Wait, wait, wait, don't bin this idea just yet. A professor of anthropology has concluded that there's more to this idea than initially meets the eye. Have a look at his research of the beliefs of the native inhabitants of Papua New Guinea:
Forth, Gregory: Images of theWildman in Southeast
Asia. An Anthropological Perspective. London: Routledge,
2008. 343 pp. ISBN 978-0-7103-1354-6. Price:
£ 95.00
This book is the fruit of long-term fieldwork, library
research, and regional comparison-making in a special
ethnological arena. Prof. Forth’s remit is wide, and his
scholarly scope is correspondingly deep. He has covered
a huge terrain of materials across Southeast Asia and
including parts of the Pacific region, all in pursuit of
the elusive topic expressed in his title, “Images of the
Wildman.” Forth is not averse to many different forms of
speculation, interpretation, and deduction in relation to
the array of materials he has marshaled, and the result
is an impressive testimony both to his persistence in
following leads into byways and corners of ethnography
and to the acuity of his thoughts about the topic as a
whole.
There are two main aspects of his enquiry. One is to
establish the distribution of a particular set of images of
“wildmen” or “hominoids,” partly human creature, who
appear to be neither simply fictional/symbolic nor entirely
a product of empirical observation. The other is to
Anthropos 105.2010
Rezensionen 637
relate these traditions both to the spread of Austronesian
speakers throughout Southeast Asia and Oceania (including
Taiwan, a putative origin place of the Austronesians),
and to the recent discovery of homo floresiensis remains
in Flores, where Prof. Forth has carried out his own longterm
fieldwork.
The distribution of stories about categories of wildmen
is extremely wide. Forth’s erudite exposition takes
us progressively from his field areas among the Nage of
Flores with their ideas of the ebu gogo category, through
other examples from Flores, and then progressively outwards
to Sumba, Timor, the Moluccas, Sulawesi, Sumatra,
Borneo, Java, and Bali, all within Southeast Asia
(chapters 1–6). In chapters 7–10 he embarks on another
comparative journey through Sri Lanka, China, and the
Himalayan region with its traditions of the yeti. Throughout,
he finds evidence that these wildman images may be
partly derived from observations of primates, but he cautions
that a simple empiricist explanation is not entirely
adequate, because “the representations include a residue,
apparently (though not always certainly) fantastic, which
cannot simply be derived from experience of known animals”
(202). He finds this same pattern in examples from
further afield outside of Asia, in Europe, North America,
Australia, and Africa, bringing the discussion form
Southern Africa over to Madagascar, a link with Southeast
Asia (chapter 8).
In chapter nine Prof. Forth comes to the Pacific region,
including the areas conventionally labeled Melanesia,
Polynesia, and Micronesia. Appropriately enough,
Taiwan and the Philippines, as homes of Austronesian
speakers, are included here. Forth discusses the Solomons
category of the kakamora and the mumu, the vui of
Vanuatu, and notions of aggressive creatures with long
hair and teeth, said to steal pigs and eat humans (246).
This last image of aggressive cannibalism leads to a discussion
of materials from Mount Hagen in the interior
highlands of Papua New Guinea. There are two prongs
to the analysis here. One has to do with reports of “pygmies,”
since short stature is a recurrent motif in wildman
images. These, however, should not too readily be assimilated
to wildman traditions. Forth quotes information
from Hein Dosedla about “cannibals,” light-skinned people
portrayed in Hagen folktales as cannibals who prey
on ordinary humans. Forth reports that these cannibals,
according to Dosedla, are seen as having also reddish
hair, sometimes all over their bodies (247). From our own
fieldwork knowledge dating from the 1960s, and from
the earlier work by Vicedom and Tischner, and Strauss
and Tischner, we would comment that there are actually
two categories of light-skinned beings in folktales from
Hagen: one is the light-skinned cannibals known as kewa
wamb nui wamb (“the strangers who eat people”), the
other is the Tei Wamb, the creative origin people who
are seen as giving the underlying power to humans to
procreate and prosper in their lives and whose abode is
the sky and mountain tops. Neither category corresponds
at all closely to the “short hairy hominoid” image of the
Wildman. As for pygmies, Hageners traditionally viewed
the people of the Jimi Valley area north of Hagen as being
very short and also as possessors of kum koimb powers of
sorcery/witchcraft (see P. J. Stewart and A. J. Strathern,
Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumors, and Gossip. Cambridge
2004). But they did not regard them as less than human
or wildmen in that sense.
