LESHY NICKNAMED AS "APE"

By Dmitri Bayanov

The publication in Internet was adapted by Michael Trachtengerts

THE PREFACE BY INTERNET-PUBLISHER

The book offered to the reader’s attention has been written by Dmitri Bayanov in 1987 and was published 4 years later only. Now it is a rare book and many of those, who are interested in the “Snow Man”-hominoid problem, are not familiar with it. At the same time it presents many interesting data concerning to this problem and wide field of questions on modern human-hominoid interactions during customary coexistence through thousands of years.

The creatures discussed in the book are not yet recognized by mainstream biological scientists as real. Only folklorists pay some attention to this part of people knowledge in assumption that all their tales are imaginary.

It should be noted that European science about primates, as close biological relatives of human, was unlucky from the very initial steps. Medieval religious views divided the World on pure, connected with the Christian God, and sinful, wicked supporters of Satan. It placed monkeys in the last side. It was indecent for high society to be interested in these animals. The reasons why these quite harmless animals have been enlisted as "bad guys" (in the American interpretation of this word-combination ¾ outlaw creatures), deserve a separate consideration. Here it is important for us, that some change in attitude came only a couple centuries ago and concerned usual species of monkeys. The large anthropoids ¾ apes ¾ have been investigated mainly in the last century only by our contemporaries.

Pioneers of in-depth researches of apes in the nature are George Schaller, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and some other scientists who have spent themselves in years of supervision by own eyes of these animals, carefully fixing all features and peculiarities of their life. Only after these researches it became possible to say that a transformation from imaginations, including those of scientists, to real knowledge had fulfilled.

In his book Dmitri Bayanov paid attention to other creatures that are more close biologically to human than apes, but have not passed yet in mind of majority of people and, first of all, people of science, into the light part of reality. Alternatively to the researchers mentioned above, he had seen these creatures not by his own eyes, but by millions eyes of ordinary peoples. These peoples did not fill scientific diaries about their encounters, but transferred their knowledge one to one, keeping it during generations in various forms of folklore. Dmitri Bayanov could allocate realistic details from Mont Blanc of folklore and in result he had received biologically harmonious understanding of creatures that exist until now near us.

Remarkably that through the whole the book the author never used scientific names but only the terms accepted by different nations ¾ leshy; shurale, devil, shaitan, etc., giving to the reader, that familiar with elements of human origin, to draw conclusions for himself independently. I shall state my opinion about this creature and some relevant remarks after the end of Bayanov’s book.

At preparation of the book for reading on an electronic screen some difficulties have arisen due to its specific structure. All citations in the book are most scrupulously pointed. Dmitri Bayanov specifies every statement where he have received it. This approach has not allowed to collect all the cited sources of information in a list at the end of the book as it commonly used by authors. He gives the references in page by page at bottoms of them. It is inconvenient in case of presentation in standard HTML-form, because references would appear as patches through the text. The form of a PDF-file did not suit us also because of greater memory needed on a server. Therefore it was necessary to enter such unusual element-divider into the presented on-line text as page number near to the right margin. It corresponds to number of page in the paper edition. Thus, a reader at first sees text of a page, then references mentioned in it and then page number marked by an icon. It may be unusual at first in some degree. But I hope that that, after sinking in the most interesting content, the reader will soon not pay attention to this hindrance.

THE AFTERWORD BY INTERNET-PUBLISHER

So, in his book Dmitri Bayanov has featured and described many characteristics of contemporary humanoid-like creatures that were noticed mainly by ordinary people. His research covers in majority cases the Eastern Europe territory. It does not mean, that the dwelling area of these creatures is limited this region. Simply the basic sources used in the book are observations and life experience of eastern Slavs, though folklore of other peoples was involved also. Now inevitably the main question arises, and the author withheld from answer to it ¾ what is the creature?

