Could they still be living in remote mountains?

There are stories of giants in every culture of the world. We don’t mean stories of very tall man, although there are lots of these too, but legends of huge, hairy men of 2.5 metres,3, even 4 metres in height who lived in caves and forests. Of course, experts dismiss these stories as myths and inventions, but there is actually physical evidence that the stories are true. Especially in North America.

Now the evidence is being investigated again, and some experts are asking whether giant ape-men lived in North America until very recently. Could the stories of giants be memories of real ape-men, cousins of Homo sapiens? Skeletons found in Alaska are proof, and some people even think that the ape-men survived until the present.

Sasquatch – our forgotten cousin?

When European settlers first reached the Rocky Mountains in the west of America, they began to hear rumours and stories about giant ape-men who lived in the mountains and deep forests. At first, they dismissed the stories as superstition, like the European legends of werewolves and “bear-men”.

But then settlers started to find evidence themselves. They heard strange cries in the forests, they found animals killed in strange ways, and they found huge footprints that were man-like, but much bigger. There were even scattered reports of people sighting the Sasquatch. The legend of the American Indians spread to the white settlers, although they named the creature “Bigfoot.”

As the West became more developed, cities were built, and the first universities appeared. Archaeologists started to show an interest in the burial mounds that they found all over the USA, from east coast to west. In the east, most of the burial mounds were obviously evidence of old Indian settlements and burials. The skeletons were normally sized, and the relics buried with bodies were like those that Indians still used.

But in a few places in the East, and many more places as they moved further West, they also found stranger remains too. From all over the USA there came reports of huge man-like skeletons being found. There were hundreds of reports, and all of them found similar remains:

  • Bodies at least 2.5 metres tall
  • Longer legs than humans, but shorter arms
  • Much thicker and more powerful bones
  • Skulls that were much longer than human skulls (2 to 3 times longer from chin to the top of the head)
  • Powerful jawbones with huge teeth designed for ripping through raw meat, and occasionally two rows of teeth

Remember that these are not legends of burials found by peasants long ago, but reports by qualified experts. They knew the bodies were not just larger human beings, but a completely different creature – related to us, but not like us.

However, in the 19th century there were a lot of crank scientists, and carnival shows that had “freak exhibits” with faked bodies of strange creatures. Often fake ape-men were the “stars” of these freak shows, and so the reports of massive bodies found buried were dismissed as mistakes. The Christian religion was also still very strong, and discoveries of fossils and very old burials were regarded as impossible, because most people still believed the Earth was created in 7 days about 6,000 years ago.

The public soon forgot the serious scientific reports on these mysterious ape-men burials, and even though there were occasional sightings of “bigfoot”, these were dismissed as jokes or people lying.

Proof found – in the 1940s

In the 1940s, US Air Force engineers were sent to the Aleutian Islands off Alaska to build an airfield. This remote chain of islands was created by volcanoes, and when the planet was warmer, they had been inhabited. But now most of them are uninhabited, with some eskimoes going to some of them in the summer to fish, but not places where anyone could live permanently.

So, when the construction crews saw the site of the runway was covered with low mounds, they thought they must be natural and like mounds found in many other areas of the Arctic. They started to bulldoze them to level the ground, until one of the crews found a skeleton! They then realised the mounds were actually burial mounds, and carefully checked each one before bulldozing it. This was during the war, and so the men did not have time to take great care, but they did find five skeletons and made some records of the discovery.

The bodies found were of ape-men, not humans. They all had huge skulls, powerful bodies and were well over 2 metres tall. And the skulls all had two rows of teeth and six fingers on each hand. They were definitely a different species from us. Proof at last that the Sasquatch exists!

Reports of the find were sent back to the Air Force HQ in the USA, but in the chaos of war, they seem to have been forgotten or lost. There were no media reports, because the construction work was secret. Once again, proof was lost, and the discovery remained unknown by the wider world until one of the engineers read a book on mysterious creatures by a zoologist called Ivan Sanderson.

Sanderson told the story of the discovery and details of the skeletons found. Since then, experts have been piecing together as many details as possible of the discovery. Based on the story that Ivan Sanderson published, they have said that the bodies must have been very similar to skeletons that were found in another part of Alaska.

A burial was found high up in the Alaskan mountains by a gold prospector, who found multiple skeletons in a single burial ground. The giants measured from 2 metres tall to over 3 metres! Sadly, the skeletons themselves have been lost, but these are also proof of a giant race of ape-men in North America.

Whether called the Sasquatch or Bigfoot, the giant ape-men existed. There are reports even to this day of sightings in remote mountains, but no physical evidence has been found. You may have seen a famous film of Bigfoot walking through the forest, made in the 1960s, but this film is a fake, a man in a costume. It is likely that the giant ape-men are now extinct, but their memories continue. Indian legends and burial mounds found suggest they lived all across the northern USA and Canada, but then were driven to the margins as people settled the country. Like the “hobbits” found in Indonesia, these giants were relatives, but not human. It is a common, but mistaken, view that we humans are the only hominids to develop from apes, but science is discovering new species all the time. Our family of cousins is much larger than we ever realised, and we are just the one group that survived.