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Not to be taken without a liberal dose of Salt, the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs give some interesting results when Sasquatch is the topic. See https://deepai.org/machine-learning-model/text-generator for an easy to use AI experience. Here is my input: What evidence exists that Sasquatch is a real animal existing on all continents including Australia , North America, South America, Europe and Asia with evidence of trackways and footprints. Why are Sasquatch rarely seen? Here was the output: Evidence of Sasquatch's existence includes trackways, footprints, hair samples, eye-witness accounts, vocalizations, and even photographic evidence. While sightings are rare, discovering these signs proves that Sasquatch is indeed real and inhabits multiple continents including Australia, North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. One theory as to why sightings of them are so rare is that they have an excellent understanding of their environment and have developed skills to hide from humans. My overall comment: Hmmm The output is highly dependent on how you phrase the input. It does not have to be a question either. This AI revolution is not small potatoes by the way, but it raises some perplexing epistemological issues, that is, how do we know what output is true and to what extent? Why should you believe the output? This is scarcely unique to AI, but the output is typically so well-written, that it seems extremely authoritative. Apparently some students have used AI to write their essays. It could be BS, but it is well-phrased BS. It would appear to me that the ability of AI to craft words exceed the skill of the typical undergraduate. Of course, I meant artificial, not artificail, but I can neither type nor proofread.

To begin with, DNA has no amino acids, which are found in proteins. Nucleotide bases hold the DNA strands together through hydrogen bonding. Until I see the sequence and the primers used I do not believe Mayor's claim of chimpanzee DNA. Based on behavior and physical characteristics it's as unlikely that Sasquatch DNA is that close to a chimpanzee as it is to be very close to human. UNLESS hybridization is involved. Presumably we are talking about mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the mother only. So a hybridization event will not show anything about evolution of the male, or the female. It's a slice in time(of the mating) of the female. Nuclear eDNA is much more difficult (and expensive) to sequence, and was not likely the case in either the Mayor or the Disotell case. But, please, show me the data. If Mayor used a sequencer that had previously been used on chimpanzee DNA, there could be carry over. Protocol details, especially blanks and standards, would be helpful to know here. Comparisons of the Kentucky vs the Washington environment based only on rainfall neglect other important factors such as microbe species and populations, temperatures, and sample handling. There is plenty of opportunity for degradation. I am currently analyzing littoral eDNA sequences for signs of an unknown primate and have learned that sequencing errors can confuse the issue, as well as heteroplasmy, and the possibility of sperm mtDNA leaking (into the egg). The latter is fairly minute in humans but may not be so in Sasquatch. The community awaits a sample collected from an observed Sasquatch immediately after deposition, or a body part. Otherwise, as mentioned above, there are too many unknowns to base a case on subtle differences. In the mtDNA region of over 200 bases that I studied, Neanderthal differs from modern human by only ONE mutation, so there's "no room" to distinguish an intermediate Sasquatch there. Longer sequences in other regions are desirable. There's a lot of data to sort through in this work. The so called "mammalian" primers I used also sequenced birds, and fish, lots of them. Unfortunately I know of no readily available software to do this. Also, the NCBI BLAST results are not eDNA friendly, so relevant data must be extracted through character manipulation of large flat files. I wrote BASIC programs and also used Excel sorting. A goal of this work is to develop a simple procedure that can be used by our Community to analyze sequence data from commercial labs.

Who knows, maybe modern humans didn't hunt down and slaughter all the other hominids or outcompeted them in times of diminished food availability, but rather we vanquished them through genetic warfare, akin to the Europeans unwitting germ warfare as they explored the new continents. Perhaps within our own genetic code is contained some sequence we "shared" with the other forms of humans, which when combined to form homozygous pairs proved incompatible, deleterious, or lethal to our neighboring cousins in a manner that dramatically diminished their numbers. Couple that with modern humans proclivity to keep on "sharing" genes with other species, as the others numbers continued to drop, we became the best/only options to species that had yet to grasp such genetics. So maybe we did indeed "sex our fellow hominids into extinction" even if we were just shooting for darker hair, or just having a good time at the block party!

I agree with all of that and if it there was a coverup I’d guess it’s along the lines you speak, disrupting mans origin. I’d put that above all the other possible reasons such as ppl not visiting National Forests or needing to protect the land. It would be bible thumpers pushing the coverup. As with anything there will be people on both sides pushing their agendas.

