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Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Last Neanderthal: A Geneticist's Search for Modern Apemen
"...you're talking about a yeti or bigfoot or sasquatch. Well now, you'll be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure they exist." —Jane Goodall on NPR
This is "The Big Book of Yetis." What the reader gets here is a world-class geneticist's search for evidence for the existence of Big Foot, yeti, or the abominable snowman.
Along the way, he visits sites of alleged sightings of these strange creatures, attends meetings of cryptozoologists, recounts the stories of famous monster-hunting expeditions, and runs possible yeti DNA through his highly regarded lab in Oxford. Sykes introduces us to the crackpots, visionaries, and adventurers who have been involved in research into this possible scientific dead-end over the past 100 years. Sykes is a serious scientist who knows how to tell a story, and this is a credible and engaging account.
Almost, but not quite human, the yeti and its counterparts from wild regions of the world, still exert a powerful atavistic influence on us. Is the yeti just a phantasm of our imagination or a survivor from our own savage ancestry? Or is it a real creature? This is the mystery that Bryan Sykes set out to unlock.
This is "The Big Book of Yetis." What the reader gets here is a world-class geneticist's search for evidence for the existence of Big Foot, yeti, or the abominable snowman.
Along the way, he visits sites of alleged sightings of these strange creatures, attends meetings of cryptozoologists, recounts the stories of famous monster-hunting expeditions, and runs possible yeti DNA through his highly regarded lab in Oxford. Sykes introduces us to the crackpots, visionaries, and adventurers who have been involved in research into this possible scientific dead-end over the past 100 years. Sykes is a serious scientist who knows how to tell a story, and this is a credible and engaging account.
Almost, but not quite human, the yeti and its counterparts from wild regions of the world, still exert a powerful atavistic influence on us. Is the yeti just a phantasm of our imagination or a survivor from our own savage ancestry? Or is it a real creature? This is the mystery that Bryan Sykes set out to unlock.
330 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2016
29 people are currently reading
634 people want to read
About the author
Bryan Sykes
12 books217 followersBryan Clifford Sykes was a renowned British geneticist and science writer who served as a Fellow of Wolfson College and Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford. He was a pioneering researcher in the field of ancient DNA and was among the first to retrieve DNA from ancient human remains, with his landmark 1989 study published in Nature. He played a significant role in high-profile cases, including the analysis of DNA from Ötzi the Iceman.
Sykes gained widespread recognition for his popular science books, especially The Seven Daughters of Eve (2001), in which he explained how mitochondrial DNA could trace maternal ancestry back to prehistoric women, whom he described as "clan mothers". In Blood of the Isles (2006), he explored the genetic roots of the British and Irish people, arguing that modern populations largely descended from early Mesolithic and Neolithic settlers, with limited genetic input from later groups like the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings.
He was also known for investigating cryptozoological mysteries, including the alleged Yeti, suggesting some samples might belong to a rare bear hybrid, though later studies contested his findings.
Educated at Eltham College, the University of Liverpool, Bristol, and Oxford, Sykes authored numerous scientific papers. He died in December 2020, leaving a lasting impact on genetic genealogy and public understanding of human ancestry.
Sykes gained widespread recognition for his popular science books, especially The Seven Daughters of Eve (2001), in which he explained how mitochondrial DNA could trace maternal ancestry back to prehistoric women, whom he described as "clan mothers". In Blood of the Isles (2006), he explored the genetic roots of the British and Irish people, arguing that modern populations largely descended from early Mesolithic and Neolithic settlers, with limited genetic input from later groups like the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings.
He was also known for investigating cryptozoological mysteries, including the alleged Yeti, suggesting some samples might belong to a rare bear hybrid, though later studies contested his findings.
Educated at Eltham College, the University of Liverpool, Bristol, and Oxford, Sykes authored numerous scientific papers. He died in December 2020, leaving a lasting impact on genetic genealogy and public understanding of human ancestry.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
October 20, 2016
Many books have been written on mystery hominids and hominins over the years including a number of classic titles. Ivan T Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen: A Legend Come to Life, Ralph Izzard’s Abominable Snowman Adventure and Janet and Colin Board’s Bigfoot Casebook spring to mind.
The Nature of The Beast is something quite different to anything that has come before. Not only is it the best book ever written on the subject, it is the most important. The book is authored by Professor Bryan Sykes one of the world’s leading geneticists. Sykes is Professor of Human Genetics of Oxford University. For a scientist of such standing, to put his head over the parapet in such a contentious subject takes a lot of guts but the end result is worth it.
