above image: a sculpture of a Bigfoot and child, China

Bigfoot, the original cryptid, Fact or Fiction.

     You don’t have to be a fan of the Mysterious and Unexplained to know who Bigfoot is, although you may know him/her as Yeti, sasquatch, Yeren, Yowie, Mande Barung, Orang Pendek, Skunk Ape or anyof the other monikers this elusive hairy beast has been called. The fact is that just about every culture in the world has Bigfoot of some sort and I believe I know why. I am going to give you my theory at the end of this post, first I want to share a famous sighting and compare the descriptions.

I have been fascinated with Bigfoot ever since I was a very young boy. My Grandpa would take my Brother and I fishing every weekend morning back then, from the age of 4 until about ten or eleven we spent weekends and summers with my Grandpa in the woods of Northern Wisconsin learning how to fish, hunt, survive and appreciate nature. Many times on our trips through the woods we would study the footprints of various wildlife we found, Grandpa would explain what it was, where it probably had a home and how to successfully track and hunt one if necessary. One particular morning we came across some larger prints that looked like a human print with no shoes on. My Grandpa bent down looked at the track and then at my brother and I with a serious look in his eyes. He spoke with a whisper, “This is a Sasquatch print. They are very large and hairy human like creatures, My Grandfather used to hunt them in the mountains of Oregon before we moved to Wisconsin. They are very dangerous but often stay far a way from humans. I’ve never seen prints from one around here before.” He stood up and continued walking toward our fishing hole. My brother and I had our gazes firmly fixated on the footprint next to us, both too afraid to even move, thinking a large hairy man like monster may be watching our every move. Realizing he may have scared us beyond fishing he turned around and laughed, I’m kidding you two, it’s just some guy coming from the swimming hole, now let’s go.” My brother and I were happy with that explanation and we left the scene to continue our fishing. I never knew whether Grandpa was pulling our legs that entire time or if we really had stumbled across a Bigfoot print, I suppose it wasn’t really him but that day had done all it needed to pique my interest in Sasquatch.  I would imagine that from the time I was five or six until my teenage years I had amassed dozens of books on the subject and would often go Bigfoot hunting whenever I had the chance. I never found one or another print but it didn’t stop my curiosity. When the Internet became an accessible commodity for me I went Ape-shit (sorry I have to pun though) about all the new information on my favorite legendary creature. I’ve watched every video that hasn’t been easily debunked, I’ve struggled through TV shows with crazy people convinced they would find and speak with a Bigfoot and I’ve even attended a lecture by a renowned Bigfoot hunter back in the early 2000’s. I was obsessed for quite a while. My Bigfoot fever had subsided quite a bit since those days but the subject still fascinates me and it was only after spending years studying ancient human species other than Homo sapiens that I came across my theory. Again I just want to show an example of what people have described when encountering them and then I will share my ground-breaking theory.

I chose just a couple of sightings to highlight here and there really was no criteria other than a good look at the hairy Humanoid or its way of life.

Albert Ostman, 1924, Toba Inlet, British Columbia.

Mr. Ostamn who was a logger and construction worker decided to take some time off and head for Toba Inlet in search of a lost gold mine. On the way to the location an old Native American boatman told him of huge hairy beings, big people, who lived on the island in the mountains near the mines supposed location. Mr. Ostman hiked inland for almost a week before finding a suitable camping spot near the mines last known location. He started realizing that his food and camp were being messed with when he was sleeping and assuming it was racoons or maybe a bear he decided to stay awake one night while hiding in his sleeping bag. Well that night the things came back and before he even knew what was going on Mr. Ostamn was picked up bag and all and carried away. He couldn’t get to his knife to cut himself out so he waited. He was carried for hours before he was finally deposited on the ground.  He waited in the bag for a while listening to what he described as a strange kind of chatter he could not understand, finally he slipped out of his bag and found himself in the corner of a cave. He could make out the forms of four people, wearing no clothes and covered with hair. As it got lighter he could see that he was in a valley surrounded by mountains and the hairy things seemed to be a family. An old man, old lady and two young ones, a boy and a girl. They made no attempts to hurt him but they seemed intent on keeping him around. He described the young one as between 11-18 years old standing about 7 feet tall and weighing about 300 pounds, he had wide jaws, a narrow forehead that slanted upward around at the back about four or five inches higher than the forehead. The hair on their heads were about 6 inches long while their body hair was shorter and thicker in places. The women’s hair was longer on their heads. The older female was between 40-70, 7 feet tall and about 500-600 pounds. She had very wide hips and a goose like walk. The older man’s eyeteeth were longer than any of the other beasts but not quite fangs. He was nearly 8 feet tall, his hands were wide, the palms long and broad. His fingers were short in proportion to the rest of his hand. His fingernails were like chisels. The only place they had no hair was the insides of their hands and the soles of their feet.

After six days Albert Ostman decided that he had enough. Choosing his moment wisely he fired his rifle, which startled the Sasquatch family enough to let him escape. Curiously Ostman didn’t even tell his story for many years fearing that he might be disbelieved.

 There are thousands upon thousands of stories but I chose Mr. Ostman’s because it gives my theory more credence. It is very simple, I believe that Sasquatch, Bigfoot or whatever you want to call them are actually the last remnants of our ancient ancestor, Homo Neanderthalis, or Neanderthal for short. Neanderthals had lived in Europe and Asia for 500,000 years or more before homo Sapiens entered the picture. Common thought is that Neanderthals were wiped out about 30,000 years ago by climate change, low birth rate and Sapiens interaction but I disagree. Who’s to say that small pockets of Neanderthals packed up and headed into the deep mountains and forests of Asia, Europe and even North America. They had spent almost a half a million years evolving to adapt to Ice Age Europe/Asia so why couldn’t they have adapted themselves even more? When they realized that they were being pushed out by the new human species they chose to flee into harsher and harsher climates. Even if they didn’t start ‘hiding” in the harshest environments until 30-40,000 years ago it would have given them and evolution enough time to help them adapt. They were already barrel chested, larger humans with sloping and slanted foreheads. They would have had tens of thousands of years to become invisible, spending all of those generations hiding from the humans that drove out their ancestors. They would have figured out how to avoid us at all costs unless absolute necessity calls for interaction. There are records of Neanderthal burying their dead and also cannibalizing them so that could easily explain the lack of bones ever found. If you’ve spent tens of thousands of years hiding and being invisible you get really good at it, especially if you are a human species with a brain larger than even Homo Sapiens.  

In conclusion, I absolutely believe that a Bigfoot/sasquatch creature does exist except it isn’t some strange long forgotten monster ape. No these creatures are an intelligent human species that could either be Neanderthals or were evolved from the last surviving Neanderthals who took to the deep forests and mountains to hide and eek out a living.  One patch of hair, one little toe bone or even a pile of Bigfoot scat could have all the genetic information to support or deny this theory. It is a tad frustrating to think that’s all we’d need to figure this out. It is also sad to think if we ever did find a family of Bigfoot how we as a modern society would react to them. They’d be captured experimented on and paraded around like zoo animals when in fact they may just be an older species of humans. Just think what would have happened had homo Sapiens and not Neanderthal went extinct.  Would tall hairy humanoids be chasing the elusive tiny hairless humans and wondering if they really existed?

Have a great day and as always………………PEACE!!!!!!

above image: Artist recreation of one of the oldest Neanderthal skulls ever found. Looks a bit like Bigfoot, right?