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(Oh, and in your opinion, how much of the paper that I linked was actually written by Dr. Meldrum? Seems to me that Mr. Munns wrote the lion share with some collaboration with Meldrum......yet, you attribute the whole paper to Meldrum in order to discredit it?) With that said, I'm done derailing the heck out of this thread, I just felt the need to counter those unproved claims above for the new folks that may not be familiar with 'kitakazery'. ;-)

You could be right, MIB. Actually, I've given that theory a lot of thought. If they can put thoughts, words, & pictures in your mind, why not smells? I smelled that horrible BO smell one night when I stepped out on the porch for firewood. It was pitch dark & I couldn't see or hear anything. I stood there for about a minute still smelling it, & then it stopped, with not even a whiff of it left. Same thing a few times with a sewer smell suddenly coming in the window. It couldn't have been ours, because the field line is on the other side of the house & ends so far from the house that we never smell it anyway. I've had a lot of encounters with their smells & I couldn't swear that any of them were actually "in the air".

I thought it might jar some memories. If nobody ever mentions strange things like that, they can just be passed off as another "hmmm moment" & forgotten. I've heard the smell described by different people as like citrus fruit, perfume or flowers. And just the other day, somebody said it smelled like lavender. The time I smelled it just outside my window, it was really strong & all of those mixed together would be a good description. It didn't last very long & then it was completely gone. It makes me wonder if they can control that smell the same as they seem to be able to control the bad ones.

Sorry Hammer, I don't go out of my way to try and trip people up and deconstruct their claims here. Life's too short to spend my time doing that! It's just that after a quick search to refresh my memory about SweetSusiq's sighting, I was struck by the differing accounts. I'm looking forward to hearing from her for clarification.

I do not believe they exist. I have always been fascinated by the subject as well as other mysterious subjects. I want them to exist .I do like to read ,study and look at videos. I enjoy the shows and documentaries. I enjoy the eyewitness accounts. Not here to ridicule or offend. It is not logical to have apemen all over the country and many parts of the world and not be documented. So, I may dismiss the foot prints, personal accounts and most of the footage. I am on the no fossil record and no specimen bandwagon,but that does not deter my interest. 5 Percent over all. This due to research and my own studies of PGF.

I respect your opinion but I don't know how you can know there is no danger and none of them are interested in hurting you no matter what the situation. If I get between Mom and junior am I safe? I don't think so. It is that way with most species. Was the BF I encountered today shot at yesterday? I can't know that. Are they all the same temperament region to region? I doubt it. Yes I did advance on one and got warned with the growl. I probably got what I deserved. In actuality since I did not see the BF I was closing towards, for all I know it was a bear that growled and the BF behind me that broke the stick, did it to get my attention and back out, or warn the bear it was there. I remember a BFRO report where a witness had a bear encounter with a mother and a cub. The witness thought he was in deep trouble until he noticed that the bear was intently staring at something other than the witness. When he looked in the direction that the bear was staring, he saw it was looking at a BF. That particular encounter really shows what the pecking order in the woods is. I honestly think they respect someone that treats them with respect but is not so terrified that they run screaming out of the woods. I have been told the BF females are particularly upset when a male human is frightened of them. That sounds strange but rings so true that somehow I believe it. I would like to think that with continued contact one might choose to show itself because they know me well enough that they know I would not be too afraid to deal with it. But their avoidance protocol seems so strong that showing has to be a truly unusual event. The real problem with all of this is there is so little direct human/BF contact we are only guessing what is going on when there is contact. It will take a Jane Goodall to interact long term to have any idea of what their behavior is in an given circumstance.

I guess the vikings and the first europeans hoaxed the Native Americans?

