Documentary, Yeti: The Himalayan Bigfoot Myth Or Beast
#Himalayan #Documentary #Yeti #BigfootMyth #Bigfoot #Beast
#Himalayan #Documentary #Yeti #BigfootMyth #Bigfoot #Beast
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00:01They say its face is human.
00:05It looks exactly like a human face.
00:08They say it walks on two legs.
00:12It's like that tall.
00:13And for thousands of years, it's been part of Tibetan folklore.
00:19But could the yeti be more than just a story?
00:23It made the noise like this.
00:26There is some kind of biped creature out there.
00:31People find new species in very unexpected places.
00:37I'm Mark Evans, a scientist on a mission.
00:43Oh, that is gruesome.
00:46Hard evidence is what interests me.
00:49Excellent.
00:51Not fairy tales.
00:53If somebody had told me that one day I'd be chasing yetis around the Himalaya,
00:59I'd have told them to see a psychiatrist.
01:03But with help from leading geneticists, I'm homing in on two rival explanations for the yeti.
01:11The way this is shaped is quite human.
01:16There is always a scientific base to any legend.
01:21The question is which, if either of these two theories, will stack up?
01:27If I can get DNA, I will be able to tell you what they are.
01:32For several years now, I've been digging into one of the world's oldest and most intriguing legends.
01:51Aside from a few questionable relics, though, and the occasional puzzling footprint,
02:00there is precious little hard scientific evidence to go on.
02:05On the other hand, I've talked to a lot of people who live in the high Himalaya,
02:17and it's clear that many of them regard the yeti as something real.
02:22He says there's a species in Tibet.
02:25The footprints look exactly like human.
02:26And what makes those footprints?
02:27And he says it walks on two feet.
02:30It's called a mite.
02:31A mite?
02:32There are multiple local names for the yeti.
02:37Crucially, though, the stories are all much the same.
02:42People across the Himalaya describe some kind of dangerous, hairy, upright creature
02:49that lives in the high mountains and sometimes steals women.
02:54Do you know of anyone who's actually seen Amiré?
02:56It all sounds pretty outlandish, but could there be a rational explanation?
03:09I'm going to be exploring two radical possibilities.
03:13According to one theory, the yeti might be a different species of human
03:20that was pushed to the margins by Homo sapiens
03:24and clung on in the high Himalaya until much more recently than anyone thought possible.
03:30The second theory is that the yeti is some kind of unknown bear.
03:37It's the bear yeti that I'm going to investigate first.
03:59A couple of years ago, I was involved in an extraordinary university-based project
04:10to see if 21st century science could finally solve the mystery of the yeti.
04:17Based on the DNA analysis of the two most credible hair samples
04:24we could find in the high Himalaya,
04:27the lead scientist proposed that the biological explanation for the yeti
04:34could be some kind of polar bear hybrid.
04:38This bold idea certainly grabbed the headlines,
04:47but the genetic evidence was extremely limited and far from conclusive.
04:56Put simply, we still don't know if a polar bear hybrid exists
05:01or has ever existed in the Himalaya,
05:04let alone whether it explains the yeti.
05:08So I'm picking up my bear investigation in Italy,
05:12where I've come to question an important eyewitness.
05:18Reinhold Messner is one of the world's greatest mountaineers.
05:24Renowned for making the first ascent of Mount Everest without carrying oxygen,
05:29he was also the first to summit all 14 of the world's 8,000-metre peaks.
05:34Even after losing seven toes to frostbite,
05:40he was unstoppable.
05:43But it's not his superhuman achievements I've come to talk about.
05:49Now in his 70s, Messner is one of the few westerners
05:54who actually claims to have seen a yeti.
05:58I was trying to cross the eastern part of the bed.
06:03The rivers are very difficult because my toes are not there.
06:16The balance is not perfect.
06:24When I was out on the other side,
06:27it was getting dark.
06:28And in this moment,
06:37this creature was in front of me.
06:41It was clearly on two legs.
06:44Very near.
06:46And it was going very quickly.
