Yeti: The Abominable History
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15
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Tales of the yeti, the ‘Abominable Snowman’ of the Himalayas, have been recorded for centuries.
This huge, ape-like, hairy creature has tantalised explorers, mountaineers and locals with curious footprints and elusive appearances. But until recently, no one has been able to identify what this mythical creature might be, or even determine if it is real.
On an expedition to the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, Graham Hoyland found and filmed footprints of the mythical yeti in a part of the country that has never before been visited by Western explorers. In a lost valley near the unclimbed mountain Gangkar Punsum, Hoyland believes he was stalked by the mysterious yeti, a beast so unspeakably powerful that locals say it can kill a yak with one savage blow of its fist.
As he delves into the fascinating history of this ancient legend, Hoyland hears tales of the yeti from Sherpas who have tried and failed to track it. He explores the literary hinterland behind the legend and searches for the yeti’s American cousin Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and her African relative Mokèlé-Mbèmbé. From the dubious, mystical pseudo-science of the Nazis in the 1930s to our current era of ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’, Hoyland examines the age-old cultural phenomena that have shaped our collective consciousness and fuelled a belief in the existence of these monstrous creatures.
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I admit to being a bit of a sucker for yeti books. But I guess my approach to date has been a little led by Sir Ed Hillary - and I am totally paraphrasing - that we don't know everything about everything, and the Sherpa certainly believe that there are yeti, but it is pretty unlikely. Hope I have been been fair to Sir Ed there.
Hoyland's book title “Yeti, and Abominable History” gives some clue to his approach in the content. He commences by catalogues each reported sighting (typically written in mountaineering books), and carries out some analysis on the person, the situation, and any other events that may have influenced the situation. For much of the first quarter of the book Hoyland doesn't do a lot more than catalogue these, but then he starts with some breaking down of the evidence. Of course there is little evidence - footprints, the occasional hair or stool sample, some Tibetan relics such as the scalp and the hand, which are well known. Much of the evidence was identified (and therefore debunked) prior to Hoyland collecting it in this book, but the appeal of the stories seems to keep them alive.
There are conclusions for the various types of Yeti that the Tibetans believe in, and again they are not new, but align with other researchers, but Hoyland takes it all a bit further (more below).
After the Yeti evidence is covered, then Hoyland moves on to other criptids in the stable. The yeti's North American cousin Big Foot is first, followed by a number of iceman type hoaxes from the USA. The Loch Ness monster is up next, including analyzing many of the suggested explanations for Nessie. The Mokele-mbembe follows, then a very brief debunking of more general hoaxes.
Finally, Hoyland brings it all together in an overarching examination of phenomena of mysterious monster sightings, and, as he puts it, the collective consciousness that leads us to believe in monsters. Here he also examines the reasoning behind many of the searches - and the very non-scientific approach - infact counter scientific, for a single purpose - for the Creationists, proof of Bigfoot, or or Mokele-mbembe is alive, they consider it would prove their belief that the earth is only a few thousand years old - and that such a find would disprove evolution. Of course it would do no such thing...
So in summary, Hoyland goes far and wide, covers off the evidence, the hoaxes (and more of then than not the reasoning for these), the effect of media, the popularity of media (such as the long-running series Finding Big-Foot which he suggests would be more correctly titled Not Finding Big-Foot), undiscovered species (which are obviously tending to smaller life forms, not dinosaur sized discoveries).
And while I haven't shared the details of his conclusions, Hoyland writes a interesting book, with plenty of humour, and while he certainly rains of the parade of a believer, he does so in a readable and logical manner.
4 stars
