large, I mean, I know your book has
Speaker 2: yet to be published officially. I mean there's a couple
Speaker 2: of copies floating around. But what was looking back to
Speaker 2: your first book, or the first book that I was
Speaker 2: aware of. I know you've published quite a bit, but
Speaker 2: Images of the Wild Men in Southeast Asia? What was
Speaker 2: the academic response to that book when it was published?
Speaker 4: Oh well, I've opened a bit of a candid worms no,
Speaker 4: in a very good way. I'm glad you asked this question.
Speaker 4: I published that with with Routledge or route Ledge. I
Speaker 4: don't hear it spoken naturally you see the name everywhere Routledge. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they took the book up. I originally had an agreement
Speaker 4: with keegan Pool Publishers, which used to be conjoined with Routledge,
Speaker 4: but unfortunately the they by that point had become a
Speaker 4: rather small operation in London. And uh, the the head
Speaker 4: man I can't remember his name now, very nice man,
Speaker 4: though he died very suddenly. Uh. And it was Routlets
Speaker 4: that that took over had the option of taking over
Speaker 4: titles in that that King and Paul had commissioned anyway,
Speaker 4: So yeah, it was published by Routledge. But but they did,
Speaker 4: know I can safely say, they did no publicity that
Speaker 4: I've ever been aware of on the on the book. Naturally.
Speaker 4: I told a few people about it, but it and
Speaker 4: like everything it got on the internet in some shape
Speaker 4: or form, it wasn't promoted. So I can't I can't
Speaker 4: compare or I can't say any I can't say anything
Speaker 4: about a general a general response to that book back
Speaker 4: in twenty eight, because you know, I don't think there
Speaker 4: was very much a tool. Yeah, so this is my
Speaker 4: first trade book, and it's been quite a quite a revelation,
Speaker 4: I must, I must say, But yeah, no, I really
Speaker 4: don't know what the in any general academic response was.
Speaker 4: I mean I suspect there would be disapproval. Well, well,
Speaker 4: i'll tell you with regard to my article, my first
Speaker 4: article on the giant crabs on Flor's Island, which was
Speaker 4: based on well it was based on zoological literature but
Speaker 4: also but mainly on my own ethnographic work. I sent
Speaker 4: that to Christasiana, which is, you know, a leading journal
Speaker 4: for about zoology of crustaceans carcinology, I guess it's called,
Speaker 4: and they they send it out for review. They didn't.
Speaker 4: They just actually, well we didn'tually published this sort of nonsense,
Speaker 4: but they sended out for review and I got one
Speaker 4: review back, which really was quite quite extreme. I mean,
Speaker 4: first of all, he said, you know this is not
Speaker 4: is not relevant to a scientific journal. If if if
Speaker 4: this man wants to if this man wants to show
Speaker 4: that that burger lats exist on on Flores, then you
Speaker 4: know he needs to go to catch one, basically, and
Speaker 4: it needs to be a field zoologist, which which which
Speaker 4: I wasn't. So that in all these reports, descriptions, what
Speaker 4: have you from local people was just dismissed as well.
Speaker 4: The best term because it is anecdotal.
Speaker 2: That's the kindest way you could put it, I think.
Speaker 4: Someday's point out. Of course, the plural of anecdote is data.
Speaker 4: If you get enough people by saying relevant things, you know,
Speaker 4: you've got to explain that information somehow. Where is this
Speaker 4: coming from? The easiest explanation usually is that to the
Speaker 4: people talking to you have actually seen something that looks
Speaker 4: like what they've described.
Speaker 2: The sasquatch thing. You know. I mean I read in
Speaker 2: your article that you're basing your hypothesis that these things
Speaker 2: might still be live based on something like thirty witnesses
Speaker 2: that you've spoken to personally. Well, I mean, I own
Speaker 2: a bigfoot museum in the Pacific Northwest. I very reasonably,
Speaker 2: during the run of tourist season or whatever, I might
Speaker 2: get thirty witnesses a month in my museum that I
Speaker 2: personally speak to that I have no reason to doubt.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting that in some ways about the you know,
Speaker 2: like you said, the I love, the plural of anecdote
Speaker 2: is is data, you know, And and the easiest way
Speaker 2: to explain it is that there's a biological animal. But
Speaker 2: the laziest way to explain it is that Oh, these
Speaker 2: people are just all wrong.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're they're they're you know, mentally mentally deranged, or
Speaker 4: you know, they saw a bear or what have you.