06:49Like a human being.
06:51Did it make any noise?
06:53Could you smell it?
06:54It made a noise like this.
07:00Quite a strong smell.
07:03A few seconds later, it was gone.
07:05Disappearing in the dark of the woods.
07:11Forgive me, but I've got to ask this.
07:12Did you think at any point,
07:14you know, you were exhausted,
07:16you were wet,
07:17it was high altitude,
07:18that it was all playing tricks on your mind?
07:23No, no, no.
07:23I was totally in good shape mentally.
07:27I went to the spot where he was standing.
07:30I could see the footprints.
07:33And so I was beginning to say to myself,
07:37but this could be the real yeti.
07:39Maybe he's existing.
07:41Messner was hooked.
07:47With typical single-mindedness,
07:49he found out everything he possibly could
07:52about the legend.
07:54After my sighting,
07:56I begin seriously to ask everywhere about the yeti.
08:00His research led him to a clear conclusion.
08:04There is no doubt for me
08:06that the yeti legend is based on a bear.
08:09And it became 100% clear
08:12there is no other answer.
08:14But what bear?
08:17Could the upright beast that startled him
08:20have been something out of the ordinary?
08:26During a later expedition,
08:29Messner claims to have seen an odd-looking bear.
08:32I could see at least one with a white hat,
08:35at least partly white hat.
08:37I think it's a population with certain things,
08:41certain hair, certain size,
08:43and maybe some different behaviours.
08:47So let me be clear about this then.
08:49You're saying the yeti is a special form of bear?
08:54The yeti is based on a huge bear
08:57living in the Himalaya.
08:58This special bear is the bear and the yeti in one.
09:11The idea of a huge hybrid bear is pretty radical.
09:17Could it be true?
09:18So far, we know about two species of bear in the Himalaya.
09:27In the foothills,
09:28villagers are familiar with forest-dwelling black bears.
09:33Though dangerous to livestock,
09:36they're relatively small.
09:37Higher up in the remote areas where yetis are said to live,
09:44hidden cameras occasionally capture images
09:47of much larger brown bears.
09:52While these predators are well-known in Europe and America,
09:57it seems they've hardly been studied in the Himalaya.
10:00We know so little about the brown bears in this area,
10:04in the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayan mountains.
10:07Very, very little has been done.
10:09Very few samples have been analysed.
10:12They are just very rare.
10:14Dr Charlotte Lindquist is the leading expert
10:18in bear genetics and evolution.
10:20And according to her,
10:22the brown bears of the Himalaya divide into two
10:25very distinct subspecies.
10:27In the Western mountains,
10:31they're known as the Himalayan brown bear.
10:34The brown bears that are found on the Tibetan Plateau
10:37are called the Tibetan brown bear.
10:39Of the two,
10:41it seems that the Tibetan bear
10:43is the larger and more carnivorous,
10:46preying heavily on small mammals.
10:49So what if we throw a polar bear hybrid into the mix?
10:53How would that fit in?
10:54It is possible that there are hybrids
10:57that they possibly migrated into the Himalayan mountains.
11:01And there are descendants of hybrid bears.
11:05That is entirely possible.
11:07But I definitely would want to see more data.
11:10Okay, so what needs to be done to settle it?
11:14For sure, we will need more samples.
11:17Hair is very good.
11:19Bone, teeth.
11:20The more DNA we look at, the better.
11:23If I get you samples,
11:25will you categorically be able to tell me what they are?
11:29If I can get DNA from them, yes.
11:32I will be able to tell you what they are.
11:35The more remains from alleged yetis that we can test,
11:39the better.
11:40And to get the ball rolling,
11:43I'm giving Charlotte three samples collected on previous expeditions.
11:49Okay, now the first is this one,
11:52which is from a monastery.
11:57And it's claimed to be about 40 years old.
12:03Okay.
12:03So, the next one is this one.
12:09And this was collected by a Jesuit priest
12:13and about 60 years old.
12:17My third yeti sample was given to me by Messner,
12:21and it comes with a bizarre backstory.
