"Abominable! Can you
believe that? Do I look
abominable to you? Why
can't they call me the
Adorable Snowman or...or
the Agreeable Snowman,
for crying out loud? I'm a
nice guy."
– The Yeti [Monster’s Inc.]
Guarding the sleep of the mountains
steep
The Yeti is the legendary
guardian of the Himalayan
Mountains. The search for the
Yeti dates back as early as 326
BC and continues today.
Home Home on the (Mountain)
Range
The Himalaya mountain range is both remote
and vast with a length of about 2,400 km and a
width of 200-400 km. The range includes Mount
Everest, the highest peak on earth, standing at
29,028 feet high. The Yeti is said to roam
between the treeline and permanent snow at
14,000 to 20,000 feet.
Alexander the Great & the hunt for the
terrible horrible no good very bad…Yeti?
The search to find the Yeti can
be traced back to the time of
Alexander the Great, who in
326 BC set out to conquer the
Indus Valley. Having heard
stories of the Yeti he demanded
to see one for himself, but local
people told him they were
unable to present one because
the creatures could not survive
at that low an altitude.
Come & Get Your Yeti!
• In the 1950s the Nepali government cashed in
on the increasingly popular Yeti myth by
issuing Yeti-hunting licenses priced at £400
per Yeti. To date no-one has succeeded in
capturing a specimen dead, or alive (though
people still pay for the chance).
• Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary in Bhutan is a
national park officially dedicated to preserving
the Yeti.
Yetis Save Lives!
This legendary creature has had an actual
impact on conservation. Belief in an unproven
animal has helped conserve the forest for real
animals, like Himalayan black bears, red pandas,
leopards, and Himalayan tahr.
What’s in a name?
The name
‘Abominable
Snowman’ was coined
in 1921 by journalist
Henry Newman who
mis-translated the
Tibetan label MetohKangmi, “dirty men in
the snow.”
Here, there, everywhere!
Mystery primates are reported from every
continent except Antarctica. They include the
Sasquatch of North America, the Yowie in
Australia, the Yeren of China, the Hibagon in
Japan, the Orang Pendek in Sumatra,
theAlmasty of Russia, the Ferles Mor in
Scotland, and the Mapinguari of Brazil.
Where it all began…
It is suggested that the Yeti myth originated in Tibet, and reached Nepal via the Sherpa,
descendants of families who emigrated from the Khams region of Tibet across the
Himalayan range in the middle of the sixteenth century.
What walks that way?
Possible explanations for
the unusually large
footprints found over the
years include the effect of
evaporation and melting
snow, the ‘overstepping’
phenomenon in which the
longer tracks of an animal’s
hind feet overlap and
obscure the tracks of the
shorter forefeet, and even
the prints left by nomadic
mountain men wearing
roughly-woven snow
sandals.
Scientist Says
The first scientist to
investigate the Yeti was
German Professor Ernst
Schaefer. Allegedly, he
was employed by the
head of the SS Heinrich
Himmler to search for
the Yeti in 1938 in the
hope that it would turn
out to be the progenitor
of the Aryan race.
Schaefer reached the
conclusion that the Yeti
was in fact the Tibetan
bear.
Artwork Copyright Nate Wragg 2012
According to Natives
Sherpa tradition
holds that the Yeti
will only show itself
to those who
believe in it.
Hard to Say…
From a scientific point of view, the descriptions
of the Yeti raise an interesting question: is there
a real animal that lives in the Himalayas that
people have exaggerated or imagined to be
some kind of oversized hairy human?
So mixed up!
Could one or more of
the large mammals
that live in the high
mountain forest be
the real Yeti? Or are
people seeing
glimpses of real
animals and mixing
them together to
create a mythical
one?
Trying to Understand
People who study the
traditional beliefs, myths,
tales, and practices of a
people are called
folklorists. They study
folklore to try and
understand why certain
legends persist and what
significance they might
play in daily life. One
theory is that the myth of
the Yeti serves to help
protect the forests.
Going two by two
The Nepali people who live in the mountains, the
Sherpas, believe in Buddhism, a very important
religion in Nepal. Buddhism encourages people to
live in balance with nature and discourages people
from hunting animals for food or cutting down trees
for fuel. They also establish “sacred lands,” large
tracts of forest that are not to be disturbed. It is
believed the Yeti favors these sacred areas. The
people rarely enter dense forest alone or after dark.
They believe it is safer to go by twos in case they
meet this legendary creature.
Proof? Smoof…
Yet, even without proof,
belief in the Yeti is very real.
The lack of hard evidence
despite decades of searches
doesn't deter true believers;
the fact that these
mysterious creatures haven't
been found is not taken as
evidence that they don't
exist, but instead how rare,
reclusive, and elusive they
are.
Artwork Copyright Nate Wragg 2012
Any body? Anybody?
A single body would
prove that the Yeti exist,
though no amount of
evidence can prove they
don't exist (you can’t
prove a negative.) For
that reason alone, these
animals — real or not —
will likely always be with
us.
History of the Yeti…in under 1 ½
minutes
https://vimeo.com/97494705
Reinhold Messner: Climbing Legend,
Yeti Hunter
• Age: 55
• Home: South Tyrol,
Italy
• Day Job: Member,
European Parliament
• Number of Toes:
Three*
[*Other seven toes lost to frostbite while descending Nanga Parbat after an avalanche.
