Bigfoot?

So I watched the history channel's documentary Bigfoot, a definitive guide.   And yeah, while it was the typical made for television documentary (ie, light on info, heavy on reenactments with just enough to keep you watching.) this one actually had enough late in the show to take the idea of Bigfoot truly existing and gave it an interesting spin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blzzkqkuS2A

  So, Does Bigfoot/Yeti/Sasquatch look like this?

 Or like this?

  The premise of the show turned towards not, whether or not Bigfoot actually exists, to where did it come from?

  This got my brain going into overdrive (which is partially due to the show, and questions and observations from a friend who has the ability to make me think in different directions than I normally would.   Many thanks, Redcrow!)

  So here's the idea, Bigfoot, Yeti, whatever you call it, might actually be, in fact, an offshoot of the human tree, most likely a form of Neanderthal.

  First, lets look at common misconceptions about Neanderthal.

  Media and popular myth takes us into realms of wild conjecture and outright parody, but from what science has been able to identify so far;

  The transitional or missing link has been found and discounted many times (beginning with the Piltdown hoax of the early 1900s, which both steered theory until it was discovered a fake in the 1950s and other disputed claims since) the only thing that we know for sure is that Darwin's theory of Macro Evolution in which one species evolves into another, ie; Neanderthal evolving into modern man, has lost a lot of traction, primarily since the discovery of an neanderthal settlement in a cave in spain where they found more modern homosapiens buried beneath them, proving that, if anything they coexisted.

  This in no way discounts Micro Evolution, which points to environmental concerns that dictate the changes in humanity, such as the Maasai of Africa and the Inuit of the Arctic have striking differences but genetically are both more similar by far than different.

  Here's a question;   If you discount evolution as a cause, (seeing how as so many of these variant humans seem to have coexisted.)  then what would have caused so many different versions of essentially the same species?   Was this a long change brought on by environmental causes, then why did they come with homosapiens and then disappear almost as quickly?

  What kind of influence caused the human design to branch so far and so much in such a relatively short period of time?

  Was there a radiological event?   An asteroid impact that changed the climate and behavior, and even the appearance of the dawn of humanity?

  Or was nature simply experimenting by some fashion to decide which design was the best?

  Clearly Neanderthal, with it's bigger brain and stronger body was superior, or is there something that we haven't learned yet?

  Is the Biblical history of Nephilim and the sudden branching of humans thru breeding with angels an option to consider?

     When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

(insert your own cause here; Angels, Extraterrestrial visitors, Zeus, whatever...) 

   This would explain the various forms of the human species.   So in that sense, these are abberations, genetic accidents?

   Within the bible, the earth is scourged by the Great Flood,  which is backed by the discovery of artifacts at the bottom of the Black Sea, lending truth to the story, which is not uncommon, most biblical stories of God intervening are backed by science, geological fault lines at the site of the biblical town of Jericho, etc.

  But let's not get off on a tangent, and assume for the case of a biblical source of Neanderthal, being the offspring of human and alien (not human that is) creating a new type of human, was curtailed by a flood, which to the writers of the scripture may have been their whole world, if not the actual world.

 We might even assume that it may have been the result of an asteroid strike that would bring on the effects shown, long term precipitation, (40 days?) a drastic change in weather as the skies are filled with debris and the other effects of a massive asteroid strike lend it's hands to leaving a very small group of survivors.

  But we can't ignore that others, may have in fact survived as well.   Perhaps in reduced numbers.

  So best guess, is that anatomically modern humans seem to go back father than any of the specimens found to date, not including those that seem to feed more into a traditional primate family.

  And except for what we call modern man, seemed to drop off  the radar for the most part in a short amount of time, relatively speaking.

  Now, evolution versus creationism debate, is beside the point.   There are so many new discoveries from the most recent "Woman X" , Desinova homonin, discovered a few years ago in Siberia and apparently shares little in common with either Neanderthal or Modern man. and the Homo Floresiensis or "hobbit" that has been both found in Indonesia, and rumored to still exist today in limited numbers, although they have not been found to date, other than rotting bones.   (not yet, anyway.)

  So add to it a dozen more variants and the historical evolution of modern man looks less like the traditional family tree and more like a tangled family shrub.   (Insert Jeff Foxworthy joke here.)

  

  

  The Usual Suspects?

  With modern genetic testing, we have found that interbreeding did in fact occur, and even today,  for example, the Denisova homonin tooth that was found shares about 4 to 6 percent of the genome with various modern humans in the asian continent as well as samples taken from Nigeria and New Guinea.

  Neanderthal shares around 4 percent with certain europeans as well.  

  The differences in geography probably lends itself to why one variant is more predominate than the other in different areas.   It's harder to tell, because of modern travel, and I would be interested to know if an older genetic group, such as those in iceland would give us more information.

  So do we assume that the smaller populations of Neanderthal and his cousins were bred into (or out of) modern man?

  

  Which brings us to the Bigfoot theories, rather than an undiscovered primate, is it not more realistic that they are, in fact, a descendant of Neanderthal, or Denisova homonins?

  

  Once you take away the myth, exaggerations, and hoaxes, the sheer volume of sightings, (both in the north american and elsewhere;  The Himilayan Yeti, the Chinese Yeren, the Vietnamese Batutut, and the Siberian Chuchunya amongst a dozen others.) lends credence to it's existence.

  So maybe we do have a species of Neanderthal that exists on the fringes of modern man, hidden from us by the millions of acres of woodlands and geographical parts of our land that rarely see a human presence.

   One of the best form of evidence seems to have been that the strange unidentifiable hairs that are found and held to be belonging to the elusive creatures...

  They are usually mentioned as being coarse and reddish in color, but testing cannot seem to find a home for the hair, except for the fact that they most likely belong to a higher primate as yet unidentified.

 "We found a variant of MC1R in Neanderthals which is not present in modern humans, but which causes an effect on the hair similar to that seen in modern redheads," said lead author Carles Lalueza-Fox, assistant professor in genetics at the University of Barcelona, Spain.

  

   It would seem that the more that we understand about the Neanderthal, suggests that they were intelligent, capable of speech, and in many ways, not so dissimilar from modern humans in appearance, except for the larger muscle tone, and facial features.   

  So while a shape running past you in the woods, can leave this imprint on your psyche;

  However, you might actually have a better chance at runing into something more like this;

  Makes you think, huh?

  

  Imagine yourself as a member of a tribe of Sasquatch, you have family that look like the guy above, and you live yourself a simple agrarian life, migrating in the deep mountains, and for hundreds of generations, then you begin to hear stories, of skinny pale creatures that look kinda like you, but almost hairless and wearing odd looking skins.

  Hell, sounds like some kind of alien!

  Perhaps you've heard stories of your great grandparents trading with these lean olive skinned tribesmen who warned you of the pale people, ghosts that speak in a strange language and carry sticks that kill with the sound of thunder.   

  Gods?  Perhaps not, but a week ago your tribe began it's move northward and you scouted ahead, as a young man and you find this strange person dressed in bright colors and wearing odd clothes and you watch as they fire a walking stick at an animal, the one you were scouting with your favorite spear and it falls as if struck dead by the thunder.

  Every year more of your tribe and others that you run into discuss these strange things, among others, strange flat stretches that cut thru the forests upon which these ghosts travel along, riding in strange conveyances of unnatural shapes and colors.

  From the variety of them, you cannot even fathom how many exist, but look to your tribe and wonder how so few could fare against so many and despair, growing more cautious.

  Perhaps a few of your tribe have raided their settlements, small square structures of wood cut flat and other things that can only confuse you, perhaps even captured a few, and assimilated thru the tribe, into breeding stock?

  They are weak, and cannot speak the language, and are frail, but are legion, and deep inside you despair for your tribes future.

  So you migrate, and learn to melt into the forest, and live, knowing that one day there will be no more.

  Or maybe you have taken clothes, and ventured past them, your heart hammering in your chest, buried beneath clothes taken from their washings, close enough to see them, but not enough to speak to them, and watched them as they spend a day, a week on the border of your territory.

  Maybe even learned to live amongst them, blending in, learning the language, for a while before returning to your tribe?

  

  An Adult male Neanderthal?

   So if the mysterious Bigfoot is nothing more than a Neanderthal that's somehow managed to make it's way thru the ages to coexist, hidden from view, who knows what we might run into on our travels.

  Take away the minor genetic differences, and there might not be anything so different from so called modern man, save the ravages of a hard life and living off the land for generations.

  Are these men above what lives outside the fragile thread that separates civilization from something feared or dismissed as myth and legend?

  

  Do lost tribes of Neanderthal live on the edges of our world?

  

  Would we really know one if we met one?

  Does explain a few of my camping trips though....