Astounding Abominable Snowman Facts That Everyone Should Know

The Abominable Snowman, also known as the Yeti, is a mythical creature that is said to inhabit the Himalayan mountains.

For centuries, there have been stories of sightings of this elusive creature, but no one has ever been able to capture or kill one. Many different theories exist about what the Yeti are, but most scientists believe they are likely polar bears.

Whatever the true identity of the Yeti may be, it continues to fascinate people all over the world. Here are some astounding facts about this legendary creature. The word 'Abominable Snowman' was first coined in 1921 by British explorer Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Howard-Bury. Yeti comes from the Nepalese word Yeh-teh, which means 'little man with big feet.'

In 1925, British mountaineer Percy Fawcett claimed to have seen footprints of the Yeti while on an expedition in the Amazon jungle. In 1951, American explorer Eric Shipton took a photo of what is believed to be the footprint of the Yeti while on an expedition in Nepal in Central Asia.

In 1967, Russian climber Mikhail Gerasimov claimed to have found hair samples belonging to the Yeti.

However, these samples were later found to be from brown bears. In 2013, DNA tests were conducted on two purported Yeti samples. One sample was found to be from a polar bear, while the other was found to be from a human.

History Of The Abdominal Snowman

H. Siiger mentioned the concept of Abdominal Snowman aka Yeti, which came from pre-Buddhist beliefs in the Himalayas. Before hunting, there is speculation that people used to worship a 'Glacier Being,' and the being used to look like an ape with a large stone as a weapon.

Tibetans and Sherpas initially introduced the whole mythological concept of the snow man. Natives in the Himalayas used to have many stories about that, like these creatures used to abduct young girls or hurt villagers or eat yaks.

Female Yeti were imagined to be top-heavy, so if they tried to hunt you down, you were supposed to run downhill and the female Yeti would fall down. It is rumored that there was a domesticated Yeti, Zana, with human children.

There were stories once in 1968 in Minnesota that natives found dead Yeti in a freezer. Natives do not feel comfortable talking about Yeti because they think it brings bad luck.

Dremo was another concept similar to the Yeti myth of Himalayan creatures. In some National Geographic interviews, natives claimed once Dremo fell to pieces and ate a little girl.

Expeditions became quite frequent, and the American government had to implement some rules, such as groups will require a Nepalese permit and must report anything about the animal. A government mandate became necessary not to harm the Yeti unless in self-defense.

In search of physical evidence of the Yeti, Edmund Hillary joined the 1960 to 1961 Silver Hut expedition. He was lent a Yeti scalp, and with the help of local legend Khumjo Chumbi, he brought that to London for some testing.

Marca Burns analyzed it and compared the specimen with Serow, a black and blue polar bear. In the end, Burns came to the conclusion that the specimen seemed a little bit similar to Serow but not identical.

Don Whillans mentioned he had seen four Yetis moving during his Annapurna scaling. In 1983 Daniel C. Taylor and Robert L. Fleming went on a Nepal's Barun Valley expedition.

They interviewed many Nepalese and native villagers and learned about two brown bears, the rukh bhalu (tree bear) 150 lb (70 kg) and the bhui bhalu 400 lb (180 kg).

They collected some skulls and analyzed them at the British Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and American Museum of Natural History. In the end, they found some similarities with the Asiatic black bear.

In Junior Skeptic, the educational nonprofit organization of Skeptics Society, an editor named Daniel Loxton explained the concept of Yeti was misinterpreted because of various Himalayan cultures, and it became hard to find out a genuine anthropological or zoological explanation.

According to Loxton, just because the Himalayan brown bear can walk on hind legs, it does not make them Yeti.

They were extensively observed for decades. People will continue to believe in the Yeti as long as people continue to believe in the concept of the Loch Ness monster.

Russian Search For An Abominable Snowman

In the Kemerovo region, the Russian government published a report where they claimed they got distinct evidence of Yeti from Siberia.

On their behalf, the Daily Mail reported that Russians accommodated an expedition to Mount Shoria in search of the Yeti. They mentioned they became very close to trapping one of them, but in the end, they were left with the coarse hair of Yetis in a remote cave.

The expedition members explored Azasskaya cave, and with some evidence, they came to the conclusion that snow men used to live there; even local people in the Kemerovo region supported that.

They claimed they had the large footprints, the bed, and various markers, which were used to mark up their territory. But everything was based on speculations; that team did not have any photographic or DNA evidence. All they had were bent branches, a single indistinct footprint, and some grey hair.

But even with a lack of firm evidence, the Russian government deduced that in Mount Shoria, there had to be some Yeti existence. They put emphasis on the hair sample for DNA analysis.

