Denisovans and Sasquatch

[Buckaloo]

53 minutes ago, norseman said:

Yes, but I would counter that with how many Cougar have you seen in your lifetime? I have spent a lifetime in the woods and have seen very few. Probably as many Cougar as some people have seen Bigfoot. And yet a Cougar isn’t as smart a Gorilla or a Chimp or a Orang. All three have been taught sign language. So how much intelligence do you need to be a forest Ninja?

 

As far as the **** Dodge types? Yah we have a legend here of “Wolf people”. Feral people that run around barefoot and howl like Wolves. This was told to me by a buddy that was a USAF survival instructor at Tacoma creek. I am not denying that Homo Sapiens can go feral. But even **** Dodge sneaks into town for a burger now and again. He isn’t a new species. He hasn’t developed into Patty. A quick shave and a change of clothes and you can put him in an elevator with others. So how many generations of **** Dodge do you need to create a Bigfoot? My guess is zero. Because ultimately they would die out. 
 

Here is another example. A chihuahua 20,000 years ago was a Timber Wolf. If you kicked a family of chihuahuas into the wilds of Siberia? How many generations would it take before they looked like Timber Wolves again? My guess is zero. Because they wouldn’t make it.

 

Bigfoot most definitely is a human cousin. It’s bipedal. Females have breasts. It’s an omnivore. But that’s where the similarities end. Well that’s well past the Hominin range and could easily place it in the Hominid range. I mean we are slicing hairs here. A Chimp is 98% the same as a Homo Sapien. So we are haggling over 2%. Obviously a Bigfoot is more closely related to Homo Sapiens than a Chimp is. Unless some sort of convergent evolution is going on.

 

But a Denisovan is a species of human so closely related to Homo Sapiens it interbred with us and had viable offspring with us. And that blood line continues to this day in certain human populations.

 

I don’t believe that Bigfoot had that option. And there are plenty of Indian stories claiming they have tried. We are morphologically too far separated as two distinct species to make viable offspring. Which is bad news for the NFL.

 

Bigfooters kinda want their cake and eat it too. The storyline of Bigfoot being this super intelligent forest shaman that has stuck its nose up at modern technology is a very popular point of view. I just don’t find it very realistic. Bigfoot doesn’t make stone tools the same way a Chimp doesn’t make stone tools. It lacks the cognitive ability and probably the fine grasping skills to flake a Clovis point. It can pick up rocks and smash them together or breaks nuts. But beyond that? It doesn’t think about it.
 

 

I've never seen a cougar, but I have been lucky enough to see plenty of black bears.  I think the difference is that cougars have been captured, killed, and taxonomically identified for centuries.  Perhaps the government has also done the same with Sasquatch, but that's for another discussion.

 

I understand of course where you're coming from.  I guess this is the "universal debate" concerning Bigfoot.  Is it some type of "people" (with human-like intelligence), some type of "animal" (like a giant bipedal chimp - smart but not too smart), or something "supernatural" (a Shaman or from a UFO or from another dimension, etc).  For now we're all grasping at straws.

[Huntster]

1 hour ago, Buckaloo said:

I've always believed that Zana may have belonged to a larger group of "people" who had lived "wild" long enough to have actually developed morphological differences from "civilized" humans.  She may be a key to many mysteries like this.

 

After the Zana investigation moved through the DNA phase, I came to believe that she was abandoned by an African family (either still enslaved or post slavery) at some point after she was born hirstute, and she turned out like so many other children over the ages who grew up feral.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

 

After reading about feral children, a lot that I already knew (as the husband and father of special education teachers) was more fully revealed to me. If a child is deprived of early development up to the age of 6 or 7, intellectual recovery is almost impossible. We aren't born intelligent. It is developed.

[Buckaloo]

47 minutes ago, Huntster said:

 

After the Zana investigation moved through the DNA phase, I came to believe that she was abandoned by an African family (either still enslaved or post slavery) at some point after she was born hirstute, and she turned out like so many other children over the ages who grew up feral.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

 

After reading about feral children, a lot that I already knew (as the husband and father of special education teachers) was more fully revealed to me. If a child is deprived of early development up to the age of 6 or 7, intellectual recovery is almost impossible. We aren't born intelligent. It is developed.

I'm inclined to believe the same, but what puzzles me is that reports indicated that she had so many physical characteristics that perfectly adapted her to live out in the wild.  She was hairy, seemingly impervious to the cold, very large, could swim, was fast, and agile.  Also, she must have found ways to eat given that she seemed to be a healthy adult when "captured" (whatever that meant).  Her morphological adaptations seem totally adapted for her apparent lifestyle. 

 

Her offspring didn't retain all of her physical advantages, but she bred with modern European-stock humans.  Perhaps the various Father's genes were dominant in some way?  It's a fascinating story.