Speaker 4: I agree, I just I just want to say though
Speaker 4: that that my case in regard to Flora is in
Speaker 4: the Leo is UH is grounded in quite a thorough
Speaker 4: understanding and and and and analysis of of their their culture,
Speaker 4: which is is quite different from North American uh, North
Speaker 4: American culture. I mean, for example, if you're able to
Speaker 4: find a catch a sasquatch or indeed film it like
Speaker 4: Roger Patterson and the other guy did years ago, so
Speaker 4: they claimed, you have become quite famous and possibly something
Speaker 4: financially in it as well for you in North America,
Speaker 4: whereas that doesn't apply to anyone who you know, comes
Speaker 4: across an eight man, you know, up up in the
Speaker 4: highlands of Flora. Is it any LEO person who who
Speaker 4: does that? For reasons I explain. For one thing, they
Speaker 4: may not they may not tell anybody about it, they
Speaker 4: may not want to talk about it. And if they did, well,
Speaker 4: I spent a lot of a place, a lot of
Speaker 4: I put a lot of attention, as you say in
Speaker 4: the final chapter, to asking well, why you know, okay,
Speaker 4: if people are finding dead bodies, for example, why hasn't this,
Speaker 4: why hasn't this got out got outside of Flora's at
Speaker 4: least and you know too to the ears and eyes
Speaker 4: an academic scientists, and I don't won't go into the details,
Speaker 4: but I show that it would be very unlikely to
Speaker 4: to leave the island or really to be accepted as
Speaker 4: a credible report by very many other people than that
Speaker 4: that the person who came across the across the thing
Speaker 4: one of the one of the cases of somebody who
Speaker 4: did find a body that was about I guess eleven
Speaker 4: years ago. Now he got rid of it straight away.
Speaker 4: Now why did he do that? Uh? I do actually
Speaker 4: give some explanation for that. No, this was the thing
Speaker 4: that you know, shouldn't it was found he founded on
Speaker 4: his line, and it shouldn't be on his land or
Speaker 4: you know, anywhere near to humans are such a thing
Speaker 4: it needs to be. He wouldn't even bury it because
Speaker 4: there is a notion that like well, disinter their their
Speaker 4: relatives that have been buried by somebody else but by humans.
Speaker 4: So so he took it a long way away, uh
Speaker 4: and dumped it in the seas. That's what he told me.
Speaker 4: That may seem suspect, but again, if if you put
Speaker 4: it in in the context of you know, local views
Speaker 4: of the world and what's in it, and how are
Speaker 4: you relates the things that are in all that kind
Speaker 4: of stuff, that then it makes more sense than than
Speaker 4: burying it.
Speaker 2: Oh. Sure, we'd run across similar things with sasquatches and
Speaker 2: people not sharing their encounters or not wanting people to
Speaker 2: know that they had seen them, because in a lot
Speaker 2: of these rural areas sometimes there the mutation is the
Speaker 2: most valuable thing they have and they don't want to
Speaker 2: be thought of as a drunk or a hallucinator or something.
Speaker 4: So yeah, no, that's that's interesting because it's it's people
Speaker 4: are being quiet, but for different cultural reasons. Is what
Speaker 4: I wanted to suggest.
Speaker 3: If you got funding to go actually look for remnant
Speaker 3: you know rollo commonis that are still alive, do you
Speaker 3: have do you have specific places you have you'd put
Speaker 3: camera shops and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I would. I think about that a bit,
Speaker 4: and indeed i'd have to get local cooperation to to
Speaker 4: determine which would be the very best place, But I
Speaker 4: would say anywhere in the Highlands in mountainous regions of
Speaker 4: Leo Leo country. You'd have to You'd have to have
Speaker 4: academics involved. I mean qualified academics like field biologists and
Speaker 4: maybe primatologies. I suggest somebody is the actually that in
Speaker 4: terms of cooperation, that if you could find a few
Speaker 4: email primatologist to kind of Jane Goodall figure might be
Speaker 4: the best bet for doing this, this kind of research.
Speaker 2: Which which brings about the idea of just discovery in general. Usually,
Speaker 2: obviously a holotype is needed dead one to describe in
Speaker 2: a journal, et cetera. Do you think that would be
Speaker 2: the most promising avenue forward and trying to prove the
Speaker 2: leha Oh, for sure?