Dr. Igor Burtsev, leader of an international conference on Yeti, said that they would be the first ones to prove Yeti's existence, and they would be appreciated worldwide. His ideologies said 30 Yetis, who were more likely to be the Neanderthal men who had survived, lived in the Kemerovo region.

Etymology And Alternative Names

In different regions, Yetis are identified with different names.

Initially, the Yeti name started in Tibet. In traditional Tibetan culture, they were known by various names. Nyalmo was supposed to be 15 ft (457.2 cm) tall with black fur and the fiercest personality, while Chuti was supposed to be 8 ft (243.84 cm) tall. Rang Shim Bombo was 3-5 ft (91.4-152.4 cm) tall with reddish-brown fur.

However, Himalayan people use different terms to describe Yeti, like Michê or man-bear, Migoi or wild man, Kang Admi or snow man, Dzu-teh or cattle bear, Mirka or wild man, and Bun Manchi or jungle man. In Russian folklore, there is a similar creature, Chuchuna; in Siberia, they are 6-7 ft (182.88-213.36 cm) tall with dark hair.

Yakut and Tungus tribes described those creatures as well-built Neanderthal-like men. There are many rumors that they used to have tails or were seen to eat human flesh.

Abominable Snowman Sightings

James Prinsep's journal mentioned the northern Nepal expedition of the trekker B. H. Hodgson. Some local guides had seen a tall bipedal creature with long dark hair all over, there were many rumors around that, but Hodgson said that it was an orangutan.

In 1899 Laurence Waddell's guide saw prints of a large ape-like creature, and Waddell said it was a Himalayan brown bear. Waddell also mentioned many superficial investigations were made with Tibetans, but in the end, it always came to a point where it was just something that somebody heard tell of.

In the 20th century, the rumors started getting frequent.

At 15,000ft (4,600 m) near Zemu glacier, a photographer of the Royal Geographical Society, N. A. Tombazi, reported a creature. He said the distance between them was 200-300 yd (180-270 m), and visibility was vague, but he noticed the human-like creature was moving upright and sometimes stopping to pick some rhododendron bushes.

While descending from the mountain, he discovered the 4x7in (10-17cm) footprints.

In 1948 at the exact location, Peter Byrne discovered those Yeti footprints on a Royal Air Force assignment in northern India. In the 20th-century, western folklore interest was growing quite fast.

Important figures like Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay noticed those same footprints during measuring Mount Everest.

Although Hillary did not support the Yeti myth, Tenzing initially kept that into consideration but later questioned himself. During the Daily Mail Snowman expedition, even John Angelo Jackson noticed some Yeti paintings at Tengboche gompa while trekking the mountain range from Mount Everest to Kanchenjunga.

After the expedition in 1954, in a report, Daily Mail mentioned they got hair specimens of the Yeti scalp in the Pangboche monastery. Frederic Wood Jones, who had expertise in human and comparative anatomy, examined the hair specimen.

He bleached the sample and cut that into sections to analyze it microscopically. The test was done to compare the hair with other animals, but nothing was found to be entirely similar to other animals.

But this much was concluded that it was not from a brown bear or anthropoid ape; it seemed that the hair specimen belonged from the shoulder of a coarse-haired hoofed animal.

In the book, The Long Walk, Slawomir Rawicz mentioned they were stuck while crossing the Himalayas in the winter of 1940 because two bipedal were seen shuffling in the snow. In 1957 out of curiosity, Tom Slick sponsored some expeditions to know more about Yeti.

Some of them had found Yeti feces during the expedition and made a fecal analysis, where they got an unclassified parasite.

Evidence And Explanations Of The Abominable Snowman

At 20,000 ft (6,000 m), Eric Shipton photographed some large prints in the snow. These photos became a matter of debate. Some accepted these as the supporting evidence of Yeti's existence, but some speculated that those were just another mundane creature.

In search of Yeti, many periodic expeditions were accommodated. In 2003 in Dhaulagiri, a seven-member Japanese team set up infrared cameras in the cave where it was rumored to find human-like footprints and smells in a 1994 expedition.

Reinhold Messner wrote a book called "My Quest For The Yeti' and debated that a Yeti is similar to a large brown bear. He said that all the monstrous myths from Himalayan villages are fake, and the Yeti remains that monasteries have are just hoaxes. I

n the West Garo Mountains of northwest India, some black animal hair samples were found. Later, Primatologists tested the samples in Britain but could not find any known match.

In 2013 some DNA samples were matched with the samples of ancient polar bears' jaws. Bryan Sykes found hair samples from two different places, the northern Indian region of Ladakh and 800 mi (1,290 km) away from Ladakh, in Bhutan.

With these, Sykes found similarities with an ancient polar bear jawbone sample from the Norwegian Arctic in 2004. But Brian Regal from Kean University in New Jersey debated this.

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