The Yeti ()"Yeti" . Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary., also commonly referred to as the Abominable Snowman in Western popular culture, is a large, hairy, mythical humanoid creature said to inhabit the Himalayan mountain range in Asia. Many dubious articles have been offered in an attempt to prove the existence of the Yeti, including anecdotal visual sightings, disputed video recordings, photographs, and plaster casts of large footprints. Some of these are speculated or known to be hoaxes.
Folklorists trace the origin of the Yeti to a combination of factors, including Sherpa folklore and misidentified fauna such as bear or yak. The Yeti is commonly compared to Bigfoot of North America as the two subjects often have similar physical descriptions.
Description The Yeti is often described as being a large, bipedal human or ape-like creature that is covered with brown, grey, or white hair, and it is sometimes depicted as having large, sharp teeth.
Etymology and alternative names
The word Yeti is derived from , a compound of the words "rocky", "rocky place" and () "bear".Stonor, Charles (30 January 1954). The Statesman in CalcuttaIzzard, Ch. 2, pp. 21–22. Pranavananda states that the words "ti", "te" and "teh" are derived from the spoken word 'tre' (spelled "dred"), Tibetan for bear, with the 'r' so softly pronounced as to be almost inaudible, thus making it "te" or "teh".Izzard, Ch. 2, p. 199.
Tibetan lore describes three main varieties of Yetis—the Nyalmo, which has black fur and is the largest and fiercest, standing around fifteen feet tall; the Chuti, which stands around eight feet tall and lives between above sea level; and the Rang Shim Bombo, which has reddish-brown fur and is only between tall.
Other terms used by Himalayan peoples do not translate exactly the same, but refer to legendary and indigenous wildlife:
Michê () translates as "man-bear".Izzard, Ch. 2, p. 22. Dzu-teh – 'dzu' translates as "cattle" and the full meaning translates as "cattle bear", referring to the Himalayan brown bear. Migoi or Mi-go () translates as "wild man". Bun Manchi – Nepali for "jungle man" that is used outside Sherpa communities where yeti is the common name.Taylor Mirka – Another name for "wild-man". Local legend holds that "anyone who sees one dies or is killed". The latter is taken from a written statement by Frank Smythe's sherpas in 1937.Tilman, p. 131. Kang Admi – "Snow Man". Jungli Admi – "Wild Man". Xueren (Chinese: 雪人) - "Snow Man"
Other names and locations In Russian folklore, the Chuchuna is an entity said to dwell in Siberia. It has been described as six to seven feet tall and covered with dark hair. According to the native accounts from the nomadic Yakut and Tungus tribes, it is a well built, Neanderthal-like man wearing pelts and bearing a white patch of fur on its forearms. It is said to occasionally consume human flesh, unlike their close cousins, the Almastis. Some witnesses reported seeing a tail on the creature's corpse. There are additional tales of large, reclusive, bipedal creatures worldwide, notably including both "Bigfoot" and the "Abominable Snowman".
The Abominable Snowman The name Abominable Snowman was coined in 1921, the year Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Howard-Bury led the 1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition, which he chronicled in Mount Everest The Reconnaissance, 1921. In the book, Howard-Bury includes an account of crossing the Lhagpa La at where he found footprints that he believed "were probably caused by a large 'loping' grey wolf, which in the soft snow formed double tracks rather like those of a bare-footed man". He adds that his Sherpa guides "at once volunteered that the tracks must be that of 'The Wild Man of the Snows', to which they gave the name 'metoh-kangmi. "Metoh" translates as "man-bear" and "kang-mi" translates as "snowman".Izzard, Ch. 2, p. 21.
Confusion exists between Howard-Bury's recitation of the term "metoh-kangmi" and the term used in Bill Tilman's book Mount Everest, 1938Tilman, pp. 127–37 where Tilman had used the words "metch", which does not exist in the Tibetan language,Izzard, Ch. 2, p. 24. and "kangmi" when relating the coining of the term "Abominable Snowman". Further evidence of "metch" being a misnomer is provided by Tibetan language authority Professor David Snellgrove from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London (ca. 1956), who dismissed the word "metch" as impossible, because the consonants "t-c-h" cannot be conjoined in the Tibetan language. Documentation suggests that the term "metch-kangmi" is derived from one source (from the year 1921). It has been suggested that "metch" is simply a misspelling of "metoh".
The use of "Abominable Snowman" began when Henry Newman, a longtime contributor to The Statesman in Calcutta, writing under the pen name "Kim", interviewed the porters of the "Everest Reconnaissance expedition" on their return to Darjeeling. Newman mistranslated the word "metoh" as "filthy", substituting the term "abominable", perhaps out of artistic licence.Izzard, Ch. 2, p. 23. As author Bill Tilman recounts, "[Newman] wrote long after in a letter to The Times: The whole story seemed such a joyous creation I sent it to one or two newspapers".
