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Transcript · The Joe Rogan Experience
Joe Rogan Experience #2577 - Gregory Forth
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Joe Rogan talks with anthropologist Gregory Forth about the Homo floresiensis 'hobbit' fossils found on Flores, Indonesia, and the local Lio accounts of similar small hairy creatures still said to live in the mountains. Forth argues the eyewitness reports match the fossil reconstructions and deserve further investigation, while acknowledging the evidence is not conclusive and that scientists remain cautious.
- Homo floresiensis was announced in 2004 from the Liang Bua cave on Flores, with remains initially dated to about 12,000-13,000 years old, later revised to around 50,000-60,000 years.
- Forth first heard local accounts of small hairy 'ape men' (Ebu Gogo/Lio sightings) in 1984 while doing cultural anthropology research on Flores.
- Forth recorded over 30 reports of encounters, mostly in high mountainous forest in the Lio region, and found the clearest descriptions matched the fossil reconstructions.
- Two British hikers contacted Forth in 2019 describing a large upright primate-like creature they saw on a Flores mountain, and a Dutch contact plans a camera-trap and drone search.
- Forth noted Flores has no native apes or monkeys, making mistaken identity harder to explain, though many mammals were introduced by humans over time.
- Scientists debate whether the fossils are a separate species, a diseased human (microcephaly), or a more primitive lineage, and stone tool attribution remains uncertain.
- Rogan and Forth compared the Flores reports to Indonesian orangutan-like 'Orang Pendek' stories, Bigfoot accounts, and pygmy human populations, concluding Bigfoot evidence is weaker due to hoaxes.
- The conversation also covered Forth's upcoming book on witches and the cultural role of betel nut chewing on Sumba.
- 0:01Introducing the Hobbit Fossils
- 3:22Liang Bua Cave Discovery
- 6:30Stone Tools and Komodo Dragons
- 9:19Humans on Flores Timeline
- 13:23Lio Ape Men Sightings
- 22:42Early Folklore and Augo Stories
- 28:20Flores Terrain and Access
- 35:40Accumulating Eyewitness Reports
- 39:00Searching for the Creatures
- 48:19Recent British Hikers' Encounter
- 58:36Fossil Record and Evolution
- 1:18:12Scientific Debate and Skepticism
- 1:27:32Culture, Betel Nut and Folklore
- 1:40:12Bigfoot and Native American Lore
- 1:57:20Witches Book and Closing
Introducing the Hobbit Fossils
0:01Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. >> The Joe Rogan Experience. >> TRAIN BY DAY. JOE ROGAN PODCAST BY NIGHT. All day. >> U. Thank you very much [music] for being here. I'm really excited to talk to you. I am fascinated by this little hobbit creature. This homo floriansis. Am I saying it right? Florence.
0:22>> Floresensis. Floresensis. >> Yeah. So it's like flor and then zensis. >> Right. Uh, I've been fascinated from 2003 when it was announced when they, well, when was it announced? They discovered it in 2003. >> Uh, September 2003, announced October 2004. So, >> so for people that don't know what we're talking about is the supposed hobbit people from the island of Flores.
0:45A very small tiny uh it's in the homo genus, right? So, it's a relative of human beings. That's what they That's a little fella right there. >> Uh, fair enough. Yeah, quite quite good. >> What is fascinating about your work is that you were on that island quite a bit before that and you were investigating the possibility of this existing a long time before that.
1:14>> Yeah. No, that's correct. I first began uh field research on on Flores as an anthropologist, a cultural anthropologist in uh 1984. Um I was interested in the people and the culture and the languages generally. Um but quite early in my stay in fact in 1984 during my first visit I heard about um these small uh homoid humanlike uh creatures uh which were known locally.
1:45Um actually at that time I was working right in the central part of the island place called Nag. Uh and the Nag people according to the Nag people um there were a group of these used to live close by in a in a cave high up on a nearby volcano. Um but they had become extinct about two 300 years uh previously.
2:05So in that particular area that particular part of Flores they weren't supposed to be around anymore. But then subsequent to um that visit um I I I began to hear about uh similar creatures uh further to the east in a place called Leo. Um and those are the ones I write about in in uh in the book. >> Yeah.
2:32In the book you discuss two distinct at least possible different >> species. Yeah. One of them being homo feresiansis and the other one being this the one from Leo. >> No. Uh well um in a way you could say that. I mean there's homo floriziansis um which lived on the island of Flores for a long time and must have lived in places other than the single discovery site.
2:59Um but and and then there are the claims, the descriptions uh offered by Leo people uh about creatures they say are still around, rare but but still present in their territory and which some people claim to have seen and and have given you quite quite vivid description of and and and they they seem very very similar.
Liang Bua Cave Discovery
3:22If I if I may just expand a bit, um >> the um there has been discovered after a deliberate uh uh search by paleo anthropologists, if you'll appreciate that distinction, um in uh also in the central part of of Flores, um in fact, in in a a place where decades ago there were discovered uh stodons, kind of primitive elephant uh bones in in in large numbers, it was assumed and and there was evidence that something had if not killed these things.
3:57These stoodons had had at least uh um eaten them eaten their uh their their carcasses. Uh a very long intensive study was done in what uh the n 20 was it the 2000s uh into the 201s. um looking for um some kind of of human some kind of homminid remains. And finally after you know a concentrated effort they they found um pieces of jaw uh pieces oh right teeth um that belong to something far older than floriziansis going back about 700,000 years ago and contemporaneous with what were taken to be stone tools
4:48which is what kind of set them in motion in the first uh place um w- which were even smaller than Floriziansis. So, and it is yeah kind of presumed that that these are possible ancestors of Floriziansis. Um, again, you know, going back uh further hundreds of thousands of years, 700 thou 600 700,000 something in that.
5:14>> Wow. >> Yeah. But there's also stone tool evidence or or stones taken to be possible tools. Um that uh takes us back even further to like a million years ago, maybe even even earlier. I mean, there's still a big mystery as to how these things ever got on the island, >> right? >> Yeah. >> And is the are these stone tools clearly formed like an arrowhead or a spearhead or are they ambiguous?
5:42>> There some of them, you know, this is not my area. I should confess straight away but um some of them are ambiguous. There have been different interpretations um some authorities in in you know pale anthropology archaeology would uh would suggest that they're uh they're not artifacts at all as they're not things that have been made by any uh any uh homminin.
6:09>> So here's uh Jamie pulled up some examples from Indonesia. >> Yeah. And this is uh some potential tools that they believe homo floricensis. >> Yeah. >> Used. And you can see they they are tool like but it's it's a little >> Yeah, >> it's a little odd. >> It's hard to say. Could be just flakes of >> chips of stone.
Stone Tools and Komodo Dragons
6:30Well, to mention right away there is that there was some overlap between Floriziansus and ourselves um homo sapiens >> uh and it it is a well-known generalization uh certainly in that part of the world that you can't distinguish species on the basis of stone tool industries as they're called. Um, in other words, you need skeletal evidence in close association with anything that is a stone tool or might be to say what species probably made these things.
7:06So, yeah, none of none of these can we securely attribute to Homoziensus. It it's there's been some fascinating um recent studies actually uh on uh steodon bones um close to the um location of the discovery site. >> Is that a pygmy elephant? Is that a small elephant? >> Yeah, those would have been the ones that they they prayed on or scavenged.
7:36>> Yeah, pygmy uh a pygmy stood on um but size of a cow. So if you can think of an elephant the size of a cow >> um still pretty formidable if you're only three feet three and a half ft tall >> or four. Yeah. H but uh then again I mean the the the recent interpretations analyses suggested that uh um these uh godons um which may have been consumed by floriziansis were killed not by florizens not hunted by uh floriziansis but instead were killed by komodo dragons >> which is is the um the world's largest
8:18lizard um growing up growing yeah to uh 10 feet long [laughter] and and um a formidable formidable animal. Uh venom glands, >> um you know, terrifically sharp teeth and a deadly tail. >> So, they were probably scavenging or potentially scavenging what was left. >> That's the idea. And anything that could be taken for a cut, well, the bones that have been studied, um they show marks, but mostly from dragon's teeth.
8:48Komodo dragon teeth. >> Mhm. >> Um or Komodo monitor teeth to uh use another another name. Those that don't look like um Komodo dragon teeth marks have been uh interpreted as yeah possible stone tool marks used by Floriziansis but but merely to to scrape meat off the bones, not not to kill the animal.
Humans on Flores Timeline
9:19But were there humans living on the island of Flores at the same time? >> If I'm not mistaken, um, well, when Floresensus was was discovered, the the the oldest date for Homo sapiens on the island was 11,000 years ago. >> Oh, wow. >> Um, and whereas now I think that's been pushed back to to 50,000 or so.
9:38Soap, right? So this overlap, is it possible that it was humans that were predating on these pygmy elephants? >> That's certainly possible. Yeah. Um >> which would would leave uh Yeah. Although if again if I've got this right and if I'm up to date on this, I I'm not sure that there are clear evidence there's clear evidence from bones that uh um the um any of the elephants were killed by homo homo sapiens, >> right?
10:16Like spear marks when you're butchering that. That's that sort of is the big Yeah. So it's more like something smaller and smaller tools just scraping meat away. >> Yeah. >> Which would indicate the little animals. So the date of the actual uh the the group that they found that was in that cave >> was it was it 50,000 60,000 years old?
10:42How how old were they? >> That's well of course initially it was uh it was reckoned they're only 12 13,000 years old. That the youngest, >> right? Right. Right. >> But that was a big problem for the paleos. >> That was a big problem. >> They said so as well. >> Well, it would be a real big problem if they found a live one today.
11:00>> Well, yeah. No, that uh that you're you're certainly um you're certainly correct there. Although one of the um senior investigators uh the original find um said memorably that um that that that just the discovery of of something like homopensis at uh uh you know 12 13,000 years ago or even a bit older uh would was more surprising.
11:27It was a kind of gobsmacking uh than would be he said uh the the discovery of a space alien. So that that just shows you how out of the blue this this paleontological discovery was. >> Well, it is pretty crazy that this myth has gone on for so long all over the world or or all over that part of the world, I should say.
11:50Like the Orurang Pend >> right that one's what is that Vietnam or is that >> Orang Pend is in um Malaysia? >> Southern Sumatra. >> Sumatra. >> So very close to Malaysia. Yeah. And it's a very similar description. >> Um yeah, on the whole I I would say so I've written a bit about that as well. But uh um the the the the difference I guess well a couple of differences with uh florizensis is that um with florizensis we uh we have fossil evidence for something that could have survived until much more recently was uh
12:32>> in um in Somatra that the the fossil evidence for orang is is not there. Um and um also of course on somatra you have all kinds of primates that could be shall we say mistaken or taken for a very small human. Um orangutans for one thing. >> Um >> but Flores does not. >> Flores has only one species of monkey and no apes.
12:59Uh, and the monkey, a macac, a longtail macac, um, was introduced by humans thousands just a few thousands of years ago. So, no, no native apes, no no native monkeys either. >> So, these people when you first went in the 1980s, um, how frequent were their sightings and were they in a very specific area?
Lio Ape Men Sightings
13:23Yeah. >> And what what did they say the en encounters were like? Well, the the the sightings have been entirely or nearly entirely in uh in the Leo region towards the eastern end of the uh of the um of the island. um uh mostly in in high altitudes, mountainous areas, mountain mountain forest. Uh and and that's, you know, well away from uh human settlements for for the most uh most part.
13:58Uh how frequently? It's it's difficult to say. I mean, I um I I I recorded over 30 um reports of encounters. Um, some of them not terribly credible. Um, others, um, you know, a dozen or so much more interesting. >> Can I ask you this? When you say not entirely credible, were there aspects of it that seemed like mythological?
14:23Like what what what was not entirely credible? not necessarily mythological, but um um sound like they they could well have been identifying monkeys seen in and another well one one reason for that was what they described. Um, another reason was that uh a lot of those less credible ones were um in circumstances when you wouldn't expect a human to uh encounter anything like floresians um and and largely close to the coast uh where where most most people live and and have have lived for for a long time
15:06whereas uh um yeah all indications are that um the Lihaho as they're called the ical hormonoids um are much higher up in in unsettled parts of the mountains. >> So that would indicate that there's a food supply for them up there. >> Yeah. >> And um are they primarily vegetarian? >> They seem to be um very much uh very much so.