12:24On the eve of World War II,
12:42five officers from the Nazi SS slipped into Tibet,
12:48where they hoped to persuade the Hermit Kingdom
12:50to attack the British Empire.
12:54But for SS leader Heinrich Himmler,
12:58there was another, more racist objective.
13:01Especially the people around Himmler.
13:05They were hoping to find an animal
13:07which was looking like a human being.
13:10They were hoping to find the proof
13:13of a special human being,
13:15of a stronger, better, bigger human being.
13:20They wanted to show that the Aryan race is something special.
13:25And they were hoping that the yeti,
13:28the snowman,
13:29is one part of the Aryan race.
13:34However, group leader Ernst Schaefer
13:37was certain that the yeti had to be a bear.
13:41His trophies, which now belong to Messner,
13:44include the weirdest-looking bear I've ever seen.
13:54Do you think Schaefer could have been having a bit of fun,
13:57a practical joke?
13:58From the letters you wrote to him,
13:59do you think he was a funny man?
14:01No, no, he was not British, he was German.
14:05So this is just not very good taxidermy.
14:09With luck, there's enough DNA
14:12in this strange creation
14:14for Charlotte to tell me what it is.
14:19It'll be very, very interesting.
14:22I'm looking forward to this.
14:23To assess the polar bear hybrid theory,
14:32I need samples from right across the Himalaya.
14:36And in search of more yeti remains,
14:39I'm heading to a remote valley in northern Nepal,
14:43bang in the middle of this vast mountain range.
14:47According to Messner,
14:51the once-forbidden kingdom of Upper Mustang
14:53is a Tibetan time war,
14:56where belief in the yeti is still strong.
15:00There is still a life there.
15:02There are legends,
15:03there are stories of the yetis,
15:05beings between humans and wild animals.
15:10The culture is Tibetan.
15:12The architecture is Tibetan.
15:15They are Tibetans, real Tibetans.
15:17Shielded from the monsoon by high mountains,
15:27Upper Mustang is arid and barren.
15:30More like Arizona than the Himalaya.
15:34As a foreigner,
15:36I've had to get special permission to come here,
15:39and frankly,
15:40I wouldn't get far without my guide, Tashi Bista.
15:45Despite recent landslides,
15:48Tashi assures me that the road is still passable.
15:52This road has actually just opened, like, three years ago, you know?
15:57All the way until here.
15:58So before this road then, or this track,
16:02how did you get in?
16:03We used to either walk or ride horses all the way up.
16:07Bloody hell, it's a long way down.
16:08The village of Sarang sits on an ancient trade route between India and Tibet.
16:31Tashi has heard about a yeti hand kept inside its crumbling palace.
16:40And with the owner's permission,
16:42we've come to take a small sample.
16:44The grisly-sounding relic is hidden away in an upper room.
17:14along with other fetishes once thought to protect against evil.
17:19Oh, my God.
17:20Tashi, where is the meti hand, the eti hand?
17:36Here.
17:37Here.
17:38Oh, here?
17:39Yeah.
17:40Oh, that is gruesome.
17:45Is that...
17:45There's three hands or paws.
17:47This is definitely human, isn't it?
17:49Yeah, that is definitely human.
17:51This is definitely human.
17:52Do you know what the story is behind that?
17:54I was told that it's the hand of the thief who tried to break him,
17:58and so his hand was cut as a punishment.
18:03It's not the severed hand of the thief,
18:05but the two paws that have been identified to us as yeti.
18:10OK, well, these look like bear.
18:15Did you?
18:16Yeah, yeah, they look like bear, but what bear, though?
18:20And they are very, very old.
18:25Charlotte will be excited that we found these.
18:28In the tight-knit community here,
18:36word of my interest in yetis has spread fast.
18:40Tashi and I have been told about a man called Pember,
18:43a traditional healer who roams widely across the mountains,
18:48gathering herbs to treat the sick.
