The Ketchum Report

[Guest]

Okay, I just selected "Posts By Page" (by clicking in the middle, at the top of that dividing line) and doing this seems to yield a more chronological up-down format.

[Guest parnassus]

What's all this exaggerated 'giant' stuff?

Bigfoot wouldn't be bigger than a large bear and we don't go around calling bears 'giant beasts' do we?

"Giant" as a noun is used to refer to (mythical) upright primates larger than humans, which the popular "bigfoot" certainly would be, given the thousands of descriptions.

As an aside, it is interesting to observe what seems to be proponents here downplaying size estimates of bigfoot, perhaps anticipating a "bigfoot is human" Ketchum paper. Of course, none of that "anticipatory downsizing' holds a candle to the post above which essentially casts bigfoots as homeless people in need of social services.

Don't get me wrong, I am quite certain that much of the bigfoot folklore can be traced back to encounters with hermits, homeless people, schizophrenics, and otherwise challenged persons, who often have poor hygiene, can behave unpredictably and have always evoked fear. These were "wild men." Men who lived in the wild or looked wild.

if you met this guy in the woods, how might you describe him? a wild man, perhaps?

Even today, it seems clear from videos that normal humans in the woods are sometimes responsible (intentionally or unintentionally) for "bigfoot" reports. So in a real sense, humans are "bigfoot." But these humans look like you and me and Christopher Lloyd, and their DNA is like yours and mine and Lloyd's, they are you and me and Lloyd, good old "Hss", not "Pattys".

p.

Edited March 5, 2012 by parnassus

[Guest]

Drew, this is what the question asker and Ketchum are referring to:

1. "Researchers compared the Neanderthal genome with the genomes of five living people: one San from southern Africa, one Yoruba from West Africa, one Papua New Guinean, one Han Chinese and one French person. Scientists discovered that 1% to 4% of the latter three DNA samples is shared with Neanderthals — proof that Neanderthals and early modern humans interbred. The absence of Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of the two present-day Africans indicates that interbreeding occurred after some root population of early modern humans left Africa but before the species evolved into distinct groups in Europe and Asia."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1987568,00.html#ixzz1oGX5GzsZ

2.Yotova, Vania; Jean-Francois Lefebvre, Claudia Moreau, Elias Gbeha, Kristine Hovhannesyan, Stephane Bourgeois, Sandra Be´darida, Luisa Azevedo, Antonio Amorim, Tamara Sarkisian, Patrice Hodonou Avogbe, Nicodeme Chabi, Mamoudou Hama Dicko, Emile Sabiba Kou' Santa Amouzou, Ambaliou Sanni, June Roberts-Thomson, Barry Boettcher, Rodney J. Scott, and Damian Labuda (July 2011). "An X-linked haplotype of the Neandertal origin is present among all non-African populations". Molecular Biology and Evolution.

[Guest gershake]

if you met this guy in the woods, how might you describe him? a wild man, perhaps?

Perhaps. But I wouldn't describe him as a 7' tall hairy person with no clothes and no neck.

[Guest]

A speculation based on rumors and rumors of rumors (like most of us here I have no inside scoop ). Sort of a summing up to get my head around all this. Correct me if I'm wrong in anything.

The KP found modern human mDNA in their samples early on - thus their early emphasis on a subspecies of H. sapiens. The problem with that is, as parnassus and others have said, modern human mDNA is modern human mDNA, no matter how oddball, and Sasquatch ain't going to fit in that crack if that's all you have. Perhaps previous DNA projects simply stopped when they hit that modern mDNA. Who could blame them?

The KP however dug a little deeper and sequenced a few targeted nuclear DNAs. Presumably some of these show a wide divergence from modern humans with a Last Common Ancestor (for those individual genes) of approximately two and a half million years ago, at least according to RL and the impression you get by the KP's excitement and apparent confidence.

If all of the above is true, we've got a fairly simple story in general: A non-modern hominin whose main LCA with us (Homo sp or not; Paranthropus anyone?) existed two and a half million years ago and still exists today.

Since then there have been a few interbreedings between us and them (hominins seem to like doing this a fair amount); just enough to get those confounding modern mDNAs (and some nDNAs presumably) into the Sasquatch population, but not so much nuclear DNA that the small Sasquatch population just gets absorbed into ours as their original nDNAs get swamped out.

That seems, in a nutshell at this time, what is being implied. Am I missing anything?

As a side note: I've heard nothing about the samples not having modern mDNA. If the samples are from a representative sampling of the Sasquatch population(s), that implies that they're going to have a lot of modern nuclear DNA in them too (which is also not helpful in establishing existence). There's an off chance you could have nothing but modern mDNA and Sasquatch nDNA in the population, but that's a lot less probable.

And one last speculation built onto the end of my very long and wobbly speculation stick: If Sasquatch have so much modern DNA floating around in them, it stands to reason (and according to some Native American stories) that some of us otherwise modern people should have the occasional Sasquatch allele hiding in us, just as we've seen with the more closely related Neandertals and Denisovans.

There may be a good reason why my girlfriend has to shave my back.

[TimB]

I am amazed that some of the posters on this thread continue to tell us what is in the study without even reading it. I personally have a hard time taking anyone that is insisting they know where the results of an unpublished paper come from as credible. Can anyone help me bridge the gap?

Tim B.

