Bigfoot - The Patterson-Gimlin Film

[Correa Neto]

Twisting and spinning again, I see.

The quote was well linked to both the entire article and Wikipedia's entry on it's originator:

Henry Gee, editor of the prestigious journal Nature.

Now, can we go back and discuss that, or are you and Diogenes going to continue to twist his statement by pulling the word "myth" out of context?

Could you please show me exactly where I twisted the original statement?

This claim of your is quite simple to defend, if you can.

If you can't, remove it.

 

[Correa Neto]

So, Huntster, you see a black/brown female bigfoot in PGF?...

Yes.

...Funny, I see a person wearing a black costume...

Well, that just goes to show that my eyesight isn't as bad as I thought it was getting.

Man, you MUST go to an eye doctor.

Seriously.

 

[Correa Neto]

I'm not familiar with the details of many of them, because my study of aboriginial American legend and folklore is limited.

I am very impressed with what Richard Nelson recorded in "Make Prayers to the Raven", mostly because I've hunted extensively in the area near Huslia, Alaska, where Nelson studied Koyukon culture.

I wouldn't say they are "real". I'd say that they have a basis in truth.
...snip...

Cultural -or social- anthropologists quite often "fall in love" with the culture they study. Anyone even superficially familiar with anthropological studies in Polinesia know this. Some even adopt their beliefs.

I worked many years in Northern Brazil -Amazonia included. I stayed in the field for at least 20 days each month. I am reasonably well aware of Brazilian lore (Native Brazilian included). Some studies I read are very interesting, and I had the opportunity to help people doing some also (much less than I would like to). This does not mean I think the mapinguari, caipora, boitata, etc. are real beasts.

There MAY be a real basis for bigfoot myth. But this basis MAY NOT be a real unknown primate lurking in North America's forests. I strongly recommend you to read the post where I wrote about what I saw regarding interpretation of Brazilian mythical beings as real creatures.

In the saquatch case, it would be nice to check:
What the original legend says?
What parts of it are considered as "usefull"?

From what I see, only a small part of the myth was used, and interpreted according to the cultural background of the interpreter, completely detached from the original.

 

[LAL]

Actually, that was me paraphrasing the views of the gent from Nature, not neccessarily a representation of what I actually believe. Tsk, and after you got so snide at Diogenes for quoting out of context, too. Ah, well.

Not that you asked, but since I fear you'd just decide you knew my opinion anyway, the same way you apparently knew my religion and my views on creation myths, let me state that I don't have any particular opinion about the influence of the hobbit discovery on the likelihood of myths of unknown hominids being true. I've yet to be adequately convinced that local myths were in fact related to or descended from the existence of the "hobbits," but I'd need to know rather more about the culture of the natives of Flores to be able to rule it out, either.

"When my colleague Gert van den Bergh first heard these stories a decade ago, which several of the villages around the volcano recount with only very minor changes in detail, he thought them no better than leprechaun tales until we unearthed the Hobbit. (I much prefer Ebu as the name of our find but my colleague Mike Morwood was insistent on Hobbit.)

The anatomical details in the legends are equally fascinating. They are described as about a metre tall, with long hair, pot bellies, ears that slightly stick out, a slightly awkward gait, and longish arms and fingers - both confirmed by our further finds this year.

They [the Ebu Gogo] murmured at each other and could repeat words [spoken by villagers] verbatim. For example, to 'here's some food', they would reply 'here's some food'. They could climb slender-girthed trees but, here's the rub, were never seen holding stone tools or anything similar, whereas we have lots of sophisticated artefacts in the H. floresiensis levels at Liang Bua. That's the only inconsistency with the Liang Bua evidence."


http://www.primates.com/ebu-gogo/

 

[LAL]

From Wikipedia



The article.

Thanks for posting that. I thought it had been archived forever.

I'll try to find the explanation of Patty's hips. It's probably in Krantz. It has to do with the size of the infant's head. There's no need for a wide passage for birth in a biped that doesn't deliver large-headed infants, therefore the hips are relatively narrower, more "male-like".

I had four kids with no noticeable change in pelvic width postpartum and no particular weight gain. I left the hospital in a size 8 sheath after the third was born.

Increase in girth seems to have more to do with age and strawberry yogurt, in my case, IMO.

Humans come in short, tall, chunky, thin, blonde, black, red-haired............I might think they're all in one highly variable species if I hadn't concluded that because of all these conflicting descriptions humans don't exist.

 

[UrsulaV]

It's an interesting notion, LAL, but those descriptions of large eared, pot-bellied long-armed short guys, causing mischief and snacking on the odd infant, could just as well be those of European kobolds or goblins (and while there are few realms in which I'd claim any expertise, I've done enough RPG illustrations to have a pretty good handle on How To Draw A Goblin!*) and don't appear to have any notable diversions from the standard "little people in the woods" myths that a lot of cultures cook up.

Which is not to say that their legends might not have a basis in the hobbits, but I don't think there's anything like conclusive proof yet, nor do I think that a mere reading of the mythology can provide such proof--myth is a tangled web and I simply don't think we can call anything in it reliable fact without significant corroborating evidence--otherwise, why these and not the Migard Serpent, why sasquatch and not the Great Muskrat, why mkolo-mbembe and not the Native American lodge with walls made of wild vaginas?**

We'd need to know, at bare minimum, that the culture's oral tradition has roots extending into the period when the Hobbits were alive, and I don't think we have enough data about their range and span yet to say. Particularly because it would be so cool if it were true, we need to be extra suspicious of it--it's so easy to see what we WANT to see there, out of the sheer coolness of wee little hominids, maaan!

I think more study of both hobbits and the native culture are called for before conclusions are drawn about what must have given rise to any particular myth.


*All those student loans, alas...

**Y'know, while this is an actual myth I've read in the past, I'm bowing out of providing reference, because some things, I am just plain not willing to Google...

 

[LTC8K6]

Should I bring up dragons?
Big, flying, fire breathing lizards.

They pretty much had to be real with all of the documentation of them, right?
All of the myths, legends, stories, statues, and pictures mean that these beasties had to be actual living beings, right? People wouldn't make up something like breathing fire, or flight, would they? They had to have actually seen dragons, or something very close, didn't they?

Today's lizards have just lost a couple of talents and gotten smaller, right?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

The feet are as theorized by Krantz and Meldrum, with a more protruding and broad heel than humans.

Except when the prints have a wide ball and proportionally narrow heel, like many Sas prints do..

 

[LTC8K6]

Why would so many people, in so many different parts of the world, over such a long period of time, describe, draw, and sculpt basically the same sort of beastie? Why would they name places based on these beasties?

Who would win in a fight? A dragon or sasquatch?

 

[LAL]

I too would like to see a real animal whose thigh fur dissapears up into a butt-diaper. Seriously - you can see the seam between the butt and the thigh in that animated gif. I really don't understand how ANYONE can take that seriously as evidence of a real animal.

If you're referring to the "hip-wader lines", they're likely tufts of hair. they disappear in a few frames.
The butt on Patty seems more human than gorilla.

The "enlarged wrists" could be hair on the wrist, puffed up a bit from digging for food or whatever. Or the hair could simply be longer in that area, like we've seen on some gorilla photos - - I'm not convinced it has anything to do with quadrupedalism.

LAL, Giganto, Huntster, etc. have grasped the point however, in that EVERY "suit flaw" that Dfoot claimed HE saw on Patty has been demonstrated to exist on REAL living animals. In the case of the "thigh pads", they seem only visible in certain frames, even when the angles/distances do not change significantly. This suggests that lighting/shadow or matted hair is more likely the cause than some sort of padding.

I agree with Dfoot concerning the thigh area. It looks suspicious in a few frames, but then as the subject continues to walk, the thing that looks like a bulging pad, simply changes shape a couple of times and then disappears.

In the animation Primateer posted at the beginning of this thread, you can see that the "bulging pads" that Dfoot is seeing are probably just a few tufts of hair.

There really is no bulging pad at all, really. The thigh seems to have a natural contour to it, other than the matted hair area. Just a few frames later, this feature all but disappears and we can see again that the subject's thigh area has a normal looking contour.

And once again in his assertions, Dfoot has zeroed in on a "suspect area" in which there are DARK OBJECTS IN THE BACKROUND THAT INTERSECT THE SUBJECT, thus adding to the jutting out thigh pad illusion. -soarwing

http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=13887&st=340 (scroll down)

How many here have actually seen a good copy (digitalized version counts) of the film rather than some blurry version on TV or only the stills, enlargements and gifs on the Internet? Hands, please.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Thanks for posting that. I thought it had been archived forever.

I'll try to find the explanation of Patty's hips. It's probably in Krantz. It has to do with the size of the infant's head. There's no need for a wide passage for birth in a biped that doesn't deliver large-headed infants, therefore the hips are relatively narrower, more "male-like".

Funny.. Huntster is claiming Patty's hips are wide ..

Of course, most of us understand that ' big butt ' doesn't mean ' wide hips ', in proportion to the torso and/or shoulders...

We don't need an explanation from Krantz.. We understand about the proportions of the human female pelvis compared to other animals.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

...
I cannot stress enough that the fat from wild game is not marbled in the meat (unless we are talking about deer that graze in farmer’s fields) like domestic beef. It is found between the meat and the hide, where it provides insulation to supplement the animal’s fur. It is thickest in the fall. I’ve seen the fat on a moose’s rump four inches thick. Bears commonly have fat on the rump that thick or thicker.