[MIB]

3 hours ago, Buckaloo said:

I'm inclined to believe the same, but what puzzles me is that reports indicated that she had so many physical characteristics that perfectly adapted her to live out in the wild.  She was hairy, seemingly impervious to the cold, very large, could swim, was fast, and agile.  Also, she must have found ways to eat given that she seemed to be a healthy adult when "captured" (whatever that meant).  Her morphological adaptations seem totally adapted for her apparent lifestyle. 

 

Her offspring didn't retain all of her physical advantages, but she bred with modern European-stock humans.  Perhaps the various Father's genes were dominant in some way?  It's a fascinating story.

 

We lack photographs.   We have pictures of her son.    Based on those I think we have purposefully re-imagined what Zana looked like from the descriptions to fit an agenda rather than to fit truth.   

[Huntster]

3 hours ago, Buckaloo said:

.........what puzzles me is that reports indicated that she had so many physical characteristics that perfectly adapted her to live out in the wild.  She was hairy, seemingly impervious to the cold, very large, could swim, was fast, and agile.  Also, she must have found ways to eat given that she seemed to be a healthy adult when "captured" (whatever that meant).  Her morphological adaptations seem totally adapted for her apparent lifestyle...........

 

Yes! The litany of abnormal physical traits were astonishing! It almost defies belief.

[Buckaloo]

10 hours ago, MIB said:

 

We lack photographs.   We have pictures of her son.    Based on those I think we have purposefully re-imagined what Zana looked like from the descriptions to fit an agenda rather than to fit truth.   

It's true that we have no photos other than of the son.  I'd believe the stories of Zana's feats and description were Tall Tales, but there does seem to be direct eyewitness testimony (if I'm not mistaken) and she did of course have offspring.  Tall Tales tend not to leave living genetic evidence.

 

If Zana was truly just a mentally-handicapped descendant of former slaves found wandering in the woods, then why the need for a hugely exaggerated story?  How did she survive until adulthood?  Why the need to "capture" her?  Where were the people she came from?  Are there other stories of wandering tribes of former slaves being seen in the region?  The questions are endless.  I don't claim to know the answers, but I do believe it's a true mystery.

Edited 2 hours ago by Buckaloo

[MIB]

^^^ To be clearer, I'm not suggesting she didn't exist.   The historical record is too strong.  I think we are misinterpreting the descriptions.   Further, I think the descriptions were deliberately misleading .. a sick rationalization of systemic rape of a captive woman.   I do not think she was nearly as "dumb" nor as hairy as we have been told.    There's a difference between "more hair than normal" and "hairy as an ape."    I have seen the darker side of human rationalization, of our ability / tendency to dehumanize others to try to make otherwise truly gross behavior somehow acceptable.   This has that feel.

[MikeZimmer]

Here is an AI summary of the transcript: 

Opening and framing

The speaker, a professional wildlife filmmaker, naturalist and conservationist, says he is risking his career and reputation by disclosing that twelve years ago, in the southern Appalachians, he saw a large, hair-covered, bipedal being in the forest at night. The experience upended his view of reality and sent him on more than ten years of mostly secret research around the world. He says he is not trying to prove such beings exist; he wants to understand what they are, and what that implies about humans. He stresses that he is not an anthropologist, that he may be wrong, and that he invites criticism. He argues that academia ignores the subject and that modern science is compartmentalized across geography, biology, paleoanthropology, archaeology and even consciousness studies, so a full picture requires combining them.

The global legend argument

He calls "Bigfoot" a laughable name for a phenomenon found on every habitable continent, described consistently across cultures and millennia as bipedal, hair-covered, humanoid beings of varying size. The most common translation of the many names is "wild man": not an animal, but another kind of person. He cites appearances from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Sistine Chapel, and oral histories of trading and warring with such beings. In his filming travels he asked locals and Indigenous people about wild man legends and heard ancient legends and modern sightings in South and Central America, North America, Australia and Southeast Asia. Two regions stood out. Africa, the birthplace of hominins, has surprisingly few such legends. The Solomon Islands in Oceania have detailed ones, with hair-covered giants and little people, island-specific names and descriptions, and specific caves said to hold living wild men.

The data analysis

He compiled over 600 records from local newspapers, books, scientific literature and ethnographies, then filtered them to pre-1950 to exclude the influence of the word "Bigfoot" and of jet-age travel spreading stories. A density heat map of the legends shows a stronghold in Oceania and Southeast Asia. He then borrows the logic of human genetic diversity: Africa is the most genetically diverse region because it is the origin, and it holds both the world's shortest and tallest peoples (the Mbuti and the Dinka). Reported wild man sizes range from about 3 feet to over 8 feet, so he mapped height diversity of the legends and found it also peaks in Southeast Asia and Oceania, matching the density map. He concludes the phenomenon likely originated there.

The Denisovan connection

He frames this within the current "golden age" of paleoanthropology: for most of our history Homo sapiens shared the planet with Neanderthals, Denisovans and other human types, humans have been alone for less than 10% of our existence, interbreeding was widespread, and species boundaries are blurry. Neanderthal admixture was only confirmed in 2010. Reasoning that the most likely candidate for hair-covered bipeds is an extinct hominin, and that the last one to live alongside us was the Denisovans, he overlays his legend maps on a map of Denisovan DNA percentages in modern populations (up to about 6%) and calls it a near-exact match. He says every new fossil and genetic finding has strengthened rather than undermined this idea.

