Bigfoot DNA

Status
Not open for further replies.
musketsatdawn said:
For the record I was not attempting to prove Bigfoot was real. Instead I was trying to suggest a reason why people might see a large hairy hominid instead of a bear, wolverine or other more common creature.
Click to expand...

It is called Pareidolia: seeing what isn't there, projecting something onto it instead like the man in the moon or Jesus on a piece of toast.

The popular media is clearly the vehicle by which millions of people have found out about bigfoot: countless TV shows, books, internet sites, etc.

Proposing it is knowledge (fear) hidden away in the DNA, but then coincidentally awakened at the same time the media hype occurs violates occam's razor, not to mention common sense.

I don't think that everyone that "sees" a Bigfoot is a liar, just mistaken, but subsequently convinced that they saw a Bigfoot.
Click to expand...

It has been shown the power of suggestion influences pareidolia. It is so pronounced that it is used to diagnose what is on someone's mind - the Rorschach Inkblot Test. Because what is on your mind will be "seen" in the inkblots.

Since we know people "see" what is on their mind, it is trivial that having bigfoot on your mind causes you to "see" bigfoot. You watched Finding Bigfoot, you read the BFRO threads, you went out into the dark woods to find evidence of bigfoot - and surprise! You see bigfoot.

Real hominid interactions are interesting. We have them immediatly at hand. A bigfoot-sized one. The largest of the Great Apes - the Mountain Gorilla - was first broadcast to Western Civilization in 1902. Gorillas had been known long before, and fear of them exploited in famous circus show acts like the girl-to-gorilla trick.

The magician closes his show with the female assistant turning into a gorilla suit storming out at the audience, causing them to panic. The illusion is done with the use of lighting and mirrors, plus a gorilla suit. This illusion was extremely popular and was performed for decades through the 1800's. The Romans had all kinds of animals including gorillas at the Ampitheater for entertainment. Organ grinders used monkeys through the 1800's to collect coins. The Spanish knew of the new world monkeys by the 1500's, and that there were none in the North Americas.

These mountain gorillas discovered in 1902 were immense though. Over twice the size of an average man. So in the pre-bigfoot era, we DO have a real life "bigfoot". A real hominid very active in the popular mind. It was not difficult to transplant him to the Himilayas in that popular mind less than 20 years after its discovery. Once the Yeti craze got underway, it was copied by hoaxers in the USA, and named bigfoot in the 1950's.

This is the direct, known pedigree of bigfoot: A real Gorilla of recent discovery transplanted by spoofers into the public imagination as the Yeti in 1920 with the first terminology "Abominable Snowman" of the Himalaya. A profitable trade in Yeti expeditions was launched in the 1950's, lining the pockets of the Nepalese officials granting permits, and hundreds of others in the form of porters, guides, suppliers, the monestaries, etc. And Peter Byrne, master con-man.

Ray Wallace, Roger Patterson, and others transplanted the YETI to the USA in the 1950's and 1960's. It is being exploited for profit to this day. It did not come as a consequence of our interaction with the American Indian tribes centuries before. It is not likely a sleeping residual in our DNA from thirty thousand years ago.
 
I read you 5 ABP, but bigfootery evolves to survive, and very fast. It's magic! Now, bigfoot could be a kind of ogre!

Posted today on the GCBRO forum by MonsterHunter( the thread is about Paulides book):

"But I can tell you for fact...what I have seen looks like some type of ape...and I have had my fair share of sightings...
could it be some type of human?...possible I would think but the bastards here look like an ape...and I do agree with his assumption...
they cannot be trusted...there are reports from NA tribes of this Monster kid napping their children and women...men...
maybe they are cannibals?..."
http://www.network54.com/Forum/23217/message/1340727613/Interesting+to+say+the+least...
 
I'm still waiting for the first report of bigfoot *********** the Pope in Grand Central Terminal. Other than that, I think bigfoot has been reported doing everything on earth. Of course, the 'footers don't call these reports "reports," they take them as actual events.
 
The Shrike said:
And yet . . . the more we learn from Archaeology/Anthropology about our distant past, the more we get a picture of ancient Homo sapiens living alongside other species of humans, e.g., Flores people, Neanderthals, Denisovans.

Think of how racism in our modern world makes bogeymen out of people with different ethnic backgrounds. Heck, just check out how we demonized the Japanese after Pearl Harbor or how blacks were portrayed in print media and film in the early 20th Century. Now imagine species-ism among our illiterate ancestors. Many thousands of years ago, there really were brutish, hairier people of enormous strength and comparatively simple ways living in some isolated valley way off in the boonies. I can not only imagine how stories of such people would be passed down long after they were gone, I would expect it. This is why I think bigfooty-type bogeyman are almost universal in modern cultures.
Click to expand...

