[Zippo]

Originally Posted by Sidhe

There have been anomalous finds over the short history of the US including bodies up to twelve feet tall. At the time of their being reported (all of these finds are from the 19th century) they were considered to be a race of giant Indians. These specimen have all been lost over the course of time. The interest in them lapsed for about a hundred years so this is not too difficult to understand.

Europeans and their decendants have many stories about Hairy Wild Men. One tale you probably had to read in high school was Beowulf. What's Grendel? A large, bipedal, hairy humanoid. And there are many historical reports of people having encounters with Wild Men of the Woods. At the time it was thought that these were people who had gotten lost in the woods and who had completely reverted to animal behavior. And grown a lot of body hair.

So there is a historical basis for creatures akin to what we are talking about speaking from the European side of America's anscestors. There continue to be some contemporary reports from Eastern Europe. Russian science, in particular, takes the question seriously enough, a little more so than we do in the West.

If you look to the far east, there are contemporary reports of strange bipedal creatures. The most interesting of these is probably the Orang Pendek. This is a creature that walks in the woods of Sumatra. It was long historically attested by the natives. When zoologists would ask them about Orangutans, they would answer, "Which ones do you mean? The small ones with the puffed out faces, the larger ones, or the really big ones who walk like men?"

Oftentimes what we consider to be mythical is well known to native inhabitants.

Which brings me to native North Americans. The belief in bigfoot as a real living creature was widespread and crossed the continent. They've tried to tell us, but we haven't listened. Many of them considered bigfoot to be a race of large hairy Indians who have language and culture and who can be reasoned with, but who were too unpredictable and strong to be trusted.

If we do have bigfoot here, it didn't come from Europe with us. It probably travelled across the bering strait with many of the first human inhabitants of this continent. Bigfoot does share some similarities with a known extinct primate, gigantopithecus. There are physical remains of this ancient relative of the orangutan -- a creature that could stand 8' or more tall, and is nearly universally thought to have been bipedal.

Ok, that's enough of that. I don't need to change anyone's mind -- it doesn't matter whether people believe or not after all, it will either be found, or it will turn out to be something other than a real animal. I only wanted a good survey of belief here. And I did wonder if anyone would admit to having seen one..

I learned a little bit about the large ones you mentioned in my primatology class and they are not "bigfoots", they are a known large primate species that had been hunted to extinction. And I beleive my prof mentioned that they were not bipedal.