From Forbidden Archaeology, pages 614 – 616
A
report of a more recent sighting of live wildmen was related to Myra Shackley by
Dmitri Bayanov, of the Darwin Museum in Moscow. In 1963, Ivan Ivlov, a Russian
pediatrician, was traveling through the Altai Mountains in the Southern part of
Mongolia. Ivlov saw several human-like creature standing on a mountain slope.
They appeared to be afamily group, composed of amale, female, and child. Ivlov
observed the creatures through his binoculars from a distance of half a mile
until they moved out of his field of vision. His Mongolian driver also saw them
and said they were common in that area. Shackley (1983, p. 91) stated: "So
we are not dealing with folktales or local legends, but with an event that was
recorded by a trained scientist and transmitted to the proper authorities. There
is no reason to doubt Ivlov's word, partly because of his impeccable scientific
reputation and partly because, although he had heard local stories about these
creatures he had remained sceptical about their existence."
After
his encounter with the Almas family, Ivlov interviewed many Mongolian children,
believing they would be more candid than adults. The children provided many
additional reports about the Almas. For example, one child told Ivlov that while
he and some other children were swimming in a stream, he saw a male Almas carry
a child Almas across it (Shackley 1983, pp. 91-92).
In
1980, a worker at an experimental agricultural station, operated by the
Mongolian Academy of Sciences at Bulgan, encountered the dead body of a wildman:
"I approached and saw a hairy corpse of a robust humanlike creature dried
and half-buried by sand. I had never seen such a humanlike being before
covered by camel-colour brownish-yellow short hairs and I recoiled,
although in my native land in Sinkiang I had seen many dead men killed in battle
.... The dead thing was not a bear or ape and at the same time it was not a man
like Mongol or Kazakh or Chinese and Russian. The hairs of its head were longer
than on its body" (Shackley 1983, p. 107).
The
Pamir mountains, lying in a remote region where the borders of Tadzhikistan,
China, Kashmir, and Afghanistan meet, have been the scene of many Almas
sightings. In 1925, Mikhail Stephanovitch Topilski, a major general in the
Soviet army, led his unit in an assault on an anti-Soviet guerilla force
hiding in a cave in the Pamirs. One of the surviving guerillas said that while
in the cave he and his comrades were attacked by several apelike creatures.
Topilski ordered the rubble of the cave searched, and the body of one such
creature was found. Topilski reported (Shackley 1983, pp. 118-119):
"At first glance I thought the body was that of an ape. It was covered with
hair all over. But I knew there were no apes in the Pamirs. Also, the body
itself looked very much like that of a man. We tried pulling the hair, to see if
it was just a hide used for disguise, but found that it was the creature's own
natural hair. We turned the body over several times on its back and its front,
and measured it. Our doctor made a long and thorough inspection of the body, and
it was clear that it was not a human being."
"The
body," continued Topilski, "belonged to a male creature 165-170
cm [about 5'/z feet] tall, elderly or even old, judging by the greyish colour of
the hair in several places. The chest was covered with brownish hair and the
belly with greyish hair. The hair was longer but sparser on the chest and
close-‑cropped and thick on the belly. In general the hair was very thick,
without any underfur. There was least hair on the buttocks, from which fact our
doctor deduced that the creature sat like a human being. There was most hair on
the hips. The knees were completely bare of hair and had callous growths on them.
The whole foot including the sole was quite hairless and was covered by hard
brown skin. The hair got thinner near the hand, and the palms had none at all
but only callous skin."
Topilski
added: "The colour of the face was dark, and the creature had neither beard
nor moustache. The temples were bald and the back of the head was covered by
thick, matted hair. The dead creature lay with its eyes open and its teeth bared.
The eyes were dark and the teeth were large and even and shaped like human teeth.
The forehead was slanting and the eyebrows were very powerful. The protruding
jawbones made the face resemble the Mongol type of face. The nose was flat, with
a deeply sunk bridge. The ears were hairless and looked a little more pointed
than a human being's with a longer lobe. The lower jaw was very massive. The
creature had a very powerful chest and well developed muscles .... The arms were
of normal length, the hands were slightly wider and the feet much wider and
shorter than man's."
In
1957, Alexander Georgievitch Pronin, a hydrologist at the Geographical Research
Institute of Leningrad University, participated in an expedition to the Pamirs,
for the purpose of mapping glaciers. On August 2,
1957, while his team was investigating the Fedchenko glacier, Pronin hiked
into the valley of the Balyandkiik River. Shackley (1983, p. 120)
stated: "at noon he noticed a figure standing on a rocky cliff about
500 yards above him and the same distance away. His first reaction was surprise,
since this area was known to be uninhabited, and his second was that the
creature was not human. It resembled a man but was very stooped. He watched the
stocky figure move across the snow, keeping its feet wide apart, and he noted
that its forearms were longer than a human's and it was covered with reddish
grey hair." Pronin saw the creature again three days later, walking upright.
Since this incident, there have been numerous wildman sightings in the Pamirs,
and members of various expeditions have photographed and taken casts of
footprints (Shackley 1983, pp. 122-126).
We
shall now consider reports about the Almas from the Caucasus region. According
to testimony from villagers of Tkhina, on the Mokvi River, a female Almas was
captured there during the nineteenth century, in the forests of Mt. Zaadan. For
three years, she was kept imprisoned, but then became domesticated and was
allowed to live in a house. She was called Zana. Shackley (1983, p. 112)
stated: "Her skin was a greyish-black colour, covered with
reddish hair, longer on her head than elsewhere. She was capable of inarticulate
cries but never developed a language. She had a large face with big cheek bones,
muzzle-like prognathous jaw and large eyebrows, big white teeth and a `fierce
expression."' Eventually Zana, through sexual relations with a villager,
had children. Some of Zana's grandchildren were seen by Boris Porshnev in 1964.
In her account of Porshnev's investigations, Shackley (1983,
p. 113) noted: "The grandchildren, Chalikoua and Taia, had darkish skin
of rather negroid appearance, with very prominent chewing muscles and extra
strong jaws." Porshnev also interviewed villagers who as children had been
present at Zana's funeral in the 1880s.