Speaker 4: You know, I think that that almost goes without saying
Speaker 4: doesn't that bad? When it could be a lifestyle which
Speaker 4: would be extraordinary. But yeah, you have to have a
Speaker 4: physical specimen, or at least that you know, a good,
Speaker 4: good part of a physical body. I guess the single
Speaker 4: most diagnostic part would be the teeth. But if you
Speaker 4: found one dead or alized and chopped its head off,
Speaker 4: that the head would be a pretty good substitute for
Speaker 4: the whole uh, for the whole body. You know. It's
Speaker 4: when you think of of sasquatch. The hair has been
Speaker 4: discovered which hasn't been linked with any you know, other
Speaker 4: kind of existing existing creature. Quite a lot of hair
Speaker 4: samples I think have been found not to be primate
Speaker 4: or bigfoot or what have you. My understanding is that
Speaker 4: there's somewhere, uh you know, it's it's it's ambiguous as
Speaker 4: to what what what what this where where this hair
Speaker 4: hair came from? So and of course i'm the problem
Speaker 4: is we don't actually have a sample of sasquat hair
Speaker 4: two to compare with you know, things later found pretty obviously,
Speaker 4: so I mean there are I'll tell you. I was
Speaker 4: asked yesterday whether you know people found bones of the
Speaker 4: ape Man. I must have been having a bad day
Speaker 4: because I think I said basically no, but there are,
Speaker 4: maybe taking the question too literally, but there are bones
Speaker 4: and teeth and so on which people claim to possess
Speaker 4: as relics or of ape man. These have magical powers,
Speaker 4: you know, according to local theory of magic.
Speaker 2: So these would be like the holy relics like the
Speaker 2: yetty hand and the yetty scalp held in the Pengbulja monastery.
Speaker 2: So they wouldn't they wouldn't be lent to outsiders for
Speaker 2: some sort of analysis to prove a species.
Speaker 4: Right, this, this would be difficult. I mean I wasn't
Speaker 4: even allowed to see some I was allowed to photograph
Speaker 4: a couple of things which clearly weren't primate. Most of
Speaker 4: what I saw, you know, looked like it had come
Speaker 4: from as a scullp It looked like a puppy dog's
Speaker 4: and I know, on and on. But there are a
Speaker 4: few bits and pieces of bone which could could be
Speaker 4: anything for me in the setting. You know, I couldn't.
Speaker 4: I certainly couldn't identify them. But you know, so that's
Speaker 4: perhaps another end of another avenue. But no, it'd be
Speaker 4: a tough job to get, you know, much cooperation on this.
Speaker 4: And uh, you know, by the same token, you've got
Speaker 4: a bit of fakery going on. Uh not always, but
Speaker 4: you know, in some instances. It's like in any in
Speaker 4: any scientific devor. You know, you're not going to hit
Speaker 4: the bull's eye every time. You're going to make a
Speaker 4: few mistakes and you know, follow fullse leads and all
Speaker 4: the rest of it. So that's to be that's to
Speaker 4: be expected.
Speaker 2: Are you getting a lot of positive press on your
Speaker 2: your upcoming book? Here?
Speaker 4: Pretty positive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 4: I mean I've had as in I think the article
Speaker 4: you you meant, and there has been criticism from uh
Speaker 4: named or unnamed uh anthropologists, paleoanthropologists like I think mentioned
Speaker 4: John Hawkes. But that that's fine. I'm not in fact,
Speaker 4: I could counter to what he said if I've been
Speaker 4: given the chance. But that that that's that's great. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm not not I'm not worried by by criticism coming
Speaker 4: from you know, one direction or the or the other.
Speaker 4: Much too worry about those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you the knowing that this book is
Speaker 2: coming down, it's like hearing a voice crying in the
Speaker 2: wilderness because there's there's so little good academic work coming out.
Speaker 2: And you know, there is the work by doctor Meldrimer,
Speaker 2: doctor Bender, Nagel, or a variety of other people. But
Speaker 2: but to have a new book on an on what
Speaker 2: what's gonna end up being a largely unheard of before
Speaker 2: now relative hominoid you know, the Lehua. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: not doesn't that's not a household name by any name,
Speaker 2: by any means. But but with the idea of these
Speaker 2: these homonoid species persisting until until close to, if not
Speaker 2: the present day, we should expect uh a smattering of these,
Speaker 2: frankly from all over the world in some regard, you know,
Speaker 2: whether it's here or uh Gareth Patterson's work in South
Speaker 2: Africa or the sasquatch thing in America or whatever.
Speaker 4: So no, I just recently actually, you know, being asked.
Speaker 4: I will thank you right away for your very informed questions.
Speaker 4: So know, the diner a homony and homonades and a
Speaker 4: homonoid as well is pretty novel, or at least it
Speaker 4: has been recently.
Speaker 2: But we nerds.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well so that vague thoughts come to mind, and
Speaker 4: these last several days, a couple of weeks, it's it's
Speaker 4: it's things broke, and that is h you know, well
Speaker 4: maybe this idea of mystery hormonoids, let's just use that term.
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of people really have never heard
Speaker 4: of this stuff. It might have had a bigfoot but
Speaker 4: have a very vague idea what it is or or
Speaker 4: the yetty But that as far as as it would
Speaker 4: as it would go. So yeah, newness is uh is
Speaker 4: often a good a good thing to have on your side.
