All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
April 21, 2007 - Skeptoid
12:49
Skeptoid #40: Neanderthals in Present Day Asia

Some claim that a legendary wildman, the Almas, is a population of relict Neanderthals. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Relict Neanderthals in Mongolia 00:06:02
From the remote mountains of Mongolia come tales of a hairy beast, but not the massive hulking yeti you've probably heard of.
Known by various names, the almos is said to be smaller, the size of a person, yet wild, hairy, and untamed.
Some believe they may be relict Neanderthal still surviving.
Today we're going to have a look at the real genetic evidence.
We're doing that right now on Skeptoid.
A quick reminder for everyone, you're listening to Skeptoid, revealing the true science and true history behind urban legends every week since 2006.
With over a thousand episodes, we're celebrating 20 years of keeping it focused and keeping it brief.
And we couldn't have done it without your curiosity leading the way.
And now we're even offering a little bit more.
If you become a premium member, supporting the show with a monthly micropayment of as little as $5, you get more Skeptoid.
The premium version of the show is not only ad-free, it has extended content.
These episodes are a few minutes longer.
We get rid of the ads and we'll replace them with more Skeptoid.
The extended premium show available now.
Come to skeptoid.com and click Go Premium.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Neanderthals in present-day Asia.
Today we're going to set aside our slide rules and put on our galoshes as we prepare to dig through muddy burial sites high in the Himalayan foothills, looking for conclusive proof that Neanderthals survive today, hidden away in the rocky corners of darkest Asia.
I've always loved reading about monsters and ghosts and mysterious creatures.
The thing that first caught my intrigue about the abominable snowman was that the reports are really about two distinct and very different species.
The big hairy ape running around the mountains, pursued by Sir Edmund Hillary and leaving the famous footprint photograph, and plaguing thrill seekers in Disneyland's Matterhorn, is usually called the Yeti.
There are many variations of this name, but let's stick with Yeti for simplicity.
The other species is neither big nor especially hairy nor much of a snowman.
The almus is most often described as a small scrawny person, about five feet tall, hairy and stinky and mute, and living in Paleolithic squalor up in the foothills of the Himalayas and into Eastern Europe.
The description is generally consistent with what we call a Neanderthal.
But since there are no remains or genetic evidence, it could also just as plausibly be said to match any of several earlier and more primitive species of the Homo genus.
Really quick history lesson on Neanderthals.
They are not an ancestor of modern humans.
Homo Neanderthalensis is descended from a separate branch that split off from the evolutionary tree about 516,000 years ago, according to some research published in Nature.
Mitochondrial DNA studies have shown conclusively that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens evolved separately.
As the Cro-Mannian Homo sapiens moved in across Europe about 45,000 years ago, Homo neanderthalensis was pushed out into little corners of the world.
The last known population died out in the vicinity of Gibraltar about 24,000 years ago, thus ending their approximately 300,000-year existence.
This was not the only time the Earth was inhabited by significantly different hominid species.
Paranthropus, a member of the muscular and ape-like, robust Australopithecines, frequently encountered and competed with the more modern, smaller, and smarter Homo habilis.
And so we have the hypothetical existence of the Almus, replete with evolutionary precedent.
We have a similar precedent for the Yeti from the fossil record.
Gigantopithecus was a prehistoric great ape that stood nine feet tall and weighed three times as much as a modern gorilla.
Its closest relative living today is the orangutan.
Giganopithecus did live in China and India.
In fact, it lived generally where the Yeti is said to exist now.
They first appeared about 5 million years ago and became extinct only about 100,000 years ago.
Like the Neanderthal, they reigned for a long time and only disappeared in the most recent of evolutionary moments.
Recall that coelacanths were thought to have gone extinct almost 100 million years ago, and they gave us quite a surprise in 1938 when they reappeared and proved us wrong.
So we've got our hypothesis.
Now let's look at some of the best known stories that the hypothesis is attempting to explain.
Hey everyone, I want to remind you about a truly unique and once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
Join me and Mediterranean archaeologist Dr. Flint Dibble for a skeptoid sailing adventure through the Mediterranean Sea aboard the SV Royal Clipper, the world's largest full-rigged sailing ship.
This is also the only opportunity you'll have to hear Flint and I talk about our experiences when we both went on Joe Rogan to represent the causes of science and reality against whatever it is that you get when you're thrown into that lion pit.
We set sail from Malaga, Spain on April 18th, 2026 and finished the adventure in Nice, France on April 25th.
The Zaina Skull Mystery 00:04:33
You'll enjoy a fascinating skeptical mini-conference at sea.
You'll visit amazing ports along the Spanish and French coasts and Flint will be our exclusive onboard expert sharing the real archaeology and history about every stop.
