Bigfoot

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This article is about the creature. For other uses, see Bigfoot (disambiguation).
“Sasquatch” redirects here. For other uses, see Sasquatch (disambiguation).
Bigfoot
Frame 352 from the Patterson-Gimlin film
Creature
Name: Bigfoot
AKA: Sasquatch
Classification
Grouping: Cryptid
Sub Grouping: Hominid
Data
First Reported: 1924 (+prior legends)
Last Sighted: Present Day
Country: United States, Canada
Region: Pacific Northwest (Primary)
Habitat: Forest
Status: Unconfirmed

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is a figure in North American folklore said to inhabit remote forests, mainly in the Pacific north-west of the United States and British Columbia, Canada. Bigfoot is sometimes described as a large, hairy bipedal hominoid, 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 one of the more famous examples of cryptozoology, a subject that mainstream researchers tend to dismiss as pseudoscience because of unreliable eyewitness accounts and a lack of solid physical evidence. Most people consider the Bigfoot legend to be a combination of folklore and hoaxes.

Contents

Description

According to most eyewitness accounts, Bigfoot is a powerfully built bipedal apelike creature between 7 and 10 feet (2.10 and 3 meters) tall, and covered in dark brown or dark reddish hair. The head seems to sit directly on the shoulders, with no apparent neck. Witnesses have described large eyes, a pronounced brow ridge,[1] and a large, low-set forehead[2]; the top of the head has been described as rounded and crested, similar to the sagittal crest of the male gorilla.

Evidence

main article: Evidence regarding Bigfoot.

Although a great deal of evidence supporting the Bigfoot's existence has been offered over the years, its validity has always been highly contentious.

Proposed creatures

Various types of creature have been described by proponents to explain the sightings. These descriptions have received little support from mainstream science.

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 relic population of Gigantopithecus blacki would best explain Bigfoot reports. Based on his fossil 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 were found in China, whose extreme eastern Siberian forests are similar to those of north-western North America. Many well-known animals have migrated across the Bering Strait, so it was not unreasonable to assume that Gigantopithecus might 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).

The Gigantopithecus hypothesis is generally considered highly speculative. Given the mainstream view that Gigantopithecus was quadrupedal, it would seem unlikely to be an ancestor to the biped Bigfoot is said to be. Moreover, it has been argued that G. blackis enormous mass would have made it difficult for it to adopt a bipedal gait.[3] 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 north-west American coast. But the evidence for these creatures is not convincing." (Campbell p.100)

Other fossil apes

A species of Paranthropus, such as Paranthropus robustus, with its crested skull and bipedal gait, was suggested by Napier and anthropologist Gordon Strasenburg as a possible candidate for Bigfoot's identity.

Some Bigfoot reports suggest Homo erectus to be the creature, but H. erectus skeletons have never been found on the North American continent.

There was also a little known genus, called Meganthropus, which reputedly grew to enormous proportions. Again, there have been no remains of this creature anywhere near North America, and none younger than a million years old.

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).

Indian Native tribes in the Northwest note the appearance of large creatures, they call Sasquatch. Such creatures were said to exist on Vancouver Island and near Harrison Lake.

The earliest unambiguous reports of gigantic apelike creatures in the Pacific north-west date from 1924, after a series of alleged encounters at a location in Washington later dubbed Ape Canyon, as related in The Oregonian.[4] Similar reports appear in the mainstream press dating back at least to the 1860s. The phenomenon attained widespread notoriety in 1958 when enormous footprints were reported in Humboldt County, California by roadworkers; the tracks pictured in the media inspired the familiar name "Bigfoot".

In previous decades mainstream scientists generally dismissed the phenomena due to a lack of a representative specimens. They attributed the numerous sightings to folklore, mythology, hoaxes, and the misidentification of common animals.

Proponents argue that every scientist who has 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 eyewitness 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 argues that most cultures have humanlike giants in their folk history. "We have this need for some larger-than-life creature."[1]

Skeptics

Mainstream scientists and academics generally "discount the existence of Bigfoot because the evidence supporting belief in the survival of a prehistoric, bipedal, apelike creature of such dimensions is scant".[5]. In addition to the lack of evidence, they cite the fact that while Bigfoot is alleged to live in regions unusual for a large, nonhuman primate, i.e., temperate latitudes in the northern hemisphere, while all other recognized nonhuman apes are found in the tropics, Africa, continental Asia or nearby islands. The great apes have never been found in the fossil record in the Americas, and no Bigfoot bones or bodies have been found to date.

