Minnesota Iceman Hoax

[Guest]

Meldrum believes the Minnesota Iceman was real??

I was replying to Blackdog who brought up BCM (again)

That's all you got? The fake was fake but it was based off of the real thing?

Same as the BCM thread, rinse and repeat.

On the surface the two situations ARE similar in some respects, as we have the legitimate original, and subsequent manufactured attempts at "look alikes".

My statement vis a vis Dr Meldrum was in relation to BCM, and his observations that proved the Wallace stompers could not have caused the original BCM tracks.

[Guest LAL]

Hairy Ainu from Japan...

This was before Bobbie got involved in the Massacre at Bluff Creek - ah- stuff. I still like her website.

[Guest]

Thanks, Chris. The teeth?

Not especially. I just think it looks very real: The skin, the hairs (some finer and shorter, some thicker and longer), the blood around the mouth. The teeth are definately human- and not apelike. I think I have this picture in larger resolution. Trying to find it...

Good points! There's the theory that there was no model at all and that Hansen simply shifted some body parts to make it look like a model. I think you can see some changes in the pictures. For example the mouth that looks more open in some of them.

[Guest LAL]

Not especially. I just think it looks very real: The skin, the hairs (some finer and shorter, some thicker and longer), the blood around the mouth. The teeth are definately human- and not apelike. I think I have this picture in larger resolution. Trying to find it...

Good points! There's the theory that there was no model at all and that Hansen simply shifted some body parts to make it look like a model. I think you can see some changes in the pictures. For example the mouth that looks more open in some of them.

I'm not finding the source but I've read one of the models was so bad it couldn't be used. Hansen said he rearranged the original. Possibly this accounts for the differences Sanderson saw between what they saw and what Coleman photographed.

The mouth and teeth kind of haunt me. Wouldn't a good huckster have added some ferocious-looking fangs to scare the kids and make the exhibit even more popular? Howard Ball and his son, Kenneth, built part of one model. The hair was sewn in by a couple. Unless Heuvelmans and Sanderson had eye trouble they might have noticed several hairs sewn into the same hole.

Unless the owner or his family destroyed the original it might still exist somewhere - in the Pacific, perhaps? Hansen's son said the second one, the obvious fake, was gone, cleared out long ago.

Edited April 26, 2011 by LAL

[Guest vilnoori]

What about the hands and feet? It didn't just die - it was shot.

Bobbie Short thought it was a hairy Ainu from Japan. She had a doctor's opinion on it, as I recall.

What about the hands and feet?

It could have been shot after death to make it look authentic.

Ainu's aren't that hairy. This one's forehead seems to be completely covered in hair and face lightly haired as well.

The shape of the body, feet, hands, skull, face, nose and chin is completely human. My call is, it was an authentic, modern human body, someone with hypertrichosis. The story about the fake being made is probably true as well, to facilitate travelling with it and maybe to possibly double the profits. Two bodies, double the money, as long as both are displayed in locations far enough apart to evade discovery.

How tall was it?

Another hypertrichosis picture:

Edited April 26, 2011 by vilnoori

[wolftrax]

what it comes down to is believing:

1 person with 4 different stories, all contradicting each other and even one partially admitting a hoax.

Vs.

3 different people independently giving the same 1 story that has remained consistent that the entire thing was a hoax and who made that hoax.

[wolftrax]

I like #3 in the pros above. It didn't look like Cro Magnon, either. This was 1968. "Lucy" hadn't been discovered yet. Didn't Napier find the IM Index was 88? That's the same as Lucy's - and Patty's. Interesting coincidence.

Source on that IM index.

Africanus was well known by 67 as it had first been discovered in 1924 with adult skulls and vertebra, pelvis, and femur found in 1947 providing evidence it was bipedal.

Robustus was first discovered in 1938, boiseii in 1959, Habilis 1960 with various finds throughout the 60s. Erecuts/ergaster 1891 with all kinds of finds and parts by the 60s.

[wolftrax]

What about the hands and feet?

It could have been shot after death to make it look authentic.

Ainu's aren't that hairy. This one's forehead seems to be completely covered in hair and face lightly haired as well.

The shape of the body, feet, hands, skull, face, nose and chin is completely human. My call is, it was an authentic, modern human body, someone with hypertrichosis. The story about the fake being made is probably true as well, to facilitate travelling with it and maybe to possibly double the profits. Two bodies, double the money, as long as both are displayed in locations far enough apart to evade discovery.

How tall was it?

Another hypertrichosis picture:

The hands and feet were out of proportion for a human and the brain case was smaller than in a human.

[Guest LAL]

what it comes down to is believing:

1 person with 4 different stories, all contradicting each other and even one partially admitting a hoax.

Vs.

3 different people independently giving the same 1 story that has remained consistent that the entire thing was a hoax and who made that hoax.

