1. I’m not familiar with the usual treatment in the American press of this subject, but I understand your point.

The usual treatment is roll-your-eyes-reading-it. Whether a proponent, skeptic or agnostic (the true skeptic being more an agnostic than a scoffer, really), one requires serious treatment to form serious opinions. So, do mummies walk at night? If you think so, show me your evidence. Honest; I’ll not scoff. I just await (and no, not on the edge of my seat, but I’ll, um, be here) evidence for any proposition to which I respond, show me. It’s kind of hard for those on the fence to take a topic seriously for which most of the mass-media treatment is given with a chuckle, or worse, a hearty snicker. As someone on the fence – who just got a personal sighting account from one of the least-BS people he knows – I have to know what the hooraw is about, which requires a dispassionate accounting. Meldrum and Mionczynski are at least striving for that.

2. On the language suggestion, what I meant to suggest was that that is an absolutely massive claim- and I was not aware that Meldrum or Mionczynski had ever suggested such. Then, once you combine their stance on tools, from an evolutionary anthropological point of view, the whole thing makes little to no sense.

To me, too, this seems out of the blue; I wasn’t aware they were claiming this either, and I’ve read Meldrum’s book and talked to Mionczynski. Um, whoa. You need a s***load of evidence to put that one out there. The proponents do not help themselves with outlandish claims, like “they bury their dead and that’s why we don’t have a body.” We don’t have a body because no one has REPORTED finding one. That is, no one who was taken seriously. Claims should follow evidence, not explain unsupported suppositions, e.g., “no one has ever found a body.”

3. It seems that as the suggestion is intangible they went for it, while dismissing the ideas of tools and justifying (in a very odd fashion) the lack of bones. Would you agree with that?

Well, that’s what’s odd about it. “Tools” doesn’t have to mean worked tools, but that seems to be the context they assume for the term. My understanding is that the sasquatch hand isn’t theorized to be as dexterous as ours; but of course that lacks sufficient evidence as well. And as I hinted at above, to just talk about environmental reasons that “there are no bones” presupposes NO ONE HAS EVER found any. To me, if this animal is real, it almost follows that mis-identified and tossed (into a landfill, trashcan or museum drawer…or maybe there’s an interesting prospector’s doorstop somewhere) or abandoned remains almost certainly HAVE happened; it just hasn’t come to anyone’s attention yet.

4. Focussing on the language again for a moment, as each of these are immense subjects, but what could possibly have led these scholars to have made such an astounding conclusion? The implications are endless, and I’m yet to see any evidence that could possibly have led them there. The article brushes over it as if it’s the least important theory in there… What are your thoughts on this?

I think I’ve said it: ODD. And odd as it may seem: even though all the evidence tells me, anyway, that we are searching for a primate (and to me, probably not a hominid), we just don’t know what the sasquatch is. So let’s watch the it’s-a-human! allegations. (Some call it human based on foot shape alone, which is like calling a caribou a moose because their hooves are kinda similar.) To make what I’d consider a leap of logic, if not faith, is dangerous in this context. The precise thing that is the issue here is lack of proof. When one postulates things that de facto cannot be supported by the available evidence, one leaves oneself open to the allegation of not treating the matter with the proper scientific skepticism, of being, in fact, a True Believer.

And a SCIENTIST wants to do that…?

OK. I also have to say this. It just may be that the seemingly casual – and I agree with you that it’s seemingly REAL casual given implications – insertion of that line about language may be an artifact of the author’s mis-hearing, mis-reading, or injecting something from personal belief. That can happen.

5. p.s. my point about Meldrum’s Giganto fossil comparison was that he was seemingly using the dearth of ossary evidence of a creature that died out 300,000 years ago by all accounts to justify the absolute absence of any bone remains of an animal he’s arguing exists today.

I’d agree with you. Jeff: let’s not jump here. When one doesn’t have a bone in hand, the most one can say is: Remains are hard to come by in the wild, even if one is looking (a researcher in Congo is finding out precisely this with regard to chimpanzee remains). I’d suggest adding: given the likelihood that anyone who found them either (a) would go YEEEEUCCHHHH at the prospect of handling them or (b) would not want to go through the He’s Nuts Circus with his find or (c) both, I’d say one shouldn’t expect to have remains until science takes the subject seriously.

I wasn’t suggesting he was linking the two creatures… but more he was confusing the issues of fossil evidence and the more recent traces of an extant animal. One question is the fossil record, another one entirely is the lack of fresh bones.

