Has This Theory Been Put Forward Before?

[dopelyrics]

Drew - no, that isn't my theory at all. I don't believe I said they have evolved different feet. I don't believe I said they were huge. I don't believe I said they didn't use tools. I didn't mention population size. As for the open nostril thing, what do you mean by that?.

I asked if they could they be a group of slaves - people, like you and me - who escaped and live in the forest and live as a tribe and are being mis-identified. I would assume they lived together in groups before they arrived in America, living off the land, surviving very well.

Please feel free to read my posts again if you like..

I don't know about you, Drew, but I find it easier to believe people are misidentifying known things rather than actually seeing a different footed, huge, no-tool-use, open-nostrilled creature. But then again, I have never seen one of these things that people have claimed to have seen. I would go for a more straight-forward explanation, if you like. i believe people are seeing something, I just don't know what exactly.

Best regards,

Lee

Edited July 11, 2012 by MikeG
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[Guest BlurryMonster]

From a biological perspective, this hypothesis of yours doesn't make a lot of sense. Slavery occured over a few hundred years until roughly 150 years ago, and the importation of slaves stopped 50 years before that. That doesn't give a whole lot of time for evolution to do it's thing. That's why the whole "selective breeding of black athletes" thing has been debunked in the past (it has, I've seen a few articles on it), and it would make even less sense that people could turn turn into a hairy 8 ft. tall subspecies with that same amount of time, especially if you throw in physical features given to bigfoot. To put more simply: there hasn't been enough time for the kinds of changes you're talking about to have taken place.

By the way, most of the slaves that were brought over weren't experts at living off the land that were just plucked out of the jungle. West Africa was thriving economically at the time, and most slaves were people who were conquered by people who had more resources. It's not like they were urban or anything, but they lived in decently sized villages and usually practiced agriculture or horticulture. Besides, they were from Africa, even if they had good survival skills, being able to survive in Africa doesn't mean you can do it in North America; the climate and flora/fauna are very different. Also, there were some communities that were founded by escaped and freed slaves, and none of them turned into bigfoot. Maybe some Gullah people would even be offended by your ideas.

[dopelyrics]

BlurryMonster - I don't know if I am confusing people here with what I asked. It seems clear to me, but maybe not.

I merely asked if slaves could have been living in the forests of North American for the last few hundred years, and be misidentified. I didn't say anything about them evolving into 8 foot tall hairy monsters.

If they were adept at living off the land, is it such a big leap from them doing it in Africa to them doing it in America? If the answer is "Yes, it's a massive leap and impossible, there's no way they could have done that" then the theory holds no water and my question can be answered with an emphatic "No".

I also said right at the beginning of my first post that my intention was not to cause offense to anyone, but if I do bump into any Gullah peope in Manchester in the UK, and we get on to Bigfoot and this theory, I'll be sure apologise

Best regards,

Lee

PS: incidentally, I notice that you are a former believer turned skeptic. What do you think people are seeing?

Edited July 10, 2012 by dopelyrics

[Guest Smissen]

Nah,the theory sounds impossible by me. There were Bigfoot sightings waaaay before the first slaves were send to

America. Also,In my memory,there never have been African slaves in remote area's were Bigfoots were reported such

as the Himalaya. And last but not least,I red documents of Dutch Slave hunters in the early 1860's hunting slaves in the

Caribbean and Dutch colonies in South America were they found small slave settlements in remote area's,often

together with Natives for generations and they didn't looked Bigfoot-like...

*EDIT* When I'm thinking about it,why would slaves,after a couple of generations able

to speak English,'turn' in their English for growls and other primate-like sounds witnesses

reportedwhen they encountered Bigfoots ????

Edited July 10, 2012 by Smissen

[dopelyrics]

Smissen - that's interesting about the reports. Do you know how far back the reports go, and who made them? Are they Native American folklore tales?

With regards to the language issue - were they English speaking before they arrived? And would you think it's possible for someone to mimic growls and primate sounds, without losing their ability to speak a language?

Is it fair to say that howls, whoops etc' are heard without anyone actually seeing what made them?

I am clearly flogging a dead horse here.

Cheers.

Lee

Edited July 10, 2012 by dopelyrics

[Guest poignant]

The theory does not work because native americans have been seeing bf long before the slaves were brought over from Africa.

