BIGFOOT!
Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is an alleged ape-like animal said to inhabit the remote forested areas of much of North America, with many of the sightings occurring in the Pacific northwest of the United States and British Columbia, Canada. Bigfoot is sometimes described as a large, bipedal hairy hominoid creature, and many believe that this animal, or its close relatives, may be found around the world under different regional names, such as the Yeti of Tibet and Nepal. Bigfoot is also one of the more famous examples of cryptozoology, a subject that has been dismissed as pseudoscience by mainstream researchers. It is because of that in addition to unreliable eyewitness accounts and a lack of physical evidence that very few scientists accept the likelihood of Bigfoot's existence. Most who have expressed an opinion consider the stories of Bigfoot to be a combination of unsubstantiated folklore and hoaxes.
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Description
According to the majority of eyewitness accounts Bigfoot is described as a large, bipedal ape-like creature between 7 and 9 feet tall, broad-shouldered and of a strong build, covered in dark brown or dark reddish hair. The head seems to sit directly on the shoulders, with no visible neck ever reported. Witnesses described large eyes, a pronounced eye brow ridge,[1] and a large, low-set forehead[2]; the top of the head has been reported as being both rounded and crested, similar to the sagittal crest of the male gorilla.
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Etymology
The words "Bigfoot" and "Sasquatch" are often used interchangeably, though they have different origins. Formal use of "Sasquatch" can be traced to the 1920s, when the term was coined by J.W. Burns, a school teacher at the Chehalis, British Columbia Indian Reserve, on the Harrison River about 100 kilometres east of Vancouver. Burns collected Native American accounts of large, hairy creatures said to live in the wild. Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark wrote that Burns's "Native American informants called these beasts by various names, including 'sokqueatl' and 'soss-q'tal'" (Coleman and Clark, p. 215). Burns noted the phonetically similar names for the creatures and decided to invent one term for them all.
Over time, Burns's neologism "Sasquatch" came to be used by others, primarily in the Pacific Northwest. In 1929, Maclean's published one of Burns's articles, "Introducing British Columbia's Hairy Giants," which called the large creatures by this term.
The late Smithsonian primatologist John Napier claimed that "the term Bigfoot has been in colloquial use since the early 1920's to describe large, unaccountable human-like footprints in the Pacific northwest" (Napier, 74). However, according to Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark, Andrew Genzoli (a columnist and editor at the Humbolt Times) first used "Bigfoot" in print on October 5, 1958 (Coleman and Clark, 39-40).
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Evidence
main article: Evidence regarding Bigfoot.
Although a great deal of evidence said to support the existence of Bigfoot has been offered over the years, the matter of its validity has always remained a highly contentious one. Seemingly every piece touted as evidence has aroused its share of criticism and support.
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Various types of creature have been proposed by proponents to explain the sightings. These explanations have seen very little support from mainstream scientists.
Gigantopithecus
Bill Munns creates realistic statues of endangered apes and this Gigantopithecus.
Bill Munns creates realistic statues of endangered apes and this Gigantopithecus.
Krantz argued that a relict population of Gigantopithecus blacki was the most likely candidate to explain Bigfoot reports. Based on his analysis of its jaws, he championed a view that Gigantopithecus was bipedal.
Bourne writes that Gigantopithecus was a plausible candidate for Bigfoot since most Gigantopithecus fossils had been recovered from China, and also that extreme eastern Siberia has forests similar to northwestern North America. Many recognized animals were known to have migrated across the Bering Strait, so it was not an unreasonable notion that Gigantopithecus could have as well. "So perhaps," Bourne writes, "Gigantopithecus is the Bigfoot of the American continent and perhaps he is also the Yeti of the Himalayas" (Bourne, 296).
This Gigantopithecus hypothesis is generally considered highly speculative. Rigorous studies of the existing fossilized remains seem to indicate that G. blacki is the common ancestor of two quadrupedal genera, represented by Sivapithecus and the orangutan (Pongo). Given the mainstream view that Gigantopithecus was a quadruped, it seems most unlikely that it could be an ancestor to a biped, as Bigfoot is said to be. Furthermore, it has been argued that G. blackis enormous mass would have made it difficult for it to adopt a bipedal gait. However, an analysis of the famous Patterson-Gimlin film shows that frames 369, 370, 371, and 372 all show a slender lower mandible, that does not match the massive lower mandible of Gigantopithecus blacki, which, assuming that the Patterson-Gimlin film is legitimate, would eliminate G. blacki as a candidate for Bigfoot. (Bigfoot Coop Newsletter, March 1997, also the documentary Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science).