Together with Michel Sartori the Director of the Museum of Zoology in Lausanne, Switzerland Professor Sykes instigated The Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project. The idea was to bring hard science into the search for man-like monsters. Sykes and Satori invited people to send them supposed hair samples from unknown primates such as the yeti, sasquatch, almasty and orang pendek.
Sykes has researched human origins for over twenty-five years via the study of mitochondrial DNA. This is inherited from the maternal line and is generally the best preserved DNA. Mitochondria are found between the call wall and nucleus of each cell and release energy, ergo they are relatively abundant. Simply put the Professor has perfected a technique that examines a DNA segment called 12S RNA, part of a gene that helps mitochondria assemble the enzymes required for aerobic metabolism. This sequence is known for all known species of mammal. Hence there could be no confusion in any sample sent to the Project, they would be from one of the known species or from something new. A hypothetical new species could have its place on the genetic tree revealed by its closeness to other species. This meant that human contamination could be avoided. Even Neanderthal 12S RNA differs from modern man.
The book is the result of the analysis of thirty samples sent to the project and the Professors own travels and personal researches. Sykes finds himself in the wilds of the American North West listening to what may or may not be an unseen sasquatch banging the walls of tunnel beneath a tree. He ventures to Russia, home of the Snowman Commission, an official government backed project to hunt hominins in the former Soviet Union. Set up in the 1950s it only lasted three years but has recently been re-formed. The Russian scientists he meets are all confirmed believers and oddly seem to think it important that Bryan only published positive results from his work and not negative. At the museum in Lausanne he examines the massive wealth of information, clippings, letters and writing bequeathed by Dr Bernard Heuvalmans, the man widely excepted to have created the discipline of cryptozoology in its modern form. There is a highly interesting chapter on the Minnesota Iceman debacle were Heuvalmans and his friend the Scottish zoologist Ivan T Sanderson seem to have been duped by a clever fake, a faux ape-man in a block of ice. Correspondence between the two does not show the ‘father of cryptozoology’ in the best of lights.
The Professor meets modern explorers and cryptozoologists such as Jon Downes and myself at the Centre for Fortean Zoology, Loren Coleman, Dr Jeff Meldrum and the mountaineer Reinhold Messner.
The hair samples were collected from all across the world and sent in to the Project. Each and every one turned out to be from known species. Bears, horses, humans and goats were among the creatures found to be the former owners of the hairs.
The book is completely honest and open in its treatment of the subject. The Professor is clear in pointing out that just because these samples turned out to be from known species this does not mean that anomalous primates do not exist. Sykes criticizes some cryptozoologists for not being rigorous enough and going through the right channels in the analysis of samples. He equally lambasts some scientists for rejecting the notion of large unknown creatures out of hand.
Despite the negative results of the hair analysis the Professors personal view is more positive.
“Funnily enough, even though there were no anomalous primates in among the hairs I tested, I think my view has altered more to ‘something out there’ than the reverse. The change of heart comes from speaking to several people, some not even mentioned in The Nature of the Beast, who have nothing to gain but who have seen things in good light while in the company of other witnesses, that are hard to explain otherwise. To automatically reject these accounts is just as blinkered as accepting that every broken branch has been snapped or twisted by a sasquatch.”
In the books stunning postscript, the Professor’s optimism may just have been proven well founded. This section of the book astounded me so much I had to re-read it in order to make sure I had not been mistaken. The Professor may now be on the edge of a jaw dropping discovery.
Whilst in Russia he was able to secure a tooth from a remarkable skull once owned by the Darwin Museum in Moscow but subsequently sold to a private collector. The skull was from a man named Khwit. Khwit who died in the early 1950s was said to be one of several hybrid children born from an almasty mother and a human farther. The almasty are said to be large, powerfully built, hair covered wild people reported from the mountains of Russia and the former USSR. They are more man-like than the yeti but clearly not modern humans.
In the 1850s a female almasty was captured in a forested region of what is now Abkhazia in the Caucasus. Tall, muscular with an ape-like face and covered in reddish black hair she was named Zana. Zana was taken to the farm of a local nobleman in the village of T'khina. She finally became tame and could do menial tasks around the farm with her immense strength. She never learned speech but made inarticulate noises. Zana became the mother of a number of hybrid children via a village man Edgi Genaba. The first two children died after their mother tried to wash them in a cold river. Subsequent children were taken from her and raised by villagers. The two boys, Dzhanda and Khwit Genaba (born 1878 and 1884), and the two girls, Kodzhanar and Gamasa Genaba (born 1880 and 1882), were assimilated into normal society, married, and had families of their own. Zana herself died in 1890. Russian researchers located the grave of Khwit and recovered his skull.
