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If Not Bigfoot then How about Littlefoot?

Gord_in_Toronto

Penultimate Amazing
Gord_in_Toronto
Joined
Jul 22, 2006
Messages
26,451
Opinion: Another Species of Hominin May Still Be Alive

https://www.the-scientist.com/magaz...r-species-of-hominin-may-still-be-alive-69869

In 2004, the scientific world was shaken by the discovery of fossils from a tiny species of hominin on the Indonesian island of Flores. Labeled Homo floresiensis and dating to the late Pleistocene, the species was apparently a contemporary of early modern humans in this part of Southeast Asia. Yet in certain respects the diminutive hominin resembled australopithecines and even chimpanzees. Twenty years previously, when I began ethnographic fieldwork on Flores, I heard tales of humanlike creatures, some still reputedly alive although very rarely seen.
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The evidence seems to be as strong as that for Bigfoots (or as weak). A body would be nice. Even some DNA?
 
"I've heard stories" too. The Big Sur coast, and Santa Lucia Mountains are allegedly home to little hairy people, about 2-feet tall with gold eyes. Nobody's seen one in forty years. I suspect nobody sees them because this is a local legend, and we locals are careful not to tell people about it. Why? Same reason small towns up in Northern California don't repeat local stories about Bigfoot - they don't want to be overrun with nutjobs.

Almost as if people won't see strange things if there is no suggestion of strange things to see.
 
The Little People are found almost worldwide. Well, reported anyway.

Okay, purported. Alleged. Believed in. Well known to the old folks. Goddammit, if there wasn't something in it, how come you hear about 'em all the time?

Oh yeah? Well I hear about 'em. A lot.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
What do you have in mind for having DNA without actually having a specimen? Would a DNA comparison be decisive or would it potentially be too close a relative to be definitive?
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Hairy little creatures running about the jungle would occasionally leave a bit of hair behind. With forensic science these days they could trace its ancestry back to Eve. The Yeti hairs so tested have been found to be mundane animals.

See: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2014.0161
 
I always interpreted those stories as ancestral memories, suggesting that these beings are gone now, if they ever came into contact with ancient Indonesians in the first place.

Junk journalism; about as much evidence for Bigfoot exists.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
It's easy to recognize if it comes from something very far removed from humans, but what if it comes from something much closer?
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What is your definition of "easy"? DNA testing can tell you your ancestral lineage. Is that an "easy" recognition? What would make it a candidate for being mistaken for an unknown species? I don't see any conflation of results from cross-species DNA testing possible. or did I misinterpret your question?
 
sackett said:
The Little People are found almost worldwide. Well, reported anyway.

Okay, purported. Alleged. Believed in. Well known to the old folks. Goddammit, if there wasn't something in it, how come you hear about 'em all the time?

Oh yeah? Well I hear about 'em. A lot.
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There was one tribe that was reputed to live in the uppermost reaches of the Volta River Valley in what is now known as Burkina Faso. The people of the tribe were really small in stature, mostly only 3½ to 4½ feet tall, so short in fact that in the late spring and early summer, the tall grasses in the area where they lived towered over them. They were called the Fakawi tribe, so named because they were frequently observed jumping high in order to see over the grasstops, and as they did so, they were heard yelling "We're the Fakawi, we're the Fakawi"
 
Axxman300 said:
I'm killing the afternoon looking up Little People sightings in Detroit.
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Well we do have the Nain Rouge...

https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Nain_Rouge

His appearance is said to presage terrible events for the city. The Nain Rouge appears as a small childlike creature with red or black fur boots. It is also said to have "blazing red eyes and rotten teeth." (Skinner 1896)

The creature is said to have attacked the first white settler of Detroit in 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who, soon after, lost his fortune. The creature is also said to have appeared on July 30, 1763 before the Battle of Bloody Run, where 58 British soldiers were killed by Native Americans from Chief Pontiac's tribe. The small tributary of the Detroit River which still flows through what is now Elmwood Cemetery turned red with blood for days after the battle. It is said he was seen dancing on the banks of the Detroit River.

Famous multiple sighting occurred in the days before the 1805 fire which destroyed most of Detroit. General William Hull reported a "dwarf attack" in the fog just before his surrender of Detroit in the War of 1812.
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When I was a cub scout, we went to camp and had a snipe hunt. And the older scouts would describe the snipe as a tiny two legged person with long teeth, and we would have to catch them with a paper bag.
 