On the same animal, one will find very little fat (maybe an inch thick) on the upper legs or breast.
...

This does bring up an interesting question (for me at least). Assuming for the moment that sasquatch would be a member of the primate family; how does fat distribution occur among other primates that live in climates that have similar seasons? (mountain gorillas, Japanese snow monkeys, etc)

edit: because spelling monkey in the plural form is hard

 

[UrsulaV]

Who would win in a fight? A dragon or sasquatch?

Depends on whether the sasquatch suit is made of flame-retardant material or not, I'd imagine...

 

[LTC8K6]

Where in the world is the evidence that sasquatch heels protrude more?

Is this based on the skookum "heel", or on Krantz' skeletal fabrications from copies of casts? We know Krantz made up a more central leg bone location, which would make the heel protrude more in the back, but he just made that up out of thin air. He had nothing but his own imagination to back up his claims.

 

[LAL]

It's an interesting notion, LAL, but those descriptions of large eared, pot-bellied long-armed short guys, causing mischief and snacking on the odd infant, could just as well be those of European kobolds or goblins (and while there are few realms in which I'd claim any expertise, I've done enough RPG illustrations to have a pretty good handle on How To Draw A Goblin!*) and don't appear to have any notable diversions from the standard "little people in the woods" myths that a lot of cultures cook up.

More interesting yet is a notion Captain Cook's crew might have brought tales of the kobold and goblins to the Flores natives, who, once they learned English, immediately incorported these tales into their traditional lore instead of saying "These guys are nuts." Did similar tales emerge after visits by Europeans or was this unique to Flores?

The co-discoverer thinks the "Hobbits" may have been alive in Cook's time and even later. Where is it written that everything "prehistoric" has to be extinct?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

How many here have actually seen a good copy (digitalized version counts) of the film rather than some blurry version on TV or only the stills, enlargements and gifs on the Internet? Hands, please.

There is no such thing as a good copy available to the public.

I hope you are not talking about LMS.. Making a digitalized copy of a blurry film doe not enhance it in any way...

A good copy would probably blow it out of the water to a greater extent than what we are able to do .

A few more seconds at the end, where BH takes the mask off, would work wonders..

 

[LTC8K6]

Yeah, blowing up an old blurry film and then digitizing it will not let you see anything any better.

It will let you see things that probably aren't there, though.

 

[LAL]

Should I bring up dragons?
Big, flying, fire breathing lizards.

They pretty much had to be real with all of the documentation of them, right?
All of the myths, legends, stories, statues, and pictures mean that these beasties had to be actual living beings, right? People wouldn't make up something like breathing fire, or flight, would they? They had to have actually seen dragons, or something very close, didn't they?

Today's lizards have just lost a couple of talents and gotten smaller, right?

Bill seems to have forgotten the article I Googled up on the origins of the European dragon. We've already discussed the Chinese dragon, the cyclops.......What does it take for the human imagination to add wings to a dragon that may have been inspired by a fossil? It is no more accurate to say no myths are based on reality than it is to say all are.

Myths usually have a strong element of teaching. Some American Indian Sasquatch stories seem to fit the bill when the animal delivers a message (as does any other animal) to the people, but the modern accounts, such as of seeing one cross the road, or as the psychologist, Dr. Johnson did, while relieving himself, hardly seem to fill the bill. So why would such "myths" persist in the first place?

Bill mentioned Rant Mullens earlier. Since he has me filtered he must not have seen my post about that. Rant (and friend) disliked being called a "hick" by an investigator and carved feet just to try to fool them. The story didn't say whether or not they were fooled. Rant also claimed he carved feet for Ray Wallace.

The suggestion that these guys (with a little help from Ivan Marx, of course) were responsible for thousands of tracks found in two countries over decades is, frankly, on of the dumbest I have ever seen.

 

[LTC8K6]

For instance, in the frames just before Patty's right leg disappears behind the stump, I can see what looks like her calf muscle bulging out. The only problem is, it looks out of place and it bulges out mid-stride, way before Patty's foot gets near the ground. If I just let the film run, it looks just like her calf muscle working. When I look closer and pay attention, it appears the "calf muscle" is working backwards for this particular stride. Well, to me anyway.

Is it just a calf muscle working? If so, it's really bulging out there.
Is it just an artifact from a lot of processing? Could be.
Is it part of a suit flapping or coming loose? Could be.
Is it my imagination? I don't think so since I can see it in every version of the film.

 

[UrsulaV]

The co-discoverer thinks the "Hobbits" may have been alive in Cook's time and even later. Where is it written that everything "prehistoric" has to be extinct?

Another interesting notion, but one requiring far more supporting data.