#2577 - Gregory Forth

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ZipRecruiter has what you need to find great candidates fast, like powerful matching technology to help sort through thousands of resumes, and a feature that puts people who are the most interested and most qualified first. Try ZipRecruiter and meet great candidates who'll go the extra step for your job. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free today at ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. ZipRecruiter. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. Thank you very much for being here. I'm really excited to talk to you. I am fascinated by this little hobbit creature, this Homo floriensis. Am I saying it right? Floresiensis. Yeah, so it's like floor and then ziensis. Right. I've been fascinated from 2003, when it was announced. Well, when was it announced? They discovered it in 2003? September 2003, announced October 2004. So for people that don't know what we're talking about is the supposed hobbit people from the island of Flores. It's a very small, tiny, it's in the Homo genus, right? So it's a relative of human beings. That's a little fella right there. Fair enough. Yeah, quite true. And quite good. What is fascinating about your work is that you were on that island quite a bit before that, and you were investigating the possibility of this existing a long time before that. Yeah, no, that's correct. I first began field research on flores as an anthropologist, a cultural anthropologist in 1984. I was interested in the people and the culture and the languages generally. But quite early in my stay, in fact, in 1984, during my first visit, I heard about these small hominoid human-like creatures, which were known locally. Actually, at that time, I was working right in the central part of the island, a place called Nage. And the Nage people, according to the Nage people, there were a group of these, used to live close by in a cave, high up on a nearby volcano. But they had become extinct about two, 300 years previously. So in that particular area, that particular part of Flores, they weren't supposed to be around anymore. But then subsequent to that visit, I began to hear about similar creatures further to the east in a place called Leo. And those are the ones I write about in. In the book. Yeah. In the book, you discuss two distinct, at least possible, different species. Yeah. One of them being Homo floresiensis and the other one being this, the one from Leo? No. Well, in a way, you could say that. I mean, there's Homo floresiensis, which lived on the island of Flores for a long time and must have lived in places other than the single discovery site. And then there are the claims, the descriptions offered by Leo people about creatures they say are still around, rare, but still present in their territory, in which some people claim to have seen and have given quite vivid description of. And they seem very, very similar. If I may just expand a bit. Please. The. There has been discovered. There's been a deliberate search by paleoanthropologists, if you'll appreciate that distinction, also in the central part of Flores. In fact, in a place where decades ago there were discovered stegodons, kind of primitive elephant bones in large numbers. It was assumed. And there was evidence that something had, if not killed these things, these stegodons had at least been. Eaten them. Eaten their carcasses. A very long, intensive study was done in, what, the 20. Was it the 2000s? Into the 20-teens, looking for some kind of human, some kind of hominid remains. And finally, after, you know, a concentrated effort, they came to the conclusion that they found pieces of jaw, pieces, oh, right, teeth, that belonged to something far older than Floresiensis, going back about 700,000 years ago, and contemporaneous with what were taken to be stone tools, which is what kind of set them in motion in the first place, which were even smaller than Floresiensis. So. And it is, you know, a kind of presumed, that these are possible ancestors of Floresiensis. Again, you know, going back further. Hundreds of thousands of years. And how old? 700,000, 600,000, 700,000, something in that. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. But there's also stone tool evidence, or stones taken to be possible tools, that takes us back even further to, like, a million years ago, maybe even earlier. I mean, there's still a big mystery as to how these things ever got on the island. Right. Yeah. And are these stone tools clearly formed, like an arrowhead or a spearhead, or are they ambiguous? Some of them. You know, this is not my area. I should confess straightaway. Of course. But some of them are ambiguous. There have been different interpretations. Some authorities in, you know, paleoanthropology, archaeology, would suggest that they were not artifacts at all. They're not things that have been made by any hominin. So, here's. Jamie pulled up some examples from Indonesia, and this is some potential tools that they believe Homo Floresiensis used. And you can see they are tool-like, but it's a little odd. It's hard to say. It could be just flakes of. Chips of stone. Yeah. Well, to mention right away there is that there was some overlap between Floresiensis and ourselves, Homo sapiens. And it is a well-known generalization, certainly in that part of the world, that you can't distinguish species on the basis of stone tool industries, as they're called. In other words, you need skeletal. You need skeletal evidence in close association with anything that is a stone tool or might be, to say what species probably made these things. So, yeah, none of these can we securely attribute to Homo Floresiensis. It's. There have been some fascinating recent studies, actually, on Stegodon bones, close to the location of the discovery site. - Is that a pygmy elephant, is that a small elephant? Those would have been the ones that they preyed on or scavenged. Yeah, a pygmy stegodon, but the size of a cow. So if you can think of an elephant the size of a cow. Still pretty formidable if you're only three feet, three and a half feet tall. Or four, yeah. But then again, I mean, the recent interpretations, analyses have suggested that these stegodons, which may have been consumed by Florisiensis, were killed not by Florisiensis, not hunted by Florisiensis, but instead were killed by Komodo dragons, which is the world's largest lizard, growing up to. Ten feet long and a formidable animal. Venom glands, you know, terrifically sharp teeth and a deadly tail. So they were probably scavenging or potentially scavenging what was left. That's the idea. And anything that could be taken for a cut mark, well, the bones that have been studied, they show marks, but mostly from dragon's teeth. Komodo. Komodo dragon teeth. Or Komodo monitor teeth, to use another name. Those that don't look like Komodo dragon teeth marks have been interpreted as, yeah, possible stone tool marks used by Florisiensis, but merely to scrape meat off the bones, not to kill the animal. But were there humans living. On the island of Flores at the same time? If I'm not mistaken, well, when Florisiensis was discovered, the oldest date for Homo sapiens on the island was 11,000 years ago. Oh, wow. And whereas now, I think that's been pushed back to 50,000 or so. So there was overlap. So it coincides, right? Yeah. So this overlap, is it possible that it was humans that were predating on these pygmy elephants? Certainly possible, yeah. Which would. Would leave. Yeah, although, again, if I've got this right, and if I'm up to date on this, I'm not sure that there are clear evidence, there's clear evidence from bones that any of the elephants were killed by Homo sapiens. Right, like spear marks and the rib cage. Well, yeah, cut marks when you're butchering, that sort of is the big. Yeah, yeah. So it's more like something smaller and smaller tools just scraping meat away. Yeah. Which would indicate the little animals. So the date of the actual, the group that they found that was in that cave, was it 50,000, 60,000 years old? How old were they? That's. Well, of course, initially, it was reckoned they were only 12,000, 13,000 years old. That's the youngest ones. Right, right, right. But that was a big problem for the paleos. That was a big problem. They said so as well. Well, it would be a real big problem if they found a live one today. That would be a real big problem. Oh, well, yeah, no, that, you're certainly, you're certainly correct there, although one of the senior investigators, the original find, said memorably that just the discovery of something like Homo floresiensis that. You know, 12, 13,000 years ago, or even a bit older, was more surprising, it was a kind of gobsmacking, than would be, he said, the discovery of a space alien. So that just shows you how out of the blue this paleontological discovery was. Well, it is pretty crazy that this myth has gone on for so long all over the world, or all over that part of the world. I should say, like the Orang Pendek, right, that one's what, is that Vietnam, or is that. Orang Pendek is in mostly southern Sumatra. Sumatra. So very close to Malaysia, yeah. And it's a very similar description. Yeah, on the whole, I would say so. I've written a bit about that as well, but the difference, I guess, well, a couple of differences with floresiensis. Floresiensis is that, with floresiensis, we have fossil evidence for something that could have survived until much more recently, whereas in Sumatra, the fossil evidence for Orang Pendek is not there. And also, of course, on Sumatra, you have all kinds of primates that could be, shall we say, mistaken, or taken for a very small human. Orangutans, for one thing. But flores does not. Flores has only one species of monkey, and no apes, and the monkey, a macaque, a long-tailed macaque, was introduced by humans thousands, just a few thousands of years ago. So no native apes, no native monkeys either. So these people, when you first went in the 1980s, how frequent. Were there sightings? And were they in a very specific area? And what did they say the encounters were like? Well, the sightings have been entirely or nearly entirely in the Leo region towards the eastern end of the island, mostly in high altitudes, mountainous areas. Mountain forest, and thus, you know, well away from human settlements for the most part. How frequently? It's difficult to say. I mean, I recorded over 30 reports of encounters, some of them not terribly credible. Others, you know, a dozen or so, much more interesting. Can I ask you this? When you say not entirely credible, were there aspects of it that seemed like mythological? Like what was not entirely credible about some of them? Not necessarily mythological, but it sounded like they could well have been identifying monkeys. Oh, okay. And another, well, one reason for that was what they described. Another reason was that a lot of those less credible ones were apes. Or in circumstances when you wouldn't expect a human to encounter anything like floresiensis. And likely close to the coast, where most people live and have lived for a long time. Whereas, yeah, all indications are that the Laihoa, as they're called, the local hominoids are much higher up in unsettled parts of the mountains. So that would indicate that there's a food supply for them up there? Yeah. And are they primarily vegetarian? They seem to be very much so, yeah. I mean, the dentition on the type specimen, the skull, the teeth, suggests a vegetarian herbivore. Yeah. And they're not really a carnivore. The best specimen, the type specimen as it's called, doesn't really show any definite canines. Molas are fine. In great shape, by the way, for the age. But, yeah, so not to say they didn't have pronounced canines as do chimpanzees, for example, even though chimpanzees are also largely vegetarian. Largely, but they apparently prefer to eat monkeys. Oh, yeah. No, that's, well, like humans. I mean humans during most of our history have of necessity eaten grains and vegetables and so on because they couldn't afford the meat. But nevertheless, meat has usually been a prized food. Yeah. Well, we're clearly omnivores, right? But if you were a creature that lived in this mountainous terrain, it's probably not a wide variety of mammals, right? And if they didn't really have weapons, they had very small stone tools. There seems to be no indication they have anything they could throw or anything along those lines. They could throw stones, throw rocks. Good luck being successful at killing a deer, throwing rocks. It'll take you a long time to get one. Deer are also a recent import. The only indigenous native mammals are bats, as you would expect, because they can fly freely to the island, and rodents. So what are the dragons eating? The dragons were— Because they're huge. Well, it's interesting because at one time they were eating the godons, certainly. You think they made them extinct, perhaps, because it's a small island? Well, they could have contributed to that, yeah, along with other factors. But besides dragons, there are other large rats. Oh, that's right. They have that one very aggressive tree rat, right? Now, that guy is still around, as I know. Oh, really? I've got photos of him. That thing's huge, right? It is a huge rat. A couple feet long? It's at least, I think, in terms of memory. So, yeah. Oh, that's what it looks like? Oh, there it is. Look at the size of that sucker. Yeah, no, that's great. Mostly or largely tail is a lot of animals, but it is big, as you can see. That lady looks like she's got one as a pet. I'm not sure if that's the same creature. I don't think it is. Oh, okay. But, yeah, now that looks more like it. Yeah, yeah. This episode is brought to you by— By the Farmer's Dog, which is exactly what I feed my own dogs. And you know why? It's real food that can make a real difference in their long-term health, and it's totally backed by science. 