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Yeti

DNA study solves mystery of Himalayan Yeti, with surprising results

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Tales of a fierce ‘Abominable Snowman’, otherwise called Yeti, Sasquatch or Bigfoot, is one of the world’s most enduring mysteries. Apparent eye-witness accounts, blurry home videos, and traces of large non-human footprints have instilled both fear and curiosity in people for centuries. Now, it appears that the mystery has been solved thanks to a new DNA study conducted by British Scientists, and the results are surprising.

Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes conducted a DNA analysis on hair samples from suspected yetis, one found in the western Himalayan region of Ladakh and the other from Bhutan, 800 miles away.  The sample from Ladakh came from the mummified remains of a creature shot by a hunter around 40 years ago, while the second sample was in the form of a single hair, found in a bamboo forest by an expedition of filmmakers searching for the Yeti around 10 years ago.  Skyes used these samples to compare them to those in GenBank, the international repository of gene sequences of known species.

Sykes was surprised and perplexed by what the analysis revealed, which was a 100% match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Norway, which dates back between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago.  This was around the time that the polar bear and the related brown bear were separating into different species and Sykes believes the most likely explanation is that the animal is a sub-species of brown bear that is descended from an ancestor of the ancient polar bear.

Ancient DNA Origins

“This is a species that hasn’t been recorded for 40,000 years. Now, we know one of these was walking around ten years ago. And what’s interesting is that we have found this type of animal at both ends of the Himalayas. If one were to go back, there would be others still there,” said Professor Sykes. "It may be some sort of hybrid and if its behaviour is different from normal bears, which is what eyewitnesses report, then I think that may well be the source of the mystery and the source of the legend."

Prof Sykes said that his results were "completely unexpected" and that more work needed to be done interpreting them. He has submitted to a journal for peer review so other scientists will be able to examine the results more closely as soon as they are published.

He is aware of the limitations of his analysis, saying that there was only a limited amount that could be learned with the hair. "It's 40 years old and not much DNA there really. The next best thing to do is to get an expedition together to find one and see what one is like in the wild and to see if any aspects of its behaviour are more likely to be identified as a yeti.

By April Holloway

 

Comments

As you can check only samples provided or found, what is there to link any of them to the Yeti? Nothing!If you believe the tales of monks and men anxious to establish the Yeti as an important cultural, nay, religious presence, the bits and bobs preserved in Lamaseries etc lack streetcred and all predate whoever shows them to you, often by several generations. And you cant yourself log a bit of bear hair you have found as a suspected Yeti, as this is the very definition of Fake News- you have no evidence that it IS NOT a bear's hairs!

But these artifacts are articles of faith in the area, and the result of many sightings over the generations of an upright creature , like a big hairy man-ape, by experienced locals who can tell the difference between a bear and an ape, there being both in Nepal and Bhutan and Ladakh.

I was told a traveller's tale by a woman who was in Katmandu grieving over the loss of friends killed in yet another attempt on the summit of K2, a long way away from where she was on holiday.

Members of that expedition had informed her that three of the survivors had become lost in a blizzard on the way back to base camp, and had been at risk of losing their lives in the night and the cold, when they were approached by a couple who helped them into their shelter, a cave in the rocks, and who had remained with them throughout the storm and for several days afterward. She told me the couple then led them downhill until they reached a path well-used by locals, where they left them to find their way back to town.
The woman told me the couple were Yeti, and her friends described them as taller than people, with thick black hair all over their bodies bar their hands and their faces that were a dark leathery shade of brown, and that they were slim, and inspired no fear in the travellers at all, but concerned themselves for the entire duration of their stay with ensuring they had food, and were able to be warm inside the cave, but she did not make any mention of cooking, or of a fire, so I am not in a position to say what the food was.

This was a good sane sober middle-aged american I was listening to, not some bhanged hippy joker, and her entire manner was serious and credible: she had just lost her own husband, and I do not think that she was making that up (it was in the papers at the time), and I do not believe these other survivors were inventing a story to cheer her up somehow.

"Yeti" was Tocharian king Ye-Li-Ti, a red-headed/white-skinned Neanderthal that scared the native Homo Erectus hominids the first time they crossed into the Hindu Kush. Aka "Yayati." Simple as that.

Are sasquatch the direct descendants of Lemurians? If you get a chance, this video is well worth the watch. It seems that these are "interdimensional creatures," as we would say in "hairless human" language. But it they don't themselves *experience* many dimensions. Instead, they talk about "all-(dimensions)-as-one." Amazing documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=832&v=dK0gOhO_F48

Roberto Peron's picture

It walks on two legs as filmed and as attested to by some noted explorers!  Sorry but bears cannot walk long distances on two legs especially in deep snow.  

 
aprilholloway's picture

April

April Holloway is a Co-Owner, Editor and Writer of Ancient Origins. For privacy reasons, she has previously written on Ancient Origins under the pen name April Holloway, but is now choosing to use her real name, Joanna Gillan.

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