The Speculist

The title to a recent Slashdot post asked if "King Kong Lived?" This was in reference to the November 7 McMaster University announcement that a 9-10 foot tall ape co-existed with humans in Southeast Asia 100,000 years ago.

But it makes me wonder whether this gigantic ape wasn't the inspiration for the Sasquatch/Yeti/wildman myths that have persisted around the world.

The problem for Big Foot enthusiasts has been the remarkable lack of fossil evidence that any large primate other than humans has ever existed in the New World. That's a hard problem to overcome.

But, imagine the impression that a ten-foot-tall ape would leave on a primitive culture. These apes would have been terrifying. Their size would have been intimidating, but their physiological similarity to humans would have been frightening as well. Here, in front of their eyes was a link between the human and animal world. This fact would have made the animal spiritually significant. It could have become a totem that these people carried to the Americas.

This would explain a remaining Sasquatch mystery: How did ancient Columbia River Indians carve stone representations of what appears to be apes when no apes ever existed in the New World? An obvious answer is that they had a tribal memory of apes from the Old World.

The weakness of this theory is the date of these animals. 100,000 years is a very long time to harbor a myth. One could argue that the tribal memory of these creatures would have faded long before Indians entered the Americas.

But if we have evidence that these creatures existed 100,000 years ago, perhaps they persisted longer in small populations. If these creatures hung on another 25,000-50,000 years, this theory begins to look more plausible.