Moreover, 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 advises that mainstream skeptics 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 criticize 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 which she quotes Washington State zoologist John Crane, "There is no such thing as Bigfoot. No data other than material that's clearly been fabricated has ever been presented."[2]

Proponents

Although most scientists find current evidence of Bigfoot unpersuasive, a number of prominent experts have offered sympathetic opinions on the subject. In a 2002 interview on National Public Radio, Jane Goodall first publicly expressed her views on Bigfoot, by remarking, "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."[6] 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 previously noted, Napier generally argued against Bigfoot's existence, but added that some "soft evidence" (i.e., eyewitness accounts, 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 to Sasquatch studies by many academics: whenever there is a claim or evidence of Sasquatch's existence, enormous scrutiny is applied, as well as it should be. Yet when individuals claim to have hoaxed Bigfoot evidence, the claims are frequently accepted without 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."[7]

Hoaxes

There are times when a Bigfoot sighting or footprint is a hoax. Author Jerome Clark argues that the "Jacko" affair, involving an 1884 newspaper report of an apelike creature captured in British Columbia (details below), was a hoax. Citing research by John Green, who found that several contemporary British Columbia newspapers regarded the alleged capture as very 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 decade or so, the style of Bigfoot hoaxes winning wider news attention 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 Wallace 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 Wallace's death, his children claimed that 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 was not present in the Bluff Creek area when the Crew cast was obtained. Wallace had road-building contracts in various parts of the north-west and was usually not around in Bluff Creek. Years after the fact, Wallace attempted to capitalise 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.

Arguments against the hoax explanation

Primatologist John Napier acknowledged that there have been some hoaxes but also contended that hoaxing is not always an adequate 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 Wallace's alleged hoaxing, to which Wallace himself never admitted (and which Bigfoot supporters deny). 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."[8]

It is 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].

Formal studies of Bigfoot

There have been a limited number of formal scientific studies of Bigfoot or Sasquatch, and a small number of scientists with mainstream training have examined the evidence.

See article: Formal studies of Bigfoot.

Bigfoot in popular culture

See article: Bigfoot in popular culture.

