The Search For The Yeti: Abominable Snow Job? from Time Magazine's "Exploring the Unexplained"

When Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 B.C., he was intrigued by tales of a local ape that was taller than a man, had no tail and walked upright. Alexander commanded that one be brought before him but was told the animals lived only near the tops of remote mountains. Four centuries later, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote of "creatures...with human-like bodies (that) can run on both four feet and two," that lived "in the mountains...east of India." The peoples of Asia have long believed in a beast more human than any other animal yet still wild. The creature has many names; he is the nyalmo in northern India, the chemo in Nepal, the yeti in Tibet, the yeren in China, the almas in Mongolia, the mawa in Malaysia. All the names, most of which incorporate words meaning man, wild, mountain or snow, describe a 7-to-10-ft.-tall primate, covered head to foot with shaggy hair, walking erect, living in remote regions (usually at high altitudea), shy of human contact but dangerous if cornered or provoked. The most common signs of the yeti are his large footprints, left in snow or mud, and his piercing call-unnerving, mournful shrieks, usually heard at night, that carry across great distances, even in blizzards. Natives say the yeti devours yaks and sheep, which are sometimes found torn to pieces. Stories of supposed yeti harm to humans are often attempts to account for the unexplained disappearance of herdsmen, sans evidence. For Western explorers, the search for the yeti offers a chance to make reputations, either through confirming the stories (by killing or capturing one of the creatures) or disproving them. Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealander who first conquered Mount Everest in 1953, returned to the Himalayas in 1960, resolved to demystify the monster. After a fruitless 10-month hunt, he concluded that it was all "a fascinating fairy tale, born of the rare and frightening view of strange animals, molded by superstition, and enthusiastically nurtured by western expeditions." In the 1980s, Johns Hopkins University researcher Daniel Taylor-Ide ascribed most sightings and other evidence to a large species to a large species of indigenous bear. In the year 2000, ace Alpine mountaineer Reihold Messner also pronounced, after a years-long inquiry, that the yeti was ursine, rather than simian. Amid the fray, locals remain calm. In 1961, when French scholars told Himalayan village elder Khunjo Chumbi they believed the yeti was a hoax, he replied, "In Nepal we have neither giraffes nor kangaroos, so we know nothing about them. In France, there are no yetis, so I sympathize with your ignorance."