So far, ditto. I see no evidence that any agency "knows", even internally, that bigfoot exists. In other words, no agency has an internal training or policy instructing their employees how to deal with a bigfoot report. In my area we have many millions of acres of national forest and BLM-managed lands. Employees of the two agencies in just this area number upwards of 500, maybe upwards of 1000, and none of them .. retirees included .. that I know, which is a **bunch**, have received any instruction regarding how react to a member of the public reporting bigfoot. The employees are left totally on their own. This also applies to people in the military stationed Fairchild AFB and JBLM over the years. As I've said before, SOME individuals working for various agencies surely have knowledge, but it is individual knowledge, not agency knowledge. There can be no conspiracy beyond a personal sense of need not to make waves that might interfere with promotions later. While some folks may assert that lack of recognition is "proof" of a coverup, I don't think that is valid. It appears to fall in with the scoftics logic suggesting lack of proof is proof of lack .. and we know better than that. Since we know better, we shouldn't emulate it no matter how much we'd like it to be true.

I have had three experiences but have never seen one. This particular experience I was turkey hunting on Green Ridge near Sisters Oregon. I was near the top and I had my truck and camp trailer and it was night time. I was in Bed watching a movie with my generator running. I felt like what only can be described as an elephant stomping on the ground right outside my trailer. It shook the trailer. I opened the door, went outside, turned the generator off and looked all around the trailer/truck and didn't see anything so I turned back on the generator and climbed back in bed. Thats when the boulder hit the trailer wall right outside my head. Thats when I knew. I crept outside with my 1911 cocked and ready to fire. I was scared. I have no intention to shoot a Bigfoot but I was fearing for my safety. I turned off the generator and ran to my truck cab, started it up and took off. I ended up sleeping at the bottom of the mountain. The next day when I arrived home I saw the damage that the rock had done to my trailer. Bigfoot is my only conclusion.

I think the only way a creature like bigfoot could stand even the smallest chance of staying hidden for this long in the areas it's sighted in is if it was close to human, for one simple reason; they would have to have human range intelligence. This part really is non-negotiable to me. The intelligence of a gorilla, chimp or orangutan simply wouldn't cut it. They were all discovered by science before the 20th century in areas that are/were more remote than even the most remote areas that bigfoot allegedly inhabits today. But how close to human intelligence would they have to be? Halfway between apes and humans? 75% as intelligent? 90%? exactly equal? My opinion is that this might not actually be the most useful metric for comparing mental capabilities between different human species. There would probably be many mental tasks that a sasquatch would perform far more poorly than us. But the opposite could simultaneously be true. They could, at the exact same time, also have many mental abilities that are superior to our species. In fact, if anything, they require certain mental abilities that would be superior to ours to have stayed undetected by science this long. This has been touched a little bit in this thread, but I see Sasquatch's potential evolutionary history as defined by finding a completely different ecological niche to use their high intelligence in than the niche we've been using ours to occupy. What really defines everything our branch of the human tree of life does with our large brains is manipulating the environment to fit our needs. We make tools, clothing, art, and complex settlements out of natural materials that become barely recognizable once the end product is finished. We alter landscapes to fit our needs. We process our food with many steps. We exterminate certain animals that are mortal threats to us. Everything we do that makes us successful involves us carving out our own personalized world from the natural environment. And we are the species that have completely and utterly doubled down on this principle on a scale unlike any other species of humans before us. A survival strategy like this requires certain mental skills. It requires us to be adaptable. To have the ability to learn any skill that you could conceive of, with enough training i.e a jack of all trades. It requires language on a level that is sophisticated enough to communicate highly abstract ideas. It requires an active imagination. But most importantly, it requires the ability to socially network, to keep track of dozens upon dozens of complex relationships, so that innovation can spread. Sasquatch, on the other hand, would appear to occupy an ecological niche that isn't based in any way whatsoever on manipulating their environment. Tool use is extremely minimal. What we're only capable of doing so long as we have tools, they can accomplish through brute strength alone. They don't need clothing when they have fur. They don't carve out their environment to suite their needs. They carve themselves to fit their environment like a lock in a key. This appears to be a strange way for a creature with near human intelligence to make use of it. After all, manipulating your surroundings is the most straightforward way of utilizing such a unique trait among the animal kingdom. But if they tried to use their intelligence the same way we use ours, they'd be competing evolutionarily directly against us, and we would beat them at it every time. In the same way that we beat homo erectus, and the neanderthals, and the denisovans, heidelbergensis and florensiensis and any other human that tried competing with us on our playing field. It's only when that niche has been already filled that you should expect the evolution of intelligence to go in a different direction. So where would that intelligence that a Bigfoot has go into if it's not going into manipulating the environment? It goes into blending into the environment. It goes into stealth, it goes into highly expansive visual-spatial awareness and memory so that they can memorize every single inch of their habitat. It goes into Pattern recognition. It goes to superior motor control and coordination. It goes toward superior perceptual awareness. They have would have a type of intelligence that is highly specialized for their environment. Take them out of that environment and homo sapiens may out-perform them on any metric you can think of with our highly generalized form of intelligence and our ability to learn any skill that we put our minds to. But no matter how hard we train, no person will ever be able to move around the wilderness with the pinpoint efficiency and expert evasiveness that they can, because that is where they spent their evolution tokens on. As for what their actual lineage is. There are so many things we don't understand about our evolutionary history, and each new find only seems to bring up more questions than answers. The hominin family branch may not so much be a tree as it is a web. With different lineages splitting off from each other and recombining at different times. Sasquatch seems to have traits from all over the spectrum, from australopithecines to homo sapiens itself. If I was forced to speculate, I might say they have their origins in extremely early species of homo, like homo habilis, that travelled to Asia and got multiple injections of new genetic material from later arrivals like homo erectus, heidelbergensis, neanderthals/densiovans while simultaneously splitting off to follow the different evolutionary roads that I've been going on about. Eventually doing some interbreeding with our own species. I have to stop myself here before I speculate too much. But all I'm saying is.....there's still more than enough vacant room on the human family tree to leave some leaves to a species like the Sasquatch, the yeti, yowie, yeren, or alma.