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But as soon as you had humans on the island, you had pigs and dogs, and some of the pigs— quite quickly, I think, became feral, which they were wild. Yes. So, and yeah, and then, you know, deer at one point were introduced by humans. So, certainly deer and pigs, and not to mention domesticates like goats. Even, you know, young buffalo and horses are prey to dragons at present. So, in a sense, it could be Homo sapiens that's kept that creature. Interesting. That's alive, yeah. So, they could have wiped out the pygmy elephants, and then we could have probably maybe come in at a very opportune time with a bunch of domesticated animals, pigs, dogs, and then they started eating those. I should say, also, the little ape men that Leo, for example, described are also reputed occasionally to steal chickens, very small piglets. Yeah. So, yeah, not to deny that they wouldn't eat meat if they could get it. So, when you went there, was it 84 was the first time you went? That was the first time, but, you know, I kept going back sometimes every year. But when you first went, did you go looking for this specific creature? No. No, I went because there are parts of Flores, including Nage country, right in the center where I first— Pull that microphone up. —researched. Sorry. It's okay. It moves around a little bit. You can stay right where you're sitting. No, no, that's fine. No, the reason I went was to visit the people and find out how they lived and what they believed in, because they were kind of blank on the cultural anthropological map, and it was just incidentally, you know, by accident, you might say. And were these people—what kind of life were they living? A subsistence lifestyle? Are they hunter-gatherers? Are they— Certainly in the 1980s, yeah, they were still largely subsistence cultivators, small farmers who would feed themselves from what they grew. Also hunters, however. The men very much value hunting, although not a lot of their food supply comes from that activity. And are they hunting animals that had been introduced? Like the deer species and pigs? Deer and pigs are the two prized types, the most valued types of game. But they'll also kill monkeys, wild cats, feral cats. Feral house cats? Yeah. Well, that sounds like what they are. I don't think there's any indigenous— Right. But although some people in the past have thought they were, including Alfred Wallace, who you may know. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Sure. But, yeah, but also things like, well, the giant tree rats that you mentioned. They hunt those? They hunt those. I have said in one or two places, by the way, that it's rather unlikely that Floresiensis would have been able to hunt the tree rats because they're very difficult to hunt. They're vicious as hell. Really? Yeah. So you need—well, from what I'm told, what I am told often, was told often by the Nage, for example, is that you need, you know, more than one person. Dogs. You need dogs. You need dogs to hunt the rats? You need a kind of a prod to knock them out of the tree and so on. So it's no—and it's often reported that people are injured from the teeth of these damn things dropping down from trees. Well, you saw how big it was. So, yeah. Well, that's a great meal, though, if you're a three-foot-tall human-like creature and you eat a two-foot rat. Yeah. That's a good catch. Yeah. Mind you, at the same time, let's talk about Floresiensis, would possibly have been able to catch smaller rodents. Sure. Yeah. Sure. Sure. So when you first went there, what was the first story? What was the first story that you heard about these little hairy people that live in the woods? Yeah. The first story I heard in the Nage region that I've mentioned was— it's kind of local legend about how they were wiped out by, you know, the ancestors of the Nage. And it's a story that, whatever the basis, in fact, has clearly been— Embellished. Embellished. Embroidered. Yeah. You get, you know, narrative themes entering. Yeah. Including two escaping the extermination. And this is an old plot line. And, you know, moving to another territory where they—sister and brother, as it's usually said— where they incestuously managed to, you know, maintain their species. But, yeah, that was the first story. I mean, according to that one, these were creatures called Abugogo. There's a term you may have come across. They were in the habit, it's said, of—they lived in a cave high on the mountain. But they were in the habit of coming down a bit lower downslope and joining in feasts and dancing of villagers. And they were given food by their reluctant hosts. But they did odd things. Like, yeah, they would certainly eat the food. But then they'd start biting into the plates, which were made of—well, made of—traditionally made of sort of pumpkin skin, dried pumpkin skin. So, yeah, you can break them with your teeth. I don't know. I'm sure that a human could eat them or want to. But then— So they were just confused as to where the food ended. Well, this is the idea. They always represent that particular category of creature. Abugogo, always interpreted as or represented as being stupid. Right. Yeah, very stupid. So they couldn't tell there didn't be food on a plate. They were made drunk. They were given copious amounts of palm wine, palm gin. And then, of course, eventually they wanted to go back to their cave to sleep it off. And what was the timeline for these supposed interactions? Well, as far as one could tell from local, you know, genealogies, family histories, that sort of thing, yeah, we'd be talking at least 200, 300 years ago. So this was like folklore or at least like legend that they would tell the stories of these people. And so this was the first story that you heard of these creatures? That was the first one. Yeah, there are other stories, you know, told to and thereafter. But so this was the first one where you were explained that at least at one point in time there was supposedly a small, hairy, human-like creature that lived on the island. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, people are very insistent. The storytellers are very insistent that these things weren't like forest spirits or anything. They really were a kind of— It was an actual animal. It was an actual animal, exactly. And when did you talk to someone that had had an encounter? That was—first of all, that was when I visited the Leo region. Which is the main topic of the book, as I said. Yeah, and that was in the early 2000, 2001, 2003. What was your—so you had been—you'd had this in your mind for a couple of decades at that point. Yeah. So what was it like to hear that there was a possibility that these things were still on the island? And if people haven't seen the island of Flores before, it's incredibly dense, mountainous. Very mountainous, yeah. Very difficult to get to. There's not— There's not like a real—like, is there a road structure that allows you to get from one side of the island to the other? There's the Dutch colonials back in the— Is it a coastal road, or does it just go through the middle? It goes wherever it can go, because it's so mountainous. Right. There's virtually no straight stretches. Right. So it kind of snakes all over the place. So there's— A lot of it goes through the—yeah, a lot of it along the coast, but other parts in more central areas. Jay, can you see if we can get a photo? I'm looking at the map. I'm just trying to find the road. Yeah. Like, located. Well, it's an insanely dense jungle. So this is what we're looking at is just a 3D topographical. Okay, yeah. I mean, we're looking at it from above. And this—if you get a photograph of what it looks like, because I've seen some drone photos of the island that are really spectacular, because, you know, they're above the tree line, and you go, okay, anything could be out there. It's just—it's like parts of the Amazon, where you look at it, and you go, well, this is just so dense. Certainly in higher elevations. Yeah, just incredibly dense, and people are not regularly traveling to this area. Certainly not, you know, Westerners who are there exploring and doing anthropological work. They're not traveling. A few tourists these days, but— Yeah, okay, so this is a good representation. It's just incredibly dense, mountainous. It's beautiful, but wildly, you know, uncharted—not uncharted, necessarily, because we actually know where everything is. But people aren't going and making an audit of all the different animals that are there. So it is possible that something could—if you looked at it, you're like, well, maybe. Well, yeah, I mean, there have been studies by zoologists of, you know, certain— in certain parts of the local wildlife, local animal life. But, yeah, none explicitly in search of something like Floresiensis or the Leo ape men, as they call them. So when you first had someone explain to you an encounter, how far was that from the actual discovery of the bones? Because you had the conversation. Wow. You had conversations with people that were telling you that they had encountered one prior to them discovering these bones, correct? Yeah, yeah, certainly prior. Not very long before, a couple of months, but certainly, yeah, well over a year before the Floresiensis discovery was announced in the media, including the, you know, scientific press. That must have been incredibly exciting to hear these stories and go, wow, I've been talking to people. I've been talking to people about these things for 20 years now, and now this guy tells me he saw one, and then a couple of months later, they're finding bones. You had to be like, wow, this is a real thing. I was quite staggered, yeah. Actually, I find it kind of hot in here. Can I take my jacket off? Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, absolutely, of course. Yeah, take your jacket off. So as we were saying, you had this encounter with someone who explained that they had seen one in the flesh, and then just a few months later, they find these bones. That had to be incredibly exciting, because you had, especially in the early, when they were saying it might potentially only be 10,000 plus years old. Yeah. No, I felt extremely lucky. Right. I mean, if I'd first heard about these things a year or two later, well, I probably wouldn't have written the book, and I wouldn't have taken it much further. Right. I would have thought, well, you know, there is a possibility, however slim, that somebody's seen a reconstruction of Floresiensis in, you know, a newspaper or on television. But no, yeah, so I was fortunate. One thing I subsequently discovered is that the name Laihoa is, in fact, recorded in a Leo language dictionary, Leo Journal. It was written in German, as a matter of fact, which was, research for that went on in the 1920s, and not long after the establishment of a Dutch colonial administration, written by a German missionary. Wow. And it finally was published in 1933, and there were mentions of Laihoa, and some of the information, which came from sample sentences, right, of the land. Right. And the Laihoa language were consistent with, you know, what people generally were telling me about the Leo ape men. So that was another strong indication that the whole notion of these creatures hadn't come from the fossil discovery. Was there any encounters or descriptions from missionaries, from ancient missionaries that had visited? No. Not that I've been able to discover, and I've looked for that kind of thing, obviously, but no. So they had only documented stories. Yeah, it's quite remarkable. The man I knew for quite a long time, a Dutchman, in the Nage region, a missionary, Catholic missionary, who'd been there for ages, and he'd never heard of the Obugogo, which are the Nage. They were eight men, and which, you know, stories about these, like the ones I just described, are pretty widely known in the region, near the village, whose inhabitants were supposed to wipe them out hundreds of years ago. But the missionary, he never heard of it. I was surprised, and I'm sure he was being honest. Hmm. Now, when you first got the initial. report from someone that had encountered one of these in real life, did you then start looking for other stories from other people to get more confirmation? I did, but not so much in that particular year. That was, as I said, summer 2003. And, yeah, because I had to return to Canada, I think. It was in the June. I had to return. I had to return in the July or early August, something like that. So I didn't have a lot of time in that year. But after hearing about Farisiensis, of course, I did initiate a new project, which enabled, gave me funds to go back and, yeah, talk about a bunch of things, not just the hominoids, but certainly to pay much more attention to Leo, the Niteleo region. And to these creatures than I'd done previously. And how many reports of encounters had you had? Like, how many different people? I interviewed, well, to answer your question, somewhere in the 30s, 32, I think. Wow. But I talked to more people than that, just about, you know, these hominoids in general, what they'd heard from their parents. Right. So, you know, from whomever, to get, you know, a good idea of the kind of local knowledge there was about them. And so in total, yeah, it was well over 120, 130 people I think I talked to in all. That had encounters? No, no. No, 30 that had encounters. That knew something about, knew what a lier I was. But if you talked to 120 people and 30 of them had encounters, that seems like a lot. I guess it does, yeah. But then there were a lot of people besides who. who knew virtually nothing about Elihu. Oh, they didn't want to talk to me, or they were scared, or whatever. Right, right, right. Now, did they all have similar descriptions? Yeah. I mean, one thing I show in my analysis, and it's been four years now, so I think I got this right, is that the sightings are both the clearest, most detailed, in other words, most credible sighting reports seem more accurate, more in line with the standard image of ape men than, you know, others. And even, as I said, even among the sighting reports, there were some that I was inclined to dismiss as being, you know, mistaken monkeys or, yeah. Right, right. So. So at least a few of them possibly could have been this actual creature. Yeah. If they're being honest. That's right. And it just takes one out of 30-odd or. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you have that many, and also you have bones, and then also you have a history of these things. It's just, what would be required to comb the forest to try to find these things? Have you ever thought about, like, what kind of resources? How many people would be involved? Camera traps, like various technologies that you could use to potentially find these things? Yeah, not so much forests, although forests included, but, you know, higher slopes of mountains, of which there are many in Leo territory and, you know, neighboring districts as well. You'd need people who are young and fit to be able to find these things. And quite a few of them. Yeah, you'd need different sorts of expertise. I mean, certainly people who could handle the terrain. Maybe also people who, well, primatologists, shall we say. People specializing in the study of apes and monkeys. That would be helpful. Zoologists working in that area as well. You mentioned, you know, camera traps. That would be a good idea. In fact, I'm working, I think you could say, at present with a man in the Netherlands who is very keen on doing the sort of thing you've just described. And he has visited. He has visited one area in particular. And there's a story about that, but I won't backtrack just yet. He has, yeah, visited one volcano and placed traps, taken lots of photos and so on. He wasn't there for very long. He wants to go back, I think, late next year, but with a team. And he's asked me to investigate people with experience of, you know, rugged country and that kind of search. In fact, he even recommended I talk to you about it, but I don't know if. Talk to me about it. Well, not you, but maybe somebody in your team. Somebody you could recommend. Some explorer type? Yeah. But in the meantime, quite recently, in fact, I've been asked for an interview by Les Strauss, who. Sure, Survivorman. You made it, yeah, exactly. He's a big believer in Bigfoot. Well, yeah. But I, yeah, so I'm expecting him on Friday the 13th, actually. So just in, what, nine, ten days' time. And I think he would be the kind of person to consult on that. Well, he could live up there for a few months by himself. Yeah, well, maybe I can get him interested. Yeah, he would figure out, like, that would be a great idea for a series. Because, you know, he's done quite a few episodes looking for Bigfoot, to no avail. Shocking. Yeah. Never found it. But this would be, I think, probably more likely than finding Bigfoot. First of all, it's an island. Yeah. It's not just an entire, like, coastline. Like, if you're in the Pacific Northwest or wherever you're searching for Bigfoot. Yeah. And the other thing being that, you know, a guy like Les going solo, because he does everything solo. Mm-hmm. He doesn't want to. To bring a big camera crew would be a smaller footprint. Yeah. Probably less likely to make a lot of noise and disturb things. Yeah, that's a good feature. Yeah. And if he found something, boy, whoo, that would be exciting. That would be one of the most exciting things that's ever happened in all of anthropology. Yeah, yeah. No, indeed. So. And I think, you know, I'm not a firm believer in. In anything, really, you might say. Good for you. But I was a bit skeptical. But the evidence in this case, the coincidence that we were talking about a minute ago between the discovery, the reconstruction of Floresiensis and what Leo people and others were describing to me, you know, the match. Right. is so remarkable that, you know, and this has been some huge, well-hidden conspiracy designed entirely to fool little old me. I just can't imagine it. Well, you know, coincidences do happen, including remarkable ones, so maybe that's it. But even so, I think, yeah, it's worth further exploration. I mean, back in 2005, when I began to look at the Laihoa, hominoids in earnest, I was already approaching 60 years. I've never been particularly athletic. And, you know, by the time I left, left off this piece of research back in 2018, yeah, I was already in my 70s. So, you know, and you've seen the country. I mean, there's no way I'm going to be scrambling up a mountain side. Dangerous, too. Yeah. I won't go into the particulars of my present physical condition, but I, you know, it's a bit of a challenge going anywhere these days, I must confess. So, yeah, no, the research is worth, while not, you know, guaranteeing success of any sort. Now, what about potential use of technology? Are they going to use drones or anything along those lines? Because they've gotten incredibly good. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, no, this is on the sort of bucket list for this colleague of mine, a young guy, financially successful, who has, you know, the time to do this kind of thing. Yeah, I think drones are certainly on the list. So, yeah, those would come in. And so, how much of the area where they find them, how much of a piece of land are we talking about? What is the square kilometers? The Leo region. Can I just grab a, I'm getting very dry here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's water in there. Oh, yeah. That glass right there. I'll take a bit of this. And there's coffee in here, if you'd like some coffee. Oh, that's great. How big is the area? Where, I mean, is it centrally located where they keep finding these same, the sightings? Is it all in the same particular area? Or is it spread out? Yeah, well, I've worked mostly in a place called East Leo. But there's no clear indication of the bounds of knowledge of this kind of area. So, they go, yeah, to the east and to the west. They're just mostly avoiding people. The, yeah, well, certainly the creatures are. But, you know, the fact is that different people, their knowledge of local wild animals is different from, you know, maybe their neighbors or people at another end of the island. And there is, in. Western Indonesia, in Sumatra, possibly on parts of the Mele Peninsula, close by as well, there is a kind of wild rabbit or hare. Not the kind of place where you'd expect to find rabbits or hares, perhaps. But this animal was unknown to most of the local people. It was discovered by. Western, maybe Dutch, I think, naturalists and, you know, name and all that kind of stuff. Local people didn't have a local name for it. Interesting. Yeah. And in fact, it's now known mostly, and so far as people are aware of it, with the national Indonesian name Kalinji, which refers to rabbits that were imported by the Dutch as food a couple of centuries ago. Is that, they think, the source of these particular wild rabbits on the island? No. No, this would be quite a separate species. Okay. That they would be indigenous, yeah. Right. But again, local people or lots of local groups didn't know about them. Reasonable, they're forest dwelling, and they're quite rare. Right. So no great surprise, but if I may, something that I was going to say with regard to my friend who. Plans to go back to Flores with an expanded search, he became very interested in this particular locality, particular mountain, in fact, because of reports I received out of the blue about three years ago from two British visitors, hikers, outdoorsmen, taking a break on Flores. And doing scuba diving and hiking, a bit of mountain climbing, this kind of thing. They, I have to think about the details of this, because it was, yeah, like three years back, they finally found their name, my name, I should say, after doing, one of them in particular, found my name after doing an internet search concerning apes and monkeys, monkeys on Flores Island. And they came across my name in connection with a creature, central Flores creature called Obugogo. And one of them, yeah, he wrote to me, he contacted me, first of all, across LinkedIn, and asked me about monkeys on the island. And I told him, and he described to me what he and his friend, both of them at the same time, had seen on the higher slopes of this particular mountain. And he said, I think in his first communication, that it sounds like you're Obugogo. So naturally, I followed this up and had some more conversations by phone and email with these two young men. And it was nothing they told me to kind of disabuse me of that. Yeah. Of that possibility. Now, I should stress that I can't go into all the details or the circumstances of our communications, but all indications are that they'd never heard of my writings or never read my writings on, you know, Flores apemen before. So they just had an encounter and sought out an expert? They had an encounter. They thought it was, yeah, some kind. Well, it's interesting because I managed to interview them subsequently, separately, which was a good thing. And one of them, in fact, the main contact, described what he saw as something very much like a Leo ape man, you know, a little man, a little human, but, you know, monkey-like. Bipedal. Bipedal, yes. That was his impression. The other man described it as looking more like, you know, another sort of primate. In fact, he described it as a monkey, but a very big one. An unusually big one. And it's interesting because those two opinions, those two interpretations, very much align with the range of descriptions that I recorded from local people. You know, some descriptions had it more monkey-like, others more human-like. And, of course, naturally, there were variations in the estimated size of what people see. What's the high estimate? The highest comes from. From a second-hand report of a lihor, and that would have been about 1.4 meters, which is, yeah, it's bigger than. Four feet-ish. Four feet-ish. It's getting on there. Getting four feet, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. So, this encounter that these gentlemen had, this was only three years ago? Well, actually, the encounter was in 2019. Okay. In March. And, you know, that's. You know, they hadn't followed this, they hadn't thought about it, and then, for some reason, they met. This is it. I think they were separated for some time, these two guys. And they met and, you know, over a drink, started to reminisce about their visit to Flores. Now, they'd like to go back. And one said to the other, well, you know, God, do you remember that huge monkey we saw? And, you know, we're not to discuss that. And then one of them, he, yeah, he took some time to kind of follow this up by looking for information on the internet. And it was that way that he finally came across my name and contact details. So. So, is that one of the only Westerners, or at least groups of Westerners that spotted these things? This episode is brought to you by the movie Ghost Soldier. Kavizel plays Fitz, a former American special forces soldier and advanced weapons developer. As a military veteran, Fitz has a strong code of justice and a natural instinct to protect a vulnerable community from a powerful corporation. Here's the trailer. And tonight, you're the problem. Now, that doesn't sound like a guy you want to mess with. Ghost Soldier is a fun action film that demands to be seen in theaters, which opens nationwide on Veterans Day, November 11. Rated PG-13. Um, there are two of them. Yeah. Of course, um, no, not, uh, not quite. I might mention that 2019 was well before the 22 book came out. So, you know, that's a factor as well. Um, no, not the only two. Uh, there was, um, there was a man, uh, not Western, but Asian. I won't give any more details of that because he didn't want me to mention this in the book. Um, but he. He came across something in the dark, uh, trekking back towards Upslope, uh, a village he was staying in. He got a bit lost, actually, and managed