The Yeti or Abominable Snowman of the mountainous terrains of Nepal and Tibet have given birth to drawing room tales in a wintry evening, provided many with the worst share of their nightmares and the legend also formed the framework for many novelists, thus presenting a vast range of books and tales of adventure of the same.
DNA tests of samples including hair, bones, teeth and feces, sadly, destroyed all the myths surrounding the legend. A study conducted by scientists, based on the DNA tests conclude that Yetis never existed. And the samples? Well, they belong to Asian black bears, Himalayan or Tibetan brown bears.
The findings crushed all the myths and folklore attached to the legend. Call it the Bigfoot, Skunk Ape, Yeren, Yowie, this creature gave all of us serious goosebumps. Coming back to the Abominable Snowman, who was it? Where was it born? How are the Nazis and Russians connected to it?
The answer lies buried, beneath the snow-capped mountains of the Himalayas.
Origin of the Yeti
The Yeti is the folklore of Nepal and Tibet. Also known as Meh-Teh, the ape-like creature is taller than an average human being. Yeti was a part of the pre-Buddhist beliefs of the Himalayan people and the Lepchas worshipped the being as the 'God of the Hunt'.
People came to know of a real life Yeti encounter in the year 1832, in James Prinsep's Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal which published B.H.Hodgson's experience of the wildling in Nepal. His local guide spotted a tall, bipedal creature covered with long dark hair. Later, however, Hodgson stated that it was an orangutan.
The frequency of Yeti encounters saw a hike in the 20th century. Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay, in 1953, saw large footprints on the snow, while climbing the Everest.
Anthony Wooldridge, a hiker, in 1986, saw a Yeti standing in the snow about 500 feet away from him. He took photographs of the creature which were later proven genuine.
How were the Russians related to the snowman?
In 2011, the Russian government took interest in the Skunk Ape. John Bindernagel, Bigfoot researcher and biologist stated that Yeti stays in their shelters carved out of tree branches. However, Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University stated that the news of Yetis building shelter out of twisted tree branches are completely fake.
Did Hitler conduct secret Yeti hunts?
A crackpot theory suggests that the Nazi organization funded an expedition in Tibet between May 1938 and August 1939, led by Ernst Schaefer. People claim the expedition to be related to the Abominable Snowman and were not political and military in nature. The Germans hoped that the yeti could be the missing link of the Aryan race.
In the book titled My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery, Messier Reinhold, spoke about the theory of glacial cosmogony stating that energy originates from the clash between ice and fire and that Yeti might be the source of the Aryan race.
However, whether true or not, whether they are Bigfoots or Asian black bears, whether they are something that exists or a mere folklore, nothing really matters. These creatures still form the best part of the storytelling sleepovers and shall always stick with us.
