The Top Cryptozoology Stories of 2004

[indigobusiness]

The Top Cryptozoology Stories of 2004
By Loren Coleman, author of Bigfoot!


In the 1940s, the Scottish-born zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson began using a word he coined, "cryptozoology," to describe a new subdiscipline of zoology that studied hidden, as yet-to-be-discovered large animals. In the late 1950s, after a decade of correspondence with Sanderson, Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans began formalizing "cryptozoology." Today, their precise approaches to the passion and patience of the field has grown into a more scientifically-aware cryptozoology.

Once again (see 2000-2003 links below), I review the top stories of the year, which garnered the most media attention, and mention others that should have perhaps received more notice for other cryptids.
The Discovery of Homo floresiensis
The story is as remarkable as the finding of the first coelacanth, the 65 million year extinct "living fossil" found off Africa in 1938. The biggest story in anthropology for 2004 may become the event of the decade within cryptozoology. The editor of Nature, Henry Gee, in an editorial entitled "Flores, God and Cryptozoology," wrote: "The discovery that Homo floresiensis survived until so very recently, in geological terms, makes it more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures such as Yetis are founded on grains of truth....Now, cryptozoology, the study of such fabulous creatures, can come in from the cold."

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This is a new interpretation of the Flores woman, Homo floresiensis, by wildlife artist Richard Klyver. It is based on the 2004 Australian and Indonesian discovery viewed in terms of Loren Coleman's cryptozoology research on recent evidence, such as sightings and folklore, of Asia's unknown hominoids.
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On October 27, 2004, Nature announced an entirely new species of Homo, concurrently living with modern humans (Homo sapiens), from the Indonesian island of Flores. The team of scientists (Peter Brown, T. Sutikna, Mike Morwood, R. P. Soejono, M. W. Moore, D. R. Hobbs, M. I. Bird, and several other Australians and Indonesians) involved in the discovery and analyses of the Flores people thought they were at first dealing with children, but soon realized this was a group of fully-grown 3 feet (one meter) tall hominids, a new species, who lived as recently as 13,000 years ago. Christened with the new name, Homo floresiensis, the type specimen is a 30 year old female, with the subfossilized remains of six other individuals also being found in the same cave.

Local natives on Flores have one hundred year old legends of a small hairy people, the Ebu Gogo, and clues from these tales will be employed to find new caves to explore for evidence of their former little habitants. While Sumatra's Orang Pendek has been mentioned in the same context as the media nicknamed "Hobbits" of Flores, the more relevant cryptids are not anthropoids, but the fully manlike ones, such as the Nittaewo, the three feet tall hairy hominids of ancient Ceylon (Sri Lanka) -- mentioned by Pliny in the first century -- who were said to exist to the end of the 18th Century. It is time to look again at reports of little people, with an eye to the discovery of their subfossil remains and living existence, from Sri Lanka to the South Pacific. As many cryptozoologists have been saying for years about these unknown hairy hominid reports: "We are not alone." Now we know that is assuredly true.

snip

http://www.lorencoleman.com/top_cryptozoology_2004.html

[pantouflard]

1. Such a cool story. Reminds me of the Menehune legends. n/t

[indigobusiness]

2. Would you expound on that? ....n/t

[karl meltdown]

3. hope these remains do not...

suffer a fate worse than N.A.G.P.R.A. this discovery is just the beginning of a large scale re-writing of history ?

[indigobusiness]

4. I think you are addressing a significant point,

and a real possibility.

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Indonesian 'hobbit' legends may be factual

Mount Ebulo, Indonesia - Nellis Kua is too old to remember his exact age, but his eyes light up when he talks of the gang of hobbit-like creatures his grandparents told him once lived in the forest on the slopes of this still smoking Indonesian volcano.

"They had these big eyes, hair all over their body and spoke in a strange language," said Kua, his skin leathered by a lifetime tending coffee and chilli pepper crops under the harsh tropical sun.

"They stole our crops, our fruit and moonshine. They were so greedy they even ate the plates!"

Kua and other elders said the creatures, known locally as the "Ebu Gogo" or the "Grandmother who eats everything", were last seen on the central Indonesian island of Flores around 300 years ago.

snip

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x1329

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=qw1104048723735B253