Edited March 5, 2012 by TimB

[Guest]

tVS is just extrapolating (and quite plausibly, it seems to me) from the very limited "information" we seem to have at this point. He is not claiming to "tell us what is in the study." Such speculation is what's left to us while we languish in limbo, counting the days...

[TimB]

Bad timing- I wasn't referencing him... My apologies. His reasoning process seemed sound.

Tim B.

[Guest Jodie]

Except the mDNA samples that Stubstad referred to were supposedly not used in the study. I believe Dr. Ketchum said that, now what the the criteria was for inclusion in the study is beyond me. However, you can't have mDNA from a human and nDNA from some other primate/animal mixed together unless it is artificially created so I seriously doubt that there is anything in these samples to cause that kind of confusion when the results are released. If so, well it would be the first time it occurred naturally based on what I know about stem cell research.

Edited March 5, 2012 by Jodie

[Guest slimwitless]

That seems, in a nutshell at this time, what is being implied. Am I missing anything?

No, that's about it. Thanks.

A few weeks back I brought up Robert Alley as a possible co-author on the paper. This is because his NABS profile states he "is part of a large–scale hominid DNA study". Anyway, I was just listening to an interview with Alley on Bigfoot Tonight. Here's a relevant quote.

One thing's for sure, anthropologists have recently come to the conclusion that our ancestors and their compatriots, other hominids who were around at the same time in Asia, definitely not only existed over the same periods of time and in the same areas but actually seemed to have shared genetic material. I'm not going to go to much into that because Dr. Melba Ketchum's project will detail that more carefully. It just causes one to speculate on the possibilities. Because we don't know...

He then goes on to discuss Indian legends about abductions, etc. I mentioned this idea in the Paulides 411 thread. Anyway, combine all these revelations with Ketchum's recent post mentioning Neanderthal and Denisovan hybridization and I gotta think we're going to be hearing more about this shocking idea.

Edited March 5, 2012 by slimwitless

[Guest Jodie]

The fact that different species of human intermingled doesn't seem shocking to me. I doubt our ancestors realized it and just thought they were funny looking foreigners. But when you talk about a hairless wonder mixing with a hairy giant, it starts to get sketchy IMO.

[Guest]

"You can't have mDNA from a human and nDNA from some other primate/animal mixed together..."

You can, if the original coupling (or rather, a long-term regime of coupling) was between a female human and a male something-else-in-the-family-Homo. And we probably weren't very hairless 30,000 years ago, or whenever this hybridization occurred.

Edited March 5, 2012 by Christopher Noel

[Incorrigible1]

I am amazed that some of the posters on this thread continue to tell us what is in the study without even reading it.

It works on either end of the spectrum: There's been plenty of the fairly skeptical folks telling us what is and isn't included in the report........

[Guest Jodie]

But that is homo, the same family, and it would still be difficult to get something viable. I don't think based on what is described about bigfoot that he would fall into a homo classification but that is just opinion. I also don't think y'all realize how much can go wrong in reproduction within your own species.

"You can't have mDNA from a human and nDNA from some other primate/animal mixed together..."

You can, if the original coupling (or rather, a long-term regime of coupling) was between a female human and a male something-else-in-the-family-Homo. And we probably weren't very hairless 30,000 years ago, or whenever this hybridization occurred.

[Guest]

"You can't have mDNA from a human and nDNA from some other primate/animal mixed together..."

You can. . .

I agree with Christopher on this. If the species are related enough (i.e. they roughly have mostly the same number of the same genes, just different alleles, sorted in the same places on the same number of chromosomes) you can get fertile offspring.

The only barriers would be behavioral. I don't recall a really weird out of place mDNA seen in modern people. If we did, that would suggest a modern man woo'ed a woman belonging to a different hominin species sometime in the past (and the descendant line stayed in our species). (Which is not to say it never happened. There's just no evidence for it yet.)

However, we have two, admittedly thin, strands now that correlate with each other:

1.)All or most? of the purported KP Sasquatch samples have modern mDNA, and. . .

2.)The several Nat Am. stories about women being abducted and impregnated by Sasquatch, some in the last century. The only man I know of possibly abducted for such purposes (and this was just a theory at the time; I have no idea if true) is Albert Ostman, and in any case the woo'ing was reportedly not consummated.

But that is homo, the same family, and it would still be difficult to get something viable. I don't think based on what is described about bigfoot that he would fall into a homo classification but that is just opinion. I also don't think y'all realize how much can go wrong in reproduction within your own species.

The genus Homo is an arbitrary man-made category like all hierarchical taxa above species (and species boundaries can be pretty messy all on their own in nature). It's really useful putting like species with like in the same natural clade, but it can be a barrier in thinking about these things, too, sometimes. By the way, I wouldn't put Sasquatch in Homo either as the genus is presently described.

I don't disagree that reproduction is hugely complex, and, frankly, I'm amazed it works as well as it does. So many biochemical steps have to happen in order at the right time; correct chromosome sorting in the gametes all the way down to one hormone having to be in the right concentration at the right time in the right place. . . but saying all that - it appears to be pretty robust.

If there is interbreeding between two species with fertile offspring, and their Last Common Ancestor was 2 1/2 million years ago, that's not really all that implausible. The biochemistry and chromosome number just have to be similar enough.

Edited March 5, 2012 by tsiatkoVS