Who is Bigfoot? Is There a Truth Behind the Legend?
I’ve gone Bigfoot hunting. Honestly, lots of people have. It’s not, of course, about finding Bigfoot. It’s an excuse to go out into the woods and explore, after all.
Bigfoot. Sasquatch. Yeti. Woodwose. And a bunch more. “Apemen” who live in the woods are one of the world’s most prevalent cryptids. So, what started all of these stories? Were they all started by the same thing or do they have different origins?
Are they people or are they just beasts? Are they just, you know, bears?
Let’s peek at the legends, starting with our good friend Bigfoot.
Bear, Ape, or…
There’s lots of “evidence” that Bigfoot exists, but skeptics hold that most, if not all of it, is fake. Bigfoot and Sasquatch are, in fact, the same cryptid…Bigfoot is the English name, while Sasquatch is of Salish origin, meaning “wild man” or “hairy man.”
The term Bigfoot was apparently coined by the Humboldt Times in Northern California, where they found giant footprints near Bluff Creek. These footprints were eventually revealed to be a prank, but it was too late…Bigfoot had become established in popular culture. But this “evidence” of Bigfoot showed up in…1958. Yes, Bigfoot hasn’t been around that long.
There have been over 10,000 sightings, but it’s very likely a lot of them were in fact grizzly bears…a bear standing on their hind feet, poorly seen, could easily be mistaken for a giant ape and the size is about right. Others were probably pranks…humans in gorilla suits, for example.
Samples of Bigfoot hair have variously turned out to match cows, raccoons, deer, humans, horses, and, yes, bears. But nobody has ever found a dead Bigfoot…so most likely Bigfoot doesn’t exist.
(Whether Yeti should be considered the same creature is questionable. I’d argue no, but…)
Did it ever do so?
Sasquatch vs. Bigfoot
Bigfoot came into existence in the 1950s. But what about Sasquatch? The Sts’ailes people, who have lived in the Harrison River Valley for at least 10,000 years, make their own case. They even have their own museum. To them, the sasquatch is a totem and caretaker of the land. It’s real at the level of…well…in the same way fairies are real. It’s real to them as a symbol. And the other thing that’s different about the sasquatch is that it’s a shapeshifter. When you get too close to a sasquatch it’s likely to turn into a tree, rock, or harmless animal.
There’s no evidence that the Sasquatch is a real physical creature. (It is, of course, real at the spiritual and symbolic level).
But was there ever a creature that started those stories?
One theory is that a group of Gigantopithecus blacki, an extinct large ape from southern China, crossed the land bridge and found a good habitat in the boreal forest. If this is true, then they may well have interacted with the Sts’ailes and been remembered.
But there’s another creature that Sasquatch could be…one that’s not a man or a primate at all.
Was Sasquatch, in fact, a Sloth?
Giant ground sloths existed throughout North America and absolutely overlapped with humans. Unfortunately, it’s possible we hunted them to extinction.
But a large, sometimes bipedal creature moving through the woods? Could be our Sasquatch. And ground sloths, while not arboreal, were definitely forest dwelling.
I don’t know if anyone else has voiced this particular theory.
Honestly, it does seem rather more likely that Sasquatch was a bear, especially as some other groups in the area thought bears were very important. (And most modern Bigfoot sightings occur in places with plenty of black bears).
But it’s an out of the box thought!
What About Those Abominable Snowmen?
One key difference between Sasquatch and Yeti is that the latter are generally portrayed as white. Also known as the “abominable snowman,” the Yeti lives in the high reaches of the Himalayas where few people go.
On the face of it, it seems more likely that the Yeti will be real than the Sasquatch simply because, well, the Himalayas. Not a place people go.
However, just like the Sasquatch, there’s no actual evidence of the Yeti. An explorer took a picture of a footprint in the 1950s…which looks decidedly bear-like.
And every piece of “Yeti” evidence…fur, bone, skin…are bears. The Yeti appears to simply be a bear….but like the Sasquatch, the Yeti also may be supernatural in nature. Unlike the Sasquatch, they appear to be far less benevolent, and have been described as paralyzing people and then eating them.
Interestingly, they did find that the Himalayan brown bear is a genetically distinct population, and likely ancient.
I personally have to wonder if the Yeti are a folk memory of a different bear…during the Ice Age, polar bears ranged much further south. It’s not impossible that a few remained in the high mountains, and we do know that polar and grizzly bears can interbreed…
Could the Yeti be a memory of a white bear that lived in the mountains, but has since disappeared or crossbred with those interesting local bears?
Wild Men in Europe – Woodwose
Finally, there’s a lesser known cousin, not often seen in cryptid literature. The woodwose has been seen in a variety of places in England, and there are woodwose stories from all across Europe.
This one almost certainly isn’t real. One could imagine an apelike creature surviving in the Pacific Northwest, the Himalayas, or even Appalachia.
In England? It seems highly unlikely. I personally suspect the 1982 Salford sighting in which a woodwose “jumped out of the bushes” at two passing women was a hoax…presumably some guy in a gorilla suit. There was another sighting in 1984 in a closed, dark park. That one also seems to me to be likely a hoax.
But it’s worth noting that wild men appear to show up in all kinds of places, and are one of the most widely spread cryptids.
Are they a dim folk memory of other hominids? Bears? Or something from our own psyche.
Maybe, ultimately, they’re something we wish existed…our wild cousins to guard the forests, most of all from us.