Footprints on the snow

A. V. SWAMINATHAN

Yeti, the mythical creature inhabiting the Himalayan mountains, feared as a harbinger of misfortune, is held in awe by the deeply religious-minded Sherpas and Nepalis. Its great appetite for Yak meat or of cattle grazing on the mountain slopes is known to the local inhabitants.

Several articles and graphic accounts regarding the fabled visitor have appeared in print, particularly in issues of Anamolies and other feature publications such as of Hammer Films, and Skeptics Dictionary of UK. It is on these that this write-up is largely based. Even National Geographic in the U.S. included an article to cover reports about the abominable snowman. Although the mysterious being has been known to the people of the Himalayas for centuries, the earliest recorded sighting was not until 1921 from the versions by Col. Howard-Bury, who led an expedition to Everest. From that time onward, this virtually unknown Himalayan denizen has shot into limelight, bordering on "sensation", baffling all Naturalists. They have, however, quickly discovered the species a "Hominid" that could probably fit into their concept of the "missing link", which has remained inobscurity for so long.

It was further believed among the Tibetan monks that the mythical being carried a magic stone beneath one arm "partly accounting for its unique ungainly gait". This stone endowned prodigious powers that could overwhelm even strong and large-sized prey.

The tradition-bound Sherpas suggested the lower slopes as the habitat of the Yeti, where they were "to exist as spirits, always beyond the slight of moral men".

Folk-tales apart, it appears that several unexpected encounters have taken place, though from a distance, but convincingly indicating a creature which shrieked with a "high-pitched whistling sound", moved swiftly as a human being, and had a profusion of hair on its body. Skeptics, however, persist in decrying authenticity in these reports, as life, according to them would be impossible "on the snow-clad mountains, where food was scarce". The narrations, in their opinion, were mere hallucinations of the brain, likely in the rarified heights, or the effects of an overdosage of alcohol!

But, Scientists have never given up the idea to locate it, "dead or alive" in order to establish if the Yeti could really be the "anthropoid ape" - the "missing link" in the chain of human evolution.

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