[dopelyrics]

_{Thanks poignant. And Native Americans were seeing Sas and accepting it as a physical being rather than a supernatural one? But the first written or detailed account by a white person was in the early 1800s, is that correct?}

_best.

_lee

Edited July 10, 2012 by dopelyrics

[Guest poignant]

Hi dopelyrics, I don't think it matters when the first white person gave an account. The native americans have been on the land long before the slaves came over in the 1600s. The Hoopa people know BF to be another tribe of large people. Feral people generally do not become larger (if anything they just become leaner and more diminutive), and for such drastic morphological changes to occur would take a lot more time than the 400 odd years. Just my thoughts.

Edited July 10, 2012 by poignant

[Shelly]

all of the great long distance runners etc are actually African not African American anyway. I doub't some Kalahari bush man has anything to do with slavery genetics.

[Guest BlurryMonster]

BlurryMonster - I don't know if I am confusing people here with what I asked. It seems clear to me, but maybe not.

I merely asked if slaves could have been living in the forests of North American for the last few hundred years, and be misidentified. I didn't say anything about them evolving into 8 foot tall hairy monsters.

If they were adept at living off the land, is it such a big leap from them doing it in Africa to them doing it in America? If the answer is "Yes, it's a massive leap and impossible, there's no way they could have done that" then the theory holds no water and my question can be answered with an emphatic "No".

I also said right at the beginning of my first post that my intention was not to cause offense to anyone, but if I do bump into any Gullah peope in Manchester in the UK, and we get on to Bigfoot and this theory, I'll be sure apologise

Best regards,

Lee

PS: incidentally, I notice that you are a former believer turned skeptic. What do you think people are seeing?

I would say that knowing how to survive in Africa is quite different than surviving in America because of how different the environments are. The plants and animals one would encounter would be totally different. You wouldn't know what was dangerous or what you could eat. For example, I'm fairly confident in my ability to survive where I live (the Pacific Northwest), but I'd be absolutely clueless in Africa. It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

And sorry if you thought I was trying to call you out or anything, I just wanted to point out how some might find this idea a bit offensive (you are kind of saying that Africans can be mistaken for inhuman monsters); I don't think you were consciously doing anything offensive. In anthropology, it's pretty common to run into psuedoscientific claims made to explain things that are racist to some degree; this can range from things like the book "The Bell Curve" to claims that megalithic structures couldn't have been built by Native Americans. I guess I'm so used to seeing it, I'm a little sensitive to picking up when it's hinted.

I think people that actually saw something they couldn't explain (some people do lie and tell stories) misidentified something known to exist. I don't think it's one thing, but rather of a whole spectrum of things that can look weird at times, from tricks of light, to bears or even other people. When you throw in a cultural idea that something like bigfoot exists, it's not a big jump from "I saw something weird

to "I saw bigfoot." It's easy for such a thing to happen, just ask this guy, or hear how a whole town thought

was bigfoot (at he 7:30 mark). In my post in the "Being a bigfoot fan" thread, I go over my journey from believer to skeptic and recount a story wherein I honestly misidentified a tree stump for bigfoot. Some sightings might also be explained by hallucinations, which even normal, sane people can have.

By the way, I disagree with the claim that Native Americans have been telling stories about bigfoot for hundreds of years. I'm familiar with a lot of stories most people tie to bigfoot, and I don't think they're about bigfoot. Most of the stories are either talking about boogeymen (like the giant woman who carries children away in a basket) or can be seen as dehumanizing portrayals of enemies or neightbors (which every culture does, look at WW2 propaganda). Some don't sound anything remotely like the bigfoot concept, like the wendigo, which is a spirit with a deer's head that can possess people and make them cannibals. I think bigfooters just latched onto all these stories and shoehorned them into being about bigfoot as a means of giving the story more validity by being able to say that a folklore existed.

[Guest Smissen]

Smissen - that's interesting about the reports. Do you know how far back the reports go, and who made them? Are they Native American folklore tales?

With regards to the language issue - were they English speaking before they arrived? And would you think it's possible for someone to mimic growls and primate sounds, without losing their ability to speak a language?

Is it fair to say that howls, whoops etc' are heard without anyone actually seeing what made them?

I am clearly flogging a dead horse here.

Cheers.