History and sightings Pre-19th century According to H. Siiger, the Yeti was a part of the pre-Buddhist beliefs of several Himalayan peoples. He was told that the Lepcha people worshipped a "Glacier Being" as a God of the Hunt. He also reported that followers of the Bön religion once believed the blood of the "mi rgod" or "wild man" had use in certain spiritual ceremonies. The being was depicted as an ape-like creature who carries a large stone as a weapon and makes a whistling swoosh sound.
Yeti was adopted into Tibetan Buddhism, where it is considered a nonhuman animal (tiragyoni) that is nonetheless human enough to sometimes be able to follow Dharma. Several stories feature Yetis becoming helpers and disciples to religious figures. In Tibet, images of Yetis are paraded and occasionally worshipped as guardians against evil spirits. However, because Yetis sometimes act as enforcers of Dharma, hearing or seeing one is often considered a bad omen, for which the witness must accumulate merit.Capper, Daniel S. (2012). The Friendly Yeti. University of Southern Mississippi.
19th century
In 1832, James Prinsep's Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal published trekker B. H. Hodgson's account of his experiences in northern Nepal. His local guides spotted a tall bipedal creature covered with long dark hair, which seemed to flee in fear. Hodgson concluded it was an orangutan.
An early record of reported footprints appeared in 1899 in Laurence Waddell's Among the Himalayas. Waddell reported his guide's description of a large apelike creature that left the prints, which Waddell thought were made by a bear. Waddell heard stories of bipedal, apelike creatures but wrote that "none, however, of the many Tibetans I have interrogated on this subject could ever give me an authentic case. On the most superficial investigation, it always resolved into something that somebody heard tell of."
20th century The frequency of reports increased during the early 20th century when Westerners began making determined attempts to scale the many mountains in the area and occasionally reported seeing odd creatures or strange tracks.
In 1925, N. A. Tombazi, a photographer and member of the Royal Geographical Society, writes that he saw a creature at about near Zemu Glacier. Tombazi later wrote that he observed the creature from about , for about a minute. "Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking upright and stopping occasionally to pull at some dwarf rhododendron bushes. It showed up dark against the snow, and as far as I could make out, wore no clothes." About two hours later, Tombazi and his companions descended the mountain and saw the creature's prints, described as "similar in shape to those of a man, but only long by wide..., The prints were undoubtedly those of a biped.".
During the autumn of 1937, John Hunt and Pasang Sherpa (later Pasang Dawa Lama) encountered footprints on the approaches to and at the Zemu Gap above the Zemu Glacier that were thought to belong to a pair of Yetis.
In June 1944, C.R. Cooke, his wife Maragaret, and a group of porters encountered very large bipedal prints in soft mud at just below the Singalila Ridge, which the porters said were of the "Jungli Admi" (wild man). The creature had come up through bushes on the steep hillside from Nepal and crossed the track before continuing up to the ridge. Cooke wrote "We laid Maragaret's sunglasses beside each print to indicate its size and took photographs. These prints were strange and larger than any normal human foot, heel to toe, with the great toe set back to one side, a first toe, also large, and three little toes closely bunched together."
Peter Byrne reported finding a yeti footprint in 1948, in northern Sikkim, near the Zemu Glacier, while on holiday from a Royal Air Force assignment in India.
Western interest in the Yeti peaked dramatically in the 1950s. While attempting to scale Mount Everest in 1951, Eric Shipton took photographs of a number of large prints in the snow, at about above sea level. Shipton took three photographs, one depicting the tracks, and other two of one particular print which was size compared by a pickaxe, and boot. The footprints had distinct two large toes, and three smaller digits close together. These photos have been subject to intense scrutiny and debate. Some argue they are the best evidence of Yeti's existence, while others contend the prints are those of a mundane creature that have been distorted by the melting snow. Jeffrey Meldrum examined a reconstructed form of the print in 2008, noting that one of the large toes was the result of Macrodactyly. He also stated the alignment of the toes matched that of a great ape, and the Yeti would likely spend more time in the subtropical region of the Himalayas. Meldrum stated it was hard to conclusively say the prints were genuine since Shipton only took two photos of a single track.
In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reported seeing large footprints while scaling Mount Everest. 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 sceptical about its existence.
During the Daily Mail Snowman Expedition of 1954, the mountaineering leader John Angelo Jackson made the first trek from Everest to Kanchenjunga in the course of which he photographed symbolic paintings of the Yeti at Tengboche gompa. Jackson tracked and photographed many footprints in the snow, most of which were identifiable. However, there were many large footprints that could not be identified. These flattened footprint-like indentations were attributed to erosion and subsequent widening of the original footprint by wind and particles.