A perfect example of the demonizing of other peoples and the attempt to exterminate them (no slaves) existed in North America amongst aboriginal peoples.
Samuel Hearnes' description of the massacre of the Inuit encampment by the Chipewyans he was with is a great example. The entire encampment of men, women, children and infants were brutally murdered - many after being tortured - with great glee and celebration. The Inuit were not considered human by the Chipewyan so they were to be destroyed without hesitation in all cases.

A contemporary example example I ran into was in Alberta while working with the Crees. When meetings were held in Edmonton - The Cree and Blackfoot Confederacy chiefs would not stay under the same roof. They stayed in separate hotels and the meetings had to be held in a third (neutral) hotel conference room. Talk about carrying grudges! Can you imagine the burning hatred that existed between these two cultures when they were actually fighting?

There was and is a lot of sanitizing of aboriginal culture by revisionists who are attempting to idealize the "Noble Savage" concept of North American Indians. The truth is - they were like humans everywhere else and we must not try and sanitize our past brutal nature and hatred to peoples not considered "one of us".
(However, after watching the coverage of the brutish behaviour of people during the European Cup - especially towards the black players - I realize my use of the term "past" is a Pollyanna view of modern humans).
 
AlaskaBushPilot said:
It is called Pareidolia: seeing what isn't there, projecting something onto it instead like the man in the moon or Jesus on a piece of toast. (snip).
Click to expand...
I think my favorite was the photo Creekfreak took (it's probably somewhere on the forum, but I'm too lazy to look) that showed a low-hovering helicopter and, a few feet in front of it, what really looked like the head and shoulders of a big ol' gorrilla-like critter crouched in the brush. Closer inspection, though, turned the creature into a mere pattern of light, shade, and twigs. Creekfreak still thought it was a bigfoot, but it was just an example of pareidolia.
 
GT/CS said:
Here ya go.
That was a fun thread! Too bad Creek got himself banned. Little Mak was another fun sort that got himself banned.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96467

Here is a link to the photo without the rectangles.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6397449&postcount=1917
Click to expand...

That would be the first time I've seen that one, and I see nothing. I'm not into photography, what is the point of enhancing?

Isn't that using technology to enhance your pareidolia? How do you know an enhanced photo is authentic regardless of the subject?
 
The Shrike said:
That works too:

1) Plunder Neanderthal encampment, killing all the adults.
2) Take 1 or 2 baby girls to raise as slaves.
3) Take liberties with those girls when they mature.

Viola. There's an easy explanation for extermination of Neanderthals by the dominant human on the planet, including the persistence of Neanderthal genes in modern human DNA. It doesn't preclude the demonization of Neanderthals, however. What better way to brag about one's power than to ascribe great power and ferociousness to the thing you conquered?
Click to expand...

I don't think it could happen that way since they can't find any Neandertal mt DNA in our lineage.

The researchers concluded that the interbreeding success rate was probably less than 2 percent in most scenarios. Assuming that both lineages interacted for about 10,000 years, this means successful interbreeding would have, on average, happened just once every 23 to 50 years, they calculated. "If more exchange had occurred, we would have become Neanderthals," researcher Laurent Excoffier, a population geneticist at the University Of Berne in Switzerland, told LiveScience.

http://www.speroforum.com/a/FNFPSOUEKJ41/69074-Neanderthals-and-Homo-sapiens-intermingled-in-more-ways-than-one
 
Jodie said:
That would be the first time I've seen that one, and I see nothing. I'm not into photography, what is the point of enhancing?

Isn't that using technology to enhance your pareidolia? How do you know an enhanced photo is authentic regardless of the subject?
Click to expand...

A simplistic expanation (that's the only kind I know) is that when a digital photo is taken a lot of data is stored in a file that accompanies the photo, like the date of the photo, the camera used, etc.
If the photo is manipulated the file data changes.

Here is some information.
http://www.digicamhelp.com/glossary/exif-data/

And here is an example of exif data.
http://www.exif.org/samples/canon-ixus.html

Someone got ahold of Creekfreak's exif file and it said, "Photoshop" in it.
Game, set, and match.

Of course, there are ways around the exif data issue. For example someone could take a photo, manipulate it, print it, and take a photo of the printed image. That would result in a clean exif file but it would most likely create other red flags.
 
