Wildmen of the Pamir Mountains
There
seems to be renewed interests in the 'wildmen' of Asia...probably the
best known is the Yeti. But there have been expeditions into the more
tropical areas of south central Asia as well. In this post, I want to
concentrate on mountainous central Asia, specifically those hominids or
'snowmen' that are said to exist in the Pamir Range of Tajikistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. These hominids go by
several monikers...the Barmanu, the Tajik Yeti, the Almysty, the
Golub-Yavan or simply the Gul.
In August 2001, the Russian
magazine Karavan + I, published an article about the killing of a wild
man on the old Soviet-Afghanistan border. According to the author,
border guards of the Kevran unit in the Pamir Mountains saw a "Snowman"
during the winter of 1967/68. They reported their observation to their
superior, Kuzkov, the officer in charge of the unit. He did not, at
first, pay any attention to it.
The soldiers of the next
watch again saw a creature and reported the fact. Subsequently, the duty
officer accompanied the soldiers to the spot and personally observed
the creature. Kuskov informed his superior officer, a colonel in Khorog –
a settlement on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border. News about this
reached the Central Asia Command where, in February 1968, a high-ranking
officer gave the order, ‘Catch him or, if that isn’t possible,
eliminate him!’. Thereupon, the border guards shot the creature and took
it to the border post. The body was stored in a woodshed. A subsequent
article 3) in Karavan + I in September 2001 on the happening disclosed
that the body was taken to Moscow in great secrecy.
The
magazine questioned two scientists to establish what had happened to the
remains of the "Snowman". One of these was Georgy Skvorzov, director of
the programme Animals in inhabited settlements and, according to
Karavan, for many years a collector of information about the ‘Snowmen’.
[Karavan:] Georgy, do you believe in the existence of the Snowmen?
[Skvorzov:]
Of course. The Snowman has not only just been seen once in the
mountains of Tibet, in the Pamir Mountains, Siberia and the northern
Caucasus. In recent time these sightings have been fewer. Probably these
very cautious creatures are hiding from the advancing human
civilisation.
[Karavan:] Do you know about the affair at
the end of Winter 1968 when our border guards killed a Snowman in the
Pamir Mountains and brought his body to the capital? Did scientists get
their hands on this specimen?
[Skvorzov:] We have slightly
different information if we are talking about the same event. According
to my information the body of a Snowman was found by a shepherd in the
Pamir Mountains in autumn 1968. But at that time our scientists only
received pieces of the fur and the eye-teeth.
The magazine
confided that their editor had been visited by an ex-border guard
called Andrej. He had served in the Pamir Mountains during the 1960s and
had confirmed the killing of a "Snowman" at the place mentioned.
Further information about what happened to the body or about the fur and
eye-teeth was not given.
In the Russian Newspaper Simbirskij Kur'er (Simbirsk Courier), Arsenij
Korolev reported in 2002 among others about a 1982 expedition of the
Tajik Academy of Science in the Hissar Mountains in the western Pamirs.
The academy was equally involved in the 'snowman' problem. According to
Korolev, in the 1980s, many adventure lovers came to Tajikistan in
search of snowmen. During their holidays, media workers organized
themselves into groups and came to the Hissar Mountains. A great number
of publications followed as a result and the local press was full of
stories concerning the Gul' He writes: “Only few, however, knew that
this puzzle would be solved by the scientists of the Tajik Academy of
Science." Tatjana Vasileva, at that time a scientist at the academy, is
quoted as following: “Despite all that, the scientists were not
inactive. Of course we were inquisitive to follow the traces of the
snowman, particularly so when this legends was just close to us. But the
leading stuff of the Academy was against an official expedition. The
only thing that we could do was to organize an expedition that was
dealing with soil profiles. At the same time, we could also search for
traces of the snowman."
Cryptozoologist George M. Eberhart's description of the 'Wildman'
At
the beginning of May 1982, a ten member expedition left for the Hissar
Mountains. Flora and fauna related materials were collected and examined
to find possible eyewitnesses of the snowman. The expedition team noted
that the locals themselves would reluctantly talk about the Gul. Often,
they changed the subject quite abruptly. In most cases, no personal
experiences would be reported except for encounters through another
person. The expedition found no traces of "Snowmen".
Furthermore,
Korolev reported about an encounter with a police chief of Tadshikabad
who spent the weekend with friends in the mountains: “After lunch, the
friends went to the river for a bath. The policeman was tired and fell
asleep. He only woke up because someone was shaking his car. He looked
back and saw a Gul beside his Shiguli. The Gul was pushing the Shiguli
forward. Then, the creature placed its hands at the rear windscreen of
his car. Full of fear, the policeman shot up and the Gul ran away. But
the prints of his hands at the rear windscreen of his car have remained.
A Tajik detective has taken these prints and has forwarded them to the
police department of criminal investigation."
A guide Surob stakes his honor on the wild man's existence. “I saw his footprints, bigger than the man’s, in snow.”
The
road slides upwards from Dushanbe and starts to disintegrate. Surob
gestures towards a sad-looking town to our right. “That’s town where I
was born, after collapse Soviet Union, people started banging, stealing,
breaking everything, proving they themselves are the Yetis.” He
bristles when I suggest the Yeti may be a peasant mirage. “They swear on
the Koran. Why should they lie? They know nothing, they have nothing,
they swear by Allah they have seen it.” I back down.