If you re-read my earlier posts, I do not specifically advocate the whole of Vendramini's hypothesis, nor am I invested in it, but he does raise a couple of questions that I consider objectively valid. I focus specifically on two points from the mindset of an educator (see below). 1. It is self-evident that the size and positioning of the eye orbits in the Neanderthal skull are markedly different from that of a human skull, yet the interpretation of a Neanderthal's appearance in the OP does not reflect this distinct divergence in morphology. If anything, the interpretation seems to have somewhat beady eyes, and they are positioned as human eyes would be relative to the positioning of the eye orbits in a human skull. I don't see how anyone could accurately interpret a Neanderthal's eyes as slitted cat eyes, though others seem to throw this out as if I believe it to be true, which I don't. 2. That the use of human facial reconstruction techniques to overlay the Neanderthal skull with a face is based on the very loose assumption that those techniques can actually be applied to Neanderthals. Vendramini points out that the Neanderthal skull more closely fits the shape of a chimpanzee head than that of a human head, and looking at the two representative overlays, I have to agree with him on that point. Other than that, Vendramini's hypothesis is largely conjecture regarding aspects that cannot be verified. And his hypothesis actually agrees with the prevailing view of Neanderthals on other points. I recall stating that both the OP's and Vendramini's interpretations were based on assumptions. Now it is appropriate to discuss my specialty and qualifications as requested. 1. I am a government-licensed Professional Chemical Engineer. This is akin to being licensed by the State in medicine or another discipline in that a person with my skill and qualifications is required to approve, on behalf of the State, industrial chemical processes, and also to approve the design of both the equipment used in the process line and of the building housing the process line before the whole lot can be constructed. 2. I am the inventor of a novel technology that is going to market late this year. I hold both method and device patents for this technology; two in the U.S., with others pending; and patent awards in the European Union (the U.K., Germany, and France), Mexico, Australia, Israel, Egypt, and South Africa so far. I have patents pending in several other countries. In short, I discovered how to produce a very important compound, that had never before existed in the gas state, as a gas with near-ideal characteristics, and invented devices to produce the gas for use in multiple applications and market verticals. 3. I am a West Point Graduate, served in the Army Chemical Corps as a field grade officer, and hold additional skill identifiers in nuclear and chemical weapon target analysis, electronic warfare, and education, among others more operational in nature. I have an MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia. PhD's in my specialty offer less earning potential than a professional engineer's license (see points 1 and 2 immediately above), so I chose that path rather than remain in academia (reference point 4 immediately below). I might also state that I served at the Army's High Technology Testbed and was a member of a NATO technology panel back in the day. 4. I also served on the faculty at West Point for four years. As a matter of fact, I directed West Point's largest academic course, with eighteen faculty reporting to me (ranking from Captain to Lieutenant Colonel, along with a few civilian PhD's). I coordinated their instruction of over 900 cadets split into 52 separate class sections. I very much enjoyed these four years. I also had duties as an educator in other assignments, in professional development specifically, training junior officers to serve on battalion and brigade staffs, and to command a company, as I did. And, of course, training is a daily part of military service, and supervision of that training is part and parcel of the culture. And this brings me back to the point of my earlier posts. Though not an anthropologist, I am somewhat acquainted with the scientific method, and I do recognize when someone stretches it. So, as I did with students and trainees, I pointed out a flaw or two in scientific reasoning evidenced in the OP, most importantly that the OP was presenting assumption and interpretation as accepted fact. Assumptions and interpretations are not fact. In subsequent posts, I recall pointing out that the suffix "ology", defined as "the study of", accurately characterizes the disciplines to which it is appended as The Study of This, or The Study of That. By definition, the suffix "ology" is a tacit acknowledgment that the knowledge of such fields is incomplete or, more charitably, an ongoing process of discovery and development. And this actually applies to the hard sciences such as Chemistry and Physics also, and of course the applied sciences represent by the fields of engineering. If this weren't the case, I wouldn't be able to discover, invent, and patent something new. As an aside, my father was a geologist, and growing up in Northwestern Nevada, I spent quite a bit of time poking around geological, archeological, and anthropological sites with him. Lots of fun. We reported Native American remains when we found them (exposed by erosion), but kept arrowheads when we happened upon them. With regard to bias and wild conjecture, I have actually faced that. It is an integral part of the patent application process as one's claims are subjected to scrutiny by patent examiners worldwide. As indicated above, I successfully asserted the novelty, inventiveness, and value of my intellectual property. Then there is the matter of convincing a Board of Directors who do not have scientific backgrounds that certain testing and regulatory processes are objectively necessary rather than subjectively nice to have based on my "biased" advice. Finally, once my points were made and understood that assumptions and interpretations are not fact, that competing interpretations of the same data (each with some value) can exist, and that new information and data within a field of knowledge regularly cause old hypotheses and interpretations to be refined, I withdrew from the discussion. Subjectivity and objectivity are a theme in most threads on this board. We have tons of fun going back and forth with each other over them. Thank you for keeping me occupied while waiting up for the airline to have my lost bag delivered.

Yeah, I would expect differences in the location of anchor points on the bones for muscles and tendons changing the leverage. Sometimes maximum strength is not the ideal, most useful option, sometimes arrangement for greater speed or endurance have survival advantages over arrangement for strength. I've read that we are one of the top 5 "critters" on the planet for endurance running. Not in our couch potato state, but in a stone age state. We're an open plains / savannah "critter." Look at our big toe arrangement, our ability to shed heat and continue doing so across mega miles, our eyesight. Turn to the big guys ... like darwin's finches, they seem adapted to avoid direct competition. They seem better suited for night time, to steep terrain, to feats of strength rather than endurance, cold weather rather than hot. In just about every way I can think of, they are nearly our opposites so far as adaptation to niches in ways that would avoid direct competition. Seems remarkable for a "made up" monster, wouldn't you say? MIB