15:32Yeah. Uh I mean the dentition on on the uh type uh um specimen the the the skull the teeth um suggests u um a vegetarian herbivore I if you if you will um the best specimen um the type specimen as it's called uh doesn't really show any definite uh canines. mers are fine. Um, in in great shape, by the way, for the for the age um but but uh yeah, so not to say they didn't have pronounced uh um canines as do chimpes, for example, even though chimpanzees are also largely um vegetarian.
16:22>> Largely, but they apparently prefer to eat monkeys. >> Oh yeah. No, that's well like humans. I mean [laughter] humans uh during most of our history have of necessity eaten you know grains and and vegetables and so on because they couldn't afford the meat but um nevertheless meat has uh has usually been a prized a prized food.
16:47>> Yeah. Well, we're we're clearly omnivores, >> right? But um if you were a a creature that lived in this mountainous terrain, there's probably not a wide variety of mammals, right? Like so. And if they didn't really have weapons, if they had very small stone tools there, there's seems to be no indication they have anything they could throw or anything along those lines.
17:14>> They could they could throw stones, throw rocks. Um they're pretty >> good luck being successful at killing a deer throwing rocks. It'll take you a long time to get one. >> Deer are also a recent import. >> Oh, is it? >> In fact, flores is is mammal poor. The only indigenous native mammals are bats as you would expect because they can fly freely, >> right, >> to the island and uh and and rodents.
17:41>> So, what are the dragons eating? The dragons were huge. >> Well, it's interesting because at one time they're eating the godons certainly. >> You think they made them extinct perhaps because it's a small island? >> Well, they they could have contributed to that. Yeah. Along with other uh other factors, but um besides um besides dragons, there are other uh >> uh large rats.
18:08Um >> Oh, that's right. That one very aggressive tree rat right >> now. That that guy is still around as I know photos of Yeah, >> that thing's huge, right? >> It is a huge rat. >> Couple feet long. >> It's uh at least I think in terms of of of uh um metrics. So uh um yeah. >> Oh, that's what it looks like.
18:30>> Oh, there he is. >> Look at the size of that sucker. >> Yeah. No, that's that's great. Most mostly or largely tail as a lot of animals, but but it is big as you can see. It's a um >> that lady looks like she's got one as a pet. >> Yeah. I'm not sure if that's the same creature. I don't think it is.
18:46>> Oh, okay. >> Um but um yeah, now that looks uh more like it. Yeah. Yeah. >> This episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog, which is exactly what I feed my own dogs. And you know why? It's real food that can make a real difference in their long-term health. And it's totally backed by science. Every meal is developed by boardcertified nutritionists, made to human-grade safety standards, and is backed by published research that shows it supports healthy aging, and my dogs
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19:41Plus, you can now add their humanra crunchy biscuit treats to any plan. Try them today. >> Papa go. >> But if you're a 10- foot long poisonous lizard, it's going to be hard to sustain that mass just on rats >> unless they're overpop populated with rats. Well, I I got to say that that once um you know extinction dates for me stagodon or any stigodon uh well I can't recall the current figures but uh you can always changing by um but um as soon as as you had humans uh on the island you uh
20:22um you had pigs and dogs um and some of the pigs quite quickly I think became feral which wild. >> Yes. >> Um so and and yeah and and and then you know deer at one point were were introduced by humans. So certainly deer and pigs uh and and not to mention domesticates like uh goats uh even you know young uh buffalo and oysters are prey to dragons at present.
20:49So uh >> in a sense it could be homo sapiens that's that's kept that creature >> interesting >> alive. Yeah. So they could have wiped out the pygmy elephants and then we could have probably maybe come in at a very opportune time with a bunch of domesticated animals, pigs, dogs >> and then they started eating those.
21:12>> I should say also the little ape men the the Leo for example describe uh uh also reputed occasionally to steal uh chickens or you very small piglets. >> Yeah. Um, so yeah, not to deny that they they wouldn't eat meat if they could get it. So, uh, >> so when you went there and was it 84 was the first time you went?
21:35>> That was the first time. But, uh, you know, I kept going back sometimes every year. Uh, >> but when you first went, did you go looking for this specific creature? >> No. No. I I went because there are parts of Flores, including Nag country, right in the center where I first uh >> pull that microphone up.
21:55Research. Sorry. >> It's okay. You It moves around a little bit. You can stay right where you're sitting. >> No, no, that's uh that that's fine. >> Um no. Um they the reason I went was to uh visit the people and find out how they lived and what they believed in and uh because they were kind of blank on the on the uh cultural anthropological map.
22:17M >> um and it was just incidentally you know uh by accident you might say >> and were these people what kind of life are they living a subsistence lifestyle? Are they hunter gatherers? Are they >> certainly in the 1980s? Yeah. They they were still largely subsistence um cultivators um small farmers who who would feed themselves from what they grew.
Early Folklore and Augo Stories
22:42Also hunters. However, the men uh very much value hunting uh although not a lot of their uh food supply comes from that uh that activity. >> And are they hunting animals that have been introduced like the deer species and pigs? >> Deer and pigs are the two uh the two um prized types most valued types of game.
23:05But they'll also kill uh monkeys, uh wild cats, feral cats, um >> feral house cats. >> Yeah. Well, that sounds like what they are. I don't think I don't think there's any indigenous uh Yeah. >> But um although some people in the past have thought they were >> uh including Alfred Wallace, who you may you may know.
23:26>> Sure. >> Um but um yeah, but also things like well the giant tree rats that that you mentioned, >> they hunt those. >> They hunt those. Um I have um said um in one or two places by the way that uh it's rather unlikely that uh Fizensus would have been uh able to hunt the the tree rats because they're very difficult to hunt.
23:52They're vicious as hell. >> Really? >> Yeah. So you need uh you need well from what I'm told what I am told often was told often by the nagi for example uh is is that you need uh you know more than one person dogs. You need dogs. >> You need dogs. >> You need a kind of a prod to knock them out of the tree and and so on.
24:14So it's no and and it's often reported that people are injured from from the teeth of these damn things dropping down from uh trees. Well, you saw how big it was. So, yeah. >> Well, that's a great meal, though, if you're a 3-ft tall humanlike creature and you eat a twoft rat. >> Yeah, >> it's a that's a good catch.
24:35>> Yeah. Mind you, at the same time, um let's talk about fizens um would possibly have been able to uh um to catch uh smaller rodents um nation. Yeah. >> Sure. So when you first went there, what was the first story that you heard about these little hairy people that live in the woods? >> Yeah. Um the first story I heard in the Nag region that I' I've mentioned was uh it's a kind of local legend about how they uh they were wiped out by um you know the ancestors of the uh the the the
25:16nag and um it it's a story that whatever the basis in fact I was clearly uh been um >> embished >> been embellished embroidered yeah you get you know narrative themes entering >> uh including two escaping think the extermination and this is an old plot line and you know moving to another territory where they sister and brother it's usually said where they incestously managed to uh you know maintain their their species but um yeah that that that was the the first uh first story I mean according to that one
25:54these were creatures called augo is a term you may have uh come across um they were in their habit It said of uh they lived in a cave high on the mountain, but they were in their habit of coming down a bit uh a bit lower down slope uh and joining in feasts and dancing of uh of of villagers. Uh and they were they were given food um by uh by by their reluctant hosts.
26:19Um but they did odd things like yeah they would certainly eat the food but then they they start biting into the uh the plates [laughter] which were were made of um well made of traditionally made of uh sort of pumpkin uh skin dried pumpkin skin. So yeah you can break them with your teeth so sure that a human could eat them or want to um but then >> so they were just confused as to where the food ended.
26:49Well, this is the idea there represent that particular um category of creature augo always uh interpreted as or represented as being stupid, >> right? >> Yeah. Very stupid. So, they couldn't tell the difference between food and a plate. Um they were made drunk. They given copious amounts of uh palm wine, palm gin.
27:12Uh and then of course eventually they wanted to uh go back to their cave to sleep it off. And what was the timeline for these supposed interactions? >> Well, as so far as one can tell from local, you know, genealogies, family histories, that sort of thing. >> Yeah. We'd be talking at least 200, 300 years ago.
27:31>> So, this was like folklore or at least like legend that they would tell the stories of these people. And so, this was the first story that you heard of these creatures? >> That was the that was the first uh the first one. Yeah. And there are other stories, you know, told soon thereafter. >> So, this was the first one where you were explained that at least at one point in time there was supposedly a small hairy humanlike creature that lived on the island.
28:00>> Yeah. Yeah. That that that's exactly right. Um Yeah. I people very insistent uh the the storytellers very existent insistent that these things weren't like forest spirits or anything. They really were. >> It was an actual animal. It was natural animal. Exactly. >> And [snorts] when did you talk to someone that had had an encounter?
Flores Terrain and Access
28:20>> That was um first of all that was uh when I um visited the Leo the Leo region >> um which is the main topic of the the book as I said. Yeah. And that that was in the early 2000 2001 2003. What was it? So, you had been you'd had this in your mind for a couple of decades at that point. >> So, yeah. So, what was it like to hear that there was a possibility that these things were still on and if people haven't seen the island of Flores before, it's incredibly dense, mountainous,
28:58>> very difficult to get to. There's not like a real like is there a road structure that allows you to get from one side of the island to the other? There there's the Dutch um colonials back in the What? >> Is it a coastal road or is it just go through the middle? >> It it goes wherever it can goes because it's so mountainous.
29:15It's virtually no straight stretches, >> right? >> So, it kind of snakes all over the place. A lot of it goes through the um yeah, a lot of it along the coast, but but um other parts in uh more central areas. >> J, can you see if we get get a photo? I'm looking at the map. I'm trying to find the road like located.
29:36>> Well, it's insanely dense jungle. [clears throat] >> So, this is what we're looking at is just a 3D topographical. >> Okay. Yeah. >> I mean, we're looking at uh it from above and this if you get a photograph of what it looks like cuz I've seen some drone photos of the island that are really spectacular because you know they're above the tree line and you go, "Okay, anything could be out there."
29:59It's just it's like parts of the Amazon >> where you look at it and you go well this is just >> certainly higher higher elevations. >> Yeah. Just incredibly dense and people are not regularly traveling to this area. Certainly not you know uh westerners who are there exploring and doing anthropological work.
30:19They're not >> few few tourists these days but uh >> yeah. Okay. So this is a good representation. It's just incredibly dense, mountainous, beautiful, but wildly, you know, un unchart uncharted necessarily because we have actually know where it where everything is, but people aren't going and making an audit of all the different animals that are there.
30:46So, it is possible that something could if you looked at it, you like, well, maybe. Well, I yeah, I mean there there have been studies by zoologologists of uh um you know certain certain parts of the the local uh wildlife, local animal life, but um yeah, none explicitly in search of of something like Floriziansis or or the Leo ape men as I call them.
31:12So, when you first uh had an encount someone explain to you an encounter, how far was that from the actual discovery of the bones? Cuz you you had the the conversations with people that were telling you that they had encountered one prior to them discovering these bones. Correct. >> Yeah. Prior certainly prior.
31:36Not very long before, a couple of months. Um but certainly yeah well over a year before uh that the Florizensus discovery was announced uh in the in the media including the you know scientific press. >> That must have been incredibly exciting to hear these stories and go wow I've been I've been talking to people about these things for 20 years now and now this guy tells me he saw one and then a couple of months later they're finding bones.
32:06You had to be like wow this is a real >> I was I was quite staggered. Yeah. I actually I find it kind of hot in here. Can I take my jacket off? >> Yeah, absolutely. Of course. >> Yeah, take your jacket off. So, as we were saying, um, you had this encounter with someone who explained they had seen one in the flesh and then just a few months later, they find these bones.
32:29That had to be incredibly exciting because you had in especially in the early when they were saying it might potentially only be 10,000 plus years old. >> Yeah. No, I I um yeah, I felt extremely lucky, >> right? >> Uh and I mean, if you know, I'd first heard about these things a year or two later, I uh well, I I probably wouldn't have written the book.