to find his way. And he saw something which, uh, which, which was described, certainly interpreted by local people as having been, uh, one of these, uh, one of these ape men. And that would, that would go back to, I guess, yeah, the last century, 1990s, maybe. Um, but he's a person I know quite well. Um, but, but also, um, uh, well, somebody who became a friend of mine, um, sadly passed away a few years ago, was working on the neighboring island. He was an anthropologist. Um, he was working on the neighboring island called, uh, Zimbabwe, uh, which is immediately east of Flores, another big island, lots of mountains. And, uh, and so on. Uh, and he had a similar sighting back in the, uh, similar experience, I should say, back in the, uh, the 1980s and, and was, you know, very, uh, very open about the whole thing and, uh, gave me detailed descriptions on more than one, uh, more than one occasion. Um, now that he did allow me to mention in, uh, in the book, in fact, in more than one, one book. And he, did he? He described the same type of creature, the same type of experience. A big monkey standing upright, no tail, about three feet or more tall. Um, yeah, there was more than one of them that he saw. The, the end of a, a kind of a, um, uh, a grown over area, sort of, sort of a tunnel that had been created by vegetation. He was trekking through, through jungle. Um, and, uh, he came across these things and he turned back. Actually, he wanted to. He wanted to, um, find there was a, a, a site, um, with certain stone monuments that he'd, uh, he'd heard about and, uh, you know, villagers down below had, had sort of pointed him in the right, right direction and he, he followed the, uh, the trail they, they'd indicated. And he, he was still in his 20s at this time, he was in pretty good shape and, um, then, then he came to this, this area, um, which, uh, what was growing. grown over, grown over to the extent that it He had to go on all fours to continue climbing. And it was at the end of this tunnel where there was some light, of course, a sunny day, where he saw several of these creatures, mostly kind of silhouettes, you know, given the lighting conditions. They made sounds which were unlike local monkeys. And there you have it. He wrote it up in his field notes, which he showed me, much tidier than my field notes, I can tell you. And, you know, what he'd written at that time accorded with what he told me. So, again, you know, talk about Florisensis. I mean, there's no reason that that species or something very much like it is not. Or wasn't at one time present also on other islands around and about, you know? And this. So his depiction of it was before you had ever had your first description of it given to you. Yeah. You can say that. We weren't qualification. My first research in Indonesia was done in the 1970s. Oh. As a. As a doctoral student. And you had never heard any of these stories then? Well, I was working on the island of Sumba, which is not the same as Flores, a big island to the south. Not to be confused with Sumbawa, but this is just Sumba. And there, there is a tradition of. Well, something that sounds more like the Sasquatch, actually, or the Bigfoot. Because, yeah, these are sort of, you know, half human, half ape, standing on. On two legs. But they're much bigger than, well, than us. Certainly much bigger than local people. So they're talking about, you know, two to three meters in height. And I must say, out of the evidence for them, it's not as good as for, you know, my Flores ape men. So I'd heard about this. Also, I might mention that I did my first degree in Vancouver. At Simon Fraser University, my undergraduate degree. At Simon Fraser. In the late 60s and into the 70s. And this was a time when there was a lot of interest in, locally, in British Columbia. In Bigfoot. It was also at that time, yeah, late 60s, very late 60s, that there was the film supposedly made in Northern California. Oh, the Patterson? The Patterson-Gimlin footage? Patterson-Gimlin, exactly. Yeah. There's a new documentary out that kind of shows that that had been rehearsed. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of suspicion. Pretty fake. Although at the time, it's interesting. I know there were a number of, or a few at any rate, primatologists and so on who thought it credible. But there's that film. And then, of course, there's the phenomenon, as a whole. But anyway, from that kind of thing going on in the late 60s, early 70s, I, yeah, I became interested. Well, I was studying anthropology at the time. Including, you know, prehistory and paleoanthropology and a lot of talk about the possibility of this kind of thing. And, yeah, so I was just studying human evolution and all the rest of it. And so I became aware at that point that there were, there were reports of things still alive that kind of looked like, you know, Homo erectus or some of these physically primitive forms of Homo, of humans. Well, it's an incredibly fascinating idea. And we know from what we know about the fossil record, the fossil record's so incomplete because it's so difficult to make a fossil. So when we find, you know, when we find new things like the Denisovans, which is a very recent discovery, we go, oh, well, there's a totally different branch. Yeah. And they were larger than people. This is really interesting. So the, we don't really know because it's so difficult to make a fossil. And that, that, that's right. In fact, it's infinitesimally, infinitesimally remote, a possibility of a species, just a whole species, not just an individual animal being, you know, surviving, being preserved, being fossilized. That's why it's so crazy to try to get an understanding or a map of the past with fossils. Well, it's always changing. This is, right. It's always changing. They find a new one, throws a monkey wrench into the whole thing. And you're like, oh, well, oh, look at this. Yeah. Now we know there's this kind and now we know Homo Juliensis and Homo, you know, there's a whole series of them, the Denisovans. Yeah, no. And, and yeah. You know, if we don't kill ourselves off in, in the near future, it's likely there'll be more of these, these discoveries. No, they're made, you know, quite by chance. The likelihood of anybody finding these things is, is remote. So the sample of fossil hominins is certainly not representative. I mean, it's really, it's needles in a haystack. It seems to be constantly expanding our understanding of how many there were. Yeah. Well, because research continues, that, that's, that's why. But even so, there are lots of places where people could look and, and yeah, we don't know with any species that, that is declared extinct. We, we don't know exactly when it, when it, when it died out. We know the most recent date. Right. Well, that's what's really interesting. And we know the earliest date when it came into being as well. We don't know. And when you find something that's 60,000 years old, like those bones that they found in the cave. Yeah. The odds of those. The odds of those being the last ones that existed are very small. Very small. Yeah. That's way in the, or that's a question of yours I didn't answer. I think that way in the Eastern, sorry, the Western end of, of Flores Island is, is the discovery site. Whereas I'm working mostly in, in towards the Eastern end, Central or East Central Flores. So quite a, quite a distance away, but no, and let's remember as well that the, the, the evidence suggests that what's called Homo Floresiensis survived for at least, at least 50,000 years, which is, is quite a stretch of, quite a stretch of time. Especially when we don't really know how they got there. We don't know how they got there. There is evidence for something much earlier. It's 700,000 years ago that could possibly be ancestral to Floresiensis. Now in that space of time, the, the notion that they were restricted to one small neighborhood is just not, is not credible. They must have been all over the, all over the map of Flores. What is the evidence of the one that's 100,000 plus? The 700,000 plus, see me? Oh, 700,000 or, oh, I'm sorry. The Floresiensis, there's a number of, a number of specimens in Liangboa Cave. Um, the most recent were initially reckoned to be 12,000, 13,000. That date was pushed, pushed back in a kind of interesting way to 50,000 or 60,000. Well, how was the pushback? Was it radiocarbon dating? Uh, various methods were applied. I, I, uh, I can't recall the, the details, but, but, uh, yeah, I mean, the, the point is, uh, Joe, that, um, that this 12,000, 13,000 date was found to be a big problem. Sure. Uh, and so. So, uh, a lot of energy was, was put into, uh, retesting, uh, the geological situation in, in, in the cave. So is the current dating a certainty? No, nothing's a certainty. Right. So is, is it possible that it's earlier or it's newer, rather? I, I think, I think it is, um, simply because we only know, uh, one, one site. Um, a site, you know, not, not much bigger, if any bigger than this building. Mm. Uh, on an island of, of that, uh, of that size. So, um, it's interesting, the follow-up research, uh, looking for ancestors to Homo floresiensis, which turned up the, um, the 700,000-year-old, uh, fossils, that was all focused on finding something older. And where, is that on. Not, not something more recent or, or younger. Is that Flores as well? On Flores also, but in the central part of the island. Well, that's even crazier, right? So how did they get there 700,000 years ago? Uh, well, there is, uh, evidence in the form of possible stone tools, uh, let's just say stone tools, uh, that, that something was making those, uh, those artifacts, um, yeah, you know, a million years ago. Whoa. So how did they get there? They, they, um, or what did, whatever it was that was living a million years ago look like? Uh, it's reckoned that they, well, they wouldn't have had, like, uh, sea craft. There are no land bridges, by the way, that anybody knows about, so they would have to come somehow by sea. Lower sea level, though, correct? Particularly during the Ice Age. Lower sea levels, but not a land bridge. I mean, the stagodons swam over. Whoa, from how far away? Not that far, probably from the east or the north. Maybe they rode the elephants. Well, actually, somebody suggested that, but not likely. Imagine you're in a boat, and you see a bunch of weird-looking monkey people riding elephants. Yeah, no, you would check your diet. I'd definitely pull my iPhone out and take a video. Yeah, but it is possible for creatures like Floresiensis, apparently, to kind of sail over. And accidentally, on great clumps of foliage. I'm looking for a term now, which I don't have. Okay, like driftwood, like some sort of a log or something, but how many miles or kilometers? Yeah, or a great clump of earth that had been, you know, dug up by a tsunami and driven out to sea. There's evidence for this kind of thing happening. So, yeah, you would need, of course, more than one of them to get to Flores, and they'd have to be opposite sexes. But it's all possible, given the time scale involved. Yeah, that's the thing that they do when they talk about human populations. They find these islands that are problematic in age. When they get really, really long ago, before they thought people were sea-traveling, they go, okay, how many had to get out here in order to develop a population? So there's a mathematical equation to that, right? Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. As there are estimates of how many, you know, members of a group of people, you know, who are sea-traveling, you have a population you'd need for it to be able to survive, continue, breed, and so on. So if it's such a small island that it's not possible that they evolved there? Well, I mean, it suggests they did part of their evolution once on the island, yeah. But once on the island. But how did everything else get there? Like, how did the dragons get there? How did the rats get there? Like, what is the origin of all these various life forms? Because it's very diverse, right? Well, yeah, I mean, rats seem to be able to get it everywhere. Yeah. Except Alberta, by the way. It's too cold. We have mice, but no rats. You guys have no rats? We're trying to keep them out as well. You guys have wolves, though. We have wolves and all kinds of things. You have grizzly bears. Yeah, black bears. Yeah, a lot of black bears. Yeah, no mountain lions. Moose. Moose, all various members of the deer family. Oh, yeah, big deer. Huge deer, elk. You guys have everything up there. It's gorgeous. So-called antelope as well. Yeah, it is a beautiful part of the world. Yeah, of course, we've got the two national parks, which are full of protected wildlife. But, yeah, no, let me say about the dragons. The so-called dragons, Komodo monotaus, great swimmers. Really? I mean, now they swim between islands regularly. Ugh. Yeah, so they would have no problem getting there. Right, so they probably just went wherever they smelled food. Yeah. They probably smelled something. They were dead over there and just took a hop into the water. So all these various animals, the elephants could swim, the dragons could swim, the rats could figure out a way to get there. Birds, obviously, could fly. Yeah, bats, lots of bats, they can fly. And the monkeys came on boats. No, the monkeys- They were introduced. They were introduced, like a lot of other animals. I mean, there are only mammals there, you know, sizable mammals, a various species of mice and rats, and then there's the giant rat. You've got- You've got, what, pigs. Right, we talked about all this. We talked about pigs, yeah. Well, all the things that were introduced by people. Yeah, a lot of them were introduced by people. What year was this where they started getting introduced by people? It varies, and it's controversial. I mean, there's like dogs, for example. There's some evidence that suggested that they haven't been there very long, several hundred to a thousand years. But it seems likely to me they've been there longer. Pigs. There is a book in which I've written about all this stuff, but I can't remember now, the details. Anyway, yeah, you know, they're monkeys, porcupines. There are porcupines that were introduced from- Interesting. Western, and they're a game animal. Really? Yep. Wow. Oh, for sure. Well, they're ultimately rodents like rats. So if you're going to eat giant rats, a porcupine is certainly also on the menu. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. You've got to know how to cook them and butcher them, probably. Yeah, and kill them without getting jammed. That's, yeah, again, you need dogs for that. Oh, poor dogs. And they have a special, special method. Well, the dogs have to be clever if they're not going to get injured. I've seen pictures of dogs with porcupine quills all over their face. Yeah. It's so sad. Yeah. Well, that can happen with tigers in India, of course. I've seen that as well. Look at this poor dog. Oh, wow. Oh, this poor dude. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. You should be able to produce those straight away. Oy, oy, oy. Yeah. So the point is, there's a lot of wildlife, and a lot of it came from somewhere else, including the monkeys. And we have no idea if these little hobbit people, we don't have any idea when they got there or how they got there. But it's not just there. But isn't there some evidence, or at least some evidence, that these little hobbit people came from? Are there some stories of them from the Philippines as well? Yeah. There's a similar remains on Luzon Island. Oh. How long ago was this discovered? It was discovered after Thereseensis. Oh. So it's fairly recent. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Luzonensis. That's called Homo luzonensis. And it's a separate branch? It's a different animal? It's a different species. Yeah. Wow. But then there are, I'm not sure, the present state of the animal. I don't know the state of interpretation on this one, but in China as well, in a place called Red Deer Cave, there's evidence for small hominoids living, yeah, the same region as Homo erectus, which was much bigger there, a bigger hominin. Yeah. And then in Africa, you've got, again, since Thereseensis, the discovery of Homo erectus. Yeah. A small species called Homo naladi. Right. That goes back about 200,000 years. But that apparently, a small. But they're an interesting one, right? Because they buried their dead. They, yeah. Yeah. Now, that's right. They had a kind of an unusually elaborate, you know, for their circumstances, symbolic culture, evidently. Yes. Yeah. Nothing special. Nothing like that for Thereseensis. And evidence of stone tool use, too, correct? Yeah. I believe so. Yeah. And so, weren't there the ones that had a specific area in a cave where they would deposit their bodies? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. A fascinating story. Really interesting stuff. Because it makes you think, like, well, what else did they have? Like, how long ago? And they were tiny, right? Yeah. Well, similar to Thereseensis. So, there's evidence that this particular type of creature existed all over the world. Or at least in many parts of the world, I should say. Parts of Asia and Africa with Naladi, yeah. Of course, the whole of the New World, South and North America, there's no evidence there for any kind of human or primate except for South American monkeys. So, yeah. Do we know if South American monkeys were indigenous or were they. Well, they came from the Old World originally. I can't remember exactly how. I mean, this was, I guess, at a time when, you know, world geography was a bit different. So, they were introduced as well? Yeah. Not by humans, though. But they managed to get there. And they're quite different in many respects from Old World monkeys because, well, the main difference, I guess, is the prehensile tail. They can actually use the tail as a. To hang from things. Oh, an extra limb, whereas no Old World monkey can do that. Really? Yeah. The whole story of these creatures, to me, it is so captivating. I really can't get enough of it. And what I also thought was really interesting was that when they first found these bones of Homo floresiensis, there was a lot of dismissing of it. And a lot of people thought that it was maybe humans that had some. Genetic abnormality. That's right. Very good. Yeah. Yeah. No. Somebody's done your research. Oh, you've done your research. I'm obsessed. No. I'm obsessed with this. No, that's right. I'll tell you, paleoanthropologists themselves can be interesting characters. Yeah. I mean, they can be very contentious. They sort of fight among themselves. Yeah, for sure. There are a few other academics that are like that. But. Yeah. yeah, no, you're right. There was a He wasn't a member of the Indonesian team, but a very senior Indonesian prehistorian, archaeologist, who was resentful of the fact he wasn't on the team and he wasn't consulted early. But anyway, he dismissed this as a new, Floresiensis, as a new species, and he claimed that these, what they'd found, were one or more humans who were suffering from a brain condition called, well, there are a couple of different possibilities. One's called microcephaly, I think, yeah. It's a very small cranium, small. Small brains. But this is an abnormality, and people in this condition, you know, they don't, as individuals, they don't survive. Adamantly rejected the notion that these were a different species. Has been. There was also the problem that these things are, yeah, the Floresiensis, of course, were small, small-bodied, which doesn't correlate with microcephaly. It just turns the head. And, yeah, no, I mean, I don't think this. Many people who support this, there is another bone of contention there, so to speak, and that has to do with the classification of Homo Floresiensis as Homo or not. And there's, I mean, most paleoanthropologists still seem to support Homo, but there are some, including a guy called Christopher. He's a stringer at the National History Museum in London, who I very much respect, mainly because what he says agrees with what I think. But no, he suggested that Floresiensis is something much, much more primitive physically, and that it derives from something much older, a separate branch, going back to, I don't know, somewhere in the region of Australopithecines, so pre-Hopitalia. And, you know, a lot of stuff, a lot of features of the fossils, not least of all the brain size, which is about that of a chimpanzee, pretty small body size, and all the rest of it. The lack of evidence for, you know, much in the way of, or anything in the way of culture, all of these things suggest something that is a different kettle of fish altogether. And, in fact, there was a senior member of the team that discovered and analyzed and interpreted the Floresiensis fossils, a guy called Peter Brown, an Australian anatomist, who proposed a different name for Homo Floresiensis. He gave it a new genus. He put it into a new genus. Which he named, he gave the suggested name Sundanthropus, which would mean something like man-like being from the Sunda region, which refers to those islands. And this was rejected on, you know, I mean, that there were, you know, it was just arguable, this kind of stuff. But some of the reasons. That were put forward were not particularly credible, I found. I mean, one suggestion was that, you know, this thing is so recent, bearing in mind that one specimen was reckoned to be only 12,000, 13,000 years old at the time. But this species was too recent, so recent that it had to be Homo. Right. But this betrays a very kind of linear, progressive view of. Not progressive in a political sense. Right, right, right. But, you know, in a time sense of human or hominin evolution. Really, I mean, it's ironic because, yeah, it was the discovery of Floresiensis that threw your monkey wrench into that whole picture of human evolution. I mean, it was evidence in favor of a view which had been around a little bit. It was evidence in favor already by that time that you didn't have a single line of evolution. Whereas, you know, something bigger and better, more developed and so on replaced something more primitive in a single line of development. Rather that the suggestion was that the view now seems to be that the human tree, family tree, as it were, is bushy. So, you know, something like a Jewish menorah, you know, the thing with the candles. You've got these things coming up side by side and, you know, terminating at the same point. We have that in everything else. It happens in all other sorts of animals, yeah. The idea that we would be isolate. Well, we are, as humans, so used to thinking of ourselves as special, right? Right, right. I mean, everything in our culture, our history, religion. Religion as well suggests that. But, no, so it's kind of ironic that you still find traces of this progressive linear view in certain statements made quite recently by paleoanthropologists. Well, I think it's part of the problem with this. They adopt an idea, start saying that this is the fact, and then are very reluctant to change their position. Especially if they've been teaching it, if they're professors, if they've written books. Look, with the Clovis first thing, like, I forget the gentleman's name, who found these stones that indicated that there was people in the Americas far earlier than that. Oh, yes. He was destroyed. I mean, they've ruined this guy's reputation. They viciously attacked him, and it turns out he was correct. Yes, no, this does happen. He wasn't just correct. He was correct by a long shot. Like, they found evidence of things that were 10,000 years or close to it. 22,000 years, the White Sands, New Mexico footprints. Right, right. Yeah, that date keeps being pushed further and further. Further and further. Going further and further back. Right, there's other weird evidence of, looks like someone had broken apart mastodon bones or mammoth bones. That's over 100,000 years ago. Yeah, yeah. No, you're quite right. I want to say something in defense of science and scientists. Actually, I mean, they are conservative. You're right. And they probably should be. Exactly what I was about to say. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, there's a lot of uncertainty, obviously, in this field of endeavor that you can't rule out anything as being correct, including the prevailing view, at least for the time being. And it does take a lot to change things. I think on the whole. Quite rightly, I, yeah, I mean, with regard to what I've written, I don't, I don't argue, I don't attempt to argue that fluorescence or something deriving from fluorescence, you know, is definitely still around. I'm not going to make a statement of conviction like that. All I'm trying to say. And my focus, of course, is on the people, the modern people of Flores Island and their experiences and, you know, how they think, what they say and all that kind of stuff. So my, what I need to explain as an ethnologist, a cultural anthropologist, is the basis of some of their claims about, about things, about creatures, about beings. Right. Some of those beings, I. I'm sure, are, are supernatural, that is to say, they don't, they don't exist. I mean, I'm thinking of things like forest spirits, various varieties of forest spirits, which have their names and characteristics. But they are not like animals or modern humans because they can't be, they can't be perceived. Certainly they can't be seen. They're, they're invisible. And people say this. So there is a difference between. Between them on that ground alone and, and homo ferigenses with what I am showing is that there is a possibility that when Leo people make these reports about their ape men, that their reports are accurately based on some actual experience that, that individuals, a few individuals at any rate have had. Yes. So when you're talking to these people, is there evidence of psychedelic drugs? Or drug use amongst these people? You know what I mean? For the like forest spirits and stuff like that. I thought you're going to ask me if there's any evidence of my use of such substances in the field. I'll ask you that off air. No. But I mean, when you hear people talking about forest spirits, you start thinking about people in the jungle that have psychedelic rituals, like in the Amazon with ayahuasca. Yeah, well, for one thing, rarely are these things, the forest spirits, obscene. You get the odd, well, you get a category of people, healers in part. Shaman. Shaman is not a bad description, yeah, who claim an ability to see things that other people can't. But do they have a history of psychedelic drug use? Nothing? No, no. Because most cultures have some method of perturbing their consciousness. Yeah. Are they using fermented fruits and making any kind of alcohol? Oh, yeah, making alcohol, for sure. Okay. Palm wine, palm gin, very powerful stuff. Right. Good drink. Right. Now, are they drunk when they're seeing these forest spirits? No evidence that they are or were. Right. But are the, so is that the only documented substance that these people are taking on this island? Is there any particular plants that have any sort of hallucinogenic properties? Well, certainly traditionally, not so much nowadays among the men. But until quite recently, they would regularly, habitually, excuse me, chew. So, what's called beetle nut, no, yeah, it's not actually a nut. It's an areca nut. It's a palm nut and beetle, which is either a leaf or a sort of pepper from a vine together with the slaked lime. And this is mildly narcotic. I mean, yeah, it's, I consumed it regularly when I was on Sumba in the 1970s. And it was, it was, it was pleasant. It turned my teeth black as it does with the local people. It's kind of like, I don't know, smoking too many cigars in a row. Okay. So it's like a strong stimulant. Yeah. I never became, you know, like physically ill in the stomach, but you feel, you make it feel good. Like a lot of, a lot of other things. I wasn't hallucinating. And yeah, so, so, so there, there's that in addition to the. You said slick lime. What is that? Slaked lime. Slaked lime. Yeah. What is that exactly? It's, it has to do with the way it's, it's, it's, it's produced. I mean, it comes out as a. Here, Janie just pulled it up. It's calcium hydroxide power, powder or paste. Yeah. I was going to say it comes out as a kind of a white powder, like talcum powder. Yeah. And you, you take a dab of that with, with your beetle pepper and, or leaf. And your, your ricanut, chew it all up. It, it becomes red. I mean, the plant materials are green. It's the fourth most commonly used addictive substance in the world after alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. Yeah. Isn't that wild? I can believe that. That's wild. Yeah. I don't think I became addictive, even though I had a red mouth a lot of the time. Did it mess up your teeth? It made them black. That's it? But you could brush them off? Oh, wow. Look at these people. Oh, that's nasty. I'll tell you this, so you may not believe it, but I mean, I rarely brush my teeth for two years on Zumba. Wow. What was your breath like? I was very intent, my, my, while I was smoking as well. Oh, boy. You know, whatever. And I'm still alive at the age of nearly 80, so there you go. You were smoking cigarettes on the island by yourself? How'd you get them there? Oh, there were cigarettes for sale. Oh, they have them? Not very good ones, yeah. Okay. And they make their own as well. They grow their own tobacco. Okay. So there's nothing, my point was, there's nothing that causes hallucinations. That's a part of their culture. I hope my insurance agent isn't listening to this. Sorry, what was the question? Are you still smoking? A small cigar, maybe five or six times a week. Okay. Yeah. After lunch only. I get it. No more than one a day. Some days, none. I haven't had one since Monday. But, no, I enjoy, I enjoy smoking cigars. I do as well. So, but that was my point. Like, if there was something that would cause them to see things that maybe wouldn't be available under normal consciousness. To two other people. No, not really. And there's no, I mean, with some shamans, people called shamans in other parts of the world, you have. They're making deliberate efforts to dissociate, to alter their consciousness. Through ritual? Well, it can be through percussion, drumming. Chanting. Chanting, yeah. It can be through substances, as you've described. Rigorous sex, even. Rigorous? Yeah. But there's not, like, psychedelic mushrooms? Or anything that grows there? On florets, no. Right. Not that I'm aware of, no. I'm sure I'd have heard about them if there were. No. There are, of course, in other parts of the world. And used by shamans as well. Of course. Yeah. So that was just my point with this. Because you were talking about how there's things that they saw that clearly seemed to be mythological. Or just. The spirits, yeah. Fiction. The spirits, yeah. But then they also saw things that match up with these. Hobbit people. Yeah. I must say, I mean, the Leo people certainly have these religious figures, if you want to call them that. And I tended to dismiss their accounts, which were often a bit towards the fantastic ends of things. Did they have other fantastic accounts, not of primates, but of other things other than forest spirits that also existed that seemed to be? Something that was fiction? Seemed to be fiction, yeah. I mean, one case I go into, again, in the recent book, is a creature that we are told is very good at climbing trees. That's not fantastic. But it has multiple testicles, they tell us. The females as well as the males. Females? They come in two sexes. And it grows an extra pair every year. Whoa. When it's reached a limit, which I think is a dozen, two times six, it will climb a tree, wail all night, and be dead by the morning, or drop dead in the following morning. Now, that sounds pretty fantastic, I think you could say. Especially testicles on the ladies. It turns out to be the palm civet. Ah. Which is a well-known animal, and with some interpretation, you know, has features that accord with all these exaggerated claims. Have you ever had that coffee that they make out of the civet dung? Yes, indeed. Kopi Luwak. Luwak. That's exactly the species, yeah. Yeah, I've had that. Yeah. It's remarkably smooth coffee, but it's disconcerting to think that you're drinking it. You're drinking coffee that came out of a civet's butt. I guess so, but I guess there's weirder things that people eat, I think. Certainly. Or consume. Yeah, no, the species name is hermaphroditus. Really? Which relates to certain glands both sexes possess, which can be mistaken for testicles. Oh, okay. So that's the origin. That's the origin of the idea. Interesting. I mean, I later discovered that this fantastic. Well, I was pretty sure beforehand, but it later became clear that people put it away as one of those, and it was a palm civet, as I know. Right. So then you have to take into consideration what other things are they seeing that is either getting exaggerated or getting incorporated into the folklore, right? Like if they see just a particularly large monkey, and maybe at a distance. And maybe through thick brush, and then they decide. Because monkeys will occasionally be bipedal for brief periods of time, chimpanzees as well. Yeah. Well, they're apes, of course. Yes. Our closest relative. Yes. So it gets to the point where you go, "Okay, if you have 30 people that have these stories that seem credible, at least a few of those have to be BS." But it gets to the point where if you have enough of them, and they're so similar, and then you have bones. And then you don't just have bones there, but you have bones in the Philippines, you have bones in China, and in Africa, you start going, "Hey, maybe this is a real thing." Yeah. And then the real problem is, what's the ethical considerations if they captured one? Like, if they capture a monkey, you can put the monkey in the zoo. Yeah. It gets real squirrely if they captured one of these things. Yeah. And then they have to decide what to do with it, because what is that? It's not quite a monkey, and it's not quite a person. yeah no it's it's well between ape and human yeah using human in the sense of i would feel very bad if one of those was in the zoo i feel bad when i see monkeys in a zoo uh well especially chimpanzees sort of the higher apes uh yeah like they're in hell yeah yeah no i i agree with you i um i'm very torn myself on this uh on this point i mean obviously um you know i i'd partly like something like that to be discovered i mean it would uh from a scientific perspective it'd be incredible it would also kind of vindicate me i guess you might you might say but on the other hand i think it would be much better if if they still exist to leave them alone right but you would have to prove it and how would you prove that they exist other than and especially in this day and age with ai video it's almost impossible at this point to discern what's real and what's not very right yeah but if they captured one of them like boy i would feel bad like especially if it started making noises that sounded like a language you know oh well then it would be kind of easier i guess to uh yeah you would definitely wouldn't put them in a zoo right well not only that what are you going to do even in terms of studying them like do you decide to dart them for a short period of time and sedate them and also there's complications to that you to sedate who knows what they're allergic to you could potentially kill them yeah accidentally while studying i mean that's uh that's an uh an issue as well but i would say the best way to study them would be through uh um field research a primatological field researcher a la um what's her name jane there's other ladies um including the one that lived with mountain gorillas um and uh yeah long enough so they become habituated to you and uh uh and so on um yeah probably would be better if a a slightly built female uh took on that uh on that role um something non-threatening that would allow them yeah yeah to allow to come into their community yeah but they're not chimpanzees or they weren't um so i i don't know gosh it really uh i mean we are used to dealing with all these conceptual boundaries right like human and animal and so on um and and this would uh yeah that this would present a real philosophical problem broken under them yeah so uh forrest gallant was telling me about a contemporary account of a woman who was an anthropologist who was i just cannot remember where the village was but this uh person had encountered something well i got it yeah here it is i've got it it's a woman named sabine kugler who wrote this book called child of the jungle uh her parents were german missionaries and uh a super remote uh area of western papau so it was in new guinea and he did an interview with her and uh she said that she had seen these little people and then she woke up in camp more than one time and they were looming over her and around camp and she's a very sane academic he's saying uh not like a jungle person who believes in third world superstition and she's a very sane academic he's saying uh not like a jungle person who believes in third world superstition he says and this woman who is a very sane literary author cutting-edge scientist and she swears that she saw these little people and she told the exact story and so uh he says he actually has a recorded zoom call that he could send me of this encounter yeah but this is a woman who was just like completely stunned encountering these tiny little people in new guinea yeah so are there a couple of people who counts in new guinea that are similar sure if i may ask she was um she was quite young at the time i don't know i don't know i mean it's just something that forest sent me he's a wildlife biologist and he does a lot of work uh trying to find extinct species as well like he's looked for the uh thylacine uh multiple times the thylacine yeah oh yeah yeah so there's in case that one right so we have video of the last supposed thylacine that was alive in a zoo yeah yeah yeah 1936 but there's quite a few credible reports of sightings yeah there there are there are sightings and and if people aren't actually seeing them that there's that uh bigger more fascinating problem of you know what they are seeing or right right right where this all comes from yeah going is this is forest's uh history this is what he does yeah he has a great youtube channel by the way yeah i don't i think i've heard of the name really great particularly if you might follow that out yeah but fascinating guy but the point is like this woman yeah told him the story like this story is like insane yeah she actually encountered these so is there a history of them in new guinea as well um i might just point out not not to appear too defensive but i um i myself have been told similar stories by um by flores islanders you know and i don't want to uh i want to make clear that you know to my mind um that there's not as much difference as you would think between flores islanders and and westerners who report similar experiences but you you said new guinea uh papua new guinea i think yes yeah um there are uh again in the highlands of that very big island um there are uh what are or used to be called um human uh yeah i there have been reports of of uh of those people showing up in in sort of odd odd places and you know walking through um human uh settlements as well you know also from uh um reported by credible um witnesses i'm writing a book on witches are you really yeah no that's another thing in fact i i had some difficulty preparing for this interview because i'm working on the proofs the final proofs and the index and i've and i did a pieces recently on halloween and so i oh wow that was just a freudian slip yeah no worries witnesses i meant but um so what are the descriptions are they human