The finger being examined was part of the Bigfoot's hand, which was kept in an alpine Buddhist monastery in Nepal
For two years, scientists from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and Edinburgh Zoo studied the "yeti finger", once brought from the Pangboche monastery in Nepal. They carried out a genetic examination of pieces cut from these mysterious remains, which are still kept in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
The brush from which the finger was cut off.
Photo: dv.kp.ru
Nepal, by the way, can be considered the birthplace of the yeti - the "snow people", who are often called "bear man" or "me-te" here. It was from this alpine country located in the Himalayas that the first rumors about huge humanoid creatures supposedly living here came to the Old and New Worlds. In 1830, the British explorer BH Hodgson published them in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, his story of a bipedal giant covered with dark hair. He insisted that he had seen him personally.
In 1953, legendary climbers Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who were the first to conquer Everest, reported that they had encountered large footprints during their ascent. Although before, Hillary did not believe the stories about the yeti.
The Pangboche Buddhist Monastery is located at an altitude of over 4 thousand meters. Images of the yeti "adorn" its walls. And the yeti themselves are revered here like saints. Recently, the examination of the "finger" mummy from the monastery was completed. Its leader, Dr Rob Ogden, announced the results in a special BBC documentary Natural History.
How to relate to the results is completely incomprehensible. In a word, scientists have puzzled …
Promotional video:
Finger by finger
A long and almost detective story is associated with the finger that fell to British scientists from distant Nepal. Here is what the British newspaper Daily Mail has told about it:
“… In 1957, a series of expeditions to explore the Yeti was funded by the wealthy American oilman Tom Slick.
He literally became obsessed with the Yeti, having heard about them during his business trips to India.
During one of the expeditions sponsored by Slick, the Irish-American explorer Peter Byrne heard the word "me-te" from two Sherpas. As a result of questioning, he learned about an ancient Yeti hand kept in the Pangboche monastery. Bern made his way to this magnificent monastery - the road along treacherous mountain paths under the constant threat of an avalanche took several days.
He recalls walking through the halls by candlelight and being taken to the room where the "hand of Pangboche" was kept.
“The hand was covered with withered black skin,” Byrne says.
He sent a messenger to the border with India to report his find to Slick. Three days later, a telegram in response came with instructions to get the hand and deliver it to London.
But the monks refused to give Byrne their relic, explaining that this would bring a curse on the monastery. However, Slick was determined. He arranged a meeting with Byrne in London, where they were joined by the eminent primatologist, Professor William Osman Hill (William Osman Hill). The meeting place was a restaurant at the Regent's Park Zoo, where the professor was engaged in the dissection and embalming of dead animals.
At lunch, Osman Hill informed Byrne that he needed at least one finger of his hand, as he wanted to subject it to scientific analysis. Then a professor with connections to the Royal College of Surgeons pulled out a brown paper bag from under the table. He put a human hand on the table and suggested that Bern replace the finger of an unknown creature with a human.
Byrne returned to the monastery and, although the monks resisted, managed to persuade them to part with the £ 100 finger, provided that he could find a way to disguise his disappearance. The climber sewed a human finger to the relic by painting it in front of this iodine to make it look just like the rest of the hand. Now he had a dangerous journey home. A year earlier, the Nepalese government passed a bizarre law prohibiting foreigners from killing Yeti.
Therefore, Byrne took the risk, crossing the border with India on high mountain trails. He had to secretly deliver his finger to London by plane so that the authorities would not find him and ask uncomfortable questions.
Photo: dv.kp.ru
Peter Byrne with the abbot of the very monastery where he bought the "Yeti finger" for £ 100
Slick, as always, had a ready-made solution. In India there was an old friend of his, a hunter, who agreed to help Byrne. It turned out that this friend is none other than the popular film actor Jimmy Stewart.
An appointment was made at the Grand Hotel in Calcutta, in which Byrne, Stewart and his wife Gloria attended. To avoid trouble with customs, Gloria hid her finger in her suitcase of linen and they flew out of India without any problems. Upon delivery to London, the finger was handed over to Professor Osman Hill for study. But here the story ends. For many years nothing was heard about the finger. Except that Osman Hill bequeathed it to the museum …"
Man - either snowy or not very
What Hill's conclusions are not known. But current research has shown that the Yeti's finger is human.
“The finger fragments provided to us contain human DNA,” Dr. Rob Ogden said. “It didn't surprise me. This is exactly the result I expected.
The finger, according to Ogden, disappointed him. The scientist, deep down, still wanted to discover something supernatural.
“Based on what we know about the yeti,” says primatologist Ian Redmond, “their fingers should be much rougher, longer, and hairy.
- If it were not for this whole story related to the finger, I would not doubt that it is human, - summed up the primatologist.
Before the examination, the finger was shown to Peter Byrne, who is already 85 years old. He confirmed that the finger was the one "bought" in the monastery.
mission Possible
Should it be considered that the examination destroyed another legend? And there are no yeti in nature?
It is not necessary to draw such hasty conclusions. Well, they found human DNA in finger samples. And what else were there to find? After all, a yeti is probably a person. Though snowy. Not a monkey, as some suggest. Indeed, according to one of the hypotheses, the yeti are gigantopithecus that have survived to us - primates growing under 3-4 meters and weighing up to 500 kilograms. But according to strict scientific data, these creatures became extinct about 300 thousand years ago.
It is possible, of course, that Byrne, during his voyages to the Pangboche monastery, never got the real finger of the Yeti - from the hand that was kept there. But in order not to upset the rich Silk brought a fake relic - the same dyed human finger, given to him for replacement. And in the end, scientists are really doing an examination of the human finger. And that - from the yeti never got to London.
Alas, it will not work to check whether all the fingers are on Pangboche's hand. The hand was stolen from the monastery in 1990 after a film about it was shown. Where the relic is now unknown.
And the finger (either genuine or fake), scientists are going to return in Pangboche. This mission was taken over by Mike Olson, a pilot from New Zealand.