32:52And I I um I I I wouldn't have, you know, taken it much further. I I would have thought well you know there is a possibility however slim that uh somebody's seen a reconstruction of Floriziansis in you know um a newspaper or or on on television um but uh no um yeah so so so I was fortunate I one thing I subsequently discovered is that uh the name Laura uh is in fact recorded in um a Leo language dictionary, Leo German as me, uh, which was, uh, research for that went on in the 1920s
33:36and not long after the establishment of, um, a [snorts] Dutch colonial administration written by a German missionary. >> Uh, and it finally published in uh, was published in in 1933. And there were mentions of Lihore and and and some of the information which came from sample sentences, right? Uh of the language uh were consistent with uh with um you know what what people generally were telling me about the the Leo Leo 8 men.
34:06So that was another >> um another [clears throat] strong indication that that the whole notion of these uh these creatures hadn't come from the uh the fossil discovery. >> Was there any encounters or descriptions from missionaries from ancient missionaries that had visited? >> No, not not that I've been able to discover and I've looked for that kind of thing obviously but uh No.
34:35>> So they had only documented stories. >> Yeah. It's quite remarkable. I um the man I knew for quite a long time, a Dutchman uh in in the Nag region, a missionary, Catholic missionary who'd been there for for ages. Um and and he'd never heard of um the the Obugo, which are the Nag um eight men um and and which you know stories about these like the ones I just described are pretty widely known um in in in the region uh near the village where whose inhabitants were supposed to have wiped them out uh
35:16hundreds of years ago. But the missionary never he never heard it. I I was I was surprised and I'm sure he was being honest. >> Now, when you first got the initial uh report from someone that had encountered one of these in real life, Yeah. >> did you then start looking for other stories from other people >> to get more confirmation?
Accumulating Eyewitness Reports
35:40>> I I I did um but I um I um not not so much in that particular year. That was, as I said, summer 2003. >> Um, and um, yeah, cuz I had to return to Canada. I think it was in the June and I had to return in the July or early August, something like that. So, I didn't have a lot of time um, in that year.
36:04But I I I after the after hearing about Fizens, of course, I did uh um I did initiate a new project which enable gave me funds to uh to go back and um yeah, I talk about a bunch of things, not not just the uh the homoids. Um but but certainly to pay much more attention to to Leo, the Leo region uh and to these creatures than than I'd done uh um previously.
36:33And how many reports of encounters had you had like how many different people? >> I interviewed um well to answer your question somewhere in the 30s 32 I think. >> Wow. Um but I I talked to more people than that just about you know um the these these uh homoids in general what they'd heard from their parents or you know from whoa uh to to get you know a good idea of of the kind of local knowledge there was about uh about them and and so in total um yeah well over 120 130 people I think I
37:14talked to in all >> that had had encounters No, no, that knew something about knew what a lie was. >> But if you talked to 120 people and 30 of them had encounters, that seems like a lot. >> I guess it does. Yeah. But then there were a lot of people besides who um who, you know, knew virtually nothing about Ali or they didn't want to talk to me or or they were scared or whatever.
37:38>> Right. Right. Right. [laughter] >> Now, did they all have similar descriptions? >> Yeah. I I um I mean one thing I I show in my analysis uh and it's been four years now so um I think I got this right is that the the the sightings of both the clearest most detailed in other words most most credible um sighting reports um seemed see seem more more accurate uh uh more in line with the standard image of ape men.
38:15uh than you know uh others and even as I said even among the um the sighting reports there were some that I I was inclined to dismiss as being you know mistaken monkeys or >> Right. Yeah. >> Right. So so at least a few of them possibly could have been this actual creature. >> Yeah. >> If they're being honest.
38:35>> That's right. And and it just takes one out of 30 odd or >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you have that many and and also you have bones and then also how you have a history of these things. >> Uh it's just what would be required to comb the forest to try to find these things? Have you ever thought about like what kind of resources would be required?
Searching for the Creatures
39:00How many people would be involved? camera traps like various technologies that you could use to potentially sort find these things. >> Yeah. Um not so much forest although forests included but but you know higher slopes of uh of mountains of which there are many in certainly in Leo territory and you know neighboring uh districts as well.
39:25Um you'd need people who are young and fit >> and quite a few of them. >> Yeah. You'd need Yeah, you'd need different sorts of uh expertise. Um I mean certainly people who could handle the the terrain. Uh maybe also people who well primatologist shall we say. Um people uh specializing in in the study of of apes and monkeys.
39:52Um that that would be uh helpful. um zoologologists uh working in that uh in that area as well. Uh you mentioned, you know, camera traps. That that would be a good idea. In fact, I um I I [snorts] I'm working, I think you could say, uh at present with a man in um in the Netherlands who is very keen on doing the sort of thing you've just uh you've just described.
40:25and he has visited one uh area in particular and there's a story about that but I won't backtrack just yet. Um he has uh yeah visited one one volcano um and and placed uh traps, taken lots of photos and so on. He wasn't there for very long. he wants to go back um I think late next year um but but with a a team uh and he's asked me to investigate um people with experience of of you know rugged uh country and and and uh and that kind of uh search in fact he uh he even recommended I talked to you about
41:10it but I don't know if well not you but maybe somebody in in your somebody you could uh you could recommend And but in the >> some explorer type >> Yeah. But in in the meantime, um quite recently, in fact, I've been asked for an interview by uh Les Straoud, who uh >> Sure. Survivor Man. >> You made it.
41:30Yeah, exactly. Who >> Well, he's a big believer in Bigfoot. >> Well, yes, [laughter] but I um Yeah. So, I'm expecting him uh on Friday the 13th, actually. So, just >> in what 9 10 days time. Um and um I I think he would be the kind of person to consult on that that >> Well, he could live up there for a few months by himself.
41:53>> Yeah. Well, maybe I can get him interested. >> Yeah. He would figure out like with that would be a great idea for a series because, you know, he's done quite a few episodes looking for Bigfoot to no avail. Shocking. >> Yeah. >> Never found it. Uh but this would be, I think, probably more likely than finding Bigfoot.
42:10First of all, it's an island. It's not just an entire like coastline. Like if you're in the Pacific Northwest or wherever you're searching for Bigfoot. >> Yeah. >> And the other thing being that, you know, a guy like Les um going solo cuz he does everything solo with he doesn't bring a big camera crew be a smaller footprint.
42:31>> Probably less likely to make a lot of noise and disturb things. >> Yeah, that's a good uh good feature. >> Yeah. And if he found something boy, that would be exciting. That would be one of the most exciting things that's ever happened in all of anthropology. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, in indeed. Uh so, and I think, you know, I'm I'm not a firm believer in in anything really, you might say.
43:00>> Good for you. But I was a bit skeptical. But but the evidence in this case, I mean the the coincidence that we were talking about uh a minute ago between the discovery, the re reconstruction of of Florizians and and uh what what Leo people and others were describing to me um you know uh the the the match >> right >> is so remarkable that uh you know unless there's been some huge well-hidden conspiracy um designed entirely to fool little old me.
43:36[laughter] I just can't imagine it. Um well, you know, coincidences do happen, including remarkable ones. So, so maybe that's it. But even so, I uh I I I think um yeah, it's it's worth for further explan exploration. I mean back in 2005 when when I began to look at uh the Li um homoids in earnest I was already uh approaching 60 years.
44:02I've never been particularly athletic. Um and you know by the time I left uh left off this piece of research back in 2018 um yeah I was already uh in my 70s. So, you know, and and well, you've seen the country. I mean, there's no way I'm going to be scrambling up a mountain uh mountain side. >> Dangerous, too.
44:28>> Yeah. I won't go into the particulars of my uh present physical condition, but I I you know, it's it's uh uh it's a bit of a challenge going anywhere uh these days, I must confess. So yeah, no the research is is worth while not not you know guaranteeing success of uh of any sort but >> now what about potential use of technology?
44:52Are they going to use drones or anything along those lines? Because they've gotten incredibly good. >> That's right. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Well, um yeah. No, I this is on the sort of bucket list for this colleague of mine. uh a young guy um uh financially successful uh who has you know the time to uh to do this uh kind of thing.
45:16Um yeah I I think drones are certainly on the uh certainly on the list. Um so yeah that that those would come into uh into play as well. Yeah. And so how much of uh the area where they find them? How much of a piece of land are we talking about? What is the square kilometers? >> The Leo region. Can I just grab a I'm getting very dry here.
45:48>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's water in there. That glass right there. And there's coffee in here if you'd like some coffee. >> That's great. Um, how big is the area where I mean is is it centrally located where they they keep finding these same is the sightings? Is it all in the same particular area or is it spread out?
46:09>> Yeah. Well, I've worked mostly mostly in a place called uh east east uh Leo. Um but uh there's no clear indication of the bounds of of uh of of knowledge of of this kind of uh this kind of creature. So they go yeah to the east and to the west. >> They're just mostly avoiding people. >> The the Yeah.
46:34Well, certainly the the the creatures are, but um you know the fact is that that uh different people their knowledge of local wild animals is is uh is different from you know maybe their neighbors or people at another end of uh of the island. Um there is uh in um [snorts] [clears throat] western Indonesia in Somatra um possibly on parts of the Melee Peninsula close by as well there is a kind of wild rabbit or hair not the kind of place where you'd expect to find rabbits or hairs perhaps but um this this animal
47:21was um unknown to to most of the local people. It was uh it was discovered by by western many Dutch I think naturalists and uh you know given a scientific name and all that kind of stuff. Local people didn't have a a local name for it. Um interesting. >> Yeah. And in fact, it's now known mostly and so far as people are aware of it, uh with the the national Indonesian name uh Kinci, which refers to rabbits that that were imported by the Dutch uh as food a couple of centuries ago.
47:53Um so >> is that they think the source of these particular wild rabbits on the island? >> No. This would be quite a separate species. >> Okay. >> That they would be indigenous. Yeah. But again, um, local people or lots of local groups didn't didn't know about them. Reasonable. They're forest dwelling and, um, they're, you know, quite, uh, quite quite quite rare.
Recent British Hikers' Encounter
48:19>> So, no, no, no great surprise. But um if I may, something that I um was going to say with regard to uh my my friend uh who um plans to go back to to Flores um with with an expanded search um he became very interested in this particular locality uh particular mountain in fact um because of reports I received out of the blue um about three years ago from two um two British visitors um hikers, outdoorsmen, taking a break on Flores um and um doing scuba diving and and hiking, bit of
49:05mountain climbing, this kind of thing. Um they um I have to think about the details of this because it was uh yeah like three years back they finally found their name uh my name I should say after doing um one of them in particular found my name after doing an internet search [sighs] um concerning uh apes and monkeys on on Flor's Island and they came across my name in connection with the creature a central flores creature called uh Obugo.
49:41And um one of them um yeah he he wrote to me. He he contacted me first of all across LinkedIn uh and asked me about monkeys uh on the island and I I told him and um he described to me what he and his friend both of them at the same time had seen uh on the higher slopes of this particular mountain and uh he said I think in his first communication that it sounds like you're a bugo.
50:15Um, so naturally I I followed this up and and had some more conversations uh by phone and email with uh with these two young men and um there's nothing they told me to to kind of disabuse me of of that uh of that um possibility. Now, I should stress that I can't go into all the details or the circumstances of our communications, but uh all indications are that they'd never heard of my writings or never read my writings uh on, you know, Floresmen before.
50:49>> So, they just had an encounter and >> they had an encounter. They thought it was Yeah. some kind Well, it's interesting because I I I managed to interview them subsequently uh separately, which was a good thing. And one of them um that the main contact described um described what he saw as something very much like a Leo ape man, you know, a a little man, a little human, but you know, monkeyike.
51:16>> Bipedal. >> Bipedal. Yes, that was his impression. The other man described it as looking more like a um you know um another sort of primate. In fact, he described it as as a monkey, but a very big one, an unusually big one. >> Um, and um, it's interesting because those two uh opinions, those two interpretations very much align with the range of descriptions that I recorded from local people.