You know, the more I think on things, the more I wonder if this conclusion is more correct in some way The sasquatch species seems to fit right in to this planet. and us? Maybe not so much. Drop us naked in the woods and we'd be dead within a week, probably less. I think they are a hominid species that split from our branch of the family tree a long time ago. We share some similarities, and vast differences. They are a mirror version of us. We are day - they are night. We are tool users - they have no such need. We are destroyers - they are maintainers. We manipulate the world to suit our needs - they manipulate themselves to live in the world. We share commonalities, but I suspect our differences outnumber them. I think they are perfectly suited to the wild, as much as we are suited to community.

And as an archaeologist I absolutely despise anyone who claims aliens or any other imaginary beings had a role in building the pyramids or any other advancement in human civilization. Such people are cranks and imbeciles who deserve to be tarred and feathered in the pubic square as the ridiculous clowns that they are. Such a position is downright insulting to the intelligence and ingenuity of humans in general, and ancient man in particular.

I don't think you'll find consensus. Opinions vary and are strongly held. I don't think there's evidence for BF being merely a myth, the only support that has is lack of proof to the contrary, and lack of proof is not proof of lack. My research approach is looking for a F&B "critter", yes, a bipedal primate, but that's a weak term, it glosses over how truly close to us I think they are genetically. I'm looking at them being the robustus to our gracile .. more or less. Like darwin's finches evolving specializations to avoid competition for resources. Genetically, we run hot, open savannah in bright daylight, they walk cold, snowy mountains in the dark. Each specialization we have, they seem to have the opposite. I suspect they have brain capabilities similar to ours but oriented differently because their physical advantages resolve needs we had to develop tools and fire to compensate for. At the same time, in my past as a report investigator I had access to the raw reports almost nobody sees and there was an incredible amount of high strangeness that got "sanitized" out of the raw reports prior to publication. For me it is necessary to leave the possibility of some of the woo explanations on the table at least for now because, as I said before, lack of proof is not proof of lack, we just discard the uncomfortable so we don't have to deal with it. My approach in the field focuses on F&B. I keep an eye out for the "woo" and for ways to try to apply science to studying that when I encounter it. I can't take skepticism seriously. I've had two clear sightings. Non-existence is off of the table for me. MIB

Vaccines "were linked" to autism, too. The very "scientific" war being waged right now with our daily lives can be directly linked to the supposed link to autism. Science is the latest, greatest religion, and I do not worship at its altar. AFAIC, "proof" of anything is elusive at best, "evidence" is the best one can get, and my suspicion and doubt have grown to epic proportions. Firstly, yes, snow goggles are to prevent snow blindness in the spring. Winter is a L O N G period with no light whatsoever. The sun goes down in mid-November and doesn't come back up for three full months. In summer the snow is gone, so goggles are not needed. The point is that Inuit eyes didn't evolve to deal with the extreme of darkness, but with the extreme of light. Secondly, Neanderthals living "deep within caves and forests" is assumed. Their bones have been found in caves, but so are the bones of all other predators of the era. Caves provide the better conditions for fossil and artifact preservation. As the life of a nomadic hunter/gatherer would demand, Neanderthals hunted/gathered in the forests, steppes, mountains, seashores, tundra, etc. Accepting the theory of darkness because of habitat while simultaneously rejecting Danny Vendramini's "Them & Us" theory of nocturnal hunter evolution is extremely weak.