Lee

It still sounds strange to me that African slaves, especially the ones that just arrived in the 'New World'

could survive in the America's like other forumites suspected,It's a totally different flora and fauna. And still,why would slaves,which still had

their tribal language,which doesn't sounds primate-like to me,uses growls and other primate sounds in

the America's,were are no primates? And could you answer my question why there are Bigfoot(-like) reports

in such remotes area's were no slaves have been such as the Himalaya (Yeti by example. Don't let me laugh when you say the Yeti is an ex-slave. African slaves who can survive in the Himalaya's?,sure.....) ? And how come that Native-Americans,which live/lived in at the same area's were Bigfoots have been reported,such as cold woods,don't look Bigfoot-like ?

[dopelyrics]

Smissen - so you are saying that it would be impossible for slaves to live off the land in America because of the different flora and fauna to Africa? These people survived the most atrocious conditions on the ships from Africa, were treated like dogs, fed scraps, forced to sleep next to dead people - but they wouldn't even try to survive by themselves, by living off the land? Do you think that is a credible scenario? Let's just leave "the theory" aside for a moment - and concentrate on what they (or anyone) would do.

Let me ask you this - if you were plonked in the middle of the Amazon jungle, miles from anyone and anywhere and you had to survive, maybe on your own or with other people who, similarly, had no experience of the Amazon, what would you do? Let's say you have good survival skills in your own country. You knew what plants were safe to eat. You could hunt, fish, but had no equipment with you, but could perhaps fashion a bow and a makeshift fishing rod (rudimentary skills that a lot of people could manage). Would you try and use those skills to survive in the Amazon, or would you give up and die because of the "totally different flora and fauna"? Let's be realistic here. It is Man's nature to survive. That's what he does best.

With regards to the language issue, people have used other ways of communicating with each other apart from their own dialect for centuries - calls, whistles etc'. So is is beyond the realm of possibility that these people may have used sounds to communicate with each other? Grunts, whistles, wood knocks? Is it possible that they used growls to scare people off, maybe, knowing the legends of Bigfoot living in the woods? Or is that too far fetched? You tell me.

With regard to the Yeti sightings, I believe these are far less credible than Bigfoot and are rooted even more deeply in local legend and folklore. And who is to say that the Yeti isn't some bloke who has decided to live wild? There, not one mention of a slave masquerading as the Yeti. Sorry if I didn't make you laugh, brother. But if I did, everyone's a winner

Sorry, I don't understand your point about Native Americans looking like Bigfoot. Living in cold woods? What does that mean and what relevance does it have?

I'm not trying to pick a fight with you dude, I am trying to understand the phenomenon as best I can. I am trying to rule out all possibilities and narrow it down to what Bigfoot actually is. Is it a legend, a myth with no substance? Is it a misidentification of things we know - people, bears, trees, shadows? Or is it a real, as yet unclassified, flesh and blood creature that stands 8 foot tall and is covered head to toe in hair?

Best regards,

Lee

BlurryMonster - thanks for your response. You make some extremely interesting points. The videos are really good too.

Please see my post above about people surviving. What are your thoughts? Impossible, or absolutely necessary?

You yourself say that people could be misidentifying other people as Bigfoot, so I guess you could be (unwittingly) causing offense, too I make the reference to slaves because a lot of reports have mentioned Bigfoot having black skin and a broad nose. Black people do have black skin and some do have a broad nose (yes yes other races can have broad noses too). That's an anatomical fact and if someone sees racist undertones in me saying that, well maybe they need to question their own outlook and not mine.

I am totally with you about the whole "I saw something weird" to "I saw Bigfoot" scenario. That's part of my point, in a roundabout way. I am asking if two things could have come together - legends of monsters living in the forest, with people hiding in the forest who are seen occasionally - to create the myth of Bigfoot.

Best.

Lee

Edited July 11, 2012 by dopelyrics

[Guest poignant]

Oh yeah one more thing, the way bf distributes power through the foot with the mid-tarsal hinge suggests non-human morphology. To go from human rigid-foot walking to having a non-human primate mid-tarsal break in 400 years is, by all odds, unlikely.

Their dark skin and flatter noses are just coincidences with no correlation.

[dopelyrics]

Poignant...yes, assuming they are real creatures.

[Guest poignant]

Yes, and that assumption is self-evident from the moment the theory proposed that they are descended from african slaves. That is the hypothesis, and the evidence to date suggests that it is likely not the case.

Whether they are physical or spiritual beings belongs to another hypothesis so I think it's best not to muddle the two.