The Asian Wild Man

by Jean-Paul Debenat

  Following linguist Noam Chomsky, Stella believes that man possesses a boundless capacity of expression through language; his powers of thought and imagination are without limits. A child not only repeats what he heard; he also invents new sentences. Stella

  rmly believes that the emergence of consciousness is linked to the acquisition of language. Her ultimate ambition is to discover a fossil demonstrating the antiquity of linguistic abilities, and consequently of human consciousness, in an era which she thinks of as “The Dawn of Humanity.” Stella’s plans for an expedition in Tibet are clearly not based on the lure of pro t or publicity.

  The expedition is quickly put together; the ease with which it is nanced is nothing short of miraculous. Stella does not suspect the covert role of the CIA in assembling the scienti c team, one of whose members is a secret agent charged with nding out about Chinese activities in Tibet. Have the Chinese, following their occupation of Tibet in 1950, perhaps built secret factories, missile bases and radar stations? Might they perhaps want to take advantage of the India–Pakistan antagonism to invade Nepal?

  Spying is a common theme in today’s popular novels. The presence of an evil CIA agent offers the prospect of murders and mindless cruelty, regretfully too often overemphasized.

  Unfortunately, scienti c research is often subject to world events. Some areas become inaccessible due to armed con icts. The fauna, and even the ora, may be affected. Catastrophes, natural as well as arti cial, such as the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, set dif cult conditions. Thus, vast areas, even entire provinces, may become a no-man’s land. Travelers cannot obtain visas; many stay away concerned about safety. Whole regions return to the exclusive domain of a few natives and especially of animals. The rare visitors may again glimpse elusive animals, such as the snow leopard, in the Himalayas.

  One of these large cats is shot down with a hypodermic dart by Stella’s team. The encounter with the leopard is a prelude to that expected by the reader: a meeting with the yeti, here called Homo vertex, Man of the Summits. In an atomic con ict, Homo vertex would survive a nuclear winter, already adapted as it is to live in semi-arctic conditions. It would then replace Homo sapiens…

  In the novel, a feeling of panic comes over the expedition as the leader of the Sherpas has a close encounter—less than 30 meters (100 feet) away—with two yetis, large corpulent males, at least two meters tall, resembling gorillas with red-brown hair. Their heads are large and pointed, their faces hairless, atter than a human’s but not as at as a gorilla’s. These yetis stink terribly, a condition worsened by their coprophagic habits. The Sherpa notes that he has witnessed a yeti eating its own excrement. One of the scientists remarks that some great apes also do this in order not to waste any nutrients.

  Soon afterwards, the explorers discover another feature of the yeti. They see a female smash a marmot against a tree and then eat the intestines before throwing the rest of the carcass away. Yetis are carnivores, as are also chimpanzees on occasion. The story is peppered with zoological details, which add somewhat to its plausibility, as well as information about the Sherpas’ religious habits. An image of the green goddess Tara is supposed to protect the Sherpa leader. Tara, the highest form of the eternal feminine, is the equivalent of the Hindu Shiva.

  Not surprisingly, the realism of the adventure evaporates when we discover the yetis’ refuge: a small valley, dif cult of access, in the crater of an extinct volcano, with fertile soil and rich vegetation—a magni cent mountain oasis that the Sherpas name “The Sacred Forest.” A wise sadhu reigns peacefully over the yetis, viewing these creatures as so many portals through which he can contemplate the marvels of the universe.

  The heroine, Stella Swift, is brought back to the scientists’ base camp in a rather unexpected fashion: in the arms of a yeti, like Fay Wray in those of King Kong. She returns from a great height at breakneck speed as the yeti slides down the snowy slope on its rear end, as on a giant toboggan—a spirited fantasy heralding a happy ending to the novel.

  Philip Kerr’s novel takes the reader to the core of some of the twentieth century’s anthropological concerns, those which led Charles Dawson, Raymond Dart, the Leaky family, and more recently George Nutall and Jared Diamond, on the path of revealing enquiries. We recall that Charles Dawson was the one who discovered, in 1912, the remains of the Piltdown Man, a fabrication made up of a human skull and the jaw of an orangutan. It was only in 1955 that the hoax was revealed and it took some time for paleoanthropology to recover its reputation. The shadow of Piltdown Man was still hovering over the eld when Raymond Dart discovered, in 1924 at Taung in South Africa, the fossilized remains of the rst Australopithecus, to which he gave the speci c name africanus.

