Mysterious “wild people”, covered with wool and giant humanoid monkeys, regularly appear in the folklore of different countries, as well as in ancient manuscripts. And in the entire history of mankind, there have been only two official government expeditions to search for these creatures allegedly known as the Almas, Bigfoot, or Yeti – one was carried out in China, the other in the USSR.
The Search For Bigfoot Or Almas In Uzbekistan
For centuries, in the mountainous regions of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, there have been reports of “naked wild people” or “bear people” who could not talk, but only howled wildly and behaved like wild animals.
It was reported that these creatures were taller than a man and that they actively attacked lone travelers and shepherds. There were even stories about how such a creature gnawed the liver out of its victim.
These “wild people” had many nicknames, but the most famous were “Almas” or “Almasty” – that’s what they were called in the northern Caucasus, Altai, Pamirs, and southern Mongolia.
The world outside these regions did not know about Almas until the Europeans at the beginning of the 20th century were told about the mysterious Bigfoot or Yeti living in the Himalayas. Many people were fascinated by this creature and they began to delve into folklore, study ancient manuscripts and make trips to the Himalayas to learn more about it.
Then it turned out that there are a lot of such creatures not only in the Himalayas but also in other countries, especially a lot of them turned out to be in the USA, where the Indians called such creatures the word sasquatch or bigfoot (big foot) and on the territory of the USSR, where they told stories and legends about almasty.
In 1953, a large-scale British expedition to Everest was organized and yeti stories accompanied it all the way. The British did not find the Yeti themselves or its tracks there, but this further increased Bigfoot’s popularity.
The historian and anthropologist Boris Fedorovich Porshnev from the USSR became interested in stories from Western newspaper articles and suggested that such creatures could be “relic hominids”, that is, the residual population of those ancient Australopithecus, Pithecanthropus or Neanderthals who, for unknown reasons, did not die out along with the main population in prehistoric times, but lost in the deserted corners of our planet.
Porshnev was considered a very respected academician, so other Soviet scientists became interested in his opinion, and after a while, Porshnev managed to get official approval from the USSR Academy of Sciences to search for “relic hominids.”
Before leaving for the expedition, Porshnev wrote about his goals to the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper and asked readers to send him eyewitness stories about meetings with Almasty. As you can easily guess, he received a ton of such letters.
In 1958, the expedition took place, and together with Porshnev, many other scientists went to the Pamirs. True, most of them went there not to catch Bigfoot, but to study the local flora, fauna, geological features, or customs of local peoples.
Cryptozoologists believe that the Porshnev expedition was just one of two official government expeditions to find the Yeti in history. The second was held in 1991 in China and Russian researchers also took part in it.
The expedition included a large number of people, including people with special dogs who were trained to smell chimpanzees. According to rumors, they even had a secret task not only to find the yeti but to capture it and deliver it to Moscow.
Alas, it was not Porshnev who was appointed head of the expedition, but the geobotanist Kirill Stanyukovich, which, perhaps, was the reason for the failure of the expedition. Basically, it was Stanyukevich and other botanists who decided which way to go, what to look at and what to focus on, and few people listened to Porshnev.
Many mistakes were made. So, the expedition set off in the summer, not in the winter, and in summer the snow remains only in the peaks of the Pamirs and it is impossible to see the footprints of the yeti without snow. The caves were not explored – possible places for the Yeti’s shelters. In addition, a large group of people made so much noise that it scared away all the animals around, including, probably, the yeti.
As a result, the researchers failed to find any traces, nor the yeti itself, although Porshnev collected many stories about Almas from local residents and made sure that this creature lives only in the southeastern part of the Pamirs.
Because of this, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR officially closed the topic of studying Bigfoot. Porshnev was extremely disappointed:
“They said that the main result of the expedition was the discovery by archaeologists in the Pamirs of Paleolithic monuments, from which it allegedly follows that the” wild man “could not live here for tens of thousands of years due to the biological law of incompatibility of related species in one territory.”.
But he did not despair:
“I don’t know of any evidence against a relict hominoid. It seems that such a thing cannot be logically thought of at all. I have only heard many statements from different people that they do not believe in the existence of Bigfoot.”
Despite the failure, Porshnev was so fascinated by Bigfoot that he continued his search and research work in the 1960s-1980s, although the USSR Academy of Sciences no longer allocated him any funds for this. He was helped by the support of many volunteers who, like him, were convinced of the reality of Almasty.
Unfortunately, the more Boris Porshnev insisted that the Yeti is real and the more he tried to prove it in his books and articles, the more he ran into a wall of denial and rejection.
For example, in the Alma-Ata magazine “Prostor” a collective review of his work was published by some Soviet professional zoologists and they literally stated the following:
“The fiction about the so-called Bigfoot has long been exposed and tired of all serious researchers.”
As well as:
“A particularly active role in the propaganda of pseudoscientific information about the so-called Bigfoot is played by the medievalist historian Prof. B.F. in a very unattractive position of the editors of these publications, who naively believe in his competence.
In 1972, Porshnev wrote an extensive treatise On the Beginning of Human History, in which he again expounded some overly bold thoughts about anthropology. As a result, the book was not allowed to be printed, and Porshnev could not bear such a blow to the back, dying two months later at the age of 67.
What do you think about the existence of Almas?
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