We
pull up at a shack for a pit stop. This is where the valley begins. I am
peckish. Soviet-style sweets are displayed in plastic bags. “What’s the
best one?” I ask in Russian. The proprietor dashes to a side room and
brings me a Snickers bar. My guide wants to hurry, but an old man with
an unwashed beard and one strikingly yellow tooth asks for a ride up
towards his village. Surob asks him if he is from here. “He from here.
Now I will gather the information.”
The peasant knows
about the Yeti. “Ten years ago, I saw him. I was climbing a hill to
gather firewood and I saw somebody. I go hey, hey, but then he started
running towards me. It was the Yeti, covered in black wool, with breasts
like the woman’s…”
I ask him to swear on the Koran that
he saw the Yeti. Raising his hand to heaven the old man insists and
gives me his Islamic word. “I don’t know about other people, but I saw
it. It was shouting with anger, rarghh, I was shouting with fear, eeee,
and I run.” The countryside changes dramatically as we talk. The road
has become a dirt track. The car is swerving and sidling as it climbs up
the barren gullies. The old man insists he saw the Yeti. Everyone knows
somebody who has in the nearby villages. “When I got back to the
village, my father started reading the Koran to me, as protection.”
Nature
is starting to blossom in rich abundance. Cherry blossom hangs off the
crags. Shoots of wild onions sprout out of the dark earth. “Look,” says
Surob. “Look at the herbals, the Yeti is eating the herbals, this is why
he lives here.” Coloured tips of wild flowers, blues, reds, purples,
grow among the jagged browns, reds and greys of the mountains. Another
curve. A stark, barren river valley. “Hey, they saw him too.” Surob
stops the car and gives traditional greetings to two middle-aged men
driving the traditional clapped-out Lada.
“Yeah, I had
fight with him,” says the hunter. “He has wool, black wool, and these
breasts…” And he wolf-whistles. His companion, a chubby man in a sizable skullcap, butts in. “Oh yes, I was up in the glade, and he
attacked my donkey. It was very frightening. He looked like a wild man —
or a clever monkey.” The sightings occur in the same places. Regularly.
In the winter of 2002, Pakistan newspapers reported that the 'Russian UFO Digest' (
Rossiskij Ufologicheskij Daidjest)
reported a new wildmen event in Pakistan. A 20 year-old citizen of the
Pakistan village of Kharipur, Radschu, left his house and heard strange
sounds from the bushes in front of it. Suddenly an apelike male creature,
about 1,20m high, covered with thick black coat, came out of the bushes
and attacked and scratched him. Radschu cried and run back into his
house. The 'wildmen' fled from the apple garden when other men using
torches began to search around Radschu´s house. Eyewitnesses reported
about the high shrill cries of the creature. Old villagers remembered
they has seen such "strangers from the mountains" many times in the
past, particulary in winter, when they came into the villages in search
for food.
A another 'wild man' hominid is thought to live
in portions of eastern Afghanistan as well as the Shishi Kuh Valley in
the Chitral region of North Pakistan. The Barmanu, which translates as
“The Hairy One”, is often thought to be related to early hominids and
descriptions generally resemble the Neanderthal. As is the case with
other sightings of man like hairy hominids, accounts of this creature
are often accompanied by tales of a horrible stench, a trait which is
attributed to the creature’s wilderness lifestyle and hair covered body.
Legends of this creature have been told by the locals for centuries,
but it was not until the early 1990’s that the legend would receive
international attention.
During the early 1900’s several
Spanish expeditions into the Shishi Kih Valley region of North Pakistan
learned of the Barmanu through retelling of the legend by local people.
The tales of the Barmanu eventually caught the ear of zoologist Jordi
Magraner who traveled to the region with medical doctor Anne Mallasse
and another team member. Between 1992 and 1994 Magraner and his team
detailed not only eyewitness reports but personal experiences including
grunting noise thought to have been made by a primitive voice box as
well as discovering ape like foot prints. Magraner was killed by one of
his Pakistani guides on August 2, 2002.
Full Credit to Lon Strickler over at
http://www.phantomsandmonsters.com
(Apologizes to Lon for not giving proper credit. This was something I had saved on my PC almost 5 years ago and I assumed the sources listed below covered all credits.)
Thanks
~Tom~
This
post by Thomas Marcum, Thomas is the founder/leader of the
cryptozoology and paranormal research organization known as The Crypto
Crew. Over 20 years experience with research and investigation of
unexplained activity, working with video and websites. A trained wild
land firefighter and a published photographer, and poet
(Sources: www.unknownexplorers.com "Again
the "Snowman" - Rossiskij Ufologicheskij Dajdjest (Russian UFO Digest) -
January, 2003 Gurov, Boris - "Snowman Against the
USSR" - Karavan + I - August 19, 2001 Gurov, Boris -
"On the Tracks of Snowman" - Karavan + I - October 10,
2001 Khakhlov, Vitaly - "On the "Wild Men" in Central
Asia" - The Commission for the Study of the "Snowman" Question -
1959 Eberhart, George M. - "Mysterious Creatures: A
Guide to Cryptozoology, Volume 1" - 2002 standpointmag.co.uk www.andras-nagy.com Smeljanskij, Vladimir - "Mountain Spirit" - Rabochaja Gazeta - May 24, 2006 www.tajinfo.ru Makarov, Vadim - "Atlas of the Snowman" - 2002)
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