Speaker 2: Well, and so we're a couple very well informed and
Speaker 2: respected PhDs so thank you for sticking your neck out,
Speaker 2: because whether you realize it or not, you're doing it
Speaker 2: for a large community of people.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, and just my final point, I'm glad that
Speaker 4: the news is getting to those people because like with
Speaker 4: the The wild Man book, you know, very few people
Speaker 4: knew about it. If they did, they just they'd come
Speaker 4: across it by accident somehow. I mean, there may be
Speaker 4: for all I know, you know, tens of thousands of
Speaker 4: zero xerox, but further copied copies going around because the
Speaker 4: sales certainly haven't been particularly good.
Speaker 2: Well, it is one of, in my opinion, the best
Speaker 2: books written on the idea of relativeminoids and what that
Speaker 2: could possibly mean this general survey, because you do go
Speaker 2: outside of Asia, and your survey you do talk about
Speaker 2: the sasquatch to a small degree, and no, I go
Speaker 2: all over.
Speaker 4: The place, and as certainly outside of Flores in eastern Indonesia, so.
Speaker 2: By far that one of the best academic books written
Speaker 2: on the subject. There is. In fact, I literally took
Speaker 2: this to Sumatra when I went there, and.
Speaker 4: I hope it was useful. But yeah, yeah, no, I
Speaker 4: think I think you'll like the new one just as
Speaker 4: much or indeed even.
Speaker 2: Better, fantastic. We cannot wait to get my hands on it.
Speaker 2: And for our listeners the book comes out. It's a publication, deed,
Speaker 2: it's going to be May third, which is just in
Speaker 2: a week from when we're recording this right now. Pretty much.
Speaker 2: It's called Between Ape and Human an Anthropologist on the
Speaker 2: Trail of a Hidden Hominoid by doctor Gregory Fourth. I
Speaker 2: cannot recommend you need to read this book. I have
Speaker 2: not read it, of course, but I have read his
Speaker 2: first book literally a half dozen or a dozen times,
Speaker 2: and this book is going to be more accessible about
Speaker 2: a different kind of hominoid. I cannot recommend this book enough,
Speaker 2: even though I haven't even read it yet. As ironic
Speaker 2: as that is.
Speaker 4: I think as the verse of saying you disagree with
Speaker 4: this book even though you haven't read it, that's it
Speaker 4: in the context of banned books. Have you ever read it?
Speaker 4: Of course not.
Speaker 3: I won't keep you.
Speaker 4: But thanks to both of you for your questions and
Speaker 4: your interest.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Yeah, thank you for your interest in your time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, take care all right, clip well man, that was awesome.
Speaker 3: We had him on and he stated about twice as
Speaker 3: long as he said he was gonna yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope that, you know, I hope you like
Speaker 2: the questions. I hope we give him enough to talk
Speaker 2: about it. I cannot wait to read this book. Man,
Speaker 2: I'm so excited.
Speaker 3: Is that wild Man booker self east age of that
Speaker 3: is that you can make a case I being the
Speaker 3: best book written, and that's you know that topic. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The only criticism I've heard of that book is
Speaker 2: that it was too academic. And that's not a problem
Speaker 2: for me, man. I mean I think more science and
Speaker 2: more scientists needs to be applied to this idea of
Speaker 2: relative hominoids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I was able to read it, all right,
Speaker 3: It's not that technical. I thought it was just super interesting.
Speaker 4: Oh it is.
Speaker 2: It is. And you know, I was surfing around the
Speaker 2: online maybe last week or something, and I found copies
Speaker 2: I think directly from the publisher for like fifty bucks.
Speaker 2: But yeah, fifty bucks is a more than fair price
Speaker 2: and as about as cheap as you're going to find
Speaker 2: the thing, because it is a textbook. Essentially, get the book,
Speaker 2: Get Images of the wild Man, and Sound East Asia
Speaker 2: by Gregory Fourth. It is fantastic in this new book.
Speaker 2: I'd only heard of the Leyahoa from his first book.
Speaker 2: So I assume that this book, this new book coming
Speaker 2: out next week, was going to be about the Aba
Speaker 2: Go Go, just like the Images book was. But no,
Speaker 2: I was so surprised to hear that it's about a
Speaker 2: different hominoid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was pretty shocking.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, anyway, bobes, you want to take us out?
Speaker 3: All right, folks, thanks for listening. Hope you learned something.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you did, bec as we did, and hit like,
Speaker 3: hit share, Let your friends and neighbors hear this, and
Speaker 3: until next week you all keep it squatchy.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
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