Comments on: China Challenges Johor Bigfoot Theory

By: astrocave

astrocave — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 02:27:50 +0000

Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t the second picture on this article look a lot like the alleged photos as they’ve been described? Is it at all possible that one of the “photos” is in fact this image?

I also think the statue in the first image looks a lot like the descriptions as well, particularly the crazy hairstyle.

By: shumway10973

shumway10973 — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 00:50:41 +0000

I would say that both of these “experts” are really grasping. Ok, so the gentleman from china has seen, but has he captured one? That’s the only way to truly study them. So, I say, “Until one has been found/captured/documented etc…we, meaning anyone at all, have no way of saying anything about what or who these creatures are related to.

By: apiraymond

apiraymond — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 23:41:50 +0000

As it is a fairly long article, I initially use a translation software and then I correct the sentences that seem out of place to save time. I suppose I should correct/translate it more conscientiously.

Bigfoot Happy Garden is correct translation. The Chinese pinyin is “Yiren Le Yuan” which means Bigfoot Happy Garden

The time period of 11,000 years is what is written in the news article.

Chinese like to use Apeman in the description, eg Peking Apeman and our preferred phrase of Bigfoot is Yiren (Wildman).

As for the upright model of the Yiren at the museum, I believe it is put up by the Chinese news to give visual impact to Shennongjia Yiren. Huang (This is his surname) has his own theories about Shennongjia Yiren, which differs from other researchers of Shennongjia Yiren.

There is a whole bunch of Chinese reports out there on Shennongjia Yiren, including some documentaries and supposed evidence including scat, plaster casts of big footprints, hair samples etc.

By: Jeremy_Wells

Jeremy_Wells — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 19:54:30 +0000

Translation criticisms aside though, I’ve thought from the get go that the physical evidence we do have to examine (the Johor plaster cast) seems more pongid than hominid, so the idea of unknown orangutan populations or sub-species sounds plausible.

By: Jeremy_Wells

Jeremy_Wells — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 19:52:05 +0000

jayman and sschaper made the point I was going to make. I work as a content developer and have had to make sense of English scripts written by non-native English speakers on more than one occassion, but some of this is beyond even my ken to decipher.
Are there copyright issues that require you to use specific translations Loren, or could someone (possibly someone on this list?) fluent in both English and Mandarin (or whatever language this was initially issued in) make some sense of the original article for us?

By: twblack

twblack — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 16:38:28 +0000

I say Bring on the pic’s and lets end all guess work.

By: sschaper

sschaper — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:41:42 +0000

Tense issues in the translation all over the place. Was it done by software?

The Maoists have a different view of evolution than that of western science, including the notion that they evolved separately from h. erectus, and therefore are not related to us and are racially superior to us.

Which probably explains some of the strange terms and dates in the report.

By: Ken Gerhard

Ken Gerhard — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 13:34:58 +0000

As deluded as this Johor episode has become, there is a grain of logic behind the Homo erectus speculation. Many researchers, including myself and Scott Marlowe are beginning to support erectus offshoots as candidates for many worldwide hominids. The argument is too long to make here, but suffice it to say that erectus was extremely widespread and adaptable. Also, if we believe that Flores man sprang from erectus, then its descendents were definitely living as recently as 27,000 to 12,000 years ago in parts of Asia.

By: jayman

jayman — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 13:16:15 +0000

I’d assume there are some problems with translation here. Bigfoot Happy Garden?? Also some of the information is incoherent or just plain wrong. “Ape man” has no anthropological meaning… and physically, or even culturally, modern people are much older than 11,000 years.

By: shovethenos

shovethenos — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 12:48:32 +0000

I don’t know, there’s a lot of speculation here. Dr. Po (I’m assuming he’s a professor, I might have picked the wrong name as his surname.) states that the “Shennongjia Bigfoot” is likely a relative of orangutans, yet the upright model of it in the top picture above shows a foot with the five toes in line. This is much closer to a human foot than an orangutan’s, so if they are related they would seem to be very distant cousins. (Assuming the model is accurate - I assume it is likely to be, as least as the feet are concerned if that is the type of footprint they have found.)

Now the “Johor Bigfoot” as a relative to the orangutan is much closer, as far as the feet are concerned. The casts made of alleged footprints there show four toes in line with a fifth toe that appears to have recently evolved from an opposable digit. But even here the feet are not very orangutan-like: feet are longer, toes are shorter and not fingerlike, etc.

If either of the two Bigfoot are orangutan relatives they appear (at least from the alleged feet) to be fairly distant ones, with the Johor bigfoot being the closer.