18:53It was scarcely six years ago, he says,
18:56that he found the rotting carcass of a yeti
19:00across the frontier in Tibet.
19:02Yes?
19:08No.
19:13No.
19:24No.
19:25In these parts, a trumpet made from a yeti bone
19:37is believed to have unique power.
19:40Bemba, would it be possible to have a look at this body part?
19:55Kept in a treasure chest,
19:58Pemba's yeti bone is clearly a precious possession.
20:13This is it. Wow.
20:15Pemba is adamant that the animal it came from walks upright.
20:21The way this is shaped is quite human.
20:29So, kneecap here, this ear runs in there, in that groove.
20:36But it's only this long, so it's very short.
20:39To get an ID, I'm going to need a sample.
20:59If Pemba's yeti is something human, proof will come from its DNA.
21:05OK, that's good.
21:09Could there, conceivably, be a rare biped that still exists?
21:17It's a notion regarded by most as pretty implausible.
21:21But before I went to Nepal, I met a man who believes he has recent evidence
21:29for just such a creature.
21:33Nine months ago, in Bhutan, respected mountaineer Steve Berry
21:38saw something that completely stunned him.
21:42This is October last year.
21:44This is right up on the Tibetan border.
21:46This is a thing called Melongi Kang,
21:48near the highest-unclimbed mountain in the world, Ganga-pun-sum.
21:52We'd literally just got up to the coal.
21:54We'd only been there a couple of minutes, and Karma said,
21:57''Hey, Steve, look, there's some really unusual tracks.''
22:05It's an extraordinary print, isn't it?
22:06It's an incredible set of tracks, one foot exactly in front of the other,
22:11all the way across.
22:13Not a bit of, you know, feet slightly apart or anything,
22:17like you would expect of some four-legged creature.
22:22When you looked at these tracks, what went through your head?
22:25We said, ''That's got to be a biped of some sort.''
22:27How can you be so sure there is no possibility of there being people here?
22:38This is days and days away from human habitation.
22:41It is completely in the middle of nowhere.
22:44I mean, it really is uninhabited, unexplored, unmapped.
22:49It's crazy, extreme territory, isn't it?
22:53You would have to have serious mountaineering gear to get up onto that.
22:57Onto that slope.
22:59So why not snow leopard?
23:03Snow leopard prints are offset.
23:05It just wouldn't put one foot in front of the other like that.
23:09No possibility in your mind that it could be a bear?
23:13I've seen bear prints on snow on a number of occasions.
23:17It's a big creature.
23:19It walks with its feet apart.
23:22It has a double track.
23:24On your way back down, did you show anybody the pictures?
23:28It was three days down to the nearest Hamlet, four houses.
23:32And this lady and her husband were standing in their porch.
23:37So we got talking and eventually he talked to me about the yeti.
23:41So what did he think of your photos?
23:43He looked at them and said immediately, oh yes, Migu.
23:47Without hesitation?
23:48Without hesitation.
23:50Migu is the local name for a wild man or yeti.
23:54And Steve was careful to note down what the villager told him about this creature.
23:58He said the Migu lived up in the snows.
24:02He had seen it once, 11 years ago.
24:05It stood still, upright, arms by its side.
24:08It was human height.
24:10He said it was well known that the yeti could imitate the sounds of a dog, cat, horse or yak.
24:16They're well used to seeing bear tracks.
24:19You know, they know the difference.
24:21He said you can always tell a Migu track because they place one foot in front of the other.
24:26What do you think made those tracks?
24:29Up until this point in time, I was convinced that the whole legend was something to do with an unusual kind of bear.
24:37But having seen these tracks, I'm a convert, you know.
24:40I believe what the Sherpas believe, that there is a kind of bipedal, humanoid-type creature out there that we just don't see very often.
24:51And it has a vast, vast area where it can keep away from humans.
24:56Steve's tracks are certainly puzzling.
25:01But back in Nepal, I'm about to get a second opinion.
25:06Along Nepal's wild Tibetan frontier, marauding bears are no joke, especially for people who own livestock.
25:21I've come here to see a yak herder called Sunam, who has a clump of what he thinks might be yeti fur.
25:33Though it's clearly precious stuff, Sunam is happy for me to take a few strands.
25:40Excellent.
25:41I now have three new samples from creatures identified as yetis.
25:51But what about Steve Berry's puzzling tracks?
25:55Sunam has invited Tashi and me up to his tent for a cup of tea.
25:59And I'm itching to know what he thinks could have made them.
26:05This is obviously in the snow.
26:07Have you any idea what might have made these tracks?
26:10So they step, so a front leg and you'll have a hind leg, so you get just a line.
26:26Sunam seems as certain about snow leopard as Steve Berry's villager was about a migoo or wild man.
26:48Like most people, I'm sceptical that a mysterious biped still exists.
26:54There is, however, another and perhaps more plausible explanation for a man yeti.
27:04Inspired by recent and astonishing discoveries, it's a theory that I've been exploring with growing interest.
27:15Around five years ago, scientific attention focused on a remote cave in southern Siberia.
27:24Fossil remains from this cave, a couple of teeth and a piece of finger bone,
27:30looked at first like they might come from our extinct cousins, Neanderthals.
27:35But when DNA was extracted and analysed, it revealed instead an entirely new species of human,
27:46which scientists call Denisovans.
27:50Then, just a year ago, this DNA sprung another surprise.
27:54It turned out to contain a unique gene mutation, found today only in people of Tibetan ancestry.
28:07And it's a mutation that's crucial to life at high altitude.
28:12When I visit somewhere really high, like the Himalaya, my body is starved of oxygen.
28:21And it's the same for virtually everyone, even for seasoned mountaineers like Messner.
28:27But fairly quickly, our bodies respond by bumping up the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells
28:34that help us extract the scarce oxygen from every breath,
28:39delivering it to all our body tissues, but especially our brains.
28:45It works pretty well, short term.
28:48There is, however, a downside.
28:50All these extra red blood cells thicken the blood,
28:54turning it, if you like, from water into honey.
28:57And long-term, gloopier blood can lead to a whole host of life-threatening medical complications.
29:06The remarkable thing about the Tibetans, who've survived up here for thousands of years,
29:12is that their bodies respond very differently to low oxygen levels.
29:17And a key part of their success is down to a tiny bit of DNA that they got from guess who?
29:28Denisovans.
29:31This tiny bit of DNA is known as the EPAS-1 variant.
29:38It works by stopping the blood from thickening.
29:42And it's found nowhere else on Earth.
29:47To learn more about this handy genetic app,
29:54and whether it really could have been downloaded from another human species,
29:59I went to California.
30:01The team that discovered the Denisovan connection
30:04was led by human geneticist Professor Rasmus Nielsen.
30:09Rasmus, how confident are you that the Tibetans got this variant of EPAS-1
30:16from Denisovans?
30:18Well, we know there must have been interbreeding between humans and Denisovans.
30:22There's no other way you can explain that extreme similarity
30:25between the Tibetan DNA sequence and the DNA sequence you find in the Denisovans.
30:31That's two different species breeding together but producing fertile offspring.
30:37That kind of goes against what I learned in biology at school.
30:41Well, in biology, it's not always so black and white.
30:44Sometimes you have different species that can breed together.
30:49Perhaps this interbreeding with other species might have been more important in human evolution
30:54than people previously thought.
30:56Modern humans came out of Africa.
30:58They had to adapt to all these different environments.
31:00And we've been able to spread out and adapt in a very short amount of time.
31:04And one of the ways that we've been able to do that
31:06is by hijacking genes from other species.
31:10It's like fast-tracking evolution.
31:15But you've honed in on one very specific gene.
31:19Why is it so important?
31:20One benefit for the Tibetans is that they're more likely to carry their pregnancies to term.
31:27Women that don't have this particular genetic variant,
31:30they will tend to suffer from hypertension.
31:33So what else do we know about Denisovans from the secrets that are hidden in their DNA?