A recurrent feature in wildman stories is the idea
that humans exterminated these creatures at some time
in the past. This feature appears in the Nage stories
from which Forth begins his quest. It turns up also in
Taiwan, for example among the Saisiat, who have a
story of earlier symbiosis with cave-dwelling dwarfs,
whom they then killed because these dwarfs “seduced
their women” (253). A male and female dwarf pair,
however, escaped and before leaving taught the Saisiat
an agricultural ritual which they now perform every two
years (253). This interesting point sets the Saisiat case
apart from the more common stories of how humans
simply killed the wildmen off. Forth carefully notes this
and other differences from his Nage materials.
In a final chapter (chap. 10), Forth meticulously reviews
all of his materials. He muses on the symbolic
status of wildmen as inverted opposites of the proper
forms of human sociality (262), but notes that specific
features of these images still need to be explained. Wildmen
are not simply spirit figures (263). They do seem
to be universally figures that mediate between humans
and animals (271), and thus can be derived both from
observations of human-like animals and “other” humans,
seen as not fully cultural beings (marked by their habits
of stealing from humans, although humans steal from
one another also). Finally Forth considers the intriguing
possibilities of overlap between the Nage ebu gogo and
the Homo floresiensis findings, concluding that “at best”
there is only “an approximate concordance” (282). More
broadly, however, he thinks that prosaic descriptions of
wildmen categories, among the Nage and elsewhere, reveal
a development of naturalistic observation that is
also akin to “the emergence of scientific thought” (286).
Ethno-taxonomies in general, of course, reveal the same
capacity for empirical observations of “nature.”
Taken all in all, this book is a scholarly and intellectual
tour de force in the grand traditions of comparative
enquiry in mainstream anthropology. It is also an eloquent
testimony to the stimulus of field materials, indicating
how an interest in ebu gogo tales among the Nage
led Forth into such a sweeping, original, and thoughtful
comparative odyssey.
Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart
Now, compare with this recent eyewitness event from a log cabin in Canada:
Now compare this with the eyewitness sightings of the Dover Demon:
All I'm saying is that if a strange 'alien' body was recovered along with the balloon wreckage, then it's much more likely to be an earthly crypto creature, rather than the popular myth of a "space alien". Anyone see what I mean?
Forth, Gregory: Images of theWildman in Southeast
Asia. An Anthropological Perspective. London: Routledge,
2008. 343 pp. ISBN 978-0-7103-1354-6. Price:
£ 95.00
This book is the fruit of long-term fieldwork, library
research, and regional comparison-making in a special
ethnological arena. Prof. Forth’s remit is wide, and his
scholarly scope is correspondingly deep. He has covered
a huge terrain of materials across Southeast Asia and
including parts of the Pacific region, all in pursuit of
the elusive topic expressed in his title, “Images of the
Wildman.” Forth is not averse to many different forms of
speculation, interpretation, and deduction in relation to
the array of materials he has marshaled, and the result
is an impressive testimony both to his persistence in
following leads into byways and corners of ethnography
and to the acuity of his thoughts about the topic as a
whole.
There are two main aspects of his enquiry. One is to
establish the distribution of a particular set of images of
“wildmen” or “hominoids,” partly human creature, who
appear to be neither simply fictional/symbolic nor entirely
a product of empirical observation. The other is to
Anthropos 105.2010
Rezensionen 637
relate these traditions both to the spread of Austronesian
speakers throughout Southeast Asia and Oceania (including
Taiwan, a putative origin place of the Austronesians),
and to the recent discovery of homo floresiensis remains
in Flores, where Prof. Forth has carried out his own longterm
fieldwork.
The distribution of stories about categories of wildmen
is extremely wide. Forth’s erudite exposition takes
us progressively from his field areas among the Nage of
Flores with their ideas of the ebu gogo category, through
other examples from Flores, and then progressively outwards
to Sumba, Timor, the Moluccas, Sulawesi, Sumatra,
Borneo, Java, and Bali, all within Southeast Asia
(chapters 1–6). In chapters 7–10 he embarks on another
comparative journey through Sri Lanka, China, and the
Himalayan region with its traditions of the yeti. Throughout,
he finds evidence that these wildman images may be
partly derived from observations of primates, but he cautions
that a simple empiricist explanation is not entirely
adequate, because “the representations include a residue,
apparently (though not always certainly) fantastic, which
cannot simply be derived from experience of known animals”
(202). He finds this same pattern in examples from
further afield outside of Asia, in Europe, North America,
Australia, and Africa, bringing the discussion form
Southern Africa over to Madagascar, a link with Southeast
Asia (chapter 8).