Extracting mitochondrial DNA from the tooth Professor Sykes found that it was 100% sub-Saharan African. This was confusing as Zana was clearly no kind of modern human. Her behaviour and appearance seemed to be far more primitive than a Neanderthal. Further work showed the DNA was from an exceptionally ancient lineage from Western Africa and furthermore it may have been pre Homo sapien. Sykes thinks that this lineage may have left Africa over 150,000 years ago, before modern man. If he is correct than Zana may have been an unknown species of pre-human hominin, a species still lurking in the Caucasus and other areas today.
I was in recent e-mail contact with Professor Sykes. Like all good scientists he is proceeding with caution. He and another geneticist are still working on the sample. He has likened Zana’s DNA to old fragments of old photographs that have filtered down through time. I await the results with baited breath.
The Nature of the Beast could easily have been a dry tome but it is written in a highly entertaining and accessible manner yet without losing its scientific credibility, a very impressive feat. It is a must read for any cryptozoologist or fortean.
10 /10
The Nature of The Beast is something quite different to anything that has come before. Not only is it the best book ever written on the subject, it is the most important. The book is authored by Professor Bryan Sykes one of the world’s leading geneticists. Sykes is Professor of Human Genetics of Oxford University. For a scientist of such standing, to put his head over the parapet in such a contentious subject takes a lot of guts but the end result is worth it.
Together with Michel Sartori the Director of the Museum of Zoology in Lausanne, Switzerland Professor Sykes instigated The Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project. The idea was to bring hard science into the search for man-like monsters. Sykes and Satori invited people to send them supposed hair samples from unknown primates such as the yeti, sasquatch, almasty and orang pendek.
Sykes has researched human origins for over twenty-five years via the study of mitochondrial DNA. This is inherited from the maternal line and is generally the best preserved DNA. Mitochondria are found between the call wall and nucleus of each cell and release energy, ergo they are relatively abundant. Simply put the Professor has perfected a technique that examines a DNA segment called 12S RNA, part of a gene that helps mitochondria assemble the enzymes required for aerobic metabolism. This sequence is known for all known species of mammal. Hence there could be no confusion in any sample sent to the Project, they would be from one of the known species or from something new. A hypothetical new species could have its place on the genetic tree revealed by its closeness to other species. This meant that human contamination could be avoided. Even Neanderthal 12S RNA differs from modern man.
The book is the result of the analysis of thirty samples sent to the project and the Professors own travels and personal researches. Sykes finds himself in the wilds of the American North West listening to what may or may not be an unseen sasquatch banging the walls of tunnel beneath a tree. He ventures to Russia, home of the Snowman Commission, an official government backed project to hunt hominins in the former Soviet Union. Set up in the 1950s it only lasted three years but has recently been re-formed. The Russian scientists he meets are all confirmed believers and oddly seem to think it important that Bryan only published positive results from his work and not negative. At the museum in Lausanne he examines the massive wealth of information, clippings, letters and writing bequeathed by Dr Bernard Heuvalmans, the man widely excepted to have created the discipline of cryptozoology in its modern form. There is a highly interesting chapter on the Minnesota Iceman debacle were Heuvalmans and his friend the Scottish zoologist Ivan T Sanderson seem to have been duped by a clever fake, a faux ape-man in a block of ice. Correspondence between the two does not show the ‘father of cryptozoology’ in the best of lights.
The Professor meets modern explorers and cryptozoologists such as Jon Downes and myself at the Centre for Fortean Zoology, Loren Coleman, Dr Jeff Meldrum and the mountaineer Reinhold Messner.
The hair samples were collected from all across the world and sent in to the Project. Each and every one turned out to be from known species. Bears, horses, humans and goats were among the creatures found to be the former owners of the hairs.
The book is completely honest and open in its treatment of the subject. The Professor is clear in pointing out that just because these samples turned out to be from known species this does not mean that anomalous primates do not exist. Sykes criticizes some cryptozoologists for not being rigorous enough and going through the right channels in the analysis of samples. He equally lambasts some scientists for rejecting the notion of large unknown creatures out of hand.