Which three people? Hansen himself gave out the story a model was made and it was in print in 1968. Presumably Hansen gave the model makers instructions but never showed them what they were trying to duplicate. Isn't this rather like Roger-the-Genius, with no training in anatomy or suit-making coming up with something that even Dr. Daris Swindler would eventually take seriously? Would those involved in model making have let it be known around Hollywood they thought they were imitating something real even if they thought that was the case? I'm sure Hansen didn't give them much detail.

So Heuvelmans was sleuthing and perhaps getting too close to the truth. Owner panics, Hansen misdirects to Minnesota and there's even a harrowing tabloid story involving a woman (in Minnesota, not Wisconsin - my bad). The Smithsonian loses interest and everything thing goes back to more or less normal.

Makes sense to me.

[wolftrax]

Which three people?

Napier, Chambers, and Langdon.

Hansen himself gave out the story a model was made and it was in print in 1968. Presumably Hansen gave the model makers instructions but never showed them what they were trying to duplicate. Isn't this rather like Roger-the-Genius, with no training in anatomy or suit-making coming up with something that even Dr. Daris Swindler would eventually take seriously? Would those involved in model making have let it be known around Hollywood they thought they were imitating something real even if they thought that was the case? I'm sure Hansen didn't give them much detail.

And yet the "Real" iceman and the "Fake" iceman look exactly the same. Even you can see that's not believable, that really the "Fake" and the "Real" iceman were one and the same.

So Heuvelmans was sleuthing and perhaps getting too close to the truth. Owner panics, Hansen misdirects to Minnesota and there's even a harrowing tabloid story involving a woman (in Minnesota, not Wisconsin - my bad). The Smithsonian loses interest and everything thing goes back to more or less normal.

Makes sense to me.

makes more sense than what really happened? Hansen approaches both Chambers and Langdon to produce this fake apeman and encase it in ice. They tell him who to go to, and that is who he has produce it. He then travels the carnival circuit with this thing making money, advertising it as a real body. S&H see it, write about it, and it gets publicity, taking some from the PGF showings. Hansen is making money from this thing until he is stopped at the border and has to answer to the claims this is a real body. All of a sudden he has to admit it's a fake to get through that, and concoct yet another wild story to try to salvage his money maker, he had a fake made and replaced the real one which went to a mysterious rich owner, classic story to keep the rubes coming.

Does it make more sense to you that Hansen with his shifting stories and admitted fake iceman would have a real one, than Langdon, Chambers, and Napier were right and Hansen came to C&L and had a fake one made in 1964?

Edited April 26, 2011 by wolftrax

[Guest LAL]

Napier, Chambers, and Langdon.

How did Napier get in there?

And yet the "Real" iceman and the "Fake" iceman look exactly the same. Even you can see that's not believable, that really the "Fake" and the "Real" iceman were one and the same.

I don't know that Coleman photographed the fake. Sanderson said so but not why, exactly.

makes more sense than what really happened? Hansen approaches both Chambers and Langdon to produce this fake apeman and encase it in ice. They tell him who to go to, and that is who he has produce it. He then travels the carnival circuit with this thing making money, advertising it as a real body.

Cost $22.000? Am I remembering that correctly? Or, he exhibited the stinky original until he needed to substitute the model.

S&H see it, write about it, and it gets publicity, taking some from the PGF showings. Hansen is making money from this thing until he is stopped at the border and has to answer to the claims this is a real body. All of a sudden he has to admit it's a fake to get through that, and concoct yet another wild story to try to salvage his money maker, he had a fake made and replaced the real one which went to a mysterious rich owner, classic story to keep the rubes coming.

He said it was a fake but wouldn't let it be X-rayed? Does that make any sense? Hansen himself may not have known what it was if he got it from someone who traded a case of whiskey for it. Clever Chinese fake like the platypus?

Does it make more sense to you that Hansen with his shifting stories and admitted fake iceman would have a real one, than Langdon, Chambers, and Napier were right and Hansen came to C&L and had a fake one made in 1964?

Where are you getting 1964? Langdon? Another story is that "At about the same time a Hollywood special effects firm claimed that they had made the "Iceman" in 1967. Howard Ball, who made figures for Disneyland with his son, Kenneth, had modeled the fake in rubber trying to make it look like 'an artist's conception of Cro-Magnon man' with 'a broken skull with one eye popped out.' " So, more than one model?