Alleged Bigfoot sightings of note

  • 1811: On January 7, 1811, David Thompson, a surveyor and trader for the North West Company, spotted large, well-defined footprints in the snow near Athabasca River, Jasper, Alberta, while attempting to cross the Rocky Mountains. The tracks measured 14 inches in length and 8 inches in width.
  • 1834: Mormon Missionary David W. Patten recounts : "As I was riding along the road on my mule I suddenly noticed a very strange personage walking beside me…. His head was about even with my shoulders as I sat in my saddle. He wore no clothing, but was covered with hair. His skin was very dark. I asked him where he dwelt and he replied that he had no home, that he was a wanderer in the earth and traveled to and fro". [5]
  • 1840: Protestant missionary Reverend Elkanah Walker recorded myths of hairy giants that were persistent among Native Americans living in Spokane, Washington. The Indians reported that these giants steal salmon and have a strong smell.[6]
  • 1870: An account by a California hunter who claimed seeing a sasquatch scattering his campfire remains was printed in the Titusville, Pennsylvania Morning Herald on November 10, 1870.[7] The incident reportedly occurred a year before, in the mountains near Grayson, CA.
  • 1893: An account by Theodore Roosevelt was published in The Wilderness Hunter. Roosevelt related a story which was told to him by "a beaten old mountain hunter, named Bauman" living in Idaho. Some have suggested similarities to Bigfoot reports. [8] (Note: Roosevelt's testimony is the only evidence this encounter ever occurred).
  • 1924: Albert Ostman claimed to have been kidnapped and held captive for several days by a family of sasquatch. The incident occurred during the summer in Toba Inlet, British Columbia.[9]
  • 1924: Fred Beck and four other miners claimed to have been attacked by several sasquatches in Ape Canyon in July, 1924. The creatures reportedly hurled large rocks at the miners’ cabin for several hours during the night. This case was publicized in newspaper reports printed in 1924. [10], [11][12]
  • 1941: Jeannie Chapman and her children claimed to have escaped their home when a large sasquatch, allegedly 7½ feet tall, approached their residence in Ruby Creek, British Columbia.[13]
  • 1940s onward: People living in Fouke, Arkansas have reported that a Bigfoot-like creature, dubbed the “Fouke Monster”, inhabits the region. A high number of reports have occurred in the Boggy Creek area and are the basis for the 1973 film The Legend of Boggy Creek. [14],[15], [16], [17], [18],[19]
  • 1955: William Roe claimed to have seen a close-up view of a female sasquatch from concealment near Mica Mountain, British Columbia.[20]
  • 1958: Two construction workers, Leslie Breazale and Ray Kerr, reported seeing a sasquatch about 45 miles northeast of Eureka, California. Sixteen-inch tracks had previously been spotted in the northern California woods.[21]
  • 1967: On October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin captured a purported sasquatch on film in Bluff Creek, California in what would come to be known as the Patterson-Gimlin film.
  • 1970: A family of bigfoot-like creatures called "zoobies" was observed on multiple occasions by a San Diego psychiatrist named Dr. Baddour and his family near their Alpine, California home, as reported in an interview with San Diego County Deputy Sheriff Sgt. Doug Huse, who investigated the sightings. [22]
  • 1995: On August 28, 1995, a TV film crew from Waterland Productions pulled off the road into Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and filmed what they claimed to be a sasquatch in their RV's Headlights.[23]
  • 2005: On April 16, 2005, A creature resembling bigfoot was seen on the bank of the Nelson River in Norway House, Manitoba. The forty seconds of footage was captured by ferry operator Bobby Clarke from across the Nelson River. [24]
  • 2006: On December 14, 2006, Shaylane Beatty, a woman from the Dechambault Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada, was driving to Prince Albert when, she claimed, saw the creature near the side of the highway at Torch River. Several men from the village drove down to the area and found footprints, which they tracked through the snow. They found a tuft of brown hair and took photographs of the tracks.[25][26]

Trivia

  • Washington State is the state with the most Bigfoot sightings in the United States. Their name for Bigfoot is Sasquatch.
  • Children in Washington State in grades 3-5 have a book award called the Sasquatch Award.


See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Sheppard Software (GNU Free Documentation License). Bigfoot.
  2. ^ Lloyd Pye (2006)Various Depictions of Hominids.
  3. ^ The method of locomotion for Gigantopithecus is not entirely certain, as no pelvis or leg bone has ever been found; the only remains of Gigantopithecus being discovered is the teeth and mandible. A minority opinion, championed by Grover Krantz, holds that the mandible shape and structure suggests bipedal locomotion. The only fossil evidence of Gigantopithecus — the mandible and teeth— are U-shaped, like the bipedal humans, rather than V-shaped, like the great apes. A complete fossil specimen, with the pelvis and leg bones, would be necessary to conclusively resolve the debate one way or the other, but are absent to date.
  4. ^ Roger Thomas (date of copyright unlisted) Bigfoot/Sasquatch FAQ.
  5. ^ Skepdic.
  6. ^ BFRO.net (2006). Transcript of Dr Jane Goodall's comments on NPR regarding Sasquatch.
  7. ^ Nature Publishing Group (2004). Flores, God and Cryptozoology (available only with subscription).
  8. ^ BFRO.net (2006). Wallace Hoax Behind Bigfoot?.