like they're human they are human so they're just like tiny pygmies you know that they it's interested they don't wear a lot of clothes there's a lot of people in new guinea don't or didn't uh so uh whether bodily hair shows up more than it might do uh otherwise uh can't recall those details but they are small and they are dark might like most uh um new guineans and yeah well to be classified as pigmoid they have to be the average male height has to be um less than 1.5 meters which is like you know um well less than less than five feet or four foot eleven that kind of uh so so very small like african pygmies but these are people this is very different they're extraordinarily different yeah yeah no this is not not to confuse with uh floresiensis so that may be what this woman encountered so that might be very very possible you might we'd need more uh details of what she uh are these um documented populations yes so this is something that we know exists currently oh for sure i mean there are detailed details of what she uh remember these um documented populations yes so this is something that we know ethnographic cultural anthropological uh details of of their socioeconomic systems and and everything else this is a totally different yeah of course they speak uh they speak languages like the rest of us yeah okay so um as far as little tiny hairy creatures you said sumatra the philippines indonesia yeah where else where else are these credible witness accounts of uh people experiencing these kind of little tiny ape-like creatures yeah well my first um my first uh inclination is to say um well you know flores and i guess sumbawa neighboring island and um um sumatra as well the the orang pendek but uh there are reports from um north america um of um by by um native north americans of you know something sounds familiar uh similar nothing nothing terribly detailed but um i know i i did some research for another book years back on uh on the bigfoot or sasquatch in the pacific northwest uh and i think the bella cooler indians bella bella indians i don't know if you've heard of them i don't know if you've heard of them i don't know if you've heard of them i don't know if you've heard of them i don't think the british columbia think the british columbia think the british columbia coastal british columbia had a category of uh coastal british columbia had a category of uh coastal british columbia had a category of uh the name uh of creatures which uh the name uh of creatures which uh the name uh of creatures which uh sounded like small sounded like small sounded like small you know somewhat hairy folk And the Lai Hoa, of course, in Flores, there are various reports of how much bodily hair they have. And, you know, according to some, they're not terribly hairy, not like a, you know, a gorilla or a bear. So that's another kind of variable. But then, you know, if you just have the description hairy, then, you know, if you don't take that any further and, you know, investigate more, you don't know what that means. I mean, hairy can mean, well, like the lady in the picture up there. Right. It can refer specifically to mainly to the head hair. But anyway, yeah, no, there are, well, there's one report. I was talking about Sasquatch, which I find fascinating. From 1884, it even appeared in an early newspaper in that neck of the woods about a creature that was given the name Jacko. And I can send references to that if you're interested. But that sounded fairly genuine. Say it again. What is the name of it? The creature? What is it called? It was called Jacko. It's just kind of a nickname. Which is, you know, sometimes a nickname for human beings, right? Like Jack. Yeah. So Daniel Boone had a description in his memoirs of an encounter that he had with a giant creature that he wound up killing. Do you know that story? Probably. I know it's Daniel Boone or David Crockett was supposed to have killed a bear when he was only three. I don't know which one it is, but Daniel Boone. This was a song on the radio. It was a song on the radio when I was about five years old. He had an encounter supposedly that he documented with him and his son where they had shot and killed a giant human-like creature. And it was, I believe it was over eight feet tall or nine feet tall. Some enormous thing that had a different anatomy than humans. Like instead of having a rib cage, it had like a large plate of bone over its chest area. I mean, apparently. I sent this to my friend Steve Rinella and he said, Boone also had some tall tales. So I don't know. I don't know how much of this is true or not true. Yeah. But the whole Sasquatch thing has always fascinated me because of the amount of different names that Native Americans had for this particular creature. And they didn't have a lot of fake creatures. It's, you know, they didn't have descriptions of things that just didn't exist. And they had a lot of names for a wild man that lives in the woods. It's very tall and hairy. Yeah. No, you're right. In fact, there was a rather interesting paper written on that very issue by a guy at the University of Washington. Meldrum? Not Meldrum, no. His name, he's long gone now. His name was Wayne Suttles. You'd be interested in the article. Just looking at the different names and their derivations and all that kind of thing. No, Meldrum, another person who's passed. Yes. Yeah. No, I sort of was acquainted with him for a while. He was a true believer. Yeah. But at the same time, he was, you know, his arguments, whatever the basis, are pretty solid. He was a serious physical anthropologist. Well, you know who really believed in it, at least at one point she did, was Jane Goodall. Yes. So I understand. Again, I don't know much of the details of that. She gave interviews. She gave interviews where she was saying that she's certain it exists. You know? Yes. I mean, this was quite a long time ago, you know? Yeah. So who knows? I don't know. She's gone now, of course. Yes, but before she died, I don't know if she changed her opinion or she was probably tired of talking about it because that might have been the only thing people wanted to talk about. Yeah. Tell me more about Bigfoot. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, there's a number of other primatologists and people who study primates in the field who have also subscribed to, if not Bigfoot. Bigfoot, then the Yeti, a guy called Vern Reynolds, who was at Oxford at one time, I think, and a guy called John Napier who wrote a very interesting book called, I guess, Bigfoot back in, I don't know, the early 70s. It largely partly focused on the Patterson film. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, it's not the case that all the scientists, to use that broad category, you know, dismiss immediately. And in fact, I know paleoanthropologists, biologists as well, who find my arguments credible. But it's very interesting, you know, they'll never say so in print. No. No. Because, and again, you know, they're talking about conservatism and so on. Somewhat understandably, they like to keep this, you know, in a separate kind of compartment. Completely understandably. Especially if you're an academic. If you start saying you believe in Bigfoot, you're immediately put into the cuckoo category. Well, there's that, but more practically speaking, I guess, your funding will quite rapidly drop. Exactly. Yeah. There's a fine line between eccentric. Eccentric and foolish. Yeah. Yeah. Well, however eccentric I might be, I'm pleased to report that I never had, as a cultural anthropologist particularly, you know, studying other people's experiences, beliefs, values, all this kind of thing, I never had that problem from my colleagues or, I may have been more ignored than I would have been otherwise, but I've never had to put up with what. Well, it's fascinating. what Meldrum did, for example. Meldrum was like a full believer. I asked him if he could chop one of your fingers off to find out if Bigfoot was real, would you do it? He said, "Yes." I was like, "Oh my God, man." Yeah. But the point is, it's like, as a cultural anthropologist, it is absolutely, at least the mythology of these things, is absolutely a part of culture and a fascinating aspect of it because there's so many stories and they're so uniform. It's all like eight foot plus, nine foot tall. Yeah. It's an enormous, hairy, ape-like creature that seems to be very human in a lot of ways. It doesn't have the arm length and leg length of an ape. It seems to be built more like a large, hairy person. Yeah. Well, I would agree with you, except for one particular. These details, well, talking about flores, these details don't show up in so much in what we call mythology. Mythology, or myths, or even legends, to make that distinction. The naturalistic descriptions come from, well, mostly from supposed eyewitness encounters. Right. If you look at general knowledge, then you do start to get fantastic features, right? And also, secondhand accounts. Secondhand, they kind of tend more in the supernatural direction, which in itself is fascinating. It's a kind of evidence for the eyewitnesses, especially having had an actual experience and referring to an actual creature. Of course, that's where the similarities between the different accounts become remarkable. Not just that, of course. But the match with the reconstructions of fossils of Homo floresiensis. Yes. So, yeah. But if they had found that in North America, if they had found a Bigfoot evidence, it would change the whole conversation. Then the conversation would be, is this an extinct. Imagine if they had found some Bigfoot jawbone in a cave somewhere. Yeah. A jawbone primate that is 8,000 plus years old. Yeah. Then you'd have to go, okay. Now, what are we talking about? Are we talking about something that's extinct, or are we talking about a very small population of intelligent creatures that has thus far evaded being captured on film and. Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, that would. I mean, it would get a lot more publicity than floresiensis, which. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. happening in the modern West and in the U.S. or anywhere. Yeah. Even in the U.S. or even Canada, it would have the same coverage. Well, the problem is, unlike homo floresiensis or floresiensis. Floresiensis, yeah. there is so many hoaxes in America. Yeah. There's so many guys like, "I found Bigfoot, he's in my freezer," and they've got a big frozen doll that they're saying it is. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many kooks that have said, and so many people have done it for stories just to create a hoax. Yeah. I mean, this is something that I. Well, it's the first thing, one of the first things I discuss in the book is the different cultural contexts. circumstances of, on the one hand, people in flories, ordinary villagers, reporting what they once saw, the culture, the circumstances, all that kind of stuff. On the one hand, and the culture, the socio-economic system in which people who claim to have observed Bigfoot live, different kinds of interests, I mean, nobody on flories thinks they're going to become famous by telling me what they've seen, whatever it may have been. Whereas with bigfoot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With bigfoot in North America, then, you know, you can become rich and famous. I don't know about rich, but you probably. Maybe not rich, but famous. You might be able to parlay it. I mean, look, you could get on Finding Bigfoot. I mean, they did. How many seasons did they do of Finding Bigfoot? They never found Bigfoot. Never did. Spoiler alert. No. You watch a lot of hours-long television waiting for them to find it, and they never find it. Well, that's an excellent point, because, you know, there's never been such a search on flories. Right. And no local interest in such a thing, either. That's probably pure. It's probably better that they don't do it that way. I think, but a real, true scientific search, not a reality show search, would be absolutely fascinating. Yeah. No. Maybe Forrest would be interested in doing it. He's fascinated by the subject. Worth doing, as well. Yeah. Certainly worth doing. Now, when you were doing this whole investigation of Bigfoot, did you find any evidence or anything, any stories? Anything that you thought was compelling? Well, I mentioned the 1884 report, which was actually published in one of the few newspapers in British Columbia at that time. This is a wild frontier, right? Mm-hmm. In fact, this thing that was seen was actually. Yeah, no, it was reputedly captured alive. That's right. But it was when the Canadian Pacific Railway was going. It was when the Canadian Pacific Railway was going through, and this was about 100-odd miles from the coast in a place called Yale, as a matter of fact, or near a place called Yale. It was small. One reason why I mentioned it wasn't a giant. I know that subsequent commentators have suggested it was an infant Bigfoot. How small was it? I think it was maybe 4'4". 