We've got special side quests and extra skeptical content planned at each port.
This is a true sailing ship.
You can climb the rat lines to the crow's nest, handle the sails.
You can even take the helm and steer.
This is a real bucket list adventure you don't want to miss.
But cabins are selling fast and this ship does always sell out.
Act now or you'll miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Get the full details and book your cabin at skeptoid.com slash adventures.
Hope to see you on board.
That's skeptoid.com slash adventures.
In the mid-1800s, so the story goes, hunters in the present-day country of Georgia captured a wild woman they named Zaina.
She is variously described as tall, muscular, strong, hairy, and extremely resistant to cold.
She was kept in a village and gradually became more domesticated, though she never learned to speak.
Zayna had a number of children, presumably as a result of her fondness for drinking great quantities of wine and falling into a deep sleep.
She died about 1890 and was buried in the village.
A number of Russian researchers have followed up on the story of Zaina.
Though no evidence survives of her existence, there were plenty of interviewees who knew Zayna's children.
She had four children who survived, all of whom grew up as relatively normal humans, though they were said to have dark skin and great strength.
Only one burial site could be located, that of a son named, pardon my pronunciation, Quit, who died in 1954.
Quit's skull has been examined with mixed results, and there's a picture of it on the transcript for this episode at skeptoid.com, so you can judge for yourself.
The skull is believed to be at the Moscow State University Institute of Anthropology.
I was not able to find any reports of any DNA testing on the skull.
A Shanghai newspaper reported in 1988 that hair samples collected from wild men in the mountains of central China are definitely not human.
China has a long association with wild men.
In fact, in 1976, the Chinese Academy of Sciences sent a team of 110 people to try and capture one that was said to have accosted six government officials.
China also has its own story of a woman who was attacked by wild men in 1940 and bore them a child, who was said to have dark skin and great strength.
During World War II, Mongolian servicemen patrolling the Chinese border opened fire on what they supposed was a group of saboteurs, but found to their surprise that they had killed ape-like creatures.
Unfortunately, if this actually happened, nobody thought to photograph it or save any samples.
Like Zaina, the Chinese wild men are generally said to be large, muscular, and hairy, pretty much the opposite of what we know of Neanderthals.
In fact, it sounds more like a gigantopithecus.
If Zaina was a gigantopithecus, she could not have borne children from a human father.
The genomes are simply too different.
But what if she was a Neanderthal?
It's not impossible.
The Max Planck Institute is actually in the process of assembling a Neanderthal genome from a fragment of femur found in Croatia in 1980.
Until the genome is complete, we won't know for certain whether it was possible for Homo sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis to interbreed.
Most DNA testing done so far indicates that if humans and Neanderthals ever did interbreed, it was not at a significant level.
So now we've got a fair handle on the landscape of evidence in front of us, and now we can take a skeptical look at what we've got.
Basically, nothing.
We have some vaguely plausible hypotheses.
Yeah, I suppose it's possible that relic Neanderthals and gigantopithecus or even some descendant of Paranthropus could survive in remote parts of Asia.
But that's all we really have, a hypothesis.
A hypothesis is a provisional explanation for these stories of wild men in captivity and bearing children.
There are stories of Almus from all over Asia from all time periods, just like we have reports of Bigfoot in the American Northwest.
Why Skepticism Matters 00:02:09
What's lacking is evidence that can be tested.
The existence of Quit's skull, and yet the lack of trumpeted headlines in the scientific journals, suggests that nothing remarkable has been learned from the skull, which tends to cast suspicion on the Zena story.
Skepticism is not out to prove a negative, so I'm not going to say that the ALMUS does not exist.
Science looks at the evidence and makes a conclusion.
With the ALMUS, we have an absence of evidence, which is not evidence of absence.
By not expressing a belief in the ALMUS, critical thinkers are not being closed-minded.
Indeed, we remain extremely open to any evidence that can be presented.
DNA testing and genomes make this all much easier and more precise, so bring it.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from skeptoid.com.
Hello everyone, this is Adrian Hill from Skookum Studios in Calgary, Canada, the land of maple syrup and moose.
And I'm here to ask you to consider becoming a premium member of Skeptoid for as little as $5 per month.
And that's only the cost of a couple of Tim Horton's double doubles.
And that's Canadian for coffee with double cream and sugar.
Why support Skeptoid?
If you are like me and don't like ads, but like extended versions of each episode, Premium is for you.
If you want to support a worthwhile nonprofit that combats pseudoscience, promotes critical thinking, and provides free access to teachers to use the podcast in the classroom via the Teacher's Toolkit, then sign up today.
Remember that skepticism is the best medicine.
Next to giggling, of course.
Until next time, this is Adrienne Hill.
From PRX
Export Selection