08 August 2008

Sir Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay, and Yeti

The BBC is reporting that hairs claimed to be from a Yeti are currently being examined, and that results to date are "inconclusive." That's not surprising - but I was startled to see this comment:
"Mr Redmond said that on first glance, the hairs from India had the same cuticle pattern to hairs brought back to the UK by Sir Edmund Hillary and donated to the Natural History Museum."
So I checked Wiki, which reports that Hillary and Norgay
"reported seeing large footprints while scaling Mount Everest. But Hillary would later discount Yeti reports as unreliable. In his first autobiography Tenzing said that he believed the Yeti was a large ape, and although he had never seen it himself his father had seen one twice, but in his second autobiography he said he had become much more skeptical about its existence."
With regard to the hairs currently under study,
"The two scientists also pointed out that not that long ago a huge species of ape known as gigantopithecus roamed around the area… It was only identified 80 years ago when Western scientists discovered teeth found in Chinese apothecaries which it was claimed were dragons' teeth to be used for medicinal purposes.

"The teeth were examined and it was revealed that in fact they belonged to a an ape-like creature estimated to be 3m tall which was named gigantopithecus," he said…

"We are lucky that the Indian hairs have clearly identifiable follicles containing cells so there is every chance we will be able to get even closer to the truth…"

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...