Perhaps someone could have taken the legend with skepticism. However, our author found documentary evidence of mysterious people living in the Central Asian region.
Memories from distant childhood. Outside Irkut, in the Tunkinskaya valley, in a small ulus of Sinta, there lived distant relatives - old people. Once in Sagaalgan they came to visit. I remember the frosty horses, thick long sheepskin coats, smelling of forest and snow. With sharp knives, they cut off the boiled meat at the very lips and drank strong tea for a long time. The glare from the fire in the stove was reflected on the wall, there was a leisurely conversation about livestock, hunting, and grandfather Damba quietly, almost in a whisper, said:
- I saw again his tracks behind the lake.
“It’s probably a connecting rod bear,” said one of the guests in the same whisper.
- I've been in the taiga for seventy years already, I can't distinguish the tracks of a bear, or what? This is him, and the hair on the trees, about which he rubbed, is reddish, - replied grandfather Damba.
Legends of the distant past
Later, during folklore expeditions, I heard more than once about those unknown creatures that lived in the Sayan Mountains in time immemorial. I remember the Soyot legend about people-half-argali on two legs, whose kneecaps were behind, like ungulates, and who quickly ran along steep rocks, threw stones at the hunters. And in the taiga Bount, the Evenks have legends about the Chukikans living in the inaccessible Ikata ridges.
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At the beginning of this century, local historian G. M. Osokin wrote down from the words of the peasant Shulgin a story about the "kingdom of two-core people" south of Khamar-Daban, whose people had completely hairy bodies. The creatures themselves were as tall as “gate posts, the strengths such that, they say, if firewood was needed, the whole tree was felled with hands, and then chips were chopped from it with their hands. The horse was stopped all over the race by the tail. I don’t know what faith they were, they only lived for a long time - perhaps two hundred years, they wore animal clothes. Only few, they say, were them - they soon died."
Many Buryat legends mention creatures that annoy people. They usually come down from the mountains or come from the swamps, wander around at night near the yurts, and their arrival can be recognized by the neighing of horses or the barking of dogs. Western Buryats talk about wild people - "zerlig huun", who also rush through the uluses with noise and shouting at night, steal supplies and throw stones into the smoke hole.
There were special shamanistic rituals of propitiation and feeding of these "khadyn huun", "oin huun" - "mountain or forest people" in caves or on the tops of mountains.
Shots in the night
1939 year. Mongolia, Khalkhin-Gol. At one of the posts of the front line of the Soviet and Mongolian troops, the sentries, who were looking anxiously into the darkness, suddenly saw the silhouettes of two people descending from the slope of the hill. They walked straight towards the soldiers and did not stop when the warning shot was fired. The sentries opened fire to kill. In the morning, a small Soviet detachment moved forward to pick up the dead. They were supposed to be Japanese soldiers.
But what the Soviet riflemen saw was unexpected and even frightening. On the ground lay creatures covered with wool and more like monkeys than people. Head of the special department G. N. Kolpashnikov drew up a protocol, interviewed the sentries and local old Mongols, who, without expressing surprise, said that they were wild people.
Not scientific
There is a special section in the archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where folders with a rather intriguing stamp “Notes of no scientific significance” are kept, where along with various information there is information from serious scientists such as the researcher of Central Asia M. I. Przhevalsky, philosopher, historian, professor B. F. Porshnev, Russian naturalist scientists V. A. Khokhlov, I. A. Baikov, Mongolian academician P. Rinchen, English botanist Henry Eluns, our fellow countrymen - scientist and public figure Ts. Zhamtsarano and ethnographer B. Baradin and others.
In one of the four expeditions of M. Przhevalsky, his assistant, the Cossack Yegorov, reported that while hunting yaks, he saw unusual half-humans, half-monkeys, who, seeing him, hid in caves where he was afraid to go. However, this message, like others received from the guides of the Mongols and Tanguts, the scientist did not include in the official reports, since he considered that public opinion was not prepared for this kind of information and, possibly, would damage his reputation as a serious scientist.
Meetings on caravan trails
The Mongolian scientist P. Rinchen, the Buryat ethnographers Ts. Zhamtsarano and B. Baradin took up the baton of studies of Russian scientists of the 19th century about the wild man. They left many records of meetings in various aimags of Mongolia with almasa. Academician Rinchen published an article in the journal "Modern Mongolia", where he described the "Almas". “They are very similar to people, but their body is covered with reddish-black hair, not at all thick - the skin shines through between the hair, which never happens with wild animals in the steppe. The height is average, but the "Almas" are stooped and walk with bent knees, clubfoot, but run fast. Powerful jaws and low forehead. The brow ridges protrude. They do not know how to start a fire,”the academician writes.