Despite the negative results of the hair analysis the Professors personal view is more positive.
“Funnily enough, even though there were no anomalous primates in among the hairs I tested, I think my view has altered more to ‘something out there’ than the reverse. The change of heart comes from speaking to several people, some not even mentioned in The Nature of the Beast, who have nothing to gain but who have seen things in good light while in the company of other witnesses, that are hard to explain otherwise. To automatically reject these accounts is just as blinkered as accepting that every broken branch has been snapped or twisted by a sasquatch.”
In the books stunning postscript, the Professor’s optimism may just have been proven well founded. This section of the book astounded me so much I had to re-read it in order to make sure I had not been mistaken. The Professor may now be on the edge of a jaw dropping discovery.
Whilst in Russia he was able to secure a tooth from a remarkable skull once owned by the Darwin Museum in Moscow but subsequently sold to a private collector. The skull was from a man named Khwit. Khwit who died in the early 1950s was said to be one of several hybrid children born from an almasty mother and a human farther. The almasty are said to be large, powerfully built, hair covered wild people reported from the mountains of Russia and the former USSR. They are more man-like than the yeti but clearly not modern humans.
In the 1850s a female almasty was captured in a forested region of what is now Abkhazia in the Caucasus. Tall, muscular with an ape-like face and covered in reddish black hair she was named Zana. Zana was taken to the farm of a local nobleman in the village of T'khina. She finally became tame and could do menial tasks around the farm with her immense strength. She never learned speech but made inarticulate noises. Zana became the mother of a number of hybrid children via a village man Edgi Genaba. The first two children died after their mother tried to wash them in a cold river. Subsequent children were taken from her and raised by villagers. The two boys, Dzhanda and Khwit Genaba (born 1878 and 1884), and the two girls, Kodzhanar and Gamasa Genaba (born 1880 and 1882), were assimilated into normal society, married, and had families of their own. Zana herself died in 1890. Russian researchers located the grave of Khwit and recovered his skull.
Extracting mitochondrial DNA from the tooth Professor Sykes found that it was 100% sub-Saharan African. This was confusing as Zana was clearly no kind of modern human. Her behaviour and appearance seemed to be far more primitive than a Neanderthal. Further work showed the DNA was from an exceptionally ancient lineage from Western Africa and furthermore it may have been pre Homo sapien. Sykes thinks that this lineage may have left Africa over 150,000 years ago, before modern man. If he is correct than Zana may have been an unknown species of pre-human hominin, a species still lurking in the Caucasus and other areas today.
I was in recent e-mail contact with Professor Sykes. Like all good scientists he is proceeding with caution. He and another geneticist are still working on the sample. He has likened Zana’s DNA to old fragments of old photographs that have filtered down through time. I await the results with baited breath.
The Nature of the Beast could easily have been a dry tome but it is written in a highly entertaining and accessible manner yet without losing its scientific credibility, a very impressive feat. It is a must read for any cryptozoologist or fortean.
10 /10
April 27, 2016
Originally published in the UK as The Nature of the Beast, Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes’ Bigfoot, Yeti and the Last Neanderthal: A geneticist’s search for modern apemen is highly enjoyable and reveals a bunch of interesting tidbits as well as showing us some rather personal insights and new facts from the professor who attempted to bring credibility to the study of hairy hominids.
All Bigfoot enthusiasts should read this book. But note there are several mistakes and signs that Sykes bought in too much to the Bigfoot hype and was not knowledgable about the current field of cryptozoology.
See complete review here: https://idoubtit.wordpress.com/2016/0...
All Bigfoot enthusiasts should read this book. But note there are several mistakes and signs that Sykes bought in too much to the Bigfoot hype and was not knowledgable about the current field of cryptozoology.
See complete review here: https://idoubtit.wordpress.com/2016/0...
May 17, 2019
An in depth look at one man collecting stories and evidence from all over, having it tested, and then the results of those tests. I was led to this book by the Saswhat podcast and am glad I read it. It was interesting to see the results of each of the samples collected.
April 25, 2025
Read and reviewed 2015:
A book for free spirits
I enjoyed this book although I did feel slightly cheated by it. There is the suggestion that much more will be revealed than actually is, and we are strung out for too long on very dubious stories that - should we accept the premises of the research - were actually irrelevant to it. The author could have just analysed the mitochondrial DNA of 30 odd supposed yeti hairs and been done with it. Instead he apparently travelled all over the US knocking on trees in the woods and listening to ridiculous stories all of which turned out to be hogwash, as most skeptical people would immediately recognise. Yes, he succeeds in igniting our fascination with the yeti, and the history of the search for the yeti, but the major body of the book is speculation or fiction.
