You may be familiar with Bigfoot and the Yeti, but what about the Yowie and the Chuchunya?
The image of a big hairy humanoid hiding in the wilderness appears not just in movies like “Harry and the Hendersons” and the animated film “Smallfoot,” which premieres on Friday, but also in cultures all over the world. Visitors to the mountains of the Chinese province of Hubei report sightings of the Yeren, or “wild man,” who dwells in the forest. In Cameroon, the fearsome Dodu is said to dine on grubs. The Mapinguari stalks the rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia; the Yowie walks about the Australian outback. In Russia’s Sakha Republic, it’s the Chuchunya, and in the Caucasus and Pamir Mountains of Central Asia, it’s the Almas.
Why do stories of giant ape-men keep popping up in such disparate places, despite the persistent absence of physical evidence? And what does that say about us?
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