For more than a hundred years, the history of the lake monster called "Mokele-mbembe" has been exciting explorers of the deep forests of Africa. What have they found since then? In 1981, reports of a monster living in a lake caught the attention of Herman Regusters, an aerospace engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. This creature was called Mokele-mbembe, and it was a kind of prehistoric monster. Possibly a long-necked dinosaur. Regasters thought the monster might still be lurking in the lake.
He decided to go to a poorly studied part of Africa, now in the territory of the Republic of Congo, and find the beast on his own. After unsuccessfully trying to get his employer and the US Department of Defense to pay for the trip, arguing that useful maps could be made in this area, Regasters decided to finance himself, with the support of several private investors.
Together with his wife Kia and a team of local residents, he went to the remote freshwater lake Tele. But, like many others before and after him, Regasters returned empty-handed and brought with him only entertaining stories, which he retold in written notes.
He also said that he made some observations, but did not provide a photo or video. In fact, in one case the entire team witnessed, "with the exception of the photographer," Regasters later wrote.
The trip was not easy. Researchers suffered from bees, roamed kilometer-long swamps, experienced hot days and uncomfortably cold, wet nights, and ate monkey meat. However, they were determined to find the monster.
In Western literature, references to Mokele-mbembe appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. German and French guests to this African region told the stories of local people about a giant monster that lived in the forest. The details changed from story to story.
In some of them, the monster was gigantic - a man-eating elephant, while in others it was no larger than a hippo. Some have mentioned the snake head; others remembered the hump.
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Collecting any documentary evidence seemed to be doomed to failure. Photographic film was destroyed, sketches were burned, audio recordings were full of noise. This is probably due to the eternal attractiveness of Mokele-mbembe. The monster lives in such a remote and inhospitable part of the world that some people still believe it exists. Are they right?
The answer to this question, according to Paul Barrett, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of London, is a resounding no. There is no way to make this saura-like creature live by hiding from people, he says.
“Over the past 66 million years, nothing has survived in our fossil record that could represent a living sauropod anywhere in the world,” he says. Even if we put aside the dinosaurs, it is unlikely that a truly large land or lake animal will hide in the African jungle. Humans haven't seen a creature weighing more than a ton in half a century, Barrett notes.
“Big animals need large populations to stay alive,” he says. "They also need large geographic ranges to meet their feeding needs."
The idea that one or two giants are hiding in Lake Tele is simply ridiculous.
Paleontologist Darren Nish fully agrees with him. Some cryptozoologists who believe in Mokele-mbembe say that prehistoric creatures could have stayed in Africa because it "remained unchanged." But that's a misconception, says Nish. The flora and fauna on the continent has gone through many changes since the days of the dinosaurs.
“Even rainforests have changed over the years,” he says. "They are geologically young, so they simply reject the possibility of finding an ancient relic in Africa."
But could the stories told by local explorers be associated with another large creature that once lived in the area?
Perhaps, Nish says. Some believe that an extinct species of rhino may have lived near Lake Tele. The stories about him were passed from mouth to mouth and changed over time.
Some of these animals may have been mistaken for Mokele-mbembe or something similar. Hippos, crocodiles, large turtles, swimming elephants - even strangely shaped logs can be mistaken for something else.
Perhaps the most intriguing is that this is an unusual story. In addition to Mokele-mbembe and the Scottish monster from Loch Ness, there are a great many such tales. Bessie lives in Lake Erie in North America, Tessie in Lake Tahoe, Bownessie in England, and Kussi in Japan. It seems that in every self-respecting lake there should be a big self-respecting monster.
Barrett suggests that one of the possible reasons might be that parents told their children centuries-old stories so that they would not inadvertently drown. Keeping the kids away from the lake monster would, in theory, be safer.
Local fossils or footprints could give rise to myths about their origin, says Martin Sander of the University of Bonn in Germany, who has written several articles on sauropods. He gives a good example: "serpentine stones".
These are fossilized ammonites with a snake head carved into them by people so that it seemed as if they were curled up reptiles. They say that these are the remains of snakes turned into stone by Saint Hilda in the 7th century. In reality, these are just fossils that have been tampered with.
As for the stories of Mokele-mbemba, a key factor in their spread may be the era in which they originated. In the early 1900s, there was something like "dinosaur fever," he says. There was more hype than around Jurassic Park.
Moreover, Sander notes that some footprints point to the well-known animal dealer Karl Hagenbeck. In 1909, they could have been a simple publicity stunt. Hagenbeck told stories about Mokele-mbemba he had heard from others. “He may have known about German paleontological excavations in this region. He was the hunter who ran the Hamburg zoo,”says Sander.
In any case, such myths have value, says Barrett. Any expedition in search of the unknown can lead to the discovery of interesting and unexpected things.
ILYA KHEL