"That Gigantopithicus is in fact extinct has been questioned by those who believe it survives as the Yeti of the Himalayas and the Sasquatch of the Northwest American coast. But the evidence for these creatures is not convincing." (Campbell p.100)
* The Bigfoot Giganto Theory
Other fossil apes
A species of Paranthropus, such as Paranthropus robustus, which had a crested skull and naturally bipedal gait, was suggested both by Napier and by anthropologist Gordon Strasenburg as a possible candidate for the bigfoot's identity.
Some Bigfoot reports suggest Homo erectus. H. erectus skeletons have never been found on the continent.
A little known subspecies of the Homo erectus, is Meganthropus, which reputedly grew to enormous proportions. Again, there have been no remains of this creature anywhere near North America, and none more recent than a million years old.
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Mainstream responses
Bigfoot is one of the more famous creatures in cryptozoology. Cryptozoologist John Green has postulated that Bigfoot is a worldwide phenomenon (Green 1978:16).
The earliest unambiguous reports of gigantic ape-like creatures in the Pacific northwest date from 1924, after a series of alleged encounters at a location in Washington later dubbed Ape Canyon, as related in The Oregonian.[3] Similar reports appear in the mainstream press dating back at least to the 1860's. The phenomenon attained widespread notoriety in 1958 when enormous footprints were reported in Humboldt County, California by crews working on a road; the tracks pictured in the media led to the familiar name "bigfoot".
In previous decades mainstream scientists generally ignored and dismissed the phenomena due to a lack of a representative specimen. They attributed the numerous sightings to the misidentification of common animals, mythology or folklore.
Proponents argue that every scientist who has personally examined the best available evidence has become an advocate for further scientific inquiry. The previous mainstream perspective may be changing as several notable primatologists are now openly urging the rest of the scientific community to take a closer look at the phenomena. To ignore the quantity, consistency and apparent sincerity of eyewitnesses reports, they argue, would be unscientific. This new wave of scientific proponents suggest the pattern of anecdotal evidence is consistent with patterns of anecdotal evidence that preceded significant discoveries in the past. [citation needed]
Ecologist Robert Michael Pyle says most cultures have human-like giants in their folk history. "We have this need for some larger-than-life creature."[1]
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Skeptics
Mainstream scientists and academics generally "discount the existence of Bigfoot because the evidence supporting belief in the survival of a prehistoric, bipedal, ape-like creature of such dimensions is scant".[4]. In addition to the lack of evidence, they cite the fact that while Bigfoot is alleged to live in regions that would be unusual for a large, non-human primate, i.e. temperate latitudes in the northern hemisphere, while all other recognized non-human apes are found in the tropics, in Africa, continental Asia or nearby islands. The great apes have never been found in the fossil record in the Americas. No Bigfoot bones or bodies have been found.
Furthermore, the issue is so muddied with dubious claims and outright hoaxes that many scientists do not give the subject serious attention. Napier wrote that the mainstream scientific community's indifference stems primarily from "insufficient evidence ... it is hardly unsurprising that scientists prefer to investigate the probable rather than beat their heads against the wall of the faintly possible" (Napier, 15). Anthropologist David Daegling echoed this idea, citing a "remarkably limited amount of Sasquatch data that are amenable to scientific scrutiny." (Daegling, 61) He also suggests mainstream skeptics should take a proactive position "to offer an alternative explanation. We have to explain why we see Bigfoot when there is no such animal" (ibid 20). While he does have some pointed criticism for mainstream science and academia, Krantz concedes that while "the Scientific Establishment generally resists new ideas ... there is a good reason for it ... Quite simply put, new and innovative ideas in science are almost always wrong" (Krantz, 236).
On May 24, 2006 Maria Goodavage wrote an article in USA Today entitled, "Bigfoot Merely Amuses Most Scientists". In it she quoted John Crane, a zoologist and biologist at Washington State, "There is no such thing as Bigfoot. No data other than material that's clearly been fabricated has ever been presented."[2]
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Proponents
Although most scientists find current evidence regarding Bigfoot unpersuasive, a number of prominent experts have spoken out on the subject, offering sympathetic opinions. In a 2002 interview on National Public Radio, Jane Goodall first publicly expressed her views on bigfoot, "Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist. . . . Of course, the big, the big criticism of all this is, 'Where is the body?' You know, why isn't there a body? I can't answer that, and maybe they don't exist, but I want them to."[5] Several other prominent scientists have also expressed at least a guarded interest in Sasquatch reports including George Schaller, Russell Mittermeier, Daris Swindler and Esteban Sarmiento.