51:43Um, you know, some descriptions had it more monkeyike, others more humanlike. Of course, naturally there were variations in uh the estimated size of what uh >> what's the highest? >> The highest comes from a secondhand report of a um and that would have been about 1.4 m which is uh is yeah bigger than uh it's getting getting on there getting four feet.
52:15Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. You're right. So this encounter that these gentlemen had this was only 3 years ago. Well, actually the encounter was in 2019 in March >> and uh you know they hadn't followed this. They hadn't thought about it and then for some reason they they met this is it I think they were separated for some time these two guys uh and they met and uh you know over a drink um started to reminisce about their visit to Flores and how they'd like to go back and uh one said to the other well you know God
52:51do you remember that huge monkey we saw um and and uh you know we're not to discuss that and and then one of um he uh yeah he he he he took some time to kind of follow this up by looking for information on the internet and it was that way that he finally came across >> my name and and uh and contact details.
53:17So um >> so is that one of the only westerners or at least groups of westerners that spotted these things? This episode is brought to you by the movie Ghost Soldier. Jim Cavisel plays Fitz, a former American special forces soldier and advanced weapons developer. As a military veteran, Fitz has a strong code of justice and a natural instinct to protect a vulnerable community from a powerful corporation.
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54:16Ghost Soldier is a fun action film that demands to be seen in theaters which opens nationwide on Veterans Day, November 11, rated PG-13. Um there are two of them of course. Um >> no not uh not quite. I might mention 2019 was well before the 22 book came out. So you know that's >> a factor as well. Um no not the only two uh that there was um [snorts] there was a man uh not western but Asian.
54:52And I won't give any more details of that because he didn't want me to mention this in the book. Um, but he came across something in [snorts] the dark uh trekking back towards UPS slope uh a village he was staying in. He got a bit lost actually and managed to find his way and he saw something which uh which was described certainly interpreted by local people as having been uh one of these uh one of these ape men that that would go back to [snorts] I guess yeah the last century 1990s
55:27maybe. Um but as person I know quite well. Um but but also um uh well somebody who became a friend of mine um sadly passed away a few years ago was working on the neighboring island. He was an anthropologist. Um he was working on the neighboring island called Sambawa uh which is immediately east of Florida.
55:55Another big island, lots of mountains and uh and so on. uh and he had a similar sighting back in the uh similar experience I should say back in the uh the 1980s and and was you know very uh very open about the whole thing and uh gave me detailed descriptions on more than one uh more than one occasion.
56:18Um, now that he did allow me to mention in uh in the book, in fact, in more than one one book. >> And he did he described the same type of creature, the same type of experience, >> a big monkey standing upright, no tail, about three feet or more tall. Um yeah, there was more than one of them that he saw that the end of a a kind of a um a grown o over area sort of sort of a tunnel that had been created by vegetation.
56:50He was trekking through through jungle. Um and uh he came across these things and he turned back actually he wanted to um find there was a a a site um with certain stone monuments that he'd uh he'd heard about and uh you know villagers down below had had sort of pointed him in the right right direction and he he followed the uh the trail they they had indicated and he he was still in his 20s at this time.
57:18was in pretty good shape. And um then then he came to this this area um which uh was grown over uh grown over to the extent that it he he had to uh go on all fours to to continue >> oh wow >> continue climbing. And it was at the end of this this tunnel where there was just some light of course sunny day um where he saw several of these uh the the these creatures um mostly kind of silhouettes you know given the lighting conditions.
57:53Um they they made sounds uh which were unlike local monkeys. Um and uh there you have it. Yeah, he he u wrote it up in his field notes which he showed meow >> much tidier than my field notes I can I can tell you and uh you know what what he'd written at that time accorded with what he told me um so again you know talk about florizensus I mean there's no reason that that species or something very much like it is not present wasn't at one time present wasn't also on uh on other islands around and about.
Fossil Record and Evolution
58:36Yeah. >> And this So his depiction of it was before you had ever had your first uh description of it given to you. >> Yeah. Um you can say that with one qualification. Um my first research in in Indonesia was done in the 1970s. >> Oh. >> Uh as a as a doctoral student. And you had never heard any of these stories then?
59:03Uh well I was on working on on the island of Sumba which is not the same as Flores as big island to the south not to be confused with Sumbaua but this is just Sumba and there there is a tradition of uh well something sounds more like the Sasquatch actually or the the Bigfoot >> um because yeah these are sort of you know half human half ape um standing on on two legs but they're much bigger than uh than well than us certainly much bigger than local people.
59:36So they're talking about you know two to three meters in uh in in in height. M >> um and I I must say I the evidence for them is not as good as for uh you know my my Flores ape men but so I'd heard about this also I I might mention that uh I did my first degree in Vancouver uh at Simon Fraser University my undergraduate degree at Simon Fraser uh in the yeah late60s and into the 70s and this was is a time when there was a lot of interest in in locally in British Columbia in in Bigfoot.
1:00:15Um it was also at that time, yeah, late60s, very late 60s that there was the film supposedly made in Northern California. Um >> Oh, the Patterson Gimlin footage. >> Patterson Gimley. Exactly. Yeah. >> Yeah. There's a new documentary out that kind of shows that that had been rehearsed. >> Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
1:00:38There's a lot of lot of suspicion. pre fake. >> Although at the time it's interesting, I know there were a number of uh or a few at any privatologists um and so on who who thought it uh thought it it it credible. Um but there's that film and then of course there's the phenomenon uh as a whole. But anyway, from from that kind of thing going on in the late 60s, early 70s, um I um yeah, I even became interested, well, I studying anthropology at the time, including uh you know, uh prehistory and and paleo
1:01:16anthropology and uh a lot of lot of talk about the possibility of this kind of thing. And uh yeah, I was so I was just studying human evolution and all the rest of it. And I so I became aware at that point that there were um there were reports of things still alive that that kind of looked like uh you know homoctus or some of these uh physically primitive forms of uh of homo of humans.
1:01:40Well, it's an incredibly fascinating idea. And we know from what we know about the fossil record, the fossil record's so incomplete because it's so difficult to make a fossil. >> So when we find new things like the Dennisovvens, which is very recent discovery, we go, "Oh, there's a totally different branch."
1:02:05Yeah. >> And they were larger than people. This is really interesting. So the we don't really know because it's so difficult to make a fossil and >> that that that's right in fact it's infantessimly infantessibly um remote a possibility of of a species just a whole species not just an individual animal being uh >> being um you know surviving being preserved being fossilized.
1:02:32That's why it's so crazy to try to get an understanding or a map of the past with fossils. >> Well, it's always changing. This is >> right. It's always changing. They find a new one, throws a monkey wrench into the whole thing. You're like, "Oh, well, oh, look at this." >> Yeah. >> Now, now we know there's this kind and now we know Homo Gulens and Homo, >> you know, there's got a whole series of them, the Dennisovvens.
1:02:58>> Yeah. No. and and you know um if we don't kill ourselves off in in the near future, it's likely there'll be more of these uh these discoveries. No, they're made, you know, quite by chance. The likelihood of of anybody finding these things is is remote. So the sample >> uh of of fossil hominsins is certainly not representative.
1:03:19I mean, it's really >> um h stackh. It seems to be constantly expanding our understanding of how many there were. >> Yeah. Well, because research continues. That that's that's why. Um but even so, there are lots of places where people could look and and uh yeah, we don't know with any species that that is declared extinct.
1:03:39We we don't know exactly when it uh when it when it died out. And we know the most recent date, >> right? Well, that's what's >> we know the earliest date when it came into being as well. We don't know. And when you find something that's 60,000 years old, like those bones that they found in the cave, >> the odds of those being the last ones that existed are very small.
1:04:02>> Very small. Um, yeah, that's way in the uh Oh, that's a question of yours I didn't answer. I think uh that way in the eastern uh sorry the western end of uh of Flores Island is is the discovery site whereas I working mostly in in towards the eastern end central or or east central uh Flores so quite a quite a distance away but uh no and and let's remember as well that the evidence suggests that what's called homooresensis survived uh for at least um at least at least 50,000 years, which is is quite a
1:04:41stretch of uh quite a stretch of time, >> especially when we don't really know how they got there. >> And we don't know how they got there. There is evidence for something much earlier at 7 700,000 years ago that could possibly be ancestral to Floriziansis. Now, in that space of time, the the notion that they restricted to one small neighborhood is just not uh is not credible.
1:05:01They must have been all over the uh all over the map of Flores. >> What is the evidence of the one that's 100,000 plus? >> Um the uh 700,000 plus see me. Oh, 700,000 or um Oh, sorry. The Florizianis there's a number of a number of specimens >> uh in Leang Bua cave. >> Um the most recent were initially reckoned to be 12 13,000.
1:05:28that date was push pushed back in a kind of interesting way to 50 or 60,000. >> Well, how was the push back? Was it radiocarbon dating? >> Uh various methods were apply. I I uh I I can't recall the the details but but yeah, I mean the point is uh Joe that um this 12,000 13,000 date was found to be a big problem.
1:05:53>> Sure. Uh and so uh a lot of energy was was put into uh retesting the geological situation in in in the cave. >> So is the current dating a certainty? >> No, nothing's a certainty. >> Right. So is it possible that it's earlier or it's newer rather? >> I I think I think it is. um was simply because we only know uh one one site um a site you know not not much bigger if any bigger than this building >> uh on an island of of that uh of that size.
1:06:29So, um it's interesting the follow-up research uh looking for ancestors to homoorizensus which turned up the um the 700,000 year old uh fossils. That was all focused on finding something older >> and where not something more recent or or younger. >> Is that Flores as well? >> On Flores also, but in the central part and a large plane.
1:06:57>> Well, that's even crazier, right? So, how did they get there 700,000 years ago? >> Uh, well, there is uh evidence in the form of possible stone tools uh let's just say stone tools that that something was making those uh those artifacts um yeah, you know, a million years ago. >> So, how did they get there?
1:07:17They they um [snorts] or or what did whatever it was that was living a million years ago look like? uh that it's reckoned that they well they wouldn't have had like uh sea craft there. No, no land bridges by the way that anybody knows about. So they would had to come somehow by sea. >> Lower sea level though.
1:07:38Correct. Particularly during the ice age. >> Uh lower sea levels but not not at you know not not a not a um a land bridge. I mean the stagodons swam over. >> Whoa. From how far away? Not that far. Probably from the east or the north. >> Maybe they rode the elephants. [laughter] >> Well, somebody somebody suggested that, but uh not not likely.
1:08:06>> You're in a boat and you see a bunch of weird looking monkey people riding elephants. >> Yeah. No, you would uh check your diet out. >> I'd definitely pull my iPhone out. >> Yeah. >> Take a video. >> Yeah. But it is possible for um creatures like the like floriansis apparently to um to to kind of sail over um accidentally uh on great clumps of uh of uh foliage.
1:08:36which I'm looking for a term now which I >> okay like driftwood like some sort of a log or something but how many miles >> clump of of earth that had been you know dug up by a tsunami and and driven out to sea there's evidence for this kind of thing uh happening. So uh yeah you would need of course more than one of them to get to Flores and they'd have to be opposite sexes as well and it's all possible given the time scale involved.
1:09:03Yeah, there's that's the thing that they do with um when they when they talk about human populations they find on these islands that are problematic in age when they get really really long ago before they thought people were sea traveling they go okay how many had to get out here in order to develop a population there so there's a mathematical equation to that right >> yeah yeah know for sure as as there are estimates of how many um you know members of a population you'd need for
1:09:31it to be able to survive I >> continue breed and so on. >> So if it's such a small island that it's not possible that they evolved there. >> Well, um I mean it suggests they did part of their evolution once on the island. Yeah. >> But they once on the island, but how did everything else get there? Like how did the dragons get there?
1:09:50How did the rats get there? Like what is >> what is uh what's the origin of all these various life forms? Because it's very diverse, right? >> Well, yeah. I mean, rats um seem to be able to get it everywhere. >> Yeah. >> Except Alberta, by the way. We have We have mice, but no rats. We're trying to keep them out as well with, you know, we have wolves and all kinds of things.