"However, two separate companies specializing in model-making for waxwork museums, exhibits, and film companies in Hollywood California, have been traced, and individual model-makers working for both have stated that they made copies with wax or latex and using hair from bears. Mr. Hansen, the caretaker, informed us in January of this year that such a model had been made in April of 1967 because the owner of the original was worried about its safety. An object such as this could possibly be constructed, starting with the skin of a large male, pale-skinned chimpanzee, using a human skull, glovemakers wood racks for the hands, and so forth. The original could have been of this nature, and then a copy, or copies, made from it. "

And

"Our final conclusion, therefore, is that the specimen we inspected was that of a genuine corpse as opposed to a composite or a construction -- and that it is some form of primate. We would categorize it, as of now, as an anthropoid, but whether it is a hominid, a pongid, or a representative of some other previously unsuspected branch of that super-family we are not prepared either to say or even to speculate. There are certain firm indications that the specimen examined by Heuvelmans and this writer--though it has been removed from the place where we saw it, and hidden, while a substitute model has been installed--has not been destroyed and may therefore eventually become available for proper scientific examination. Until such time as this is achieved we advise that it serve only as a pointer to the possible continued existence of at least one kind of fully-haired, ultraprimitive, anthropoid-like primate, and be used only as a lever to pry open the hitherto hidebound notion that any such thing is impossible. "

http://www.squatchop...innesota_Iceman

The Minneapolis man who turned Sanderson and Heuvelmans on to it in the first place was a zoologist. Just how long had it been on the circuit?

http://www.bigfooten...les/argosy2.htm

[Guest Blackdog]

Ha! I wonder when Bobbi posted that Argosy magazine cover on the website.

That was mine that I posted on the old BFF a few years ago.

I've seen it a few times on the web but I didn't know Bobbi used it.

Kinda cool.

[Guest LAL]

Source on that IM index.

Article by Dr. Napier. I haven't found it yet. I shudder to think it was on Bigfoot: Fact or Fantasy? The site is gone.

Africanus was well known by 67 as it had first been discovered in 1924 with adult skulls and vertebra, pelvis, and femur found in 1947 providing evidence it was bipedal.

Dart's claims that it was a biped were roundly rejected. Paleoanthropologists were following Sir Arthur Keith. This even affected the Leakey's finds. At what point did it become acceptable to call africanus a biped?

Robustus was first discovered in 1938, boiseii in 1959, Habilis 1960 with various finds throughout the 60s. Erecuts/ergaster 1891 with all kinds of finds and parts by the 60s.

And none as complete as Lucy. She was the first non-human hominids to be considered an habitual biped - except by those who didn't think so.

[Guest LAL]

What about the hands and feet?

It could have been shot after death to make it look authentic.

Ainu's aren't that hairy. This one's forehead seems to be completely covered in hair and face lightly haired as well.

The shape of the body, feet, hands, skull, face, nose and chin is completely human. My call is, it was an authentic, modern human body, someone with hypertrichosis. The story about the fake being made is probably true as well, to facilitate travelling with it and maybe to possibly double the profits. Two bodies, double the money, as long as both are displayed in locations far enough apart to evade discovery.

How tall was it?

Another hypertrichosis picture:

Sanderson addressed that:

"4. It cannot be an abnormal individual, or freak, belonging to any of the known races of modern man because, in all cases of hypertrichosis, i.e. abnormal development of the hair, the most hairy areas are the outside of the upper head, the chin, cheek, upper lip, axillae, middle of chest and crotch; here, these areas have a less profuse growth of hair. Moreover, the specimen cannot have been preserved in ice for centuries or millennia. This is physically impossible.

The peculiar structure of the ice and the presence of a pool of blood around the head show that, immediately after death, the corpse was placed in a freezer tank filled with water and artificially frozen. A large caliber bullet entering the right eye apparently killed the specimen. The impact blew out the rear of the skull and forced the left eye out of its socket. To sum up, this specimen is a contemporary representative of an unknown form of Hominid, most probably a relic of the Neanderthal type. The belief, based on strong testimonial evidence, that small, scattered populations of Neanderthals survive, has been held for years by some scientists, mostly Russian and Mongolian."

The height was 6' and the feet were 10" wide.

"6. Peculiar relative proportions of both fingers and toes. The thumb is longer than modern man's and the toes are all nearly the same size."

[Guest LAL]

Found the article:

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/napiertake.htm

"Using Sanderson's scale diagram, which as he admits was drawn under considerable difficulties, but which was later matched and correlated with Heuvelmans's photographs, I have been able to measure the relative limb lengths of the Iceman.

The relative proportions of the upper limb and lower limb can be expressed as a percentage, the so-called intermembral index. Modern man, whose arms are shorter than his legs, has an index varying between 67 and 72; apes, whose arms are longer than their legs, possess an index that, depending on species, lies between 103 and 150. The index of the Iceman is 87 indicating that the proportions are characteristic neither of apes nor men. There is a considerable amount of data on the hand index~ in primates.: 'this index reflects the relative length of the hand compared with the length of the arm as a whole. For the Iceman this index is 32.5. The range in Homo sapiens is 22.7 - 26.1, and for the apes from 23.1 - 31.0. Other indices, which reflect bodily proportions, consistently indicate that the Iceman's measurements are neither those of fish, fowl nor good red herring-nor man, nor ape {or that matter. The Iceman, in fact, does not match up to the blueprint of any known primate or, indeed, any known animal. This does not mean that the Iceman cannot exist, it simply makes it just that much more improbable."

Not until Lucy.............

87. I was off by one.