So The Nature of the Beast is an indulgence, if you like wondering what is and what could have been, it is for you, because the basic notion, that other members of our species might have lived alongside us until recently, or the present day, is a logical supposition and an enthralling prospect. The problem Sykes has I think, is he does not have the tools to discern the human and social dimension of that fancy: our need to posit something existing outside us, that links us to our primal nature. He identifies this, and often recounts it in an amusing way, but somehow misses the fact that this construction is the enduring truth of the yeti, not the fake relics.
Without giving too much away, Sykes' concluding discussion of Zana is a case in point. It is of course fascinating that a woman with African DNA was found living in the Caucasus region in the 19th century. But it is not really that remarkable, especially considering the physical prowess hearsay and Sykes attribute to her. And it is not more or less extraordinary than an Australian Aborigine, a native American, an asian Englishman or indeed a white bear. Humans move, migrate, change, adapt. That this very human story needs to be transmitted through the prism of the yeti is telling, through the othering - the estrangement of elements of ourselves in the anthropomorphisation - of nature, we see something of ourselves. Yeti sightings (though there is an urban equivalent in zombies and vampires and such like) happen outside of human societies, in the wilderness. Here, in the elements, ever without the necessary accoutrements to capture the experience, man encounters himself as a scared, dangerous, barking animal.
To conclude then, the search for the yeti, is something of a search for ourselves. I think that’s what Sykes did, and it was enjoyable to read a respected scientist tread on the borders of mysticism. I think he found something very human there.
A book for free spirits
I enjoyed this book although I did feel slightly cheated by it. There is the suggestion that much more will be revealed than actually is, and we are strung out for too long on very dubious stories that - should we accept the premises of the research - were actually irrelevant to it. The author could have just analysed the mitochondrial DNA of 30 odd supposed yeti hairs and been done with it. Instead he apparently travelled all over the US knocking on trees in the woods and listening to ridiculous stories all of which turned out to be hogwash, as most skeptical people would immediately recognise. Yes, he succeeds in igniting our fascination with the yeti, and the history of the search for the yeti, but the major body of the book is speculation or fiction.
So The Nature of the Beast is an indulgence, if you like wondering what is and what could have been, it is for you, because the basic notion, that other members of our species might have lived alongside us until recently, or the present day, is a logical supposition and an enthralling prospect. The problem Sykes has I think, is he does not have the tools to discern the human and social dimension of that fancy: our need to posit something existing outside us, that links us to our primal nature. He identifies this, and often recounts it in an amusing way, but somehow misses the fact that this construction is the enduring truth of the yeti, not the fake relics.
Without giving too much away, Sykes' concluding discussion of Zana is a case in point. It is of course fascinating that a woman with African DNA was found living in the Caucasus region in the 19th century. But it is not really that remarkable, especially considering the physical prowess hearsay and Sykes attribute to her. And it is not more or less extraordinary than an Australian Aborigine, a native American, an asian Englishman or indeed a white bear. Humans move, migrate, change, adapt. That this very human story needs to be transmitted through the prism of the yeti is telling, through the othering - the estrangement of elements of ourselves in the anthropomorphisation - of nature, we see something of ourselves. Yeti sightings (though there is an urban equivalent in zombies and vampires and such like) happen outside of human societies, in the wilderness. Here, in the elements, ever without the necessary accoutrements to capture the experience, man encounters himself as a scared, dangerous, barking animal.
To conclude then, the search for the yeti, is something of a search for ourselves. I think that’s what Sykes did, and it was enjoyable to read a respected scientist tread on the borders of mysticism. I think he found something very human there.
January 26, 2023
I enjoyed the first few tales (yeti enigma, neanderthal, and big guy). But as I proceed further, I found this is more like a bigfoot fanboy book trying to prove its existence with countless vague interview.
I get it, for some reason the author believe in the idea of apemen hiding somewhere. However, as a reader, I would like to read the search of these apemen unbiased (or at least less biased).
I was once a researcher myself and one thing I know for sure, as a researcher you have to give your research topic a fair amount of doubt. That's how you got to the ultimate conclusion. A bias would lead to no meaningful result.