  Louis Leakey (1903–1972) was the patriarch of a clan of paleontologists and paleoanthropologists ( ve in all). His granddaughter Louise (born in 1972) continues the work begun by her grandparents in eastern Africa 70 years ago. Their discoveries have opened up new perspectives in human prehistory. Their family history is a modern scienti c and sociological epic.

  Bacteriologist George Nutall was the one who rst demonstrated that human and chimpanzee antigens were nearly identical.

  Jared Diamond, the author of The Third Chimpanzee (1991), teaches physiology at the University of California. In his view, the future of mankind—the third chimpanzee—is threatened by the dangers of genocide and ecological holocaust.

  1 Quoted from Le Grand Robert de la Langue Française, tome 1, p. 571.

  10. Messner’s Yeti

  We now pass from ction to a factual account by Reinhold Messner. Suddenly, as silent as a shadow, a silhouette emerged, about ten meters in front of me, in the middle of a thicket of rhododendrons. ‘A yak,’ I thought, immediately relieved at the idea of meeting with Tibetans, and sharing a hot meal and nding a warm place to sleep. But the creature remained immobile. Then, silently, it began to run through the forest, now disappearing, then reappearing, ever more swiftly. Neither branches nor ditches slowed it down. It was NOT a yak!1

  Biplane over Everest. PHOTO: Author’s le Thus did Reinhold Messner describe his encounter with a mysterious creature. Between 1970 and 1987, Messner conquered the highest and most challenging mountains of the world. Together with a partner, he climbed Everest (8850 meters [29,000 feet]) without oxygen in May 1978. He repeated the feat alone in 1980, again without oxygen, carrying only a light backpack. He continued his exploits, climbing all of the world’s peaks above 8000 meters (26,000 feet), demonstrating again his extraordinary adaptation to the summits.

  Once all the summits were reached, Messner turned to exploration, often alone. He traveled through eastern China, Tibet, Nepal and Buthan. In 1993, he crossed Greenland (2000 kilometers [1250 miles]). In 2004, he trekked through the Gobi desert in Mongolia, another 2000-kilometer hike.

  Like Edmund Hillary before him, Messner sought to challenge both himself and nature. “It is only nature which I must respect, the nature that’s within me as well as that external.”2 Different times meant different methods: Hillary’s expedition included 350 porters and extensive supplies, including oxygen (until the 1970s, Everest climbers carried 50 kilograms of oxygen tanks each, to be used above 7000 meters [22,965 feet]); Messner’s support team, 27 years later, included a liaison of cer and an interpreter, both Chinese. He was one of the rst to obtain permission to climb the north face of Everest. In addition, an American woman who worked in school construction for the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation, accompanied him as rst aid/cook/general helper.

  Hillary, we recall, had developed a close friendship with the Sherpas. He devoted time, money and energy to improve their lives, building 27 schools, two hospitals, 12 clinics and a few bridges. Sadly, these accomplishments were shadowed by the death of Hillary’s wife, Louise, and their youngest daughter, Belinda, in 1975when their plane crashed after leaving Katmandu.

  Messner also suffered a serious loss: in 1970, after a successful ascent of Nanga Parbat (8126 meters [26,660 feet]), his brother Günther disapp
eared during the descent. A few days later, Reinhold had to have seven frozen toes amputated. Günther’s remains were found only in 2005 and were incinerated by Reinhold on the Nanga Parbat. In his novel Esau, Kerr drew liberally on Messner’s adventures as an alpinist.

  Hillary and Messner, conquerors of the Everest, shared similar fates. Besides his exploits as an alpinist, Messner also explored vast regions from Sichuan to the Pamir, from Bhutan to southern Siberia. Often traveling alone from 1985 to 1997, his long treks aimed at tracking the “abominable snowman,” also Hillary’s quest.

  Messner’s investigations led to his book My Quest for the Yeti, (1998). In that year, the author handed all his documentation to American mammologist George Schaller. Messner now faced new dangers: the irony of the press and the hostility of the elite of mountain climbers.

  We now return to that late afternoon in July 1986 when Messner glimpsed that fugitive silhouette. He then found an enormous footprint in the dark soil. He took pictures, recalling similar photos taken by Eric Shipton in 1951. That same evening he found four more prints. Pushing through the juniper bushes, he heard a whistling noise:

  From the corner of my eye, I saw a standing silhouette, between the trees on the edge of the clearing, in an area where short bushes covered the steep slope. The creature moved fast, leaning forwards, noiselessly, disappearing behind a tree to reappear quickly in the moonlight. It paused and looked at me. I heard that whistle again…a kind of angry whistle. For a brief moment, I saw its eyes and its teeth. The beast was standing, menacing…It was covered with hair and had short legs; its powerful arms hung alongside its body down to its knees. I estimated it to be more than two metres tall and it seemed to weigh much more than a man of similar stature. I was surprised to see this enormous mass move with such agility. It was now moving towards the edge of the escarpement. I felt relieved. I was mainly astounded. No human being could have been running in this manner in the night.3

  Such is the beginning of Messner’s account, as he climbed a valley of eastern Tibet, carrying only a sleeping bag, a ashlight, a penknife, a safety blanket and a camera. He was looking for a village to spend the night. Without a tent, he would have to sleep under a tree or in a cave if no one took him in. As he approached a village, Messner discovered the truth of the Tibetan proverb, the guard dog is one with the door as a woman with her jewels.

  Hounded by the Tibetan mastiffs guarding the village, he took refuge in a loft from which the villagers expelled him. After a few words, they welcomed him and offered him tsha (tea), tara (butter) and tsampa (grilled barley malt). In answer to their questions, he described his encounter with a creature as large as a yak. His Tibetan hosts exclaimed in frightened unison, “Chemo?”

  Back on the road, a one-eyed villager guided Messner. For him, the chemo was a nocturnal creature that looked like a bear or a huge ape. Like the villagers, it ate barley, meat, fruits, berries, vegetables and nettles.

  From then on, Messner’s search took a new turn. The Sherpas, expelled from their Tibetan homeland had brought their stories of the yeti to Nepal. However, he had just encountered a creature named chemo. Was it the same as the yeti? Messner began to imagine that the discovery of the yeti could explain the origin of Sherpa legends.

  1 Reinhold Messner, My Quest for the Ye , p.4.

  2 Messner, as quoted by Caroline Alexander, Na onal Geographic, November 2006, p. 34.

  3 Reinhold Messner, op. cit. p. 7.

  11. A Casual Meeting

  A casual meeting can be transformative; it can change everything, including the scenery! The yeti no longer shows up in the mountains and high valleys of Nepal and Solo Khumbu. In Nepal, the yeti is now only a ghost. But in eastern Tibet, it is still real.1

  How can one truly fathom the impact of scenery? It might bring to mind memories of childhood, of love and adventure. It might hide a secret spring, caves, ancient ruins. It is the humus from which rises the rare ower, the refuge of the last few survivors of a hidden species. The region is either graced or haunted by the presence of a being seen as either admirable or evil, sometimes both at once. Are there two faces to the yeti? On the one hand, the killer of yaks and rapist of women, on the other, a timid and inoffensive giant? Seen from that latter side, the yeti would only venture into forested areas in search of salt, nding there the salty mosses required by its metabolism. It would otherwise avoid contact with humans.

  Gerald Russell’s analysis of yeti excrement suggests that it is not exclusively vegetarian. Bernard Heuvelmans adds, “The evidence shows that the Snow Man clearly has an omnivorous diet: roots, fruits, lizards, birds, small rodents and, occasionally, larger preys— anything that might be at hand in such a dry area.”2

  Heuvelmans also points out the imprecision of the terms used to describe the snowman. Should one detect there the in uence of Tibetan Buddhism, according to which the souls of the departed are reincarnated in the bodies of near-humans and should not be addressed by their real names? Besides mi-gö (Tibet, Nepal) or mighu (Bhutan), meaning wild man, one also nds dre-mo, which means female demon.

  Did Messner go on a quest for a real or for a mythical being? He raised the question himself at the end of the rst chapter of his book. Over the dozen years that followed his July 1986 encounter he launched a series of expeditions. The search took place on a background of political and military upheavals affecting the entire population of Tibet, as well as that of neighboring countries (Nepal, Bhutan and India) that took in Tibetan refugees. In Katmandu, Messner conversed with Tarchen, his Tibetan interpreter, who had left the country in 1950. Tarchen, a former Tibetan resistance ghter, related how he and some companions had discovered the corpse of a yeti, shot down by the Chinese. The creature had been skinned; its body was similar to a man’s, but thicker and more muscular. Messner commented, “Tibet has always been rich in myths and legends, but poor in freedoms.”3

  Messner often refers to the importance of a myth celebrated during the annual Mani Rimdu feast meaning “all will go well.” The feast lasts at least three days in Sherpa country; it is an invitation to celebrate the gods of nature. The monks wear masks of the gods. The spectators make offerings of maize to the monastery. In Chiwong Gompa, prayers are offered to Guru Rimpoche, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism. The feast begins with the sounding of the horns. The second day, costumed monks dance a mime of the struggle against the forces of evil, accompanied by an orchestra of horns, conks,

  utes and cymbals. On the third day, bread-dough gurines (tormas) are burned: the evil forces have been eliminated! According to Messner, these practices are vestiges of the ancient shamanic religion Bon, which preceded Tibetan Buddhism. The blood and the scalps of yetis were mixed with the blood of a horse, a dog, a goat, a raven, even human blood. The blood had to come from the blood of a yeti killed by arrows.

  Messner witnessed this ritual at the Khumjung monastery, at the foot of Everest. A man wearing a conical scalp and a sheepskin carries a bow and arrows. It is said that an evil fate may fall upon this disguised man. Messner relates these rituals with great objectivity, and describes them without irony or patronizing. He notes that following the introduction of a deeply esoteric form of Tibetan Buddhism in the eighth century, many elements of the old religion survived—hence this mixture of spiritual and shamanic elements that lies at the root of Tibetan culture. The term esoteric, as used

  by Messner, describes a form of knowledge that remains, without prior initiation, hidden and inaccessible. Following 18 months of investigation, Messner concluded that two questions needed

  clari cation. First of all, why had the legend of the yeti spread so widely and durably over such a wide area, from the Pamir to the eastern Himalayas? Secondly, could it be shown that there actually exists a

  The shaman of

  the Gro e des

  Trois Frères.

  living creature behind the legend? Messner discarded the option of a link to some hominid creature. He was convinced that the chemo was the living proof of the lege
nd.

  1 Reinhold Messner, My Quest for the Ye , p. 27.

  2 Bernard Heuvelmans, On the Track of Unknown animals, p. 193.

  3 Reinhold Messner. loc.cit., p. 92.

  12. Discoveries

  In the spring of 1991, Messner crisscrossed Bhutan with a German TV reporter, a cameraman and a photographer. For weeks they trekked through the high meadows lying between impenetrable forests and icy summits—the ideal yeti habitat.

  On a cool and sunny day in May, the team paused at Gangtey Gompa, a small monastery. Crossing the prayer halls during his visit to the gompa, Messner noted the absence of any image of the yeti. He asked to see the tantric room; the monks gave their permission. In the dim light, the team discovered walls covered with fabrics painted with masks and skulls. Below, hung hunting trophies: the heads of elks, bears, boars, sheep, deer—and above it all, the pelt of a “red yeti.” This mygio, explained the lama, reigns over all the other animals. It was the skin of a young yeti, cursed before removing its heart and skinning it.

  Scrutinizing the pelt, Messner quickly concluded that it was a fake, no more than a puppet. “I no longer knew what to think. Only one thing was for sure: the yeti had no place in the concrete, rational world and could only have arisen in such a place. It was either the product of the imagination, or a symbol for a particularly rare animal.”1

  Messner was very disappointed, especially in the light of the sarcasms with which expert “yeti-ologists” greeted each one of his forays. Nevertheless, he did not give up, spending the whole winter of 1992–93 in Nepal. During a visit to the hidden kingdom of Mustang he heard a story about the king having once killed a yeti that was carrying away a young yak. Not much of a reward for all Messner’s efforts.

  During the summer of 1996, Messner and a few friends traveled to Chengdu in Sichuan, en route for Lhasa. They were struck by the degree of deforestation and by the number of yak corpses seen along the road. They pitched their tent for a few days on the shore of the “divine lake” Yulung Lhantso. This is where Messner overheard the word chemo repeatedly mentioned in a conversation between the porters and members of a caravan.