Rinchen also noticed that the habitat of great apes coincides with the habitat of endangered animals: Przewalski's horse, a wild camel - a hawtagai and a wild yak.
During one of his expeditions across Mongolia, the Buryat ethnographer Bazar Baradin was walking in front of the caravan and suddenly saw the "Bigfoot". One young monk chased after him. He told about this meeting to the Soviet scientist A. D. Simukov, who recorded this fact in his writings.
In general, the entire territory of modern Mongolia - Khangai, the Gobi Desert, Alashan, Ordos, as well as Turfan, the plains of Dzungaria and the Tarim River basin - is replete with information about the "Almas" - stunted creatures covered with wool and breastfeeding babies. The same Rinchen cites a report about a certain monk who is half "Almas" and half a man. Supposedly in one of the monasteries there is a lama who became famous for his learning and whom everyone calls the son of "Almaski". It is assumed that the father of this lama was captured by the "Almas" and his son was born in captivity from the "Almas". Over time, father and son managed to escape and join the caravan passing by. Subsequently, he gave his son to the monastery, who, despite his origin, showed great ability to study.
Another story. A caravan driver named Anukh, driving through the southern part of the Gobi in 1934 together with his guide, noticed a strange two-legged creature in the dense thickets of saxaul, which, seeing people, started to run. When the camels almost caught up with him and the caravanmen were already spinning the lasso, the "Almas" uttered such a terrifying cry that the camels and people froze in place and no force could force them to move. Perhaps this creature possessed the strongest bio-defense methods, paralyzing the will of a person, which helped him to hide in the rocky slopes …
Figure Bair Obodoev / infpol.ru
Abduction of the caravan
Most often, the meetings with the "Almas" took place during the movement of caravans through deserted and remote places. Experienced and old caravan men even knew the places where they lived, and tried not to stop there for the night.
There is a known story about a caravan heading to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia. This caravan was leaving Ulyaasatui in Eastern Mongolia and was already approaching the borders of Khalkha when the caravan men decided to stop for a rest. After the halt, it turned out that one of the drivers had disappeared.
When the caravan men gathered to go in search, an old experienced guide warned them: a certain creature "dzagin-almasy" lives in these places, and advised them not to wander alone in any case.
A group of drivers, armed with rifles, set off in search. Soon they reached a cave, where they saw footprints of people. Moreover, some of them were in shoes, others on bare feet. The old guide said that the Almasy did not kill people. You just need to hide and wait until it leaves its lair by itself. Already at dusk, a two-legged creature covered with wool emerged from the cave. The frightened caravan men immediately opened fire. Having bypassed in superstitious fear the corpse of an unknown half-beast, half-human, the drivers cautiously entered the cave, where they found their half-mad comrade. He never told how he got into the cave. The man died two months later …
The mystery of the monastery
Another story. Someone Gendun from the Bayankhongor aimag reported that in 1937 he allegedly saw in the Barun-Khur monastery a whole skin of "almasa", which was fixed on the ceiling. The skin was almost intact, speckled with mysterious signs and painted. It is assumed that the creature ("almas") was killed in the Gobi desert and brought here by a famous hunter as a gift to the monastery.
Also in one of the ancient Buddhist treatises there is an image of a "wild mountain man". But, perhaps, the most interesting exhibit is kept in the Beijing Museum of Natural History. These are the hands and feet of a primate unknown to science, donated to this museum by the village teacher Zhou Guoxin from the village of Zhuangxiyang, located in the foothills of Tibet.
Oilman's meeting
One of the latest evidence of a meeting with the "Almasy" came in August 1961 from the Soviet oil geologist L. Morozov, who worked in the average Gobi, 200 km from the city of Dalandzadgad. He slept in a tent about seventy meters from the common yurt and suddenly woke up from the swing of the tent.