Prominent anthropologist Carleton S. Coon's posthumously published essay Why the Sasquatch Must Exist states, "Even before I read John Green's book Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us, first published in 1978, I accepted Sasquatch's existence" (Markotic and Krantz, 46). Coon examines the question from several angles, stating that he is confident only in ruling out a relict Neanderthal population as a viable candidate for Sasquatch reports.
As noted above, Napier generally argued against Bigfoot's reality, but he also argued that some "soft evidence" (eyewitnesses, footprints, hair and droppings) is compelling enough that he advises against "dismissing its reality out of hand" (Napier, 197).
Krantz and others have argued that a double standard is applied by many academics to Sasquatch studies: When a claim is made or evidence is presented alleging that Sasquatch is genuine, enormous scrutiny is applied to the claim or evidence, as well as it should be. Yet when individuals claim to have hoaxed Bigfoot evidence, their claims are often quickly accepted, though they typically lack corroborative evidence.
In 2004, Henry Gee, editor of the prestigious Nature, argued that creatures like Bigfoot deserved further study, writing, "The discovery that Homo floresiensis survived until so very recently, in geological terms, makes it more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures such as Yetis are founded on grains of truth ... Now, cryptozoology, the study of such fabulous creatures, can come in from the cold."[6]
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Hoaxes
Sometimes a Bigfoot sighting or track find is shown to be a hoax. Author Jerome Clark argues that the "Jacko" affair, involving an 1884 newspaper report of an ape-like creature captured in British Columbia (details below), was a hoax. Citing research by John Green, who uncovered the fact that several other contemporary British Columbia newspapers regarded the alleged capture as most dubious, Clark notes that the New Westminster, British Columbia Mainland Guardian wrote, "Absurdity is written on the face of it" (Clark, 195). Interestingly, Clark failed to see the same possibilities when researching cattle mutilations, calling them "extraterrestrial" in nature.
In the past ten years the style of Bigfoot hoaxes that have won wider attention from the press were false claims of hoaxing famous pieces of evidence such as the Patterson Footage or the Jerry Crew tracks from Bluff Creek.
In 1958 bulldozer operator Jerry Crew took to a newspaper office a cast of one of the enormous footprints he and other workers had been seeing at an isolated work site in Bluff Creek, California. The story and photo garnered international attention through being picked up by the Associated Press (Krantz, 5). Crew was overseen by Wilbur L. Wallace, brother of Raymond L. Wallace. Years after the track casts were made, Ray Wallce got involved in bigfoot research and made various outlandish claims. He was poorly regarded by many who took the subject seriously. Napier wrote, "I do not feel impressed with Mr. Wallace's story" regarding having over 15,000 feet of film showing Bigfoot (Napier, 89).
Shortly after the death of Ray Wallace his children claimed he was the "father of bigfoot". They claimed Ray faked the tracks seen by Jerry Crew in 1958. There were some wooden track stompers among Ray's inherited belongings which the family claimed were used to make the 1958 tracks. The shape of Ray's wooden track stompers did not match the shape of the Crew track, but the Wallace photo did provide a catchy visual element for the news story, which circulated internationally as "The Father of Bigfoot Dies." At the height of the publicity the Wallace family sold the story rights to a Hollywood filmmaker. The film, set to star actor Judge Reinhold, was never produced.
Canadian newspaperman John Green was closer to the Jerry Crew events than any other living journalist. He points out the Ray never claimed to have made the Bluff Creek tracks, and Ray was not present in the Bluff Creek area when the Crew cast was obtained. Wallace had road-building contracts in various parts of the Northwest and was usually not around in Bluff Creek. Years after the fact, Wallace attempted to capitalize on the interest in various ways. He tried to sell various items from a roadside shop, including bigfoot footprint replicas, which he made behind his shop using a pair of wooden track stompers.
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Arguments against the hoax explanation
Primatologist John Napier acknowledged that there have been some hoaxes but also contended that hoaxing is often an inadequate explanation. Krantz argues that "something like 100,000 casual hoaxers" would be required to explain the footprints (Krantz, 32-34).
As noted above, it was claimed that Ray Wallace began the modern Bigfoot phenomenon in 1958 by using phony foot casts to leave Bigfoot prints in Humbolt County, California. His family received major press attention in 2002 when they detailed what they said were Wallace's activities. Wallace himself never made any such claims, and Bigfoot supporters deny them. One writer, for example, argues: "The wooden track stompers shown to the media by the Wallace family do not match photos of the 1958 tracks they claim their father made. They are different foot shapes."[7]
It's also worth noting that Sasquatch reports antedate Wallace's claims by several decades -- see Burns's Maclean articles of the 1920s [3], and a series in The Oregonian from 1924 about the alleged Ape Canyon attacks [4].