In chapter nine Prof. Forth comes to the Pacific region,
including the areas conventionally labeled Melanesia,
Polynesia, and Micronesia. Appropriately enough,
Taiwan and the Philippines, as homes of Austronesian
speakers, are included here. Forth discusses the Solomons
category of the kakamora and the mumu, the vui of
Vanuatu, and notions of aggressive creatures with long
hair and teeth, said to steal pigs and eat humans (246).
This last image of aggressive cannibalism leads to a discussion
of materials from Mount Hagen in the interior
highlands of Papua New Guinea. There are two prongs
to the analysis here. One has to do with reports of “pygmies,”
since short stature is a recurrent motif in wildman
images. These, however, should not too readily be assimilated
to wildman traditions. Forth quotes information
from Hein Dosedla about “cannibals,” light-skinned people
portrayed in Hagen folktales as cannibals who prey
on ordinary humans. Forth reports that these cannibals,
according to Dosedla, are seen as having also reddish
hair, sometimes all over their bodies (247). From our own
fieldwork knowledge dating from the 1960s, and from
the earlier work by Vicedom and Tischner, and Strauss
and Tischner, we would comment that there are actually
two categories of light-skinned beings in folktales from
Hagen: one is the light-skinned cannibals known as kewa
wamb nui wamb (“the strangers who eat people”), the
other is the Tei Wamb, the creative origin people who
are seen as giving the underlying power to humans to
procreate and prosper in their lives and whose abode is
the sky and mountain tops. Neither category corresponds
at all closely to the “short hairy hominoid” image of the
Wildman. As for pygmies, Hageners traditionally viewed
the people of the Jimi Valley area north of Hagen as being
very short and also as possessors of kum koimb powers of
sorcery/witchcraft (see P. J. Stewart and A. J. Strathern,
Witchcraft, Sorcery, Rumors, and Gossip. Cambridge
2004). But they did not regard them as less than human
or wildmen in that sense.
A recurrent feature in wildman stories is the idea
that humans exterminated these creatures at some time
in the past. This feature appears in the Nage stories
from which Forth begins his quest. It turns up also in
Taiwan, for example among the Saisiat, who have a
story of earlier symbiosis with cave-dwelling dwarfs,
whom they then killed because these dwarfs “seduced
their women” (253). A male and female dwarf pair,
however, escaped and before leaving taught the Saisiat
an agricultural ritual which they now perform every two
years (253). This interesting point sets the Saisiat case
apart from the more common stories of how humans
simply killed the wildmen off. Forth carefully notes this
and other differences from his Nage materials.
In a final chapter (chap. 10), Forth meticulously reviews
all of his materials. He muses on the symbolic
status of wildmen as inverted opposites of the proper
forms of human sociality (262), but notes that specific
features of these images still need to be explained. Wildmen
are not simply spirit figures (263). They do seem
to be universally figures that mediate between humans
and animals (271), and thus can be derived both from
observations of human-like animals and “other” humans,
seen as not fully cultural beings (marked by their habits
of stealing from humans, although humans steal from
one another also). Finally Forth considers the intriguing
possibilities of overlap between the Nage ebu gogo and
the Homo floresiensis findings, concluding that “at best”
there is only “an approximate concordance” (282). More
broadly, however, he thinks that prosaic descriptions of
wildmen categories, among the Nage and elsewhere, reveal
a development of naturalistic observation that is
also akin to “the emergence of scientific thought” (286).
Ethno-taxonomies in general, of course, reveal the same
capacity for empirical observations of “nature.”
Taken all in all, this book is a scholarly and intellectual
tour de force in the grand traditions of comparative
enquiry in mainstream anthropology. It is also an eloquent
testimony to the stimulus of field materials, indicating
how an interest in ebu gogo tales among the Nage
led Forth into such a sweeping, original, and thoughtful
comparative odyssey.
Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart
Now, compare with this recent eyewitness event from a log cabin in Canada:
Now compare this with the eyewitness sightings of the Dover Demon:
All I'm saying is that if a strange 'alien' body was recovered along with the balloon wreckage, then it's much more likely to be an earthly crypto creature, rather than the popular myth of a "space alien". Anyone see what I mean?
