Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [424]
Of course, in avoiding the relatively straightforward explanation that a peculiar set of tracks in snow was made by an unknown animal, one is forced to come up with all kinds of speculative hypotheses about the superimposition of prints of various animals and humans, or the transformation of such prints by melting, in a manner not clearly understood. And this would also appear to be a violation of a key aspect of Ockham’s razor—namely, that the simplest of competing theories is preferable to the more complex.
In addition to Westerners, native informants also gave a continuous stream of reports on the Yeti. Lord Hunt, who headed a Mount Everest expedition in 1953, told of an incident recounted by the Tibetan Buddhist abbot of the Thyangboche monastery: “he gave a most graphic description of how a Yeti had appeared from the surrounding thickets, a few years back in the winter when the snow lay on the ground. This beast, loping along sometimes on its hind legs and sometimes on all fours, stood about five feet high and was covered with gray hair” (Shackley 1983, p. 62).
In 1958, Tibetan villagers from Tharbaleh, near the Rongbuk glacier, came upon a drowned Yeti, said Myra Shackley in her book on wildmen. The villagers described the creature as being like a small man with a pointed head and covered with reddish-brown fur (Shackley 1983, p. 1983).
Some Buddhist monasteries claim to have physical remains of the Yeti. One category of such relics is Yeti scalps, but the ones studied by Western scientists are thought to have been made from the skins of known animals (Shackley 1983, pp. 65–66). In 1960, Sir Edmund Hillary mounted an expedition to collect and evaluate evidence for the Yeti and sent a Yeti scalp from the Khumjung monastery to the West for testing. The results indicated that the scalp had been manufactured from the skin of the serow, a goatlike Himalayan antelope. But some disagreed with this analysis. Shackley (1983, p. 66) said they “pointed out that hairs from the scalp look distinctly monkey-like, and that it contains parasitic mites of a species different from that recovered from the serow.”
In the 1950s, Western explorers sponsored by American businessman Tom Slick obtained samples from a mummified Yeti hand kept at Pangboche. Shackley (1983, p. 66) stated: “detailed investigation of small skin samples back in European laboratories failed to reach a diagnosis. Local rumour maintains that the hand comes from a rather poorly mummified lama, but it has some curiously anthropoid features.”
In May of 1957, the Kathmandu Commoner carried a story about a Yeti head that had been kept for 25 years in the village of Chilunka, about 50 miles northeast of Kathmandu. The head reportedly had been severed from the corpse of a Yeti slain by Nepalese soldiers, who had hunted down the creature after it had killed many of their comrades (Shackley 1983, p. 66). Concerning another specimen, Shackley noted that Chemed Rigdzin Dorje, a Tibetan lama, spoke of the existence of a complete mummified Yeti.
Over the years, sightings continued. In 1970, mountaineer Don Willans was researching an approach to Annapurna, a high peak in northern Nepal. He found some tracks and at night saw an apelike creature bounding across the snow. Napier (1973, p. 135), still skeptical, said it could have been a langur monkey.
In 1978, Lord Hunt, who headed the British Mt. Everest expedition of 1953, saw Yeti tracks and heard the high-pitched cry the Yeti is said to make. Lord Hunt, described by Shackley as “a vigorous champion of the Yeti,” had come upon similar tracks in 1953. In both