Dmitri Bayanov
Paperback: 431 pages
Publisher: Hancock House Publishers Ltd ,Canada;
American Edition, Second Printing edition (January 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0888397062
ISBN-13: 978-0888397065
Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
So, I looked at the cost.
Quite expensive but 430 pages
on Russian Hominology… now it is near impossible to find much of Russian Hominology
and so I bit the bullet and ordered the book.
I had a brief correspondence with Dmitri Bayanov in the
early 1980s –mainly regarding Sasquatch researcher John Green’s call for a
Sasquatch to be shot and killed “for science”. I even got some new information
on the Russian hominid scene. It was
certainly an eye-opener to me. Sadly, TV
has never fully looked at Russian hominology but prefers to stick to
Sasquatch/Bigfoot with only an occasional look at Almas or, rarer still, the Chinese Yeren.
Anyway, the book arrived and I sat down to read it. Oh. It was not going to be all about Russian
hominology after all. Serves me right
for believing the advert. I’ve now found another advert and the book blurb
reads:
“Bigfoot is a familiar word today around the world. Since
the middle of the last century it indicates a mysterious giant primate of North America, who is also called Sasquatch. The Russian
vision of this research is distinguished by at least three peculiarities: it is
based on the combined evidence regarding these primates; it regards these
humanlike beings as relict hominids (hominins by latest primate
classification), i.e., the closest relatives of modern man, Homo sapiens; and
it firmly takes the existence of these still enigmatic bipeds for a biological
fact, not a popular myth or a scientific hypothesis. The purpose of the book is
to substantiate these views and claims. The main philosophic question posed by
it: What is it to be human?”
Seriously, that does not tell much about the book. In fact, as I started reading it I realised
that my disappointment was uncalled for.
It is never really mentioned –especially on US TV- that the
Russian hominologists and experts were the first to fully analyse and affirm
that the Patterson-Gimlin film of a Sasquatch from Bluff Creek, in 1967, was
genuine. It took a while longer for
American experts to do the same. In
fact, it was only after the advent of computer technology, enhancement and
analysis that US experts deemed the short film “genuine”. The nice thing about
this book is that it contains papers and extracts from papers that most of us
in the West have not seen for various reason.
The Patterson footage is looked at and discussed here.
The big debate on whether to shoot and kill (“humanely”?!!!)
a Sasquatch for science still rages on and, as I have written a number of times
before it should be totally abhorrent to anyone –let alone someone claiming to
be a scientist- to just go out and kill a living creature “for science”! We live in the 21st century. The age of DNA –DNA which can convict a
person of a crime in a court of law- and if the nay-sayers tell us this sort of
evidence is not good enough then they are actually snubbing their noses at the
very science they claim to uphold the principles of.
“Why do those hairs said to be from a Bigfoot not result in
a ‘This is Bigfoot hair’ announcement by the labs testing it?” It’s a question I have been asked. Well, we find a hair and on testing the data
base shows a scientifically known animal
–Brown bear, deer or whatever. However,
there is no “scientifically known” Sasquatch.
I’ve mentioned many times how evidence needs to be gathered. “Unknown primate” is what we get from test
results.
Russian hominologists are aware that killing an Almas is wrong but to “habituate”
–get it used to one or two people- and film then gather samples is a good way
to go. This is dealt with in depth in
this book.
I mentioned in Some More Things Strange & Sinister,
the American newspaper report I had found in library archives of a Sasquatch
jumping onto and then riding a horse. “Ridiculous”
was what I thought. I wish I had read
this book first! Evidence of
horse-riding DOES exist!!! Horse-mane
braiding. Sasquatch/Almas vocalisation
is also dealt with along with several claims of long term Sasquatch-human
interaction in the US. But looking at reports and more, Bayanov
tells us Almas-human interaction is not unknown.
Buy Bayanov also looks at the Chinese Yeren and the
Australian Yowie. It is incredible that
in such widely separated geographic areas there are so many correlations. There was no free access to the US press in the
Soviet era so no country folk could read of Sasquatch and think “That’d be a
great joke to pull!” Access to Australian newspapers and Yowie reports? No. But
it worked both ways and as someone always on the look out for these reports the
only thing I ever saw from China
was in China Reconstructs in the
1970s and that I saw by accident as my brother had a copy!
Bayanov also looks at reports of alleged Almas
kills and why hunters might not report such kills in Russia
or the United States.
And Bayanov makes a very –VERY- good case for the “Father of
Hominology” to be his old professor Boris Fedorovich Porshnev (1905-1972). In point of fact, reading the book you
realise that, like the Chinese, the Russians were taking hominology very
seriously and the only thing getting in the way of greater progress for the
Russians was/is lack of financial resources.
I do not normally sit down and read a 400+ paged book over a
day-and-a-half and ignore everything else.
But in this case I had no choice!
If reading about Russian hominology was not enough then Bayanov’s study
of folklore about wildmen as well as looking at accounts of these dating back
to ancient Greece and artistic depictions of wildmen in archaeological finds is
a clincher. I think that a lot of us
interested in hominology suspected that wildmen in folkore and Medieval
accounts might have been some kind of
relic hominid –“European Bigfoot” if you want to dumb it down. But in this book
Bayanov makes the strongest case for this based on known literature and
finds. He even refers to Linaeus and his classification of hominid
types. Naturalists today use the
Linnaean system of classification yet many are unaware of his hominid
classifications because they were censored
and then omitted later by ‘scholars’ who would have no such officially
recognised “other species”.
The scope of this work covers far more, though –including the
Minnesota “Ice
Man” and just WHO may have really owned it.
I have always cherished my Sanderson Abominable Snowman: Legend Come To Life and I always will. However, if I had to recommend a book on the
subject to anyone it would be this one. The fact that Bayanov’s book is decades
newer and up-to-date on hominology helps!
Lots of images regarding wildmen in history and more make
this the
must read on the subject.