References

  •   Alex Boese (2002). The Museum of Hoaxes: A Collection of Pranks, Stunts, Deceptions, and Other Wonderful Stories Contrived for the Public from the Middle Ages to the New Millennium. Dutton/Penguin Books. ISBN 0-525-94678-0. 
  • Bourne, Geoffrey H. and Maury Cohen, The Gentle Giants: The Gorilla Story, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1975, ISBN 0-399-11528-5
  • Bryant, Vaughn M. and Burleigh Trevor-Deutch, "Analysis of Feces and Hair Suspected to be of Sasquatch Origin" (in Halpin and Ames)
  • Byrne, Peter, The Search for Bigfoot: Monster, Man or Myth, Acropolis Books, 1975, ISBN 0-87491-159-1
  • Campbell, Bernard G., Humankind Emerging, Little, Brown and Company, 1979, Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 78-78234
  • Clark, Jerome, Unexplained! 347 Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences and Puzzling Physical Phenomena, Visible Ink, 1993, ISBN 0-8103-9436-7
  • Coleman, Loren and Jerome Clark, Cryptozoology A to Z, Fireside Books, 1999, ISBN 0-684-85602-6
  • Coleman, Loren and Patrick Huyghe, The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide, Avon Books, 1999, ISBN 0-380-80263-5
  • Coon, Carelton, "Why Sasquatch Must Exist" (in Markotic and Krantz)
  • Daegling, David J, Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America's Enduring Legend, Altamira Press, 2004, ISBN 0-7591-0539-1
  • Gill, George "Population Clines of the North American Sasquatch as Evidenced by Track Lengths and Average Status" (in Halpin and Ames)
  • Green, John Willison, Sasquatch - The Apes Among Us, Hancock House Publishing, 1978, ISBN 0-88839-123-4
  • Guttilla, Peter, The Bigfoot Files, Timeless Voyager Press, 2003, ISBN 1-892264-15-3
  • Halprin, Marjorie, "The Tsimshan Monkey Mask and Sasquatch" (in Halpin and Ames)
  • Halpin, Marjorie and Michael Ames, editors, Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records and Modern Evidence, University of British Columbia Press, 1980, ISBN 0-7748-0119-0
  • Hunter, Don and Rene Dahinden, Sasquach/Bigfoot: The Search for North America's Incredible Creature, Firefly Books, 1993, ISBN 1-895565-28-6
  • Krantz, Grover S., Big Footprints: A Scientific Inquiry into the Reality of Sasquatch, Johnson Books, 1992, ISBN 1-55566-099-1
  • Long, Greg, The making of Bigfoot: the inside story, Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2004 ISBN 1-59102-139-1 (Long was able to track down the man who wore the monkey suit for Roger Patterson's film, and obtained a complete confession of the hoax.)
  • Markotic, Vladimir and Grover Krantz, editors, The Sasquatch and Other Unknown Primates, Western Publishers, 1984, ISBN 0-919119-10-7
  • Mozino, Jose Mariano, Noticas de Nutka: An Account of Nootka Sound, Iris Higbe Wilson, editor and traslator, University of Washington Press, 1970, ISBN 0-295-95061-7
  • Napier, John Russell Bigfoot: The Sasquatch and Yeti in Myth and Reality, 1973, E.P. Dutton, ISBN 0-525-06658-6
  • Powell, Thom, The Locals, Hancock House, 2003, ISBN 0-88839-552-3
  • Pyle, Robert Michael, Where Bigfoot Walks, Houghton Mifflin, 1995, ISBN 0-395-44114-5
  • Sanderson, Ivan T., "First Photos of 'Bigfoot', California's Legendary 'Abominable Snowman'", Argosy, February 1968, pg 23-31, 127,128, ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: a legend come to life.
  • Sjögren, Bengt.Farliga djur och djur som inte finns, Prisma, 1962
  • Shakley, Myra, Wildman: Yeti, Sasquatch and the Neanderthal Enigma, Thames and Hudson, 1973
  • Sprague, Roderick, "Carved Stone Heads of the Columbia and Sasquatch" (in Halpin and Ames)
  • Sprague, Roderick and Grover Krantz, editors, A Scientist Looks at the Sasquatch II, University Press of Idaho, 1978, ISBN 0-89301-061-8
  • Suttles, Wayne, "On the Cultural Track of Sasquatch" (in Sprage and Krantz)
  • Wasson, Barbara, Sasquatch Apparitions: A Critique on the Pacific Northwest Hominoid, self-published, 1979, ISBN 0-9614105-0-7
  • http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/06/30/china.bigfoot/
  • http://www.parascope.com/en/articles/bigfootRussia.htm
  • http://skepdic.com/bigfoot.html
  • http://www.who2.com/bigfoot.html

Further reading

External links

Organizations

Regional

Science

Researchers

Paranormal or alternative theories

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