Last edited:
Spektator said:
@musketsatdawn:

Oh, a huge bouvier! Thanks for clarifying. This type of dog can indeed look very much like a bear.
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting Spektator, I hadn't gotten my required 15 posts to send a link at the time of my original post. Cheers.

I can still recall the image quite clearly - young girl, 5 or 6 walking down a hill in the distance a few hundred yards away. The dog was huge compared to her and to my 7 year old eyes, did indeed look very bear-like.
 
Last edited:
GT/CS said:
A simplistic expanation (that's the only kind I know) is that when a digital photo is taken a lot of data is stored in a file that accompanies the photo, like the date of the photo, the camera used, etc.
If the photo is manipulated the file data changes.
Click to expand...

I guarantee you that the exif data can be manually edited/forged. Most people aren't smart enough or don't have the right tools, which usually makes frauds easy to detect, but having what looks like plausible exif data is no guarantee of authenticity. It's useful for disproving an image, but useless for proving it.
 
Thanks GT and xtfir, I believe that was about as clear as mud but that's more of a reflection on me than your links. :D
 
Jodie said:
I don't think it could happen that way since they can't find any Neandertal mt DNA in our lineage.

The researchers concluded that the interbreeding success rate was probably less than 2 percent in most scenarios. Assuming that both lineages interacted for about 10,000 years, this means successful interbreeding would have, on average, happened just once every 23 to 50 years, they calculated. "If more exchange had occurred, we would have become Neanderthals," researcher Laurent Excoffier, a population geneticist at the University Of Berne in Switzerland, told LiveScience.

http://www.speroforum.com/a/FNFPSOUEKJ41/69074-Neanderthals-and-Homo-sapiens-intermingled-in-more-ways-than-one
Click to expand...

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/37/15129

We find that observed low levels of Neanderthal ancestry in Eurasians are compatible with a very low rate of interbreeding (<2%), potentially attributable to:
1) - a very strong avoidance of interspecific matings,
2) - a low fitness of hybrids, or
3) - both.
These results suggesting the presence of very effective barriers to gene flow between the two species are robust to uncertainties
about the exact demography of the Paleolithic populations, and they are also found to be compatible with the observed lack of mtDNA introgression.
Click to expand...

The Shrike's scenario seems credible to me, at least with the hypothesis #1 :
A few tribes of Humans and a tribe of Neandertals share the same territory. They hate each other and avoid direct confrontation, but when it happens ... Shrike's scenario here.
 
Last edited:
Jodie said:
I don't think it could happen that way since they can't find any Neandertal mt DNA in our lineage.

The researchers concluded that the interbreeding success rate was probably less than 2 percent in most scenarios. Assuming that both lineages interacted for about 10,000 years, this means successful interbreeding would have, on average, happened just once every 23 to 50 years, they calculated. "If more exchange had occurred, we would have become Neanderthals," researcher Laurent Excoffier, a population geneticist at the University Of Berne in Switzerland, told LiveScience.

http://www.speroforum.com/a/FNFPSOUEKJ41/69074-Neanderthals-and-Homo-sapiens-intermingled-in-more-ways-than-one
Click to expand...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ozzy-osbourne-genome

"For a long time we thought that Neandertals didn't have any descendents today, but it turns out that Asians and Europeans have some evidence of Neandertal lineage—like a drop in the bucket. We found a little segment on Ozzy's chromosome 10 that very likely traces back to a Neandertal forebearer.

Ozzy, of course, was tickled to hear this. But Knome founder George Church's genome has about three times as much Neandertal, which we thought was funny."
 
GT/CS said:
A simplistic expanation (that's the only kind I know) is that when a digital photo is taken a lot of data is stored in a file that accompanies the photo, like the date of the photo, the camera used, etc.
If the photo is manipulated the file data changes.

Here is some information.
http://www.digicamhelp.com/glossary/exif-data/

And here is an example of exif data.
http://www.exif.org/samples/canon-ixus.html

Someone got ahold of Creekfreak's exif file and it said, "Photoshop" in it.
Game, set, and match.

Of course, there are ways around the exif data issue. For example someone could take a photo, manipulate it, print it, and take a photo of the printed image. That would result in a clean exif file but it would most likely create other red flags.
Click to expand...

GIMP (a pretty good open source photo-editing program) doesn't touch EXIF data. Also there are programs that allow direct editing of EXIF data, or if you know what you are doing, you could simply use a hex editor to modify it. So, clean EXIF data is not proof that a photo hasn't been manipulated, but there are likely to be other indicators of tampering.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom