posted on Aug, 13 2008 @ 07:41 PM
Wow, this thread is full of so many misconceptions about a number of things.
First off,
The first white settlers were noisy smelly they brought cattle and horses and fire, it would be easy to avoid them, and they didnt really penetrate
that deep into the wilderness.
There are many species of primates in the americas,
south and central america are full of monkeys.
There are certainly undiscovered species deep in the rainforest.
A new species of chimpanzee was discovered in just the last few years.
In fact I seem to remember reading in the local paper a few months ago the announcment of a couple of new species of primates, from asia and the
americas.
There is an old photo taken in the late 1800's in brazil of a very large primate that was shot.
They have it propped up in the photo and its big, and it aint no big monkey either.
I saw it on the history channel program on Gigantopithicus, the 7-8' tall human cousin that lived in africa, asia and possibly europe.
Certain chinese anthropologists speculate that giganto might have survived untill fairly recently (25,000 years ago).
For those of you who think we a re packed in like sardines in the US, that is not the case. There are great cities and the east/west coast are very
urbanized,
but out west is a totaly different story.
You be amazed at how empty this country really is, I have roamed all over the western US and I know of so many areas to go where I could be there for
weeks without hardly seeing another person.
In fact in all of my literally tens of thousands of hrs out in the abundant wilderness areas available to us, you what I have never ever seen.
The remains of ANY animal that happend to just die, they all do at some point.
Not one deer, raccon, bat, any bird, no bears nor squirell have I ever found laying around, after they died.
But several years ago, in the Donner Pass area, I noticed a very odd scat on a rock.
We were riding our trials motorcycles through a very remote private ranch, and we were working our way down a very shallow seasonal creek bed. It was
very densly wooded and were were following a sort of game trail that went down to a nearby lake.
We came to a small clearing in thr trees/brush and right on top of a small rock was a turd pile.
Im pretty famailiar with the scat of all of the large mamals and birds of prey. It wasnt bear or mountain lion or coyote, and those are the only
animals big enough to leave a big pile like that. And it looked like human feces, except it was full of plant material, and berries and bugs.
I kinda looked at it and thought it odd while I waited for my buddy to catch up, but really didnt think about it , I was six hrs into a twelve hr
ride.
When I was on my five hr drive home, it dawned on me that I had missed the possible opportunity of a life time.
There have been many hair samples found,and some hair and blood samples taken this year were indentified as an "unclassified primate".
The researcher was saying that it was closer to human than to the great apes, but was not human.
And I remember as a child roaming around the mountains hunting, I would occasionally find swatches of long reddish brown hair stuck in buckbrush or
in the tree branches. back then I just though it was cows, but now I dont know, as I think back to them they were usually prety high up a little
higher than cattle are tall.
And cattle around hear dont have long hair.
Then theres the matter of this small town that is at the base of this part of the mountains. Its been there about a 130 yrs maybe an old logging town
with a reservation nearby.
They used to have a set of giant foot prints painted through town, on the road. I never really though about it back then, 40+ years ago.
but recently as I was riding around some of the back roads nearby there are many "bigfoot" related items decorating local homes.
There are a couple of bigfoot cutouts hiding in the trees on different peices of property, and there is one house with a big foot statue.
And when the footprints were first painted in town, was well before the patterson film brought bigfoot into the public conciousness.
So next time im up there I think I'll stop at the local tribal council and ask about their tales of bigfoot, I think my uncle told me the name in
the local laguage, but it cant for the life of me remember what it was.
When I would go roaming around my dad and uncle would tell me to watch out for "?", and it was kind of like a boogey man in the forest.
Almost every native north american tribe has a tale of a large hairy man beast that lives deep in the forest.
And the tales have similar features, except there are two exception that I have heard, in most of the tales bigfoot is peaceful or at least not
interested in us, but in the Iroqoui legends, in times of severe hardship, like bad winters, he becomes a predator.
And there is a tribe that live in a region of oregon, that absolutly feared bigfoot, and would not cross a certain river and venture into his
territory.
Then there is the Yeti in the himalayas, and oran-pendek in indonesia.
The european probably even have the tales, they have just been transformed through the ages into other tales of giants and ogres and such.
There is a book called ,"Spy at the Top of the World"
an amazing true story of spying, the himlayas and tibet in 1957?. A must read,
anyhow as the author and his companions are hiking from india to nepal, they have a yeti incounter, I think with footprints and vocalizations.
Another fascinating read is "The Story Of Ishi"
the last survivor of his tribe and how he lived in the wild hidden from the white man in northern california, till he got old and tired of hiding and
came out.
There is a similar story of an native american doing the same thing in New York City, I'm not sure of the date but I think it was in the 1850's, he
was the last member of his tribe and they had been hiding in the central park area, since before the city was there. And as his habitat shrank and
became ever more urban, he finaly got old and tired of struggling to survive and came out of the wilderness.