Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

considered ancestral to modern humans, the
two groups did coexist for several thousand
years and probably had some cultural or genetic
exchanges. Asian Neanderthal fossils have been
found in Israel, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, and
Uzbekistan. Although Mousterian toolkits have
been discovered elsewhere, these were not exclusively
Neanderthal and may have been produced
by early modern humans.
Another leading Wildman candidate is Homo
erectus, an early human that evolved in Africa
about 2 million years ago, then spread into Asia
and parts of Europe. The first fossil was found
at Trinil in Indonesia by Eugene Dubois in
1890 and was known for a long time as
Pithecanthropus erectus or Java man. More extensive
material was discovered in Zhoukoudian
Cave, near Beijing, China, in the 1920s and in
Sangiran and other Javan sites in the 1930s and
later. Since then, evidence for an erectus presence
has been found in Algeria, Morocco, Tanzania,
Kenya, Georgia, and Western Europe.
Possibly the most recent erectus artifacts and remains
come from Selungur Cave, Kyrgyzstan,
and are dated at 125,000 years ago. Erectus
skulls are long and low, with heavy browridges
and large jaws. Cranial capacity spanned from
800 to 1,000 milliliters. Evidence from East
Africa indicates erectus had a slender, upright
frame and stood around 5 feet 7 inches tall.
Most reported Wildmen seem to be more
primitive physically and culturally than modern
Homo sapiens, represented by the Cro-Magnon
culture in Europe. There have been many finds
of jaws, skulls, and other skeletal material that
show apparent transitional forms between
Homo erectus and sapiens. Characteristics are
usually described in comparison to erectus fossils
(less prognathism, reduced robusticity,
lightened browridges). Cranial capacity ranges
from 1,000 to 1,400 milliliters. European specimens
include the Mauer mandible from Germany
(sometimes characterized as H. heidelbergensis)
and the Petralona, Greece, cranium,
which shows both erectus characteristics and
more advanced features. Other fossils have been
found in Azerbaijan, Morocco, Ethiopia, South
Africa, Tanzania, India, Indonesia, Siberia
(Denisova Cave), and China. Collectively
588 WILDMEN
called “archaic Homo sapiens” fossils, there is
too much variation to assign them a species
name; some indeed may turn out to be erectus
or sapiens. Very little postcranial material has
been discovered, so it is difficult to specify
height or weight. Few of these fossils have been
precisely dated, but they are thought to occur
within the Middle Pleistocene, 500,000–
200,000 years ago.
Homo habilis was an early East African hominid
contemporary with the apelike yet upright
australopiths in the Late Pliocene, 1.9–1.6
million years ago. Although it had a larger cranium
(610 milliliters on average), smaller teeth,
and a more humanlike foot skeleton, it only
weighed an average of 66 pounds and looked
more australopithecine than human.
Notice that all the preceding types are from
the Old World. There is no evidence at all that
humans evolved anywhere in the Americas. A
flourishing of early primates took place in
North America from 66 to 28 million years ago,
but these had either disappeared or moved into
South America by 27 million years ago as the
ancestors of the New World monkeys. Fully
modern humans were the next visitors to the
Americas some 40,000 years ago, leaving no
known explanation for American BIGFOOT and
CANNIBAL GIANT traditions unless they followed
the Bering land bridge from Asia like the
Paleo-Indians.
Mystery Wildmen
Africa
AGRIOS ANTHROPOS; AKÉPHALOS; ANTIPODES;
BILUNGI; BRACHYSTOMOS; GORILLAÏ; HY-
LOPHAGOS; ICHTHYOPHAGOS; KIKOMBA; SCIA-
POD; TROGLODYTE; VADOMA; WOADD-EL-UMA
Asia, Central
ADAM-AYU; ADAM-DZHAPAIS; ALMAS; BAN-
MANUSH; BAR-MANU; DEV; FARISHTA; GÉRÉ-
SUN BAMBURSHÉ; GOLUB-YAVAN; GUL; HAR-
RUM-MO; KÉÉDIEKI; KHÜN-GÖRÜESSÜ;
KSY-GIYK; LECHY; NASNAS; SHAITAN; YABALIK-
ADAM
Asia, East
MAO-RÉN; YE-RÉN