Denisovan fossil evidence

• Denisova Cave (Siberia): a baby molar found in 1984, an unusually large tooth (about 50% bigger than a human's) in 2000, and a finger bone in 2008 that yielded DNA proving a distinct group.
• The Xiahe mandible from Tibet, found in 1980 and identified in 2019 by proteins, showing massive molars and a robust jaw.
• The Penghu jaw from Taiwan, identified by paleoproteomics, extending the range to the Chinese coast.
• The Harbin cranium ("Dragon Man," Homo longhi), with a murky discovery story, confirmed as Denisovan in 2025 through molecular evidence. It is very large and long, with a brain of about 1,420 cc, a heavy brow ridge, deep-set square eye sockets, a flat face, a wide nose, thick facial bones and a wide occipital region for neck muscles. He adds that a skull fragment announced in October 2026 suggests an even larger individual with an estimated 1,800 cc brain, and argues that the one near-complete skull is unlikely to be the largest of the species.
• Newly announced Penghu leg bones (a femur and a tibia): the largest hominin leg bones ever found, with one individual estimated at about 6'3", a foot taller than other regional humans of the time. He notes they may be male or female, with no genetics to confirm. They were found in tropical latitudes, contrary to Bergmann's rule. Isotope analysis suggests meat consumption at the level of large carnivores, and the researchers proposed that these hominins relied on body size and ability rather than technology for hunting.

He compares the skull features to witness descriptions of Sasquatch: a sloping head, heavy brow, wide-set large eyes (most sightings are at night, and he speculates the large orbits may mean night vision), a flat wide face and nose, no visible neck, and large block-like teeth.

Genetic legacy and Beringia

He explains that Denisovan DNA gave modern humans useful traits. EPAS1 allows high-altitude survival in Tibet and has been called a "super-athlete gene," improving power and sprint performance in some athletes. TBX15 affects fat distribution and metabolism and appears in roughly 65% of Siberians, 89% of Native Americans and nearly 100% of Greenland Inuit, suggesting it helped humans cross Beringia. Other variants affect pathogen immunity, UV protection, hair growth, smell sensitivity and visual contrast. He notes that humans repeatedly failed to leave Africa for 140,000 years, then about 70,000 years ago spread rapidly into Denisovan territory, to Australia within 5,000 to 10,000 years, and into the Americas. If Denisovans had access to the Bering Land Bridge for ten times longer than humans and could survive such environments, he asks why they would not have crossed it. His legend density map, he says, follows a plausible Denisovan dispersal route into North and then South America. He argues that the absence of Denisovan fossils is the same problem as the absence of wild man bones, that isolation from humans would leave no genetic traces, and that reliance on bodies over tools would leave no tool evidence.

The hypothesis (explicitly marked as his own)

He states that everything up to this point is based on published research, but the way he connects it is his hypothesis. Other archaic humans were displaced and absorbed through competition and interbreeding. The only way a Denisovan lineage could have survived is complete avoidance: total separation from humans and hiding in the wilderness. He suggests they may have foreseen what technology would do to our species and chosen not to participate. To support the contrast, he discusses:

• Cognitive offloading and the "Google effect."
• Plato's warning about writing.
• GPS and declining navigation skills.
• Digital amnesia, such as people not remembering their children's phone numbers.
• Human brain size shrinking by up to 10% since the Pleistocene.
• The fragility of modern society to a power grid failure.

He suggests we may have lost abilities with each technological step, perhaps even ones that sound impossible, such as seeing in the dark or exceptional speed. He proposes that Denisovans who avoided technology kept selecting for awareness, memory, movement and senses, so their natural abilities kept sharpening, and he briefly mentions consciousness and parapsychology (remote viewing, telepathy) as a separate frontier not required for the hypothesis. He compares the idea to historical scientific heresies such as Copernicus, Einstein and Wegener, and argues that mainstream science makes some ideas taboo.

Conclusion

He believes a surviving lineage of Denisovans or Denisovan hybrids, completely isolated from modern humans, may be behind the wild man phenomenon worldwide, and that Sasquatch, Yeren, Almas, the Yeti and other wild men are "another version of us," in some ways more advanced, a branch of humanity that evolved without technology and kept its connection to nature. The hypothesis, he says, does not rule out the view that these are undiscovered primates or paranormal. He raises a scientific problem: standard DNA tests for animal identification examine a small section of DNA, and Denisovan-type samples would be so close to human that they would likely be read as human or contaminated, so past samples may have been discarded and deeper genetic analysis is needed. He says he is convinced thousands of people have had unexplained wilderness experiences and stayed silent, that he cited his research papers in the film and will list them in the description, and that he made the video to encourage others to share their experiences and academics to keep an open mind.