In today’s mini-episode, we’ll meet a creature from the Himalayas whose existence is much debated. Its existence in pop culture is indisputable, as it makes guest appearances in Tintin and Disney and Marvel comics, as well as various movies, including one as recent as last year.
We’re of course talking of the Yeti! There are many other names for the Yeti in many languages including Him Manav, Meh Teh, Migo, Mirka, Dzuteh, and Miche. But the most popular one is the Yeti.
And yes, the Yeti is an international creature. In fact, most of the sightings of the Yeti have been outside modern-day India in Nepal and Tibet.
The earliest reports of the Yeti date back to the time of Alexander the Great. He was aware of the existence of the Yeti and was interested in capturing it before he moved on to more real Kingdoms that enjoyed a warmer climate. At some point, the German Reich commissioned an expedition to capture the Yeti, with no luck.
The legend of the Yeti picked up speed in the 1950s with early mountaineering expeditions in the Himalayas, including the one featuring the very people to climb Mt Everest – Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hilary.
Many people cashed in on this. Besides setting up lots of souvenir stalls, they started selling Yeti hunting licenses, as well as Yeti branded Airlines, Hotels, Dishes, and Drinks. And we have largely continued that tradition in the entertainment industry. The Yeti makes guest appearances in Hollywood quite regularly, even as recently as last year in the Dreamworks movie “Abominable”.
Most of the evidence that has emerged of the Yeti has been footprints. Really large footprints. You see, the Yeti wears size 18 shoes, and no one else in that area does. Not even bears.
Other than that a lot of the evidence has been various hair, claw and nail clippings.
Whatever little testing has happened on those samples have definitely not indicated a previously unknown species, instead testing proved they came from Bears and Goats.
Conveniently, there have been zero sightings of the Yeti since the invention of the cell phone camera, not unlike other cryptids all over the world including Bigfoot in North America and Bunyip in Australia.
Most of the expeditions mentioned here as well as others that claimed to have seen the Yeti concluded that the Yeti is actually just an unusually large Tibetan bear, possibly 7 feet tall. Bears are known to walk upright sometimes. Besides most footprints in the snow look larger over time as wind and other effects erode the edges.
In most movies and comics, the Yeti is depicted as a ferocious monster, ready to eat and kill everything in sight, but one of the most endearing portrayals has been in The Adventures of Tintin when the Yeti rescues and takes care of an air-crash survivor.
I’ve linked some pictures of Yeti pictures on the site sfipodcast.com, check them out.
Yeti footprints: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeti#/media/File:1937_yeti_footprints.png
A single freshly made Yeti footprint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeti#/media/File:Eric_Shipton_yeti_footprint.png
A possible Yeti scalp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeti#/media/File:Yetiscalp.JPG
An article about a man who spent years searching for the Yeti: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/08/yeti-abominable-snowman-bear-daniel-taylor/
That’s all for this mini-episode.
In this weekend’s full episode we’ll switch gears a bit and cover some stories of Shivaji. We’ll learn how a very old farmer lady can provide great military advice to an extremely competent warrior-king. We’ll also see that if you’re trying to secretly escape from someplace you really can’t pick a better place to travel in than a giant-size box of sweets.