Zoologists consider that there are no primates in the Europe territory now except in the south of Spain on rocks of Gibraltar. They have no relations with our object. In archeological excavations in Europe the only humanlike primate was found ¾ the Neanderthal man. The outward look of the Neanderthal man, which with high probably can be recreated due to found fossils, in the main corresponds to appearance of Leshy described in the book. Thus, the assumption that Leshy is the Neanderthal man that lives now has some foundations. Even moreover, apparently it is the only that could be proved scientifically.

Now the state of art in Neanderthal man researches may be called as paradoxical. Archeologists investigate fossils and ignore an opportunity of Neanderthal modern existence. Ethnographers consider modern observations on these creatures as fantastic people tales and beliefs with no connection with the reality. And these two sides of investigations of the same phenomenon do not meet in any way. At the same time the generalized look throws lights on many questions still unanswered. Those external features of Neanderthals that cannot be deduced from fossils are the most interesting, for example:

Question of archeologists: "Why Neanderthal men had extinguished about 30 thousand years ago?" (Some versions ¾ annihilation by more developed ancestors of modern people, Cro-Magnon men; forced movement into places inconvenient for life and following degradation and disappearance of populations; mixture with Cro-Magnon men and disappearance as a separate species).
Answer of the book: Neanderthals have not extinguished, their number was commensurable with number of human agricultural population not more than some hundreds years ago. Sharp reduction in number of Neanderthals has occurred during a couple of last centuries due to wide-spreading of fire-arms and penetration of economic activities into the most secluded corners of the nature. But they are not completely destroyed.

Q: "How much Neanderthals were close to modern people, whether they have speech?" (Attempts to model their voice organ have not given a certain result.)
A: They can not use own articulated speech though they can produce various loud sounds and imitate those of other animals.

Q: Whether Neanderthals and humans were so close biologically that they could give birth to viable posterity. Whether the real facts of interbreeding proved to be true? " (It is considered, that some found fossils have simultaneously human and Neanderthal attributes. DNA of human and Neanderthal coincide up to 99,5%).
A: Such interbreeding had often enough occurred within centuries and does happen nowadays too. A resulting children are viable themselves and also in the following generations.

Q: "What kind of food they ate ¾ vegetarian, meat, or they were omnivorous? "
A: Neanderthals ate everything that modern people used, and also they ate crude fish, meat, leaves of some plants.

Q: “How much they were strong?” (Some marks in tendon fastenings in fossil bones point on the developed muscles)
A: Neanderthals had power strength ¾ they could eradicate trees with roots, move big stones. Nowadays they can run with speed that is faster than running horse.

The list of such questions and answers could be continued far enough. For example, the published reconstructions of Neanderthals show them only a little bit hairier, than modern people. Really they were covered by dense and long enough hair; color of skin in the images is light or sun-burnt ¾ observers often note extremely black color of their skin. Artists represent their head hair quite short while it was very long, especially women hair. And certainly, archeologists also cannot imagine for themselves huge breasts of Neanderthal women.

In connection with the last features some questions of a new level may appear ¾ in what way evolution of a hominid species could lead to such hyper-development (according to human proportions) of these forms. At first sight they are not adaptive to an environment and, on contrary, complicate movement in forests? Whether are they consequences of sexual preferences in the species inside and of a kind of irrational sexual selection that follows from them? (A note on margin: May be that a similar process started in Homo sapiens species with influence of ascending cult of woman breast size?)

It is obvious, that connection of efforts and achievements of the two branches of science ¾ archeology that investigates the past, and ethnography that collects modern folklore data, with methods of zoology and other natural sciences ¾ would allow to carry out a step ahead in solving of human origin problem at its last phases. It is very important to protection the survived hominoid species. As we regretfully see, this was not implemented till now.

In my opinion the main reasons for such position are psychological bias of researchers in both discussed branches, unwillingness and fear to reconsider and change the existing views. This can explain the fact that main role in the researches of hominoids start play enthusiasts who came to this science from other branches and become professionals in it owing to own efforts. One of them is the author of this book Dmitri Bayanov.

Michael Trachtengerts, Ph.D, Moscow

Full text of the book in Russian is posted on this site

Ó M.S.Trachtengerts 2006