MBDK said:
What is your definition of "easy"?
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A difference from humans larger than 3% which makes the DNA obviously non-human.

MBDK said:
DNA testing can tell you your ancestral lineage. Is that an "easy" recognition?
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No. In fact I think most DNA tests that claim to do that might even be bogus. In any event do any of those establish some as from a sister line-age of humans which is what we are discussing?

MBDK said:
What would make it a candidate for being mistaken for an unknown species?
I don't see any conflation of results from cross-species DNA testing possible. or did I misinterpret your question?
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My questions is what would happen if it was a close relative? Would DNA be definitive in that case? I understand how distant species like wolves, mountain lions, rabbits, and mice would be easily recognized as non-human. But would an unknown near relative of humans, possibly a hidden tribe of the same species as us, be recognizable as such via a DNA test?

Let's say this case is a tribe of humans similar to The Awá. Would a hair sample be recognizable as "that looks like an uncontacted tribe" or would it simply just appear as any other human?

BTW my question is more driven by how the testing would work. I don't suspect these claims of a "littlefoot" are real.
 
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RecoveringYuppy said:
A difference from humans larger than 3% which makes the DNA obviously non-human.


No. In fact I think most DNA tests that claim to do that might even be bogus. In any event do any of those establish some as from a sister line-age of humans which is what we are discussing?


My questions is what would happen if it was a close relative? Would DNA be definitive in that case? I understand how distant species like wolves, mountain lions, rabbits, and mice would be easily recognized as non-human. But would an unknown near relative of humans, possibly a hidden tribe of the same species as us, be recognizable as such via a DNA test?

Let's say this case is a tribe of humans similar to The Awá. Would a hair sample be recognizable as "that looks like an uncontacted tribe" or would it simply just appear as any other human?

BTW my question is more driven by how the testing would work. I don't suspect these claims of a "littlefoot" are real.
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As a thought experiment I Googled >DNA testing dog breeds accuracy<. It appears that DNA testing can differentiate between different breeds of dog with a 95 to 98% degree of accuracy. It's also noted that such tests are less accurate than human DNA testing. So I think the answer is that you could tell the difference.
 
smartcooky said:
There was one tribe that was reputed to live in the uppermost reaches of the Volta River Valley in what is now known as Burkina Faso. The people of the tribe were really small in stature, mostly only 3½ to 4½ feet tall, so short in fact that in the late spring and early summer, the tall grasses in the area where they lived towered over them. They were called the Fakawi tribe, so named because they were frequently observed jumping high in order to see over the grasstops, and as they did so, they were heard yelling "We're the Fakawi, we're the Fakawi"
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Ban this man.
 
Can you cite a link? The links I find claiming that are from the manufacturers. Links from others generally don't agree.

For example: https://www.livescience.com/dog-dna-test

But that still begs the question: what would those test says about a sample from a closely related unknown sample? Those tests all target known markers. We're talking about a sample that is unknown and potentially closely related enough to have identical markers because they have ancestry that overlaps ours.
 
The Cherokee told tales of the Moon-Eyed People, short pale, and only able to see clearly at night. They were either Welsh who came over with Prince Madoc, one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, reptilian humanoids who lived beneath the surface, a proud warrior race who built the fort on top of Fort Mountain, Georgia, or purely imaginary creatures of folklore.

The Cherokee also told of gigantic leeches who swarmed in a river in western North Carolina. The critter could surge up and swallow a horse whole.

It probably wasn't Welsh or Jewish....
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Can you cite a link? The links I find claiming that are from the manufacturers. Links from others generally don't agree.

For example: https://www.livescience.com/dog-dna-test

But that still begs the question: what would those test says about a sample from a closely related unknown sample? Those tests all target known markers. We're talking about a sample that is unknown and potentially closely related enough to have identical markers because they have ancestry that overlaps ours.
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I'm not that interested but I suppose the interpretation of the results depends on how you define "human"; after all we match 98.8 with chimps.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
I'm not that interested but I suppose the interpretation of the results depends on how you define "human"; after all we match 98.8 with chimps.
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More on how you define Homo floresiensis. We really have no idea what they are and we have no DNA samples. The range of what they might be overlaps with nearly modern human. Actually completely modern if you presume some are still around. Or could be 2 million years divergent based on some other interpretations.
 
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