Ancient History of Cryptozoology
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 30th, 2008
For those who missed it and who might be looking for a bit of intellectual weekend reading, here is a short history of cryptozoology, which you may download here: Cryptozoology in the Medieval and Modern Worlds.
(I’m on the road, traveling for a couple weeks, and various items may reflect uploading before my trip.)
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Loren Coleman no longer writes for Cryptomundo. His archived posts remain here at Cryptomundo.
I’m surprised that there is no mention of the jentilak, of Basque tradition. The Basque people, being the native Iberians and the oldest culture in all of Europe, would be the most likely to have seen any hairy hominids in their midst. My wife is half Basque, and when I was there visiting her family a few Christmases ago I saw a man dressed as Olentzero, (their “santa” type figure). Legend has it Olentzero was the last of a race of hairy giants (jentilak). His appearance, was a bearded human, with coal dust on his face making it dark/black.
I had forgotten about that until we were talking to our kids about Olentzero the other night, and my wife mentioned the legend. I looked it up in Loren’s Field guide to Bigfoot, and it wasn’t in there either. There isn’t a lot of information on the internet about it, so I’m curious if anybody has heard of the jentilak, and can give us some more information.
Loren, do you know anything about these hairy giants?
On a side note, the reason my wife’s great grandfather chose Western Oregon to immigrate to was it’s similarity to the Pyrenees.
Thanks