4'2". So it's similar in size to Homo floresiensis? A bit bigger. A bit bigger. A little bigger. Yeah. But certainly small for a modern human or for an Neanderthal, for that matter. But there are North American or Native American tribes that have stories of small, hairy people that live in the woods as well. There are. Well, just the one, at any rate, that I mentioned earlier. So, yeah, obviously by comparison with the Indonesian stuff. What did they wind up doing with it? Because photography existed at the time, right? It did, but I'm not sure how many cameras were available. And so no pictures were taken. Jamie's got it here. It's a story of a potential. Oh, 4'7". I was wrong. Okay. Anyway, shorter than that. So a young ape-like creature of Sasquatch allegedly captured alive near Yale, British Columbia. Canadian Pacific Railway crew. First published. First published in the Daily British Columnist newspaper on July 4th, 1884. The story is widely considered by modern historians and cryptozoologists to be a work of historical journalistic fiction. A newspaper hoax, which is very possible, too, because they did a lot of those back then. Huh. Yeah. Maybe. Who knows? So there's that. But is there anything else that you thought was interesting? I, yeah, certainly there were some writers on Bigfoot, like John Green. He was a newspaper man, in fact, in the Fraser Valley there. He was not quite so dismissive. The main reason I think the cryptos would dismiss Jacko was because he wasn't big enough for a Bigfoot. Well, also because newspapers would routinely make up stories. They would, yeah. But, you know, the eyewitnesses were all named. Uh, including, uh, one of the, you know, the top bosses of the, uh, the CP Railway. So, I'm not sure if he'd want to stick his neck out so far, or indeed, you know, why he would want to do it. Whatever became of it is, is a kind, is a, is a mystery. It, it sort of disappeared. I know, um, that there's, there's a book, uh, published a couple of, uh, couple of decades back by a guy. A guy whose name escapes me. He's a physical anthropologist. Uh, and, um, the, the book is called Bigfoot Debunked. I mean, he's sort of virulently opposed to any, any suggestion that anything like this could, uh, could, um, exist. And the best he could do with Jacko, uh, is, um, is conclude that, that it was a chimpanzee that had, uh, escaped from a circus or a zoo. A four-foot-seven chimpanzee? Well, there you are. Um, now, I think it had longish head hair as well. But anyway, um. Really? Yeah. But, um, it was, by all indications, naked. Although this was not mentioned in the, uh, report. Kind of interesting. You know, bearing in mind this was, uh, height of the Victorian era, you know. Right. You didn't mention such a thing. But, um, yeah, no, the best this author, recent author could do is say that, you know, he could say that it was an escaped chimpanzee. Now, there, there, I mean, one, one thing one can be pretty certain of, very certain of, is that there were no, uh, circuses or, uh, zoos in that area. Right. At the time. Like, I don't think there was a, a zoo anywhere in British Columbia. I, I, I may be. Very remote. Maybe, well, yeah, it was a, you know, it was a brand new, it was a colony at that time. Yeah. It wasn't part of, well, I guess it had just become, I didn't know. And that area, British Columbia in particular, has a lot of those Sasquatch sightings. A lot of reports. Well, this is the kind of the classic domain of these things. Yeah. Yeah. I've got to say, no circuses either, I don't think. No, no circuses, but, so do you think that there's a possibility that something like that, at least at one point in time, existed in North America? I don't want to rule it out. As I say, I mean, the, um, the, the, the Flores ape men are much more credible because of the fossil evidence. Of course. And, uh, the whole kind of ecosystem. Of course. And, you know, the region of the world where they are, existence of other primates, if not on the island, then, you know, pretty close by. Um, whole evolutionary history of, uh, of that region. Um, and, and again, you know, the, um, not only are there, uh, fossils, but there's a close match between what the fossils indicate and what, um, um, you know, my colleagues in the field, uh, Leo Villages, uh, indicate. So, yeah, you got to keep a bit of an open mind, don't you? Yes. Well, it's also, the, my problem with Bigfoot is that it's fun. It's fun to believe. Yeah. And so I start looking at my own judgment and going, stop. Yeah. Being silly. You're wasting time. Yeah. No, I, um, I, I don't, I don't find, uh, Bigfoot, uh, credible. And again, I've said so in, in print, in, in an earlier book, um, it, it's interesting that, uh, 1884, I mean, that was a time when, uh, great apes, uh, gorillas and, uh, chimpanzees were becoming widely known to a, a, a Western, uh, public. Right. Whereas they, they hadn't been, um, before. But the discovery of mountain apes by Westerners wasn't until the late 19th century, right? Uh, the mountain gorilla, I think it was the 20th, uh, very early 20th century, was it? Uh, yeah. And, and, uh, the other, the lowland gorilla as well was relative. relatively recent. Yeah, they were thought to be a myth, which is quite hard for us to imagine today. Well, yes and no. I mean, if you look at, you know, their culture, history, and so on, you know, the historical setting and all the rest of it. Don't forget Darwin, you know, his ideas only became current in 1859. But I was going to say, with regard to, you know, kind of general knowledge about apes, these were something new. And, you know, they reached people through, I guess, you know, the popular press, such as it was mainly at the time. Some people would have read books about them, but they would have been probably a minority. So, you know, people had only a vague kind of idea of what they looked like. Anybody seeing, I don't know, a very shaggy dog or maybe a small bear in British Columbia at that time might have made a mistake. That's the part of the problem Bears also sometimes walk bipedally If you see them in the distance If it's dusk If it's very dense woods It's very difficult to discern What you're actually looking at And then the mind plays tricks on you I did a show With my friend Duncan Where we went up into the Pacific Northwest To go looking for Bigfoot And we were hanging out with Bigfoot hunters And most of them just seemed like guys That were looking for a hobby But there was one woman that I talked to One woman who had an encounter And I don't know what she saw Obviously But she was very At least the way she was communicating Felt very rational Very sane She was a smart person She wasn't stupid And she knew the area She lived in the area And she said she saw this thing And she For a half a second she goes That's a gorilla Like why is there a gorilla In the forest And she said she only saw it For less than a minute It was moving through the trees But she said She goes I know what a bear looks like She goes I know it She goes it did not look like a bear I think it was a Sasquatch And I think they're real The problem also with the Pacific Northwest That particular area We're talking about like Mount Rainier It's so dense That the trees The way I describe it It's like a box of Q-tips It's insanely dense You can't see anything No And it's the forest The forest floor is filled with pine needles And leaves that have like landed And compacted over and over and over So you're not going to get any footprints No No indeed And these things can walk quietly Because the ground is very soft And everything's wet Because it's just this tremendous rainforest It's incredibly rich with life And you're there and you go Okay I can see how something could hide in here Like you're not going to find things Like you can only Like even if you had a team of people You first of all You'd be making so much noise You It would smell you a mile away I say smell would be a factor as well Yeah Smell you a mile away Yeah And it's so dense Like the kind of forest up there Is so incredibly dense That seeing something in the distance Would be virtually impossible If you're actually in the woods Yeah Yeah But the question is like If it's something Look at that guy Have you seen this guy before? Oh yes indeed In fact Jojo the dog face Some of those pictures are in 1880s An earlier book I read Wrote Yeah Yeah there's people that have that condition today Yeah Hypertrichosis I stumbled across this guy from This is Julia Pastrana She was around from 1860 And died in 1865 in Moscow But was Is from Sinaloa, Mexico Yeah And was studied left and right By all sorts of people They call her all sorts of things So she was from Mexico Look at her features That's crazy The hair all over her face Yeah That's wild Small Was a performer Yeah Whoa Her body is still being displayed somewhere Ew Yeah But as I'm like Hearing all these descriptions I'm like this This would pass For that description you're saying Kind of in some way or another Sure Sure if you saw that If she was tiny And she was running through the woods A big foot you mean Yeah Or you know Yeah Any sort of forest person In some of these other places I guess But then you have to ask Why would anybody Like that You know Want to be running Through the woods You know In some remote place Presumably naked You know How would they get there How would they get home She was supposedly sold By her uncle After her mother died Yeah No there's some Unfortunate stories Attached to these Well didn't they put a man In the Bronx Zoo There was a man That they put in the Bronx Zoo Who was I think he was a pygmy Ah And they They literally had him In the zoo Like for a while For observation So people could see him The Bronx It's not impossible I know there were There were Same time period Yeah There were Pygmies Pygmy families Who were exhibited at Was it a World's Fair In Where the heck was that Chicago St. Louis Somewhere in In the United States Yeah It was the same one St. Louis World's Fair Yeah Same guy Yeah Oh yes Booty There's one group of Of so-called pygmies Let me tell you about Pygmies One hesitates a bit Because the name is No longer You know Politically correct But These We're talking about You know Fully modern humans Their brains and heads Are not as small As their bodies Okay So their brain size Would be comparable To anybody else Interesting So quite different From something like Homo floresiensis But the point I wanted to make Was that Before a guy called Schweinfurth A German Explorer Was able to Document the actual existence Of Of African pygmies Around the middle of the 19th century I think it was 1847 So exactly 100 years Before I was born And I was able to He actually bought one If you can believe that I mean Horrible As that sounds But you know They Some pygmies Were kept As slaves By taller Africans At that time But before that Europeans thought That pygmies Were a myth That there was no such thing That this was a product Of Greek mythology Especially Of course It's from there That the name Pygmy comes So Yeah Comparable To Our knowledge Of Or anybody's knowledge Of Of gorillas For example The pygmies Were discovered A bit A bit before It's fascinating We think of Like How little People knew About the natural world Yeah Just a couple Of hundred years ago Yeah Yeah Well no Indeed That's a good point I want to just Correct myself I said before Gorilla were Discovered They were well known To local people Of course Right Discovered by the Western world With a very ethnocentric Approach Which again Is a matter of Habit right Yep I didn't mean to say that And yeah Likewise with Conservative scientists That you get into Modes of thought Yeah That are not easy To To alter Yeah Well listen I really enjoy Talking to you And I'd love to talk To you about witches When that book is done too Because that's another Very fascinating subject April Fool's Day First of April April Fool's Day Is when there's An official publication date That you can Order copies now What is it called? It's called The Wicked Witch And then there's a subtitle Which is Origins of an Enduring Worldwide Belief Because one of my main aims Is to show that There are very few cultures Anywhere That don't have a belief That corresponds very closely Even in the smallest particulars To you know What we understand by The world By witches In the West And I would immediately Point out that I don't believe in witches Whatever I might think About homo floresiensis Or you know Present day descendants That might exist No A witchcraft Exists in accusations People accuse Have accused Still accused As a matter of fact In many places Including in the West Other people Of being able to Of being evil Of being able to Harm people Harm other people Maliciously Wantonly Through supernatural means So that's But there's a lot of Other things I've discovered About witches In that journey Which actually Began a very long time ago When I first started To teach Anthropology But I think It's something That would be of interest To your listeners 100% So let's Let's plan on doing that again We'll do that We'll do another podcast Sometime after the book is out Yeah okay We'll talk about that Okay Alright Next time make sure You get me a flight to Austin That gives me more Connection time from Houston Because I missed my flight Oh did you? Oh sorry Yeah Okay we'll do that Thank you very much Really appreciate it It was a really Really fun conversation Yeah I know It's been extremely enjoyable And I I'm very impressed By your question Oh thank you I'm very impressed By your work So Thank you Perfect Alright bye everybody Bye bye