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The legendary Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, otherwise known as Yeti, has not been "sighted" for over 20 years. This is the longest period without a reported sighting since Europeans first heard of the "hairy ape-like creature" allegedly "half-man, half-beast", nearly 180 years ago. Naturalists are more often wondering out loud, not only if Yeti now exists, but did Yeti ever exist.
It would seem that the most reasonable conclusion is that if Yeti ever was, he is no more. As have so many other living species this century, Yeti has been the victim of the encroachment of civilization upon the natural environment. The population boom in the region has probably cost Yeti its life. For example, the population of Nepal has increased 150 per cent since 1960. It was more than 28 million in 2000. There would simply be no more room for an Abominable Snowman. As naturalist Richard Critchfield says, "If a large primate, a missing link between man and apes, still does roam the Himalayan forests and rocky pastures, it must be looking for a place to hide."
This is not to say that Yeti does not still exist in the minds of the locals. Indeed, the Yeti legend has enormous religious significance to at least some of the peoples of the region. For them, Yeti is an awesome creature to be both feared and protected. As Critchfield adds, "The Yeti, never captured or studied, still survives on a mythical horizon. At least 10 million Sherpas and Lepshas, Sikkimese, Bhutanese, Tibetans, and other Himalayan hill people have no doubt whatsoever that an ape-man five to seven feet tall, with black-brown hair, a monkey face with robust jaw and arms that reach down to its knees, is a natural member of their local fauna."
The first European news of Yeti was an 1832 report in the JOURNAL OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL by naturalist and Britain's representative in Kathmandu, B.H. Hodgson. In 1887, a British expedition in the Sikkim region of India reportedly found Yeti footprints at 16,000 feet elevation. In addition, one member of the expedition even claimed a sighting. The following year, British Army Major L.A. Waddell claimed to have found more footprints and reported in AMONG THE HIMALAYAS that the Sherpas call this "wild hairy man" the yah te --- soon transformed by Londoners into "yeti". Other names for the Yeti include Meh-Teh ("rockman"), Bonmanche ("wild man"), Kanchanjunga rachyas ("demon"). The appellation "Abominable Snowman" was coined in 1921 by Lt. Colonel Charles Howard-Bury who led the Royal Geographical Society’s Mt. Everest expedition which was chronicled in the book, MOUNT EVEREST THE RECONNAISSANCE. In 1925, N.A. Tombazi, a member of the Royal Geographical Society, claimed to have observed the creature for about a minute from 200 or 300 yards away. Although a photographer, Tombazi took no photo.
Quests to find Yeti peaked in the 1950s with new photographs of footprints from mountaineer Eric Shipton in 1951 and the European conquest of Mt. Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. In 1960, Hillary led an unsuccessful expedition to find the creature.
In 1961, Hillary disputed claims by a U.S. expedition that it had retrieved a scalp, hand, and fur supposedly belonging to a Yeti. Hillary argued that the scalp was a fake, the hand was human, and the fur was from a serow (a goat-like antelope) or a Tibetan blue bear. However, Dr. W.C. Omans, a British authority on primates, disagreed with Hillary about the scalp. He argued that, indeed, it was ape-like.
In 1970, Don Whillans of the British Annapurna expedition claimed to have confronted a Yeti outside his tent. The creature "was something between a gorilla and a bear" and he, along with his Sherpas guides, watched it for twenty minutes.
In 1972, a U.S. expedition led by zoologist Edwin Cronin, Jr. made plaster casts and took photographs of footprints. The Cronin team concluded that Yeti "is an ape that walks on its hind legs, is nocturnal and inquisitive, inhabits forested, not snowy regions, is very strong, and probably does exist."
In 1986, the last sighting of Yeti to date was by an Italian climber who reported seeing two Yetis northeast of Mt. Everest.
In December 2007, an American T.V. presenter named Josh Gates, reported finding three footprints in Nepal near Mt. Everest. The prints indicated a five toed animal with feet some 33 cm long and 23 cm across. Casts were taken and are awaiting analysis as of this writing.
Today, Yeti is believed by most scientists to be a Himalayan mountain animal or perhaps merely a bear. Critics often scoff at such supposed sightings. They dismiss them as merely reactions or symptoms of stress, fatigue, snow blindness, or physiological changes due to high elevation.
The footprints used to support the Yeti legend are thought to be those of a bear, marks left by drifting snow, fallen rocks, or, as Hillary claimed in 1961, the sun melting the tracks of smaller animals.
Nevertheless, those arguing on behalf of the existence of Yeti have been hard pressed to explain why it has never been captured --- alive or dead. And what is the source of the Yeti's food supply (which would have to be considerable given the size of the animal)? No one has seen an infant Yeti, a child Yeti, or two Yetis together. Would not the Yeti need families at some stage of its development in order to survive? Why is there no evidence of Yeti groups of any kind?
To date, there is no real physical evidence supporting the existence of a "half-man, half-beast" Yeti creature. Although both Chinese and Russian scientists have previously claimed to have captured such creatures in Southern China and in the Caucasus, they have not produced evidence of this.
The notion that Yeti may be a relic of some long-extinct Neanderthal-type creature was once proposed. But this view is now discarded by scientists.
So far, no creature akin to Yeti has ever been examined by Western scientists. Until this is done and until there is proof, science will never except as valid the claims of Yeti's existence.
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