Ancient Traces

by Michael Baigent

  The plesiosaur best fits many of the eyewitness reports. Its neck was up to twenty-six feet long, its body perhaps twenty feet. Like a turtle, it came on to the land to lay its eggs. However, it did not have the fur, whiskers or mane which have been reported. But over the last 64 million years some changes may have occurred in its structure.

  The zoologist Dr Karl Shuker, in his important study of unknown animals, In Search of Prehistoric Survivors, is of the opinion that remnant plesiosaurs provide the best explanation for many of the aquatic monsters seen.37 Referring, for example, to the famous ‘flipper’ photographs taken in Loch Ness in 1972 by Dr Robert Rine, he thinks that they provide good evidence for ‘Nessie’, at least, being a developed plesiosaur type.38

  As a curious addendum to this, it is worth noting that in many isolated environments various large animals, devoid of predators, over the millennia developed into pygmy versions of their species. In Mediterranean islands, for example, the elephants of Malta and the hippopotami of Cyprus grew ever smaller until finally the last of the species, which died out in historical times, was only two or three feet in length. In the island of Mallorca, a dwarf antelope developed in the same manner. Dwarf deer remnants have been found on Jersey in the English Channel. And in the Russian Arctic, on Wrangel Island, recent work has shown that dwarf mammoths lived there until as late as 3,700 years ago – later than the building of the Egyptian pyramids.39

  In Venezuela, in 1955, on the isolated plateau of Auyan Tepuί, a naturalist reported witnessing three strange creatures lying in the sun on a ledge above a river. His drawings and description fit that of a plesiosaur. Except that the creatures he described were only three feet long.40

  The second possible candidate for prehistoric survival is perhaps the ancestor of those many reports which describe a sinuous, serpentine creature which swims in a vertically undulating manner. Certainly, no known modern creature such as a watersnake or eel swims in this way. But the fossil record reveals one such creature: the zeuglodont which, according to the palaeontologists, has been extinct for 25 million years.

  This is a very long, serpentine mammal growing up to sixty feet long. Fossils show that it was widely distributed around the world, both in shallow and deep water. It has a very long, very flexible backbone and it is thought that it swam in an undulating manner. Cryptozoologists regard remnant zeuglodonts as the main candidates for the unknown serpentine creatures reported the world over.41

  It is easy to see that some unknown monstrosity, a remnant dinosaur, or some other adaptation, could hide from the scrutiny of mankind in the remote depths of the oceans or lakes. As we have seen, this process has occurred with the coelacanth and the Megamouth shark. However, it is less easy to think of this process occurring on the land, since most of the earth seems to be either covered with humans or well explored by them.

  In fact, neither of these statements is true. Vast parts of the earth are rarely, if ever, visited by humans. And, as with the oceans and lakes, animals unknown to mankind, some of them thought extinct, have been found.

  In 1992 an international zoological team mounted an expedition along the jungle border of Vietnam and Laos. They found four animals previously unknown: a fish, a bird, a turtle and, most dramatically, the Vu Quang ox. This grows to around three feet high and has two parallel pointed horns sweeping back from the top of its skull. The team came back with three skulls. It was not until June 1994 that scientists successfully captured a live example.42

  In 1995 a team of French and British explorers were making their way across a remote region of Tibet when they found their route blocked by an unseasonally early snowfall. They detoured through a valley which had never been mapped and were surprised to find it filled with large trees which protected several herds of small horses. These diminutive animals were about four feet high with wedge-shaped heads. The leader of the expedition stated later that they looked just like the horses depicted in the prehistoric cave paintings in France and Spain.43

  These are just recent examples of a long line of discoveries which have continued ever since scientists began classifying animals; and the discoveries are not likely to cease suddenly. This century alone, seven sizeable creatures, previously unknown, have been found.44

  The two examples above show us the kind of environment in which discoveries are being made: remote areas of mountain or jungle. It is not surprising, then, that there is a jungle region out of which come tales of a creature resembling nothing less than a great dinosaur. A creature which holds the local population in a state of fear.