I'd give it somewhere around 2 - 3 stars.
I get it, for some reason the author believe in the idea of apemen hiding somewhere. However, as a reader, I would like to read the search of these apemen unbiased (or at least less biased).
I was once a researcher myself and one thing I know for sure, as a researcher you have to give your research topic a fair amount of doubt. That's how you got to the ultimate conclusion. A bias would lead to no meaningful result.
I'd give it somewhere around 2 - 3 stars.
February 11, 2019
The book provides insight into the Bigfoot community and is an enlightening and brief overview of the status of genetic analysis in the search to identify unknown creatures. Due to the controversy around Zana, which has heated up recently, the book provides a context for ongoing scientific debate about what is worthy of scientific investigation and what is not. A very interesting read.
October 11, 2017
Whether or not I want to agree with his conclusions, Brian Sykes tells an interesting story. He shares his experiences throughout his journey, and he paints an interesting portrait of each personality he encounters in this search.
January 4, 2018
Overall it's an informative and entertaining read. But it's too long. And the last chapter on Zara completely ignores the simple answer regarding her origins and is too accepting of the myth that she was something other than a human being who was imprisoned against her will and abused.
September 15, 2018
This book is awesome!
Tackles the issue of Yeti & Co evidence with respect for believers & skeptics alike. Very readable with real science behind his arguments. Not dry or boring at all! I really enjoyed reading this.
Tackles the issue of Yeti & Co evidence with respect for believers & skeptics alike. Very readable with real science behind his arguments. Not dry or boring at all! I really enjoyed reading this.
June 1, 2019
I really enjoyed this book. The writing was clear, and it was a very immersive experience. The author did go in with an open mind and it was very human and touching in parts, plus I genuinely learned a lot. Very glad I picked it up during a slow afternoon at work.
May 9, 2020
Does Bigfoot exist?
I am a skeptic but also a scientist. I believe in objective data and this book delivers. I recommend this book for anyone interested in cryptozoology from a true scientist’s point of view.
I am a skeptic but also a scientist. I believe in objective data and this book delivers. I recommend this book for anyone interested in cryptozoology from a true scientist’s point of view.
June 11, 2020
TL;DNR spoiler....
Zero DNA evidence of Neanderthal or Bigfoot/Yeti. However still a good read with lots of interesting science and background.
Zero DNA evidence of Neanderthal or Bigfoot/Yeti. However still a good read with lots of interesting science and background.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 2, 2022
Quite different from the other books on Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and the Yeti which was a great relief. Science is the thing that gives more truth than eye witnesses reports.
July 15, 2023
Very effective read written by a real scientist. Actually worth your time if you understand biology and have always wondered “why has this not been definitively proven to be false.” This is your book
December 29, 2023
Well written and slightly meandering but completely worth the time
I appreciated the more scientific approach
I appreciated the more scientific approach
February 10, 2024
A well written book but I wished the author had used the proper terminlogy First Nations or Indigenous and had spoken more to the First Nations about their beliefs of Bigfoot.
June 26, 2016
Geneticist Bryan Sykes writes a fascinating book about tracking down hair and tissue samples of putative and/or controversial primate origin. Cryptozoology enthusiasts will be disappointed that many prized accounts of Sasquatch and other cryptids are not confirmed by Sykes's research. By this I mean that their mitochondrial DNA do not match that of other primates, including the recently sequenced Neanderthal DNA. But there are findings here that are fascinating and the book is worth reading for anyone (skeptic or advocate alike) interested in these sorts of things. The accounts involving Reinhold Messner, the famous Italian alpinist, are also of historical significance.
June 20, 2020
British scientist Bryan Sykes in this book is hot on the trail investigating the yeti, bigfoot, sasquatch and other alleged hominid or giant ape species claimed to exist in remote areas of the world. As a geneticist at Oxford University in the UK, he is out to collect hair and other biological samples alleged to have come from one of these creatures. This quest takes him around the world. This book reads in part as a detective mystery, an Indiana Jones thriller, as well as a serious scientific investigation. An awesome read!
October 17, 2016
Absolutely fascinating! The book reads like a story, tracking down evidence and interviewing eyewitnesses. The genetic information is very interesting. If you are interested in the search for Sasquatch you must read this book.
March 10, 2016
Mainly the last few chapters were interesting.
November 13, 2016
DNA investigation of reputed remains of yeti and Bigfoot with surprising results.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews