50 Years Ago, A Film Spurred The Myth Of The Abominable Snowman Of America

“For more than a century, people have been saying that a huge hairy primitive human roams the unmapped mountains of the Northwest. Here’s the first tangible evidence that this 'Bigfoot' or Sasquatch really exists.” So claimed an article published in the February 1968 issue of Argosy, a popular American pulp magazine at the time. The article, which was written by cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson, featured some remarkable pictures as evidence that the "Abominable Snowman of America" was real.

The previous year, in the afternoon of October 20, 1967, two young cowboys, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, made a strange encounter at Bluff Creek in northern California. On a forest clearing along the river, the two spotted a seven feet tall, ape-like creature. As soon as she, the creature featured some prominent breasts, became aware of the two men, she quickly disappeared into the forest.

Roger Patterson, jumping from his horse, managed to snatch a minute long film of "Patty" (the Bigfoot version of Nessie). Strangely, the supposedly very elusive animal appears quite calm and unimpressed by the two intruders, striding across the sandbar, just looking back once. Since that day, the Patterson-Gimlin film is hailed by believers as the best evidence that a giant ape is really roaming the American woods. Meanwhile, skeptics dismiss it just as a guy in a fur suit.

Photo from the Roger Patterson film.

Bettmann/Getty Images

The first tales of strange creatures living in the woods were collected by schoolteacher and amateur mythologist John W. Burns in the 1920s. Sasquatch, another name for Bigfoot, supposedly derives from a word used by the Coast Salish people for such creatures. Such stories were later used to support the claim that the modern myth of Bigfoot predates the Patterson-Gimlin film. However, it's important to note that said myths refer to the creatures as wild men, not apes.

The story of Bigfoot as a living fossil, a missing link or ape-man, started not in America, but in Asia, with the discovery in 1951 by alpinist Eric Shipton of large tracks in the Himalayas. British zoologist Wladimir Tschernezky was sure that the tracks were made by a large, bipedal and unknown hominid. He proposed that the Abominable Snowman of the Himalaya, also known as Yeti, was a descendant of Gigantopithecus. Gigantopithecus was an extinct giant ape, living during the Pleistocene in Asia, known in the fossil record only from few remains, like teeth and fragments of the skull. Journalist John W. Green published in 1968 “On the Track of Sasquatch.” In his book, he didn't claim that Bigfoot was Gigantopithecus, but he made the argument, that if in the past large apes existed, it is not impossible that such animals still exist.

The direct connection between Gigantopithecus and anomalous primates was made first by Belgian-French scientist Bernard Heuvelmans in 1952, based on reconstructions of Gigantophitecus by German paleontologists Franz Weidenreich and Ralph Von Koenigswald as a primitive human. Heuvelman writes “this theory, which is utterly hypothetical, provides the only entirely acceptable explanation of the mystery of the Abominable Snowman.” American anthropologist Grover Sanders Krantz, after reading Green's book, popularized this idea. Krantz argued that migrating groups of Gigantopithecus evolved into local populations of anomalous primates. In Asia, the local population evolved into the Yeti. Some individuals crossed the Bering-Strait during the last ice-age, colonizing America. Here, they evolved into the classic Bigfoot.

In 1955 a certain William Roe claimed to have encountered Bigfoot, describing it appropriately as a “giant ape.” The idea of wild men living in the woods was quickly replaced by the idea of giant apes, and people started to talk about strange encounters with hairy ape-man beasts. Bigfoot finally got its name in 1958, with an article about alleged Bigfoot tracks found at Bluff Creek. Patterson, already interested in Bigfoot before his encounter, followed the story into this remote area, hoping to film some of the tracks. The supposed tracks were later revealed to be faked.

A problem with the Gigantopithecus-hypothesis is its outdated science.  Weidenreich reconstructed Gigantopithecus, known only from a fragmentary fossil record, as a sort of missing link between apes and humans. In his imagination, it had the appearance of a hairy ape, but with bipedal locomotion, as seen in humans. However, modern reconstructions propose that Gigantopithecus is more closely related to the modern orangutan, an unlikely match for our modern Bigfoot or at least the image the Patterson-Gimlin introduced into our pop-culture. Also, no fossils or bones of the supposed Bigfoot population in America has ever been found. Bigfoot seems to have no past. Primatologist John Napier summarized the problem best when he wrote, that “by postulating that a monster is a relic form -  a hangover from the past – monster fans feel absolved from the necessity of explaining how such an outrageous unsuitable creature has evolved in the light of present-day ecology.”

So is the Patterson-Gimlin, the most convincing evidence of Bigfoot, just a hoax? Believers observe anatomical details in the tiny figure in the film, that no costume at the time could fake. Skeptics note that the blurry image shows not enough details for a conclusive analysis. Claims, made public in 1998 that it was all a hoax, remain unverified. The testimony by Gimlin, still alive and pretty sure it was a real animal he encountered that day, stands against Bob Heironimus, who claims to be the guy in the fursuit, but supposedly the costume got later lost. After fifty years still “no one knows whether the film depicts a real Sasquatch or a man in a gorilla suit.*” The search continues...

Interested in reading more? Try:

*LOXTON, D.; PROTHERO, D.R. & SHERMER, M. (2014):  Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids. Columbia University Press: 411

MELDRUM, J. (2007):  Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. Forge Edition: 320