  4

  Living Dinosaurs

  On 19 February 1980 Professor Roy Mackal of Chicago University, a biologist with an enduring passion for cryptozoology, was wading through the virtually unexplored Likouala swamps in the northern jungles of the African Republic of Congo. As he pushed through the stinking mud, biting insects and a humidity which touched 100 per cent, he must have wondered why he had left the comfortable life of a university for such hazardous terrain. Accompanying him was a zoologist, James Powell, whose previous experience of the African jungles still had not fully prepared him for the hardships they were facing. Both were driven by a certainty that somewhere in this dangerous region lived large unknown beasts which, just possibly, might be remnant dinosaurs.1

  The Likouala swamps, however awe-inspiring their beauty often is, are one of the most forbidding and inhospitable places on earth. They are a constantly sodden marshy jungle area which extends over some 55,000 square miles, an area slightly larger than England, about the size of the US state of Illinois or Iowa, stretching across the Republic of Congo to Zaïre, Chad and the Central African Republic. They represent terrestrial life in overload, the thick jungle hiding leopards, panthers, gorillas, hippopotami, antelope and the dangerous wild buffalo, together with a number of unknown species which dwell in the shallow waters.

  The region is very hot and very humid. It is infested with

  The Likouala swamps: possible home to relict dinosaurs.

  poisonous snakes – vipers, mambas, cobras – voracious ants, belligerent crocodiles, scorpions, tarantulas and malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The region has endless tracts of stinking mud which must be laboriously waded through, each step bringing up discharges of stinking gas. It is filled with diseases of every type. Even the local inhabitants, as acclimatized to the region as any humans could be, are rife with intestinal parasites, skin diseases and malaria.

  Few hunters venture into the heart of the swamps. Even fewer live there in villages. The largest are only a handful of isolated huts, many miles’ and many hours’ travel from any neighbours. Those who do live in the area do so on the main rivers, the Likouala-aux-Herbes, the Bai and the Sangha. In this vast swamp a large beast, adapted to the conditions, could survive, rarely seen, indefinitely.

  A notable curiosity of this region is that despite its fearsome appearance it is, in ecological terms, an ‘island’ of stability.2 It has remained much the same for 60 million years – almost since the time the dinosaurs are thought to have died out. During this long period it has not experienced any of the changes which have distorted the rest of the world. It has never seen earthquakes, Ice Age glaciation, flooding or the mountain-building effects of continental drift. Over these millions of years it has remained environmentally constant. A creature adapted to the conditions, and living here successfully in the past, would have every expectation of continuing to live there today. Indeed, some known creatures have done just that: crocodiles, for example, have thrived there virtually without change for some 65 million years.

  It cannot, therefore, be regarded as a complete surprise that here, in this vast jungle swampland, local hunters have occasionally reported seeing a huge hostile monster described as a large reptile. Science may not have recognized it, but the local people certainly do. They know it as the mokele-mbembe and take care to stay well clear of its path.

  It was the reports of this monster which drew Professor Mackal and James Powell
into the swamps. Their decision to mount an expedition, in the face of considerable scholastic disdain, took considerable academic courage. The expedition itself necessitated physical courage.

  The African Dinosaurs

  It is undoubtedly true that the native peoples who have lived in the Likouala swamps over the centuries have always known of this monster and have seen no reason to feel anything about it but great fear. It is a common belief amongst certain groups in the area that to even talk about witnessing such a creature would, in some occult manner, bring about one’s death.