1:10:16>> Yeah. Black bears. >> Yeah. A lot of black bears. >> Yeah. No. Uh mountain lions, moose, all various members of the deer family. >> Huge deer, elk. You guys have everything up there. It's >> so-called antelopee as well. >> Yeah, it is a beautiful part of the world. >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. Of course, we got the two national parks which are full of uh protected wildlife.
1:10:36Yeah. >> But um >> Yeah. No, let me say about the dragons. They're so cool dragons. Komodo monitors. Great swimmers. >> Really? >> I mean, now they swim between between islands regularly. >> Yeah. So, they would have no problem getting there, >> right? So they probably just went wherever they smelled food.
1:10:57>> Yeah. >> They probably smelled something dead over there and just took a into the water. >> So all these various animals, the the elephants could swim, the dragons could swim, the rats could figure out a way to get there. Birds obviously they could fly. >> Yeah. Bats, lots of bats, they can fly. >> And the monkeys came on boats.
1:11:14>> No, the monkeys >> they were introduced >> were were introduced like a lot of other animals. I mean the the only mammals there uh you know sizable mammals of various species of uh of mice and rats and there's a giant rat. >> Um you've got uh what uh pigs >> right we talked about all this >> we talked about the things that are introduced by a lot of them were introduced by people.
1:11:37>> What year was this where they started getting introduced by people? >> It varies and it's controversial. I mean there's like dogs for example there's some evidence that suggested that they haven't then been there very very long several hundred to thousand years but there's uh it seems seems likely to me they've been there they've been there longer um pigs there is a book in which I've written about all this stuff but I can't remember now the details um anyway yeah you know they're um monkeys porcupines
1:12:10there porcupines that were introduced from >> Interesting. >> Western Yeah. And they're they're a game animal. >> Really? >> Yeah. >> Wow. >> Oh, for sure. Well, they're ultimately rodents like rats. So, if you're going to eat giant rats, >> yeah, >> a porcupine is certainly also on the menu. >> Interesting.
1:12:30>> But, uh, yeah. Um, you got to know how to cook them and butcher them properly. >> Yeah. And kill them without getting jabs. That that's again you need dogs for that and they have special special method well the dogs have to be clever >> uh if they're not going to get uh injured but >> I've seen pictures of dogs with porcupine quills all over their face.
1:12:52It's so sad. >> Yeah. Well, that can happen with tigers in India. >> I've seen that as well. Look at this poor dog. >> Oh. >> Oh, wow. >> Oh, this poor dude. >> Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. You should uh >> be able to produce those straight away. Um, so the point is it's uh there's a lot of wildlife and a lot of it came from somewhere else, including the monkeys.
1:13:15Um, and we have no idea if these little >> hobbit people. >> We don't have any idea when they got there or how they got there, but it's not just there. But isn't there some evidence or at least some stories of them from the Philippines as well? Yeah, there's a similar uh similar remains in uh ons island.
1:13:36Yeah. >> Oh, what how long ago was this discovered? [snorts] >> It was discovered after Florianis. >> Oh, so it's fairly recent. Yeah. >> Oh, >> yeah. Luzonensis. That's called Homo Luzonis. >> And it's a separate branch. It's a different animal. >> It's a different species. Yeah. >> Wow. Um but then there are uh not sure the present uh state of interpretation on this one but in uh in China as well in a place called Red Deer Cave there's evidence for uh for um small uh homoids
1:14:12uh living yeah same region as uh as Homo erectus uh which was a much bigger uh >> a bigger uh hominin um yeah and And then in Africa, you've got uh um again St. Florizens's discovery of a um a small uh species called Homo Naladi that goes back about 200,000 years. But that that apparent Yeah. small, >> but there's an they're an interesting one, right?
1:14:41Because they buried their dead. >> They Yeah. Yeah. Now that's that's right. They they had a kind of uh an unusually elaborate, you know, for their circumstances um symbolic uh culture evidently. >> Yes. >> Um Yeah. Nothing like that for Florizian >> and evidence of stone tool use too. Correct. >> Yeah, I believe so.
1:15:03Yeah. >> And so, weren't there the ones that had a specific area in a cave where they would deposit their bodies? >> Yeah. Yeah, that's right. >> Yeah. >> That's fascinating story. >> Really interesting stuff. because it makes you think like well what else did they have like how long ago and they were tiny right >> yeah well similar to uh flisian >> so there's evidence that this particular type of creature existed all over the world or at least in many parts of the world >> lots of Asia and and
1:15:34Africa with with nadi yeah of course the whole of the new world south and north America um there's no evidence there for uh uh any kind of um human or or or or primate except for South American monkeys. Um so um yeah, >> do we know if South American monkeys were indigenous or were >> they were they came from the old world originally?
1:16:01I can't remember exactly how. I mean this was I guess at a time when uh you know world geography was a bit different from >> so they were introduced as well. >> Yeah. Not by humans though, but they they managed to to get there and they're quite different in in many respects from old world >> monkeys.
1:16:18Um because well the main difference I guess is the uh prehensile tail. >> They can actually use the tail as they have or an extra >> extra limb whereas no no uh old world monkey can do that >> really. >> Yeah. that the whole story of these creatures to me is just it it is so captivating. I really can't get enough of it.
1:16:43And um what I also thought was really interesting was that when they first found these bones of homop florosensis, there was a lot of dismissing of it and a lot of people thought that it was maybe humans that had some genetic abnormality. >> That's right. Very good. Yeah. [clears throat] Yeah. No. Uh, [laughter] somebody's done your research.
1:17:05Oh, or you've done your research. Very well. No. Well, they No, that that's right. I'll tell you, pale anthropologists themselves can be interesting >> characters. They're very can be very contentious for fight among themselves. >> Yeah, for sure. >> Few other academics that are like that. >> Yeah. >> But um the uh Yeah.
1:17:29No, you're right. There was a a member of the Indonesian, well, no, he wasn't a member of the Indonesian team, but a very senior Indonesian prehistorian uh archaeologist who was resentful of the fact he wasn't on the team and he wasn't uh you know, consulted early. Um but anyway he uh um he dismissed this as a new uh florizianis as a new species and he uh he claimed that these what they'd found were one or more um humans uh who were suffering from a brain condition called uh whether a couple of
Scientific Debate and Skepticism
1:18:12different possibilities one's called microphily I think. Yeah. So very very small cranium small small brain. So but this is an abnormality and and people in this condition you know they don't uh as individuals they don't survive >> adamantly rejected the notion that these were a different species >> has been there was also the problem that these things are yeah the florizentus of course were were small smallbodied which is doesn't correlate with microphille which just concerns the head
1:18:44>> right >> um and uh yeah no I mean I don't think there's many people who uh support this. There is another bone of contention though so to speak uh and that has to do with the classification of homo floresiansis as homo >> or not and there's uh I I I most paleo anthropologists still seem to support homo.
1:19:12Um but there are some including uh um a guy called Chris Stringer at at the National History Museum in London um who I I very much respect. Um mainly because what he says agrees with what I think. But um no, he suggested that Fizens is something much much more primitive physically and that it uh it derives from something much older.
1:19:41a separate branch >> going back to I don't know somewhere in the region of oustralopiththesine so pre prehomo >> uh and you know a lot of stuff uh a lot of features of of the um of the fossils uh not least of all the brain size which is about that of a chimpanzeee right >> so pretty small body size and all the rest of it the lack of evidence for for you know much in the way for or anything in the way of uh culture.
1:20:09All all of these things suggest something that is it's a different kettle of fish um al all together. And in fact um the the uh there was a senior member of of uh of the team that that discovered and and analyzed and interpreted the uh florizensis um fossils. uh a guy called Peter Brown, an Australian anatomist who proposed a different name uh for Homo Ferziansis.
1:20:42He gave it a new genus. He put it put it into a new genus uh which he named he gave the suggested name uh Sunda an is it Sundanthropus >> uh which would mean something like manlike being from uh the Sunda region which refers to uh those islands >> and um this this was rejected on yeah I mean that there were uh you know it this was arguable this kind of stuff.
1:21:17But but some of the reasons put forward were were not particularly credible. I I found I mean one one suggestion was that you know this thing is so recent bearing in mind that uh one specimen was reckoned to be only 12 13,000 years old at the time. Uh but this speech was too recent so recent that it had to be OMO.
1:21:39Um I mean [clears throat] this portrays a very kind of linear uh progressive view of uh not progressive in a political sense but you know in a >> time sense of uh of um of human or homminin uh evolution really I mean it's ironic because um yeah it was uh it was uh um the discovery of fluiz that threw monkey wrench into that whole picture of uh human evolution.
1:22:12I mean it it was evidence in favor of a view which had been around a little bit uh already by that time that you didn't have a single line of evolution whereas you know something bigger and better more more u um more developed and so on replaced something more pre uh primitive in in a single line of development rather that uh the suggestion was that the um and the the view now seems to be that the uh the the the the human uh uh tree family tree as it were is is bushy.
1:22:52So um you know something like a Jewish manora you know the thing with the candles you've got these things coming up >> side by side and and you know terminating the same point >> we have that in everything else >> it happens in all other sorts of animals >> the idea that we would be isolate >> well we are as humans so used to uh thinking of ourselves as special right I mean everything in our our culture our history religion as well >> suggests that but uh no so it's it's kind of ironic that you still find
1:23:25traces of uh of this progressive linear view in certain statements made quite recently by uh by paleo anthropologists >> well I think it's pro problem with this they adopt an idea adopt an idea start saying that this is the fact and then are very reluctant to change their position especially if they've been teaching it if they're professors, if they've written books, >> like with the Clovis first thing, like the the the I forget the gentleman's name who found these stones that
1:23:59indicated that there was people in the Americas far earlier than that. Oh, yes. >> He was destroyed. >> I mean, they ruined this guy's reputation. They viciously attacked him. And it turns out he was correct. >> Yes. No, this this does happen. But >> he wasn't just correct. He was correct by a long shot.
1:24:12Like they found evidence of things that were 10,000 years or close to it. 22,000 years. The White Sands, New Mexico footprints. >> Right. Right. >> Yeah. That date keeps being pushed further and further and further going further. >> There's other weird evidence of u looks like someone had broken apart mastedon bones or mammoth bones and that's that's over a 100,000 years ago.
1:24:37>> Yeah. Yeah. No, you're quite right. I I I want to say something in defense of uh science and scientists. Uh actually I mean they are conservative. You're you're right >> and they probably should be. >> Exact exactly what I was about to say. >> Yes. >> Yeah. So um you know I mean there's a lot of uh a lot of uncertainty obviously in in uh this field of endeavor that you can't uh uh rule rule out anything as being correct in in including the prevailing view.
1:25:12um at at least for the the time being and it and it does take a lot to uh change things and I I think on the whole um quite rightly I I um yeah I mean with regard to what I've written um I I don't I don't argue I don't attempt to argue that furiansis or or something deriving from furizens you know is definitely still around Um, I'm not going to make a statement of of conviction like that.
1:25:44Um, all I'm trying to say and and and my focus of course is on on the the the people, the modern people of Forest Island and and and their experiences and and you know, how they think, what they say, and all that kind of stuff. So my what I need to explain as as a an ethnologist, a cultural anthropologist is is the basis of some of their claims about about things about creatures, about uh beings, >> right?
1:26:16>> Um some of those beings I I'm sure uh are um are supernatural. That is to say, they don't uh they don't exist. I mean, I'm thinking of things like forest spirits, various varieties of forest spirits, which have their names and characteristics. Um, but they are not like animals or or modern humans because they can't be they can't be perceived.
1:26:43Certainly, they can't be seen. They're they're invisible and people say this. So there is a difference between them on that ground alone and uh and homoerisianis with what I am showing is that there is a possibility that when Leo people make these reports about their ape men that their reports are are accurately based on some actual experience um that that individuals a few individuals at any rate have had.
1:27:12>> Yes. So when you're talking to these people, do is there evidence of psychedelic drug use amongst these people, you know what I mean? For the like forest spirits and stuff like that. >> Um I thought you going to ask me if there's any evidence for my use of such substances in the field. >> I'll ask you off air.
Culture, Betel Nut and Folklore
1:27:32>> A bit of >> but I mean when you hear people talking about like forest spirits, you start thinking about people in the jungle that have psychedelic rituals like in the Amazon with Iawasa. Yeah. Well, well, for one thing, rarely are these things uh the forest spirits obscene. You get the odd Well, you get a category of people, healers in part, >> shaman, >> we shamans, it's not bad description.
1:27:58Yeah. Who uh >> um they claim an ability to see things that other people people can't. >> Um >> but do they have a history of psychedelic drug use? Nothing. >> No. No. No, >> because most cultures have some method of perturbing their consciousness. >> Yeah. >> Are they using fermented fruits and making uh any kind of alcohol?
1:28:19>> Oh, yeah. Making alcohol for sure. >> Okay. >> Palm wine, palm gin, very powerful stuff. Good good drink. >> Right. Now, are they drunk when they're seeing these forest spirits? >> No evidence that uh that they are or or or were. Um >> right. Uh but are the so is that the only documented substance that these people are taking on this island?
1:28:39Is there any particular plants that have any sort of hallucinogenic properties? >> Well certainly traditionally not so much nowadays among the men but um until quite recently they they would regularly habitually excuse me chew um what's called beetle nut. No yeah it's not actually a nut. There's an ora nut.
1:29:01is a palm nut and beetle which is either a leaf or a sort of pepper from a from a vine together with slaked lime. Um, and this is mildly narcotic. I mean, yeah, it's I I I consumed it regularly when I was on Sumba in the 19 uh 1970s. Uh, >> what was that like? >> It was it was it was pleasant. It turned my uh teeth black as it as it does with the local people.
1:29:34>> It's kind of like uh I don't know smoking too many cigars in a row or uh >> Okay. So, it's like a strong stimulant. >> Yeah. I never became, you know, like physically ill in the stomach, but uh you it make you feel good like a lot of uh a lot of other things. I wasn't hallucinating. >> Um and um yeah.
1:29:53So, so, so there there's that in addition to the >> You said slick lime. What is that? >> Slake lime. >> Slake lime. >> Yeah. Uh, what is that exactly? It's um has to do [snorts] with the way it's it's it's produced. I mean, it comes out as a >> Here, Jamie just pulled it up. It's calcium hydroxide power powder or paste.
1:30:14>> Yeah, I was going to say it comes out as a kind of a white powder like talcum powder. Yeah. And and you you take a dab of that with with your beetle pepper and or leaf and your uh your RA nut. Uh chew it all up. It um it becomes red. I mean the plant materials are green. >> It's the fourth most uh commonly used addictive substance in the world after alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine.
1:30:42>> Yeah. >> Isn't that wild? >> I can believe that. >> That's wild. >> Yeah. I don't think I became addictive even though I uh had a red mouth a lot of the time. And >> did it mess up your teeth? >> It made them black. >> That's it. But you could brush them off. >> Oh, wow. Look at these people. Oh, that's nasty.
1:31:00>> I'll tell you this so you may not believe it, but I mean I I rarely brush my teeth for two years on Sumba. >> Wow. >> I I was breathtaking as well, you know, whatever. And I've still learned at the age of nearly 80s. So there you go. >> You were smoking cigarettes on the island by yourself. How'd you get them there?
1:31:22>> Oh, there were cigarettes for sale. Indian very good ones. Yeah. >> Okay. >> And they make their own as well. They grow their own tobacco. >> Okay. So there's nothing. My point was there's nothing that causes hallucinations. It's a part of their culture. >> I hope my insurance agent isn't listening to this.
1:31:36[laughter] >> Sorry. >> Are you still smoking? Um, a small cigar maybe five or six times a week. >> Okay. >> Yeah. After lunch only. >> I get it. >> No more than one a day. Some days none. I haven't had one since Monday. Uh, no. I I enjoy uh I enjoy smoking cigars. >> I do as well. >> Um, so but that was my point.
1:32:02like if there was something that would cause them to see things that maybe wouldn't be available under normal >> other people >> consciousness >> um [snorts] no not not not really and there's no I mean with with some shamans people called shamans in other parts of the world you have uh um them making deliberate uh efforts to dissociate to alter their consciousness >> through ritual Um well it can be through percussion drumming >> um chanting chanting.
1:32:39Yeah. It can be through substances as you've described. Um rigorous sex even >> rigorous. >> Yeah. >> But there's not like psychedelic mushrooms or anything that grows there >> on flores. No, not that I'm aware of. No, I'm sure I' I'd have heard about them if if there were. Um, [snorts] no. There are of course in other parts of the world and used by shamans as well.
1:33:08>> Of course. >> So that was just my point with this because you were talking about how there's things that they saw that clearly seem to be mythological or just >> the fiction the spirits. Yeah. But then they also saw things that match up with these >> hobbit people. >> Yeah. I must say, I mean, the the uh the Leo people um certainly have the these religious figures, if you want to call them that.
1:33:33Um and and I tended to dismiss their accounts, which were often a bit towards the fantastic ends of things. Did they have other fantastic accounts not of primates but of other things other than forest spirits that also existed that seemed to be >> something that was fiction? >> Uh seem to be fiction.
1:33:57Yeah. I mean one uh case I uh go into uh again in the in the recent book um is um a creature that uh uh we are told uh is very good at climbing trees. That's not fantastic. But uh it has uh multiple testicles. [laughter] Uh the females as well as the males. They come in two sexes. >> Um and it grows an extra pair every year.
1:34:32>> Whoa. uh when it's reached a limit which I think is a dozen 2 * 6 it will climb a tree whale all night and be dead by the morning or drop dead at night in the in the following morning. Now that sounds um that sounds pretty fantastic. I think you say >> especially testicles on the ladies. >> It turns out to be um the palm civet >> ah >> which is a well-known animal and uh w with some interpretation uh you know has as uh features that accord with with all these exaggerated claims.
1:35:08Have you ever had that coffee that they make out of the >> D? Yes, indeed. Luak. That's exactly the species. Yeah. >> Yeah, I've had that. Very remarkably smooth coffee. But >> yes, very expensive. >> It's disconcerting to think that you're drinking coffee that came out of a civet's butt. >> I guess so.
1:35:26But [laughter] I weirder things that people eat, I think, >> certainly >> or consume. But um yeah, I know um the species name is hermaphroditis. really >> which relates to >> certain glands both sexes possess >> which can be mistaken for testicles. So there you go. >> Oh, okay. So that's the origin. >> That's the origin of the idea.
1:35:55Interesting. >> And I I mean I later discovered that this fantastic uh um well I was pretty sure beforehand but I it later became clear that people put our is one of those um [snorts] and and it was a palm civet as >> right. So then you have to take into consideration what other things are they seeing that is either getting exaggerated or getting incorporated into the folklore.
1:36:18>> Right. Like if they see just a particularly large monkey. >> Yeah. >> And maybe at a distance and maybe through thick brush and then they decide cuz monkeys will occasionally be bipedal for brief periods of time. Chimpy as well. >> Yeah. Apes of course. >> Yes. >> So closest relatives. >> Yes. So it gets to the point where you you go okay if you have >> you know 30 people that have these stories that seem credible at least a few of those have to be BS.
1:36:46But it gets to the point where if you have enough of them and they're so similar and then you have bones and then you don't just have bones there, but you have bones in the Philippines, you have bones in China, and you start and in Africa, you start going, "Hey, maybe this is a real thing." >> Yeah. >> And then the real problem is what are they what's the ethical considerations if they captured one?
1:37:14Like if they capture a monkey, you could put the monkey in the zoo. >> Yeah. >> What? It gets real squirrely if they captured one of these things and then they have to decide what to do with it cuz like what is that? It's not quite a monkey and it's not quite a person. >> Yeah. No, it's it's well between ape and human.
1:37:37>> Using human in the sense of >> I would feel very bad if one of those was in a zoo. I feel bad when I see monkeys in a zoo. Uh well, especially chimpanzees, you know, the higher apes. Uh yeah, >> look like they're in hell. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> No, I I agree with you. I um I'm very torn myself on this uh >> on this point.
1:37:55I mean, obviously um you know, I I'd partly like something like that to be discovered. I mean, it would uh >> from a scientific perspective, >> it' be incredible. It would also kind of vindicate me, I guess. You might you might say, "But on the other hand, I think it would be much better if if they still exist to to leave them alone, >> right?"
1:38:18But you would have to prove it. And how would you prove that they exist other than and especially in this day and age with AI video, it's almost impossible at this point >> to discern what's real and what's not. And so >> very right. >> Yeah. But if they captured one of them, like boy, I would feel bad.
1:38:35>> Like especially if it started making noises that sounded like a language, >> you know? Oh, well then it would be kind of easier, I guess, to uh [sighs] >> Yeah, you would definitely wouldn't put them in a zoo, >> right? Well, not only that, what what are you going to do even in terms of studying them?
1:38:51Like, do you decide to dart them for a short period of time and sedate them? And also, there's complications to that. You to sedate who knows what they're allergic to. You could potentially kill them. >> Yeah. >> Accidentally while studying. >> I mean, that's that's an an issue as well, but I would say the best way to study them would be through uh um field research, a primatological field researcher.
1:39:19Allah >> um what's her name? Jane Goodall. >> Yes. Yes. >> And various other ladies. >> Um including the one that lived with Mountain Gorillas. Mhm. >> Um and uh yeah, long enough so they become habituated to you and uh uh and so on. Um yeah, probably would be better if a a slightly built female >> [laughter] >> uh took on that uh on that role.
1:39:44Um >> something non-threatening that would allow them >> Yeah. Yeah. >> to allow to come into their community. >> Yeah. But that they're not chimpanzees or they weren't. Um, >> so I don't know. Gosh, it really uh >> I mean we are used to dealing with all these conceptual boundaries, right? Like human and animal and so on.
Bigfoot and Native American Lore
1:40:12>> Um and and this would uh yeah that this would present a real philosophical problem real conundrum. >> Yeah. So, uh, Forest Galant was telling me about, uh, a contemporary account of a woman who was an anthropologist who I I just cannot remember where the village was, but this, uh, person had encountered something.
1:40:37>> Dude, I'm Yeah, here it is. I've got it. It's so a woman named Sabine Cougler who wrote this book called Child of the Jungle. uh her parents were German missionaries and uh in a super remote uh area of western Papau. So it was in New Guinea and he did an interview with her and uh she said that she had seen these little people and then she woke up in camp more than one time and they were looming over her and around camp and she's a very sane academic.
1:41:12He's saying uh not like a jungle person who believes in third world superstitions. She says, "And this woman who is a very sane literary author, cutting edge scientist, and she swears that she saw these little people and she told the exact story." And so, uh, he says he actually has a recorded Zoom call that he could send me of this encounter.
1:41:38>> Yeah. >> But this is a woman who was just like completely stunned encountering these tiny little people in New Guinea. Yeah. >> So, are there accounts in New Guinea that are similar? >> She, if I I may ask, she was um she was quite young at the time or >> I don't know. I mean, it's just something that Forest sent me.
1:41:56He's a wildlife biologist and he does a lot of work uh trying to find extinct species as well. Like he's looked for the thyloine >> uh multiple times. >> The thyloine. >> Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> Just in case that one. >> Right. So, we have video of the last supposed thyloine that was alive and in the zoo.
1:42:17>> Yeah. 1936. >> But there's quite a few credible reports of sightings. >> Yeah. There are there are sightings and and if people aren't actually seeing them, there's that uh bigger more fascinating problem of of you know what they are seeing or where this all comes from. Yeah. >> Going this is Forest's uh history.
1:42:36This is what he does. Yeah, >> he has a great YouTube channel by the way and he documents his >> journey. I think I've heard of the name followed that up but >> fascinating guy. But the point is like this woman told him the story and like this story is like insane that she actually encountered these.
1:42:54So is there a history of them in New Guinea as well? Um, I might just point out not not to appear too defensive, but I um I myself have been told similar stories by um by Flores Islanders and and I don't want to uh I I want to make clear that, you know, to my mind um that there's not as much difference as you would think between Flores Islanders and and Westerners who report similar experiences.
1:43:24But you you said New Guinea, Papa New Guinea, I think. Yeah. Um there are uh again in in the highlands of that very big island um there are uh what are or used to be called um human uh pygmies pigmoid uh uh populations um who um yeah I have been reports of of uh of those people showing up in in sort of odd odd places and you know walking through um human uh settlements as well, you know, also from uh um reported by credible um witches >> witnesses.
1:44:13>> I'm writing a book on witches actually. >> Are you really? >> Yeah. No, that's another thing. In fact, I I had some difficulty preparing for this interview because I'm working on the proofs, the final proofs and the index and I've and I did a pieces recently on Halloween and and so >> Oh, wow. >> That was just a Freudian slip.
1:44:29Yeah. >> Oh, no worries. >> Witnesses, I meant. But um >> so what are the descriptions? Are they human? Like >> they are human. They are human. And >> so they're just like tiny pygmies. >> You know that they It's interesting. They don't wear a lot of clothes as a lot of people in New Guinea don't or didn't.
1:44:45Uh so uh whether bodily hair shows up more than it might do otherwise uh can't recall those details but they are small and they are dark like most uh um new guineians and yeah well to be classified as as pigmoid they they have to be the average male height has to be um less than 1.5 meters which is like you know um well less than less and 5T or 4 foot 11 that that kind of uh >> so these are like African pygmies >> but these are people this is different >> these extraordinarily different yeah not
1:45:29not to confuse with florizians or >> so that may be what this woman encountered so that might be >> very very possible you might we'd need more details of what she uh reme documented populations so this is something that we know exists currently Oh, for sure. I mean, there are detailed ethnographic, cultural, anthropological uh >> details of of their socioeconomic systems and and everything else.
1:45:56>> This is a totally different. >> Yeah. Of course, they speak uh they speak languages like the rest of us. Yeah. >> Okay. So, um as far as little tiny hairy creatures, you said Sumatra, the Philippines, Indonesia. Where else? Where else are these credible witness accounts of uh people experiencing these kind of little tiny ape-like creatures?
1:46:23>> Yeah. Well, my first um my first uh inclination is to say um well, you know, Flores and and I guess Sumba neighboring Ireland and um um Sumatra as well, the the Orang Pendek, but uh there are reports from um North America um of um by um native of North Americans of something sounds familiar as similar.
1:46:58Nothing nothing terribly detailed, but um I know I I did some research for another book years back on uh on the Bigfoot or Sasquatch in in the Pacific Northwest. Mhm. >> Uh and I think it's the Bella cooler Indians or Bella Bella Indians in British Columbia, coastal British Columbia had a category of uh the name.
1:47:22>> Mhm. >> Uh of creatures which uh sounded like small, you know, somewhat hairy folk. Um the the the the lia of course in in in Flores. um that there various reports of how uh how much bodily hair they they have. Um and you know, according to some they're not terribly hairy, not like a you know, a gorilla or a a bear.
1:47:50So that that's another kind of uh kind of variable. But then, you know, if you just have uh the description hairy, then you know, if you don't take that any further and uh you know, investigate more, you don't know what that means. I mean hairy can mean uh well like the lady in the picture up there, >> right?
1:48:12>> Um it can refer specifically to mainly to the head hair. So uh but anyway, yeah. No, there are um well there's there's one report I was talking about uh Sasquatch, which I find fascinating from uh 1884. It even appeared in an early newspaper in that uh that neck of the woods about a creature that was given the name Jacko.
1:48:38>> Um, and I can send references to that if you're uh if you're interested, but that that sounded uh >> I was actually fairly genuine. >> What? Say it again. What is the name of it? >> Which the um >> the creature what is it called? >> It it was called Jacko. which is kind of a nickname which is you know sometimes a nickname for human beings like Jack.
1:49:02>> Yeah. So um Daniel Boone had uh a description uh in his memoirs of an encounter that he had with a giant creature that he wound up killing. Do you know that story? >> Probably. I know is Daniel Booner. David Crockett was supposed to have killed a bear when he was only three or >> I don't know which one it is, but Daniel Boone, >> this was a song on the radio when I was about 5 years old.
1:49:28>> He had uh an encounter supposedly that he documented with him and his son >> where they had shot and killed a giant humanlike creature. And it was, I believe it was over 8t tall or 9t tall, some enormous thing that had a different anatomy than humans. It's like instead of having a rib cage, it had like a large plate of bone over its chest area.
1:49:54>> It might I mean apparently I sent this to my friend Steve Reanella and he said Boon also had some tall tails. So I don't know I don't know how much of this is true or not true. >> Yeah. >> But the whole Sasquatch thing has always fascinated me because of the amount of different names that Native Americans had for this particular creature.
1:50:15>> And they didn't have a lot of fake creatures. It's, you know, they didn't have descriptions of things that just didn't exist. >> And they had a lot of names for a wild man that lives in the woods that's very tall and hairy. >> Yeah. No, you're right. In fact, there was a a rather interesting paper written on that very uh issue um by a guy used to be at the University of Washington, >> Meldrum.
1:50:40>> Uh his name, not Meldram, no, his name, he's long gone now. His name was Wayne Suttles. M >> um you'd be interested in the article just looking at the different names and uh you know their derivations and uh and all that kind of thing. No, Meldram, another person who's passed. >> Yes. >> Um yeah. No, I I um sort of was acquainted uh with him for a while.
1:51:03>> He was a true believer >> and yeah, but at the same time he was, you know, his arguments are [laughter] whatever the bases are pretty pretty solid. Um he was serious. uh physical anthropologist. >> Well, you know who really believed in it, at least at one point she did, was Jane Goodall. >> Yes. So, I understand.
1:51:21Again, I I don't know much of the details of that. Um >> she gave interviews where she was saying that she's certain it exists. >> Yeah. >> You know, and I mean, this was quite a long time ago, you know, so who knows if >> I don't know she's gone now, >> but before she died, I don't know if she >> Yeah.
1:51:38change her opinion or she's probably tired of talking about it because that might have been the only thing people wanted to talk about. Tell me more about Bigfoot. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. No, I mean there's a number of other primatologists and people who study primates in the field who uh have also subscribed to uh if not Bigfoot then uh uh the Yeti, a guy called Vern Reynolds uh who's at Oxford at one time I think and um um a guy called John Napier who who uh wrote a very interesting book called uh
1:52:14I guess Bigfoot back in I don't know the early '7s. I it largely partly focused on the um Patterson uh film. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So, you know, I mean it's not the case that all uh scientists to use that broad category um you know dismiss uh immediately. uh and in fact I I I know paleon paleo anthropologists, biologists as well who uh find my arguments uh credible.
1:52:48Um but it's very interesting, you know, they'll they'll never say so in in uh in in print. >> No, >> no, because and and again, you know, I talk about conservatism and so on. uh somewhat understandably they like to keep this you know in a separate kind of >> completely understandably especially if you're an academic if you start saying you believe in Bigfoot you're immediately put into the category >> well that there's that but but more practically speaking I guess your funding will uh
1:53:21>> yes >> quite rapidly drop >> so >> yeah there's a fine line between eccentric and foolish >> well however eccentric I might be I'm pleased to report that uh I never had as a cultural anthropologist particularly, you know, studying other people's experiences, beliefs, values, all this kind of thing.
1:53:40I never had that uh that problem from my colleagues or uh I may have been more ignored than I would have been otherwise, but uh I've never had to um put up with what uh fascinating what Meldd did, for example. >> Well, Mel Meldrum was like a full believer. I asked him if he could chop one of your fingers off to find out the Bigfoot was real, would you do it?
1:53:59He said, "Yes." I was like, "Oh my god, man." [laughter] >> Yeah. >> But the the point is it's like as a cultural anthropologist, it is absolutely at least the mythology of these things is absolutely a part of culture and a fascinating aspect of it because there's so many stories and they're so uniform.
1:54:20>> It's all like 8 foot plus 9 foot tall enormous hairy ape-like creature that seems to be very human in a lot of ways. It doesn't have the arm length and leg length of an ape. It seems to be built more like a large hairy person. >> Yeah. Well, I would agree with it except for one particular um the these details.
1:54:42Well, talking about Flores. >> Mhm. >> Um these details don't show up uh in um so much in in what we call mythology or or or myths or or even you know legends to make that distinction. Um the naturalistic descriptions come from well mostly from supposed eyewitness encounters, >> right? >> Uh if you look at general knowledge then you do start to get uh kind of fantastic fantastic features, right?
1:55:19Um and um also is a secondhand account they pass hand to hand they you know kind of 10 more in the supernatural um direction which in itself is fascinating is a kind of evidence for you know the eyewitnesses especially having had a a natural experience and and referring to a a natural creature. And of course that's where uh the the similarities between the different accounts become uh remarkable.
1:55:49And not just that of course but the match with uh reconstructions of of fossils of um homopiansis. So uh >> um >> if they had found that in North America like if they had found a Bigfoot evidence >> oh >> it would change the whole conversation. Then the conversation would be, is this an extinct? Like if imagine if they had found some Bigfoot jawbone in a cave somewhere that was an unknown primate that is 8,000 plus years old.
1:56:24Yeah. >> Then you'd have to go, okay, now what are we talking about? Are we talking about something that's extinct or are we talking about a very small population of intelligent creatures that has thus far evaded being captured on film and >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean that would uh I mean it would get a lot more uh publicity than than Fizens which >> oh my goodness happening in you know the modern west and in the the US or even Canada um it would uh it would have the same coverage.
1:56:57Well, the problem is unlike homo floriansis or floresensis >> flores there is so many hoaxes in America. There's so many gods like I found Bigfoot. He's in my freezer and like got a big frozen doll that they're saying, you know, there's like so many cooks that have said and so many people have done it for stories and you know, just to create a hoax.
Witches Book and Closing
1:57:20>> Yeah. Well, this is something that I well it's the first thing one of the first things I discuss in in the book um is um the different cultural context circumstances of on the one hand people uh in in Flores ordinary you know villages um reporting what you know they they once saw uh the the the culture or the circumstances all that kind of stuff.
1:57:48on the one hand um a and uh the culture the uh socioeconomic uh system in which um people who who claim to have um observed um Bigfoot uh live different kinds of of interests. Um I mean nobody on Flores thinks they're going to become famous, >> right, >> by telling me what they've seen, whatever it may have been, >> right?
1:58:17Um whereas with uh Bigfoot in in North America that then you know you can become rich and famous. Uh >> I don't know about rich but you >> maybe not rich but famous. >> You get you might be able to parlay it. I mean look you could get on Finding Bigfoot. I mean they did how many seasons did they do a Finding Bigfoot?
1:58:36They never found Bigfoot. Spoiler alert. >> No. >> You watch a lot of hours long television waiting for them to find it and they never find it. Well, that's an an excellent point because, you know, there's never been such a search on on Flores, >> right? >> And no local interest in in such a thing either.
1:58:55>> That's probably pure It's probably better that they don't do it that way, I think. But a real true scientific search, not a reality show search, would be absolutely fascinating. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. No, and >> maybe Forest would be interested in doing it. He's fascinated by the subject. >> Worth doing is Yeah.
1:59:10certainly worth doing. Now, when you were doing this whole investigation of Bigfoot, did you find any evidence or anything, any stories, anything that you thought was compelling? >> Well, I mentioned the 1884 uh report that was actually published in one of the few newspapers in British Columbia at that time.
1:59:29This is a wild frontier, right? >> Mhm. In fact, this thing that was seen um was actually um [sighs] Yeah. No, it was it was reputedly captured alive. That's right. But it was uh when the Canadian Pacific Railway was was going through uh and this was about a 100 odd miles from uh from the coast in in a very in a place called Yale, as a matter of fact, near a place called Yale.
2:00:00Um it was small. Um one reason why I I mentioned it wasn't a um a giant. I know that um subsequent commentators have suggested it was a an infant Bigfoot. >> How small was it? >> I think it was um it was maybe 4 foot2 something. >> So it's similar in size to homo. >> A bit bigger. A bit a bit bigger.
2:00:23A little bigger. Yeah. But but certainly small for a modern human or for a Neanderthal for that matter. >> But there are North American or Native American tribes that have stories of small hairy people that live in the woods as well. >> There are well just the one at any rate that I I mentioned earlier.
2:00:40So yeah, obviously by comparison with with the Indonesian stuff. >> What did they wind up doing with this? Because this photography existed at the time, right? It did, but I'm not sure how many um how many cameras were uh >> right >> were available. Um and so no no pictures were got it here. >> A story of a potential >> 4 foot seven.
2:01:06I was wrong. So anyway, shorter than that. >> So uh a young ape-like creature of Sasquatch allegedly captured alive near Yale, British Columbia, Canadian Pacific Railway crew. First published in the Daily British Colonist newspaper on July 4th, 1884, the story is widely considered by modern historians and cryptozoolologist to be a work of historical journalistic fiction.
2:01:30>> Mhm. >> A newspaper hoax, which is very possible, too, because they did a lot of those back then. >> Huh. Y >> maybe. Who knows? So, there's that. But is there anything else that you thought was interesting? people that [laughter] >> I I um yeah I certainly there were some uh writers on Bigfoot like John Green who was u a newspaper man in fact uh in the Fraser Valley there he he was not quite so dismissive.
2:01:56Um the main reason I think the cryptos would dismiss uh Jacko was because he wasn't big enough for a a big foot. Um >> well also because newspapers would routinely make up stories. They they would. Yeah. But uh you know the the the um the eyewitnesses were all named >> uh including uh one of the the you know the top bosses of of the uh the CPE railway.
2:02:27So I'm not sure if he'd want to stick his neck neck out so far or indeed you know why you'd want to do it. Whatever became of it is is a kind is a is a mystery. It it sort of disappeared. I know um there there's there's a book uh published a couple of uh couple of decades back by a guy whose name escapes me.
2:02:50He's a physical anthropologist. Uh and um the book is called Bigfoot Debunked. I mean he's sort of virantly opposed to any any suggestion that anything like this could uh could um exist. And the best he could do with Jacko uh is um is conclude that that it was a chimpanzeee that had escaped from a circus or a zoo.
2:03:18>> A 4 foot7 chimpanzeee. >> Well, there you are. Um now I think it had longish head hair as well. But anyway, >> really? >> Yeah. But um it was by all indications naked. Although this was not mentioned in the uh report kind of interestingly bearing in mind this was the height of the Victorian era you know where you didn't mention such things >> but um yeah know the best this author recent author could do is say that it was an escape chimpanzeee.
2:03:50Now there I mean one one thing one can be pretty certain of very certain of is that there were no uh circuses or uh zoos in that area at the in fact I don't think there was a a zoo anywhere in British Columbia I I may be >> very remote >> may be wrong well yeah it was a you know it was a brand new it was a colony at that time >> it wasn't part of c well I guess it had just become had it >> and that area British Columbia in particular has a lot of those Sasquatch sightings.
2:04:24A lot of >> Well, this is the kind of the classic domain of these things. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I was going to say no circuses either. I >> No, no circuses. But so do you think that there's a possibility that something like that at least at one point in time existed in North America. >> I don't want to rule it out.
2:04:40As I say, I mean the the um the the the Flores ape men are much more credible because of the fossil evidence and uh the whole kind of ecosystem, you know, the region of the world where they are, existence of other primates, if not on the island, then you know, pretty close by. >> Um whole evolutionary history of uh >> o of that region.
2:05:01Um and and again, you know, the um not only are there uh fossils, but there's a close match between what the fossils indicate and what um um you know, my colleagues in the field, Leo villagers, uh indicate. So, yeah, you got to keep a bit of an open mind, don't you? >> Yes. Well, it's also the my problem with Bigfoot is that it's fun.
2:05:26It's fun to believe. Yeah. And so I start looking at my own judgment and going, "Stop." >> Yeah. >> Being silly. You're wasting time. >> Yeah. No, I um I I don't I don't find Bigfoot uh credible. And again, I've said so in in print in in an earlier book. Um it it it's interesting that uh 1884 I mean that was a time when uh great apes gorillas and uh chimpanzees were becoming widely known to a a western public >> whereas that they hadn't been um before.
2:06:02>> But the discovery of mountain apes by westerners wasn't until the late 19th century right. >> Uh the mountain gorilla I think was the 20th very early 20th century was it? Yeah. and and the other the land gorilla as well was relatively relatively recent. >> Yeah. They were thought to be a myth. >> Yeah.
2:06:20>> Which is quite hard for us to imagine today. >> Um well yes and no. I mean if you look at uh you know the culture history and and uh and so on that that the you know the historical setting and and all the rest of it. Don't forget Darwin only you know his ideas only became current in 1859. Um but I was going to say uh with regard to um with regard to uh you know kind of general knowledge about uh uh about apes, these were these were something new.
2:06:59Um and uh you know they they reached people through I guess you know the popular press such as it was uh mainly at the time. Some people would have read books about them, but they would have been probably um a minority. So, you know, people had a only a vague kind of idea of what they looked like. Anybody seeing, I don't know, a very shaggy dog or um maybe a small bear um in in British Columbia at that time might have uh made a mistake or, you know, >> that's the part of the problem that
2:07:35bears also sometimes walk by pedily. Yeah. If you see them in the distance, >> if it's dusk, if it's very Yeah. If it's very dense woods, >> it's very difficult to discern what you're actually looking at. And then the mind plays tricks on you and you start >> Indeed. >> I did a show with uh my friend Duncan where we went up into the Pacific Northwest to go looking for Bigfoot and we were hanging out with Bigfoot hunters and you know, most of them just seemed like guys that are looking for a hobby.
2:08:01But there was one woman that I talked to, one woman who had an encounter and I don't know what she saw obviously, but she was very at least the way she was communicating felt very rational, very sane. She was a smart person. She wasn't stupid and she knew the area. She lived in the area. And she said she saw this thing and she for a half a second she goes, "That's a gorilla."
2:08:27like why is there a gorilla in the forest? And said she said she only saw it for less than a minute. It was moving through the trees, but she said she goes, "I know what a bear looks like." She goes, "I I know." >> She goes, "It did not look like a bear. I think it was a Sasquatch, and I think they're real."
2:08:46>> The problem also with the Pacific Northwest in that particular area we're talking about like Mount Reineer, it's so dense that the the trees, the way I describe it, is like a box of Q-tips, you know? Like it's just it's insanely dense. You can't see anything. No. >> And it's the forest floor is filled with pine needles and leaves that have like landed and compacted over and over and over.
2:09:07So, you're not going to get any footprints. >> No. >> No. Indeed. >> And these things can walk quietly cuz the ground is very soft and everything's wet because it's just this tremendous rainforest. It's incredibly rich with life. And you you're there and you go, "Okay, I could see how something could hide in here."
2:09:25Like you're not going to find things like you could only like even if you had a team of people you first of all you'd be making so much noise you there smell you a mile away. >> I say smell would be a factor as well. Yeah. >> Smell you a mile away. And it's so dense like the the kind of forest up there is so incredibly dense >> that seeing something in the distance would be virtually impossible if you're actually in the woods.
2:09:49>> Yeah. Yeah. >> The question is like if it's something that Look at that guy. >> Have you seen this guy before? Oh yes indeed. In fact uh >> Jojo the dogface point pictures are in an earlier book I I wrote. Yeah. >> Yeah. There's people that have that condition today. >> I stumbled across this guy from this is Julia Pastana.
2:10:08She was around from 1860 and died in 1865 in Moscow but was is from Soloa Mexico. >> Yeah. and was studied left and right by all sorts of people. They call her >> So, she was from Mexico. Look at her features. That's crazy. The hair all over her face. >> Yeah. >> That's wild. >> Small. Was a performer.
2:10:32>> Whoa. >> Uh her body is still being displayed somewhere. >> Oh, >> yeah. Uh but as I'm like hearing all these descriptions, I'm like this this would pass for that description you're saying kind of in some other >> Sure. If you saw that if she was tiny and she was running through the woods, >> a Bigfoot, you mean?
2:10:47Yeah. >> Or, you know, >> any sort of forest person in some of these other places. >> But then you have to ask, why would anybody like that um want to be running through the woods, you know, in some remote place, uh presumably naked. Um you know, how would they get there? How would they get home after >> supposedly sold by her uncle after her mother died?
2:11:15>> Yeah, I know. There's some unfortunate stories attached to these. Uh >> well, didn't they put a man in the Bronx Zoo? There was a man that they put in the Bronx Zoo who was I think he was a pygmy. >> Ah. >> And they they literally had him in the zoo like for observation so people could see him. >> The Bronx.
2:11:33It's not impossible. I know there were there were >> same time period. Yeah, >> there were um Pygmies, Pygmy families who were exhibited at uh was it a World's Fair in uh where the heck was that? Chicago, St. Louis, somewhere in um >> in in the United States. Uh yeah, >> was him the same one. >> St. Louis welfare.
2:11:59>> Yeah. Oh, yes. Booties. Yeah. These one group of uh of so-called pygmies. Let me tell you about pygmies. uh one hesitates a bit because the name is no longer you know politically correct but um the these we're talking about you know fully modern humans um in that their brains and heads are not as small as their bodies.
2:12:26>> Okay. So their brain size would be comparable to anybody else. >> So quite different from something like homoerizens. But the point I I wanted to make was that before a guy called Schweinferth, a German um explorer was able to document the actual existence of uh of African pygmies around the middle of the 19th century.
2:12:52I think it was uh 1847, so exactly 100 years before I was born. Um he actually bought one, if you can believe that. I mean horrible as that sounds. But you know they they some pygmies were were kept as slaves by taller Africans uh at that time but but before that Europeans thought that uh pygmies were were a myth that there was no such thing that this was a product of uh of Greek mythology especially and of course it's from there that the name uh um pygmy comes.
2:13:24So um yeah, comparable to uh our knowledge of um or anybody's knowledge of uh of gorillas um for example, although pygmies were discovered a bit uh a bit before uh >> it's fascinating we think of like how little people knew about the natural world >> just a couple of hundred years ago. >> Yeah. Yeah.
2:13:52Well, no indeed that's a good point. I want to just correct myself. Um I said before guerrilla were discovered they were well known to local people in Africentric [laughter] approach which again is a matter of of habit right y >> I didn't mean to say that and um yeah likewise with conservative scientists that you get into uh >> modes of thought that are not easy to uh >> to to to alter.
2:14:19Um, yeah. >> But listen, I really enjoy talking to you and I'd love to talk to you about witches when that book is done, too. That's another very fascinating >> April Fool's Day, 1st of April is when there's a official publication date, but you can order copies now. >> What is it called? >> It's called The Wicked Witch.
2:14:36And then there's a subtitle um which is uh origins of an enduring worldwide belief. Because one of my main aims is to show that there are very few cultures anywhere that don't have a belief that corresponds very closely even in the smallest particulars to um you know what we understand by by um by witches in in in the west and I would immediately point out that I don't believe in witches [laughter] whatever I might think about homoizianis or or you know present day descendants
2:15:13that might exist um no witchcraft craft exists in in accusations. People accuse have accused still accused as a matter of fact in many places includ in including in the west other people of being able to of being evil of of being able to uh and harm other people maliciously wantingly through supernatural means.
2:15:33So that's uh but but there's a lot of uh other things I've discovered about witches in in that journey. Um which actually belong began a very long time ago when I I first started to teach uh anthropology, but I think it's something that would be of interest to your listeners. >> 100%. Yeah. >> So let's let's plan on doing that again.
2:15:54We'll do that. Uh we'll do another podcast sometime after the book is out. Yeah. >> We'll talk about that. >> Okay. >> All right. >> Next time, make sure you get me a flight to Austin. That gives me more connection time from Houston cuz I missed my flight yesterday. >> Oh, did you? Oh, sorry. >> Yeah.
2:16:08Okay, we'll do that. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. >> Really fun conversation. >> Yeah. No, it's been extremely enjoyable and I uh I'm I'm very impressed by your question. >> Oh, thank you. >> I'm very impressed by your work. [music] So, thank you. Perfect. All right. Bye, everybody.
2:16:30>> [music]
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