I understand the arguments about acidic soil, porcupines, etc., but comparing 300,000+ year-old bones with the remains of animals dying now makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

Firstly, thank you for your intelligent response. I tend to look into the comments section when I’m by here to see the reactions to the articles, and am often impressed by your posts.

I’m not familiar with the usual treatment in the American press of this subject, but I understand your point.

On the language suggestion, what I meant to suggest was that that is an absolutely massive claim- and I was not aware that Meldrum or Mionczynski had ever suggested such. Then, once you combine their stance on tools, from an evolutionary anthropological point of view, the whole thing makes little to no sense.

If you take all the hypotheses briefly outlined in the article, reading them together my immediate thoughts were this: (please bear in mind I’m being objective… am a Sasquatch agnostic, but let’s suspend belief or disbelief for a moment)

no tangible proof is available for bones of this creature, past or present, fresh or fossil;
no tangible proof is available for worked* tools this bipedal creature with opposable thumbs might have used;
however, though we have no proof as we have no live specimens or recordings of the use of anything that could be called such, they see fit to conclude that the Sasquatch use language.

It seems that as the suggestion is intangible they went for it, while dismissing the ideas of tools and justifying (in a very odd fashion) the lack of bones. Would you agree with that?

*I say worked tools, as that’s what I think is intended, not branches, logs etc. A worked tool would have to be fashioned for the purpose, rather than just acquired.

Focussing on the language again for a moment, as each of these are immense subjects, but what could possibly have led these scholars to have made such an astounding conclusion? The implications are endless, and I’m yet to see any evidence that could possibly have led them there. The article brushes over it as if it’s the least important theory in there… What are your thoughts on this?

Thanks

But I can think of only two mass-media treatments of this topic – this being one – that did not involve a conscious attempt by the author, usually some exasperating wink-nudge attempt at humor, if not worse – to show that hey-I’m-not-a-loony. Two is incredibly few, and to me, a very big wow. Of course I may just be far less tolerant than most of the braying ignorance that consistently characterizes media treatment of this subject.

As to your other points:

1. Yeah, if we are going to call language “the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication,” which seems to be the angle being taken, well I feel very uncomfortable with asserting anything for which evidence does not clearly exist. And I think I’d know if there were evidence for this. (“Samurai chatter” is not evidence for anything but interesting noise.)

2. As to tool use: if these guys take seriously the “tree-knocking” phenomenon as potentially pertaining to sasquatch, well, there is a tool. If they are covering tracks with pine boughs, boom, another tool. The tools used by chimps aren’t substantially more sophisticated than that. I am not aware of any evidence of any other tool use by these animals. And I’d think I would be if there were any.

3. As to Giganto teeth, I think Meldrum is trying to point out that one shouldn’t expect tons of fossil evidence for everything that ever existed, and that it can be very hard (as in the case of chimp/gorilla ancestors) to come by. He’s saying that in this case, absence of evidence isn’t prima facie evidence of absence. Personally, I’m betting that if the sasquatch is a real animal, we haven’t found fossil evidence of its antecedents yet. I’ve never been too excited about the ‘Giganto hypothesis.’ I would certainly hope that a scientist isn’t saying: since Giganto existed, this does too. Nope, one can’t do that.

A couple of points really stand out as ludicrous from that article on the part of Mionczynski and Meldrum.

Firstly, they’ve decided the Sasquatch has developed language. LANGUAGE! Humans’ development of such went a long way to allowing us to develop into Man – gave rise to us being able to eventually express thoughts, concepts, feelings… it’s safe to say the importance of language can not be over-estimated in the evolution of Man.

Yet, their hypothesis above also suggests that the Sasquatch has not developed the ability to use tools, despite being in possession of opposable digits. This, of course, was another great step in human evolution, by all accounts, and happened far earlier than any semblance of language.

I do not understand how these two contradicting hypotheses can marry, or why this hasn’t seemed problematical to Meldrum in particular.

And finally, Meldrum suggesting that we know Gigantopithecus existed, yet we only have a handful of teeth to prove it… all well and good, but Meldrum is suggesting that Sasquatch roam the forests of North America TODAY, while a good 300,000 years have passed since Giganto lived. How is that in any way an acceptable analogy?

Has Meldrum lost the plot and cracked under the pressure?

Although something appeared in the Denver Post several years back that may rival, if not equal, this for objectivity and taking the topic seriously, this is just about the most straightforward, least woo-woo look at the topic I’ve seen. I mean, there is not a trace of woo-woo or implied author eyeroll or distancing or any other such in this article.

Wow.