31:39We can show that they likely had dark skin pigmentation,
31:42likely had brown eyes and dark hair colour as well.
31:45A more obvious clue to their appearance may be staring us in the face.
31:53Likened to Darth Vader, this skull was found in South China.
31:57And scientists have recently suggested that it could well be a human-Denisovan hybrid.
32:07Whatever they look like, the Denisovans raise a really thought-provoking idea.
32:13Could they, perhaps, have inspired stories of hairy and possibly hostile wild men,
32:21not in South China or Russia, but on the roof of the world?
32:26We modern humans, Homo sapiens, don't have a great track record
32:32when it comes to sharing planet Earth with other human species.
32:37Now, we know that Neanderthals had succumbed to Homo sapiens by around 40,000 years ago.
32:44But there's one environment where Homo sapiens struggled to survive.
32:51And it's here, at high altitude, where oxygen is in short supply.
32:57And that makes me wonder whether Denisovans, with their special high-altitude adaptations,
33:05could have survived and thrived up here on the Tibetan plateau, out of our reach.
33:13But here's the big question.
33:15Until how recently?
33:18There may be a way to find out.
33:21Two years ago, before anyone knew about the Denisovan connection,
33:31I collected saliva samples from a dozen Sherpas,
33:35people of Tibetan origin, who now live in Nepal.
33:42Back then, I was interested in Neanderthal DNA.
33:46But maybe the key to this mystery lies in the DNA that we got from Denisovans.
33:54In theory, scientists can use this Denisovan DNA
33:58to estimate how recently we were interbreeding with these other humans.
34:05Job done.
34:08This contact date is something that Rasmus Nielsen also wants to figure out.
34:16And he's agreed to add my Sherpa data to his ongoing study and share the results.
34:28I can believe that some legends, at least, might be based on real events.
34:35But could such events be tens of thousands of years old?
34:40Astonishing evidence that this may be possible comes from a faraway island in Indonesia.
34:54East of Java, on the island of Flores,
34:58a Dutch scientist had heard folk tales about tiny, primitive-looking humans
35:02who were said to steal crops from villages and sometimes babies
35:07before scampering back to their caves in the jungle.
35:11In the local Nage language,
35:14these voracious little people are known as Ibu Gogo,
35:18which roughly translates as Granny Glutton.
35:21In stories, these Ibu Gogo are very skilful at imitating
35:29the complex sounds of human speech.
35:33But, not surprisingly, no-one really paid any attention to any of this.
35:37Until 2003, that is, when, in West Flores,
35:42excavations in a jungle cave unearthed the fossilised bones
35:46of, you guessed it, a tiny, primitive type of human.
35:55Suddenly, the Ibu Gogo didn't sound quite so make-believe.
36:02It appeared they might even be a folk memory
36:05from a time when we shared our world
36:08with a race of chattering, spear-wielding, hobbit-like humans.
36:16More than a decade on, and Homo floresiensis remains a mystery.
36:21We don't yet know who her ancestors were
36:24or how they managed to get to Flores.
36:27But, crucially, most experts think that Homo floresiensis
36:32overlapped with Homo sapiens.
36:35Radiometric dates tell us that they were around
36:38until about 50,000 years ago,
36:41just as modern humans were spreading across South East Asia.
36:48The remarkable story of Indonesia's recently extinct
36:52Little Hobbits has been a real eye-opener.
36:56It even prompted the acclaimed science journal Nature
36:59to suggest that stories of other supposedly mythical humanoids,
37:03including yetis, could be based on more than just tales.
37:10Six weeks after returning from Nepal,
37:14and the final chapter in my own yeti story
37:17is about to unfold.
37:21Charlotte and Rasmus have each crunched
37:23the hard-won data I gave them,
37:25and I've come to find out what they've discovered.
37:30Bear, human, or just make-believe?
37:34It's time for the DNA to speak.
37:44Top bear expert Dr Charlotte Lindquist
37:47has been helping me investigate the theory
37:50that the yeti may be some kind of polar bear hybrid.
37:55And the results are in.
37:59The hare from the monastery in northwest India
38:02checked out as Himalayan brown bear.
38:06To the east, the hare obtained by a Jesuit priest
38:10ID'd as Tibetan brown bear.
38:13And it was the same story
38:15for Messner's bizarre Nazi yeti.
38:20So far, so normal.
38:22Perhaps one of my newly collected samples
38:26will spring a surprise.
38:29What interests me is they kind of sit
38:30kind of like halfway between the other samples.
38:34So it's sort of which way will they go,
38:36or will it be something completely new?
38:40OK.
38:40All right?
38:41All right.
38:41You know and I don't.
38:42I do.
38:42I'm handing over the dots now to you.
38:44OK.
38:45So if you start with this one,
38:46so the middle one here,
38:47that's the nomad hair sample.
38:53Nice DNA.
38:55It worked very well.
38:56And it definitely came from a Tibetan brown bear.
39:02So blue.
39:03One down.
39:04Two to go.
39:05This one is from the alleged yeti paw,
39:10the yeti hand,
39:11that was in this ancient palace.
39:17It was very old.
39:19Did you get DNA?
39:20That's the first thing.
39:20Yes.
39:21I was surprised.
39:22And I can tell you that it definitely came from a bear.
39:26A different kind of bear.
39:28Really?
39:29Really?
39:30This one here was from a black bear.
39:33You know,
39:35there are no trees in Sarang.
39:37There's no forest.
39:39At all.
39:40So I kind of rule...
39:41The genetics,
39:42the genetics does not lie.
39:45That was a...
39:46OK.
39:46From a black bear.
39:47So that's a bit of an oddity for us.
39:49It's in the wrong place,
39:50but it's probably brought there by a trader.
39:52So we need to give it a different color.
39:53OK.
39:57Just one left.
39:59Now,
39:59this sample is,
40:01is for me,
40:03the most intriguing,
40:04because it was the femur bone,
40:06the thigh bone,
40:07allegedly from a yeti.
40:12I was not sure at all what that is,
40:15but human was in my head.
40:17Well,
40:17I can tell you with certainty
40:19that that was not a human.
40:21Not human?
40:22It was definitely also from a bear.
40:25And in this case,
40:26I can say with certainty
40:28that that was a Tibetan brown bear.
40:31Strike three.
40:35Another blue dot.
40:37So where does all this now leave us
40:40in terms of the polar bear,
40:41brown bear,
40:42hybrid hypothesis?
40:44Does that hypothesis stack up?
40:46We didn't find any evidence
40:48of polar bear.
40:49I think based on what we know
40:53from the samples that you sent me
40:54that we can put that theory to rest.
41:02So if polar bears don't, after all,
41:05have anything to do with yetis,
41:08then what about my other theory?
41:10Could stories of Himalayan wild men
41:13have been inspired by prehistoric humans
41:16known as Denisovans?
41:20It's such an intriguing idea,
41:23but of course it may not be true.
41:25To explore it further,
41:27Professor Rasmus Nielsen
41:28at Berkeley University
41:29has been digging about in the DNA
41:30from the saliva samples
41:32that I collected from the Sherpas
41:35in the high Himalaya.
41:37And I'm about to get the results.
41:40I want to know if Denisovans
41:43with their high-altitude adaptations
41:45could have clung on
41:47for even longer
41:49than Indonesia's hobbits,
41:51who appear to live on
41:52in folktales told today.
41:59Evidence that ancient fact
42:01can persist as living legend
42:04also comes from Australia.
42:07Many aboriginal stories
42:09tell of the time
42:11when coastal hunting grounds
42:12were flooded by rising seas
42:15roughly 15,000 years ago.
42:22So, did you find EPAS-1
42:25in my Sherpas?
42:27Actually, we did.
42:29So it turns out that all of them
42:31contain the EPAS-1 variant
42:33that you also have into bed.
42:34So every Sherpa
42:36had the EPAS-1 variant?
42:39That's right, yeah.
42:40That's a very good start.
42:41I like that.
42:43But obviously,
42:44the big thing for me
42:45is then trying to work out
42:47the most recent date
42:49that interbreeding
42:51could have taken place
42:52between Denisovans
42:53and the ancestors
42:53of those Sherpas
42:54and other Tibetans.
42:55So let's have a look
42:56at the results.
42:57All right.
42:58So what's the key element
43:01in this thing to focus on?
43:02So the thing to focus on here
43:03is the blue curve here.
43:06The base of the graph
43:07shows time
43:08back to 70,000 years ago.
43:11The side of the graph
43:13tells me whether
43:13it was more or less likely
43:15that humans and Denisovans
43:17were interbreeding.
43:20In short,
43:21the most likely date
43:22for interbreeding
43:23was about 40,000 years ago.
43:26That's the most likely date,
43:29about 40,000 years.
43:31But obviously,
43:31I want to come this way
43:33and go,
43:33well,
43:34how recently
43:35could it have happened
43:36which you could not rule out
43:39as a possibility
43:39from this data?
43:40The most recent date
43:42that we cannot exclude
43:43is about 7,000 years.
43:467,000 years ago?
43:487,000 years ago, yes.
43:50What does that equate to
43:51in terms of generations?
43:52That's about 250 generations ago.
43:56OK.
43:57So what about
43:5815,000 years?
44:01Yeah, so 15,000 years,
44:02that would be about
44:03here on the curve.
44:0515,000 years ago
44:06is really also
44:06quite plausible.
44:09OK.
44:10Wow.
44:14At that time,
44:16the Tibetan plateau
44:17would have had
44:18plenty of antelope
44:20and wild yak.
44:21For anyone
44:25who could stand
44:26the thin air,
44:28it must have offered
44:30good hunting,
44:31even through
44:32the last ice age.
44:35And if people
44:37in Australia
44:37and Indonesia
44:38have handed down
44:40their stories
44:41for many thousands
44:42of years,
44:43then why not
44:44Tibetans
44:45with their tales
44:46of dangerous
44:47wild men.
44:51It's a fascinating
44:53thought experiment,
44:54isn't it?
44:54Somewhere on the
44:56Tibetan plateau,
44:57perhaps 15,000 years ago,
44:59small pioneering groups
45:01of Homo sapiens,
45:02modern humans,
45:04start to encounter
45:05powerfully built,
45:07dark-skinned people.
45:08People who seem
45:10better adapted
45:11than they are
45:12to the thin air
45:13and who are
45:15skilful
45:16at hunting
45:17the plentiful game.
45:20Perhaps the
45:21encounters
45:21aren't always
45:23friendly.
45:26Perhaps when
45:27scientists talk
45:28about the
45:28interbreeding
45:29that we know
45:30took place,
45:31we should imagine
45:32instead something
45:33more akin
45:34to abduction,
45:36a recurring
45:37theme
45:37in yeti tales
45:39from across
45:40the Himalaya.
45:41Suppose now
45:44that this rivalry
45:45continues for
45:46centuries,
45:47millennia even,
45:49until the last
45:51of the Denisovans
45:51are finally
45:52extinguished
45:53and all that
45:56remains of
45:56these enigmatic
45:57hunters
45:58are some useful
46:00genetic mutations
46:01now part
46:02of the
46:03Tibetans'
46:04DNA
46:04and colourful
46:07stories of
46:08dangerous,
46:09hairy,
46:10bipedal
46:11beings
46:11who roam
46:12the high peaks.
46:15We tend to
46:16think of
46:17ourselves
46:17as the only
46:19humans,
46:19but there have
46:20been many
46:21others.
46:23And to my
46:24mind at least,
46:25it now seems
46:26a very strong
46:27possibility that
46:28one of them,
46:29the Denisovans,
46:31could have been
46:31immortalised
46:33as yet is.
46:34as yet is.
46:34as yet is.
46:34that is.
46:36That is.
46:36that is.
46:37that is.
46:37That is.
46:37That is.
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