The man ran out, thinking that a hurricane had hit, and immediately stumbled upon a shaggy monster about two meters tall, with wide-set wild eyes, long arms and legs, without a neck. Something screamed shrilly and disappeared into the darkness. When the geologist ran to the common yurt, his colleagues laughed at him. But the Mongols, not at all surprised, said that it was "hun-guresu", or "almasy". In subsequent years, several more, probably the latest information came from the north of the Gobi and the Kobdo aimag …
Bogatyrs on Baikal
According to the views of Europeans, Arabs and Chinese, Siberia was inhabited by a variety of outlandish creatures, half-humans, half-animals, mythical yadzhuj and majuj, cannibals, Hyperboreans, etc.
In the most ancient Chinese chronicles of the II - III millennium BC. The Book of Mountains and Steppes describes Baikal as follows: “There is a large lake with a circumference of a thousand li. Here flocks of birds change their plumage … There also lived heroes with human bodies and horse legs covered with long hair. They whipped themselves on the leg with whips and darted across the steppe with the speed of the wind, shouting "ha-ha-ha" like wild ducks in the autumn sky. In other creatures, the legs were inverted. In the same places there were monsters with a crooked neck, shaggy hair hanging down on the chest. The arms and legs of these outlandish creatures were chopped off, and the body as a whole resembled a smoothly carved trunk."
The ancient Arabic chronicle of "Wonders of the Created" says: "Bahr - al - baka / Baikal / is a sea with surprisingly transparent and pleasant tasting water. It is located across the Sea of Diamonds. The Almighty created it in the form of two horns connected together. It emerged from an underground crevice. And it always moaned and will moan until the day of judgment. And this sea is in constant excitement and roar."
The same chronicler mentions the outlandish people of the Yajuj and Majuj who live in these places.
If we put aside all these fantastic speculations and carefully consider the myths and legends of the Yakuts, Evenks, Chukchi and other northern peoples, as well as the testimonies of modern hunters and reindeer breeders, we can see one thing in common: they leave no doubt about the creatures that existed in the inaccessible taiga wilds, more similar per person than per animal.
The party archive of the Yakutsk Regional Committee of the CPSU contains a note dated March 9, 1929, where it is said that the report of Professor P. Drivert and a student of the Siberian Institute of Agriculture and Forestry D. I. Timofeev about the existence of the mysterious people "Mulens" or "Chuchuna" in the ridges of Dzhugdzhur, Verkhoyanye and the northern mountain ranges of the Yakut region.
According to the Yakut scientist Semyon Nikolayev, who investigated this issue at the request of the regional party committee, "chuchun" are "the most primitive Paleo-Asians" miraculously preserved. In 1976, a certain A. Kurkin, north of Tynda, on the Larbe River, discovered footprints, which at first he took for bearish, but, looking closely, realized that an unknown creature had left them.
In one of the villages in the upper reaches of the Angara, the hunter A. Vyaznikov had a hide of an unknown animal in the barn until the 1980s until it was thrown away. The hunter himself never told anyone where and how he got this taiga "trophy".
The answer is yet to come
One of the most mysterious and fascinating mysteries in the history of mankind - "Bigfoot" - appears with enviable frequency on the pages of newspapers, magazines, the network and on the screen. For example, in the Kemerovo region a monument has been erected to him, and amateurs who piously believe in his existence and serious scientists who have given him a kind of niche in science - cryptozoology - are busy looking for him. It is believed that the most likely habitat for this creature is the inaccessible regions of Asia - Tibet, Pamir, Tien Shan.
So far, there is still no direct material evidence of the existence of the "Bigfoot", which would be the subject of study by anthropologists, geneticists and biologists. Although at one time the great Swedish naturalist-scientist Karl Linnaeus recognized the "Bigfoot" as a real biological species, giving him the name "caveman", or "troglodyte".
According to Professor B. Porshnev, the process of extinction of paleoanthropines lasted a very long time and dragged on in some places until our time. He suggested, based on the teachings of K. Linnaeus about "troglodytes", that the Neanderthals, relict hominoids, not only lived in the era of human settlement in North Asia and America, but also continue to exist now. In his opinion, the Neanderthals were pushed aside by man to the northern latitudes. Siberia and Central Asia were a gigantic arena for the wandering of Neanderthals …
German scientist-psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung expressed his point of view on such phenomena as UFOs, "Bigfoot". In his opinion, these phenomena are a kind of psychic phantoms, akin to visions or hallucinations. These “phenomena” are especially common during periods of crises and disasters. Nevertheless, Jung does not reject the possibility of the physical existence of these phenomena.
