Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [413]
The largest of the bears, the Kodiak bear, was unknown to science until 1899. The largest rhinoceros, Cotton’s white rhino, was discovered in 1900. The mountain gorilla, the largest member of the ape family, turned up in 1901. The largest lizard, the Komodo dragon, was first captured in 1912. In 1975, the largest known peccary, or wild hog, Catagonus wagneri, was discovered in Paraguay. This animal was previously known only by Pleistocene fossils (Wetzel et al. 1975; Heuvelmans 1983, p. 12). In 1976, a large and entirely new species of shark, 4.5 meters (almost 15 feet) long and weighing over 700 kilograms (over 1,500 pounds), was caught by a U.S. Navy ship in the ocean waters off Hawaii (L. Taylor et al. 1983). So it is not completely outside the realm of possibility that science might someday come to fully accept the existence of wildmen, which may prove to be previously unknown types of hominids or primates, or surviving representatives of fossil hominids such as the australopithecines, Homo erectus, or the Neanderthals. It would not be the first time that science has found examples of “living fossils.”
10.3 European Wildmen
Many art objects of the Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians, and Etruscans bear images of semi-human creatures resembling wildmen. For example, in the Museum of Prehistory in Rome, there is an Etruscan silver bowl on which may be seen, among human hunters on horses, the figure of a large, ape-man-like creature (Wendt 1972, p. 15). Such imagery is, of course, subject to varying interpretations. The Russian scientist Boris Porshnev believed the humanlike creatures represented survivals of prehuman hominids. But British anthropologist Myra Shackley, who said wildmen may in fact exist in some parts of the world, asserted that the figures on classical Graeco-Roman art objects represent purely mythological beings such as satyrs (1983, pp. 18–19).
The satyr is a stylized and very recognizable figure, part human and part animal, occurring mainly on Greek vases. Typically, satyrs have horselike tails and are shown engaged in some kind of sporting or licentious behavior, perhaps connected with the cult of Dionysus. The hairy humanlike figure depicted on the Etruscan silver bowl, however, is shown not with revelers but in the midst of a hunting party of well-armed humans mounted on horses. The creature has no satyr’s tail and appears to be carrying a crude club in one hand and a large stone, raised threateningly above his head, in the other.
During the Middle Ages, wildmen continued to be depicted in European art and architecture. A page from Queen Mary’s Psalter, composed in the fourteenth century, shows a very realistically depicted hairy wildman being attacked by a pack of dogs (Shackley 1983, p. 25). Wildmen were thought to live in caves and forests, where they subsisted on berries and roots. They were not considered ordinary humans. Instead, they were said to be members of the animal kingdom, unable to speak or comprehend the existence of God.
10.4 Northwestern North America
For centuries, the Indians of the northwestern United States and western Canada have believed in the reality of wildmen, known by various names, the most familiar of these being Sasquatch. In 1792, the Spanish botanist-naturalist José Mariano Moziño, in describing the Indians of Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, Canada, stated (1970, pp. 27–28): “I do not know what to say about Matlox, inhabitant of the mountainous district, of whom all have an unbelievable terror. They imagine his body as very monstrous, all covered with stiff black bristles; a head similar to a human one, but with much greater, sharper and stronger fangs than those of the bear; extremely long arms; and toes and fingers armed with long curved claws. His shouts alone (they say) force those who hear them to the ground, and any unfortunate body he slaps is broken into a thousand pieces.”
In 1784, the London