I’m not saying that those who write here are in that category, but it seems a fairly common trait in those raised in our culture. ”

That may be because our culture has been so good at dehumanizing members of our own species. Heck, a hundred years ago, some people were still debating how “Human” Africans and Native Americans were! Despite all the progress we’ve experienced since then, undercurrents of such ugliness remain. If people are still suspicious of the “otherness” of members of their own species, how much more disturbing must they find the seeming “Human-ness” of an anthropoidal ape?

It also flies in the face of the oh-so-cherished religious concept that Humans are somehow not animals, nor subject to the same pressures and protocols as they are, but something altogether superior and exceptional, in much the way that they postulate beings superior in every way to us- the angels, archangels, and so on. People cannot begin to accept a spectrum of Human-ness because such a notion is antithetical to their conception of reality. Their entire world view would shatter, the hierarchy crumble, and they would be left with more difficult questions to face. People cling to their narrow, black-and-white view of the world precisely because it is simple, and therefore easy to understand. There’s no need to think about it, to question, to wrestle with murky ethical quandaries over, say, when does an animal share enough traits with a person to be considered Human, and what rights should an animal have, even it it’s not on that same level?

I agree, it’s baffling to most all of us here, because in one way or another, we’re searchers, seekers of truth, and that means that above all, we are questioners. Doubt is more a friend to us than she is a nemesis.

Let me leave you with a few quotes of relevance-

“Men become more civilized not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.” -H. L. Mencken

“Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there Truth is- it is her shadow.” -Gamaliel Baile

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.” -Francis Bacon

When you put that idea together with such interesting anthropological tidbits as the likes of the Sumerians, the Ancient Egyptians, and the Ancient South American peoples reverenced ‘dwarfs/dwarves’ to the point of having some of them for gods, one starts wondering what might be found if people actually started looking for traces of these miniature races; or, for that matter, what might have been lost, or even possibly merely mislaid, because someone decided the traces of the peculiar little people they’d come across were merely random physical freaks.

I’m not saying that those who write here are in that category, but it seems a fairly common trait in those raised in our culture.

And Loren is right- the strong local legends and isolation of the south east Asian islands make them prime hunting ground for finding new hominid species/subspecies. And maybe some of them will still be alive.

This article also reinforces what I posted earlier today with regards to the ‘digging for proof of sasquatch’ story- if we are going to find any hard evidence for bigfoot we could do much worse than start excavating some caves and rockshelters.

(Of course, I mean we could do much worse than getting some qualified archaeologists to excavate some caves- we don’t want to go destroying or damaging one of the few things that might prove our case!)