  The first Europeans to realize that something strange and monstrous was alive in Central Africa were the French missionaries who, during the eighteenth century, were tramping through the jungles seeking to make converts to Christianity. While engaged in this task they also reported on the daily life of the people and on the animals and plants which they saw, most unknown to Western science at the time. In 1776 the French Abbé Proyart drew from these reports for his Histoire de Loango: missionaries had come across the tracks of some huge and unknown animal which left claw-marks about three feet in circumference, with seven to eight feet between each print.3

  Nothing further was recorded until the early twentieth century. Then rumours of the existence of some very strange beasts began reaching the scientific community in Europe.

  One of the earliest official records of these stories was made by the German captain Baron von Stein zu Lausnitz, just prior to the First World War. At that time these swamps fell within the German colonial empire, the Cameroons, which extended through the north of modern-day Congo, in which territory the region lies today. The captain had been ordered to make a general survey of the area which he completed in 1913–14. In his report back to Berlin – which unfortunately was never published because of the outbreak of war – he mentioned an unknown beast, the mokele-mbembe, which lived in certain rivers in the swamplands.

  This beast, he wrote, was ‘feared very much’ and lived in an area bounded by two rivers, the Likouala-aux-Herbes and a tributary, the Sangha. Both feed water into the Congo river which flows down the border between Congo and Zaïre before emptying into the Atlantic.

  The captain described an animal about the size of an elephant but with a long and flexible neck. Some reports describe a single horn on its head. Its skin was reportedly smooth and grey-brown in colour. It was said to live in caves washed out by the current beneath the river bank and to eat certain plants along the banks. The local natives were terrified of its long powerful tail which was rather like that of an alligator. It was reputed to attack any canoes which came near it, killing the occupants but not eating their bodies for, although vicious, this animal was not carnivorous.4

  During the succeeding decades, anecdotes and rumours about this beast, and perhaps others equally unknown, kept surfacing, not only in the Likouala area, but in other parts of Central Africa. In the Cameroons, a monster, the n’yamala was spoken of in almost identical terms. A water-dwelling monster, the mbilintu was noted in the jungle area where the borders of Zaïre, Zambia and Tanzania all come close to one another. This was described as resembling a huge lizard with a long neck, a small head and heavy legs similar to an elephant’s.5

  Another German official, the magistrate Dr Leo von Boxberger, who served in the Cameroons for many years while it remained a colony, reported that in the Congo basin there were many reports of a ‘mysterious water beast’ described as a huge reptile with a long thin neck.6

  The earliest European hunters and animal collectors who heard these stories concluded that some relict dinosaur was the likely explanation. Such suggestions briefly made lurid headlines which did the thesis no favours in the scientific community and, even worse, led to a number of sensationalized frauds.7 These drove the subject well beyond the boundaries of orthodox science.

  Nevertheless, apparently genuine sightings continued: in the 11920s a local ruler in what is now Zambia was informed, with great excitement, that a monster ‘taller than a man, with a huge body, a long neck with a snake-like head, and sturdy legs’8 had been resting on the edge of a nearby swamp; upon the approach of the men it had quickly vanished beneath the waters. The ruler immediately visited the site where he could easily make out traces of a large animal. In an area about four and a half feet wide, the reeds were pressed into the mud as though from the weight of a bulky creature and, from this point, a wide muddy track led to the river. This was consistent with what the excited natives had seen. The ruler deemed the incident of sufficient importance to send a report on it to the local British administrator.

  In May 1954 an Englishman, working in what is now Zambia, was taking a short fishing holiday at Lake Bangweulu. While fishing, he was astonished by the sudden appearance, about twenty-five yards away, of a small head atop a long thick neck, rising up out of the water. His first impression was that it was some sort of snake but he quickly realized that he was witnessing a much more mysterious creature. He remained tight-lipped about this sighting until the 1990s, when he told his story to cryptozoologist Dr Karl Shuker, who concluded that it represented a mokele-mbembe type of creature.9

  Dr Shuker’s informant described the animal’s neck as about twelve inches thick and of a grey colour. Its head had a blunt nose with an obvious jaw-line and brow. After a few seconds the creature sank back below the water of the lake.

  Other observers have recorded such creatures and have noted that they regularly leave the water because footprints and other marks have been found on the shore; these revealed that it had a foot with three toes or claws and a thick tail.10

  Local Traditions

  In the late 1970s James Powell approached Professor Roy Mackal, who had been delivering a lecture on cryptozoology at a Texan university, with an interesting story.

  In 1976 Powell had been based in Gabon conducting a study of crocodiles. During this time he had befriended local people who, knowing of his interest in such animals, told him of a mysterious creature which they called the n’yamala.11 It was said to be a very dangerous long-necked monster, to be avoided at all costs.

  Mackal and Powell pooled their information and began to plan an expedition to Central Africa in order to seek out this unknown monster. Both thought plausible the suggestion that it might be a relict dinosaur. Firstly, though, Powell decided to return to Gabon for a fortnight’s preliminary investigation. He arrived there at the end of January 1979. His findings were to prove important.

  Through his contacts Powell was introduced to a local shaman, a man of high intelligence and great knowledge of the area. Powell reported:

  First I showed him pictures of African animals found in the Gabonese jungles – leopard, gorilla, elephant, hippo, crocodile, etc. – and asked him to identify each one, which he did unerringly. I then showed him a picture of a bear, which does not occur in Gabon. This he could not identify.

  ‘This animal not live around here,’ he said. I then showed him a picture of a Diplodocus (a brontosaurus-like dinosaur)… and asked him if he could recognize it.

  ‘N’yamala,’ he answered, quite matter-of-factly.12 Powell then showed him a picture of a plesiosaur. The shaman also identified this as a n’yamala. When shown illustrations of other dinosaurs the shaman replied honestly and bluntly that these did not live in the region.13

  Powell was cautious but concluded that the shaman was a plausible witness and so accepted that there was, or had been in the recent past, a dinosaur-like creature concealed deep in the swamps of Gabon.

  The next day Powell travelled eighty miles downriver to another small settlement where he put the same questions and illustrations to the local people. He reported identical results: ‘Pictures of a leopard, gorilla, hippo, elephant and crocodile were all correctly identified. The bear was unknown. Pictures of a Diplodocus and a plesiosaur were both identified as n’yamala.’ The latter was said to be, ‘a rare animal that was found only in remote lakes deep in the jungle. Only the very greatest hunters have seen the n’yamala.’14
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  The natives told Powell that these animals lived on ‘jungle chocolate’, the name given to a plant with large fruit – like nuts – which grows near the banks of rivers and lakes. They added that these animals did not coexist with hippos; consequently, in any areas where the n’ yamala lived, hippos were conspicuously absent. Mackal and Powell were later to find certain areas abounding with hippos and other parts of the same river complex curiously devoid of them. Could they assume that this indicated the presence of the unknown beast?

  The shaman eventually confessed to Powell that he had personally seen one of these beasts about 1946, when he was camping near a small lake. Early one morning, he recalled, a n’yamala left the water and climbed on to the land to eat ‘jungle chocolate’, allowing him a good view of it. The beast was about thirty-three feet long with a long neck and tail and appeared to be as heavy as an elephant.15 The shaman added that its usual feeding times were between midnight and dawn; the remainder of the day it would spend under water.

  It seemed evident that this n’yamala of Gabon was the same creature as the mokele-mbembe of the Congo. Enthused by this information, Mackal and Powell decided upon an expedition to the latter region to try and find one of these beasts. They organized rapidly; on 30 January 1980 they flew out of O’Hare Airport, Chicago, en route for the northern Congo.

  The Expeditions

  From the very beginning Mackal and Powell had three aims: firstly, and most ambitiously, to photograph or capture a living mokele-mbembe; secondly, to gather all the information they could about the creature, its habits, its environment and particularly when and where it had been most recently spotted; thirdly, to meet and interview as many eyewitnesses of the beast as possible.