Living Legend
Reinhold Messner has made
a life of redefining the
possible. The Germanspeaking Tyrolean Italian is
probably the greatest
mountaineer alive. The
American climber Jon
Krakauer says: "Messner is to
climbing what Michael Jordan
is to basketball."
Even without air!
In 1978 he bent the accepted boundaries of the
human body, summiting Everest without
supplemental oxygen—arguably the greatest
alpine feat of all time. He went on to bag all 14
of Earth's 8,000-meter (26,250-foot) peaks—
another record. Now he's made a Messner of
the yeti, yanking the improbable abominable
snowman into the realm of fact.
Or has he?
Going it alone
In 1980, when attempts on Everest still relied on armies of
Sherpas and equipment, Messner went up on his own. His
single-minded passion for climbing has survived the loss of
one of his brothers, some controversy, and all but three of
his toes.
And it is with that same single-minded
determination that he believes he has solved
the yeti mystery.
Getting Bored
"These highest points
were losing their
mystery," Messner
lamented in 1986. By
the end of that year he
had all the mystery he
could handle: A close
encounter with a yeti in
the Himalaya sparked a
12-year search.
Telling His Tale
In an interview in the
National Geographic
magazine ADVENTURE
Messner recalled that
first meeting. Here he
revealed the nature of
the beast, why Hitler
yearned for yetis, and
much more.
Going for a walk
It was 1986, and he had gone for a walk on his
own and got a bit lost. A walk for Reinhold
Messner is not what most people mean by a
walk. On this one he was trying to follow a route
taken by Sherpa people centuries ago in the
flight from the lands of Dege to Lhasa. That's a
walk of about 1,200 miles.
Not alone after all
It was dusk; he was climbing a steep, densely
vegetated slope. Suddenly something large and
dark stepped out ahead of him. He watched it
racing along in front, flitting in and out of the
trees, upright like a man, but moving faster than
any man could. Neither branches nor ditches
slowed it down. At one point it stood motionless
only 10 yards away, then disappeared.
Back again
He saw it again, later
that night, running in
the moonlight. It
looked more than
seven feet tall and
immensely strong,
but agile too.
Covered in hair, with
short legs and long,
powerful arms, it
made angry hissing
noises, and for a
second he saw its
eyes and teeth
before it ran off into
the trees.
The Climbing Detective
After his encounter with the strange beast,
Messner became obsessed. He spent a large
part of the following 12 years chasing yetis
round the Himalayas - Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan,
India, Mongolia, Kazakhstan - trying to get to the
bottom of a myth that has been around since
Alexander the Great heard of them when he
went to conquer the Indus valley in 326BC. Now
he thinks he has solved the mystery.
The Answer Is….
After 12 years of research and more than 20
trips to the Himalayas, scouring monasteries for
relics and eventually seeing more "yetis" for
himself in Lhasa and the Karakorum, Messner's
conclusion is perhaps a little disappointing for
the rest of us, but not for him (more on that in a
bit.)
It’s a…bear?
[According to
Messner]The yeti
does not exist.
There is no humanlike abominable
snowman living in
the mountains. The
yeti is in fact a
Himalayan brown
bear.
In His Own Words
Listen to audio clips of Ressner actually speaking
of his experience as well as his interview here:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure
/0005/q_n_a.html Note: To listen to the audio
clips, you'll needRealPlayer.
How do the legends and this bear
match?
• “The legends all describe the yeti as two and a
half meters [eight feet] high. If it’s big, they say it
is black. If it’s very small, they say it’s reddish,
because the small Tibetan bears are reddish.
• Everything matches perfectly. They all say, for
example, when the yeti is whistling, run away
because it’s becoming dangerous. It goes on two
legs when it meets people, to show that he is big
and strong and dangerous. It’s telling you, Go
away or you are a dead man.”
Is it in fact “big and strong and
dangerous”?
“It is able to kill a yak with one fist. No other
animal can do this in the Himalaya—you know, a
yak is big like a buffalo. I found a dead yak killed
with one hand by a yeti—or a Tibetan bear.”
Why haven’t locals recognized the
bear as the true yeti?
• It is a night animal, so they see only a huge
shadow, a dangerous animal. And they know
they have no chance in the night to compete,
so they don’t go out. They see sometimes a
dead yak, sometimes in the morning a goat is
missing in their herd.
• In their stomachs, a few of them know this is a
bear, but not all of them. They call it a bear
with human abilities.
Are you [Reinhold Messner]
disappointed?
• "Not for me. Because the brown bear is really a
monster." What about for the people who live in
the Himalayas and have lived with this legend for
hundreds of years?
• The yeti is the sum of many, many, many tellings
of a legend. The local people have a lot of fantasy
creatures because they live without television
and without Hollywood, so they have to create
their own figures or myths. But most of these
figures, like the yeti, are built on real, existing
beings out of nature.
[continued]
• The local people tell each other the story. And from
time to time somebody brings along a new part
because they’ve been in touch, in the night, with one
of these creatures. So the yeti is the sum of this fantasy
figure and the zoological reality behind it—a Tibetan
bear. The legend and this Tibetan bear match.
• "In the local areas they know all that - that this is an
animal. But since only every 10 years someone is
seeing a real example, so if they speak about it, all the
children and normal people that never saw one, they
are imagining they are talking about something that
isn't a brown bear. We should see the yeti as the sum
of the legend and the zoological reality."
The Yeti