Lloyd Pye

RESPONSE TO THE “RUSSIAN BIGFOOT” EPISODE ON NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC’S CABLE TV SHOW “IS IT REAL?”

by Lloyd Pye

The National Geographic cable TV channel has recently aired two episodes of its series, "Is It Real?" Both involved material of interest and concern to me. The first is “Ancient Astronauts,” to which I wrote a very brief response that can be seen by clicking on the hyperlink. This essay, however, is far more detailed and will focus on the "Russian Bigfoot" episode, which deals with the well-documented story of Zana, an Almas type hominoid (a la Bigfoot/Sasquatch) captured in the mid-1800’s and subsequently kept for forty years in a remote Russian village in the Caucasus Mountains. While there, she gave birth to eight offspring sired by men of the village, four of whom lived to adulthood to become Russian citizens. Her youngest son, Khwit, was buried in the village cemetery (as was Zana), and his skull was later recovered and is in the possession of Igor Bourtsev, a renowned Russian hominoid researcher. Another skull has also come into Mr. Bourtsev’s possession, this one only alleged—definitely not proven—to be Zana’s.

I won't go into all the trivialities and frivolities that filled in the bulk of the “Russian Bigfoot” (RB) hour, other than to say they were not nearly as flagrant as in the “Ancient Astronaut” (AA) episode. (One especially egregious example in the RB show was spending an inordinate amount of time focused on two men lying prone on blankets during a night-long “stakeout” of an alleged Almas cave dwelling in Mongolia, drinking Jack Daniels and giggling from its effects. Hardly an example of investigative TV journalism at its finest.) However, when it came to the actual science in the RB show, as was the case in the AA show, misleading statements were presented as facts to a degree that was astonishing. The National Geographic Society (NG) should be ashamed to be associated with such utterly specious claptrap.

Chiding aside, the RB show came down to two examples of scientific analysis: a DNA comparison and a CT-Scan comparison. Fair enough. This case, like the AA case, should indeed be judged solely on the merits of the science that can be applied to support or refute it. So let’s start with the CT-Scan analysis provided by a female NG “expert” who showed four photographs of skulls with shaded interiors representing the brain cavities. These were clear outlines of those skulls, and a common way to compare gross morphology.

Khwit was on the upper left, Zana's presumed skull on the upper right, a Neanderthal on the bottom left, and a normal human on the bottom right. For reasons I could not discern, the two upper photos were more than twice the size of the lower two. I’m sure it would have been easy to make them all the same relative size, so I can’t imagine why their sizes were so dissimilar. In any case, right away I noticed a problem with the Neanderthal on the bottom left. Its braincase was very low across the top and distended in the rear, as is typical with Neanderthal craniums. However, the face was so tiny and the brow ridge so underdeveloped, I have to suspect it was a child. Even more disturbing was the wide area of brain distention through what appeared to be the foramen magnum opening. I might even suggest that this was the cranium of a deformed infant. But no matter what it actually was, there are many examples of normal adult Neanderthal skulls in existence, so right away we have to ask why the female "expert" used in the show apparently chose not to make a legitimate comparison of the Russian skulls with a comparable Neanderthal adult.

One answer might be that the show's producers wanted to create a greater sense of biological difference than might actually exist when comparing adults to adults. As presented in the show, there is a considerable discrepancy between them, both in size and in overall shape. This is not to suggest the Neanderthal skull did not depict the general shape of Neanderthal morphology, because it did. However, an adult skull might have had considerably more arc across the top of the cranium, thereby diminishing the dramatic impression of this Neanderthal's "occipital bun," a hallmark of their cranial outline that distends outward and downward at the lower rear base of the cranium (the occipital bone). This was, in my opinion, visual "sleight of hand" designed to create much more apparent "distance" between the Russian skulls and the Neanderthal example, not to mention the human example, than might have been the case with a more "apples-to-apples” comparison.

Furthermore, and this was even more egregious, the lady compares Khwit to the normal human, saying his skull is very much like the human as she waves her hands over two photographs that an average third-grader could see do not belong to the same family. Khvit's skull has very large brow ridges, which the human does not have. Khvit's skull has a marked distention downward at the base of its occipital, roughly half of the distention of a typical Neanderthal, whereas the human has not the slightest hint of such distention. This is glaringly, flagrantly an "apples-to-oranges" comparison, yet the lady says, in effect, to viewers, "Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?" Please, my friends, trust your eyes, and continue to trust them when the expert goes on to compare the Zana skull to the human, pointing out that it is very similar. In this case she's telling the truth. The Zana skull IS very much like a normal human skull, with no sign of an occipital bulge of the kind Khwit has. This means that, without question, she's not Khwit's mother and should never have been put under serious consideration as a possible remnant Neanderthal. Never!

As for the DNA results, those were provided by a NG “expert” who was chosen, no doubt, because his Mohawk hairstyle (which, I admit, I did not know was back in fashion) provided an impression of serious dedication to his craft. Displaying colorful charts capable of winning any Junior High science fair competition, this young warrior assured us that both Khwit and Zana were totally human and seem to be biologically related, so they could indeed be mother and child. "Case closed," the narrator pronounced in properly stentorian tones. Weeelllll....not so fast! I happen to know a bit about these kinds of DNA comparisons because of my own work with the Starchild skull and the efforts to try to figure out its genetic heritage and parentage. It's nowhere near as simple as this show portrayed it (nor, for that matter, was it as simplistic as portrayed on "Ancient Astronauts").

First, we can be sure the technique used to recover the DNA of Khwit and Zana was the chemical primer method, which seeks out and captures long strings of base pairs that are unique to humans. The same primers would not work, for example, on a gorilla or a chimp, though they share a great deal of DNA with humans. That needs to be understood. Also, if Khwit was indeed a hybrid between a human father and a robust, hair-covered, Almas female, the human half of the hybridization was clearly dominant because every villager who knew Khwit in life was able to testify that, while markedly “different” in certain ways, he was fundamentally human, with powers of reason and speech that Zana never developed.

That being the case, it seems fair to presume that at least some of Khwit's DNA, if not most of it, could be recovered by human-only primers. And keep in mind, there are a number of primers that are used to recover a range of base-pair strings. So what we didn’t hear was whether or not every single primer was able to recover a sample of Khwit's DNA (which would strongly indicate, but not prove, he was entirely human). Or, in fact, did only a few—only one or two or three—of his base-pair strings connect with primers, leaving the others unconnected? This was not explained on the show, but it would be interesting to know the results of the entire array of testing that was done on Khwit's DNA. How many primers found their targets?

I mentioned that even if every primer made contact with Khwit's DNA, that would not prove conclusively he was not a hybrid between a human father and an Almas mother. Vast stretches of base pairs in the 3.0 billion that comprise a human genome will have been untouched by those primers. So the only way to actually prove that Khwit was not a hybrid is to sequence his entire genome, base pair-by-base pair, as is now possible using a new DNA recovery technique developed by 454 Life Sciences. This will revolutionize DNA testing because it will allow incredibly detailed matching of biological specimens. It is now being used first to sequence a Neanderthal genome so it can be compared to a human. Most of us will have seen that historic announcement recently trumpeted in every kind of mainstream media.

What is not as trumpeted, but which is every bit as real, is that a number of other interesting comparisons can also be made using this new recovery technique. For example, what are the exact genetic differences between a zebra and a horse? Or the differences between the Starchild skull and a normal human? Or between Khvit and a normal human? Only then, when their genomes can be laid out in a base pair-by-base pair array, can anyone know with absolute certainty their genetic heritage. Obviously, none of this was made clear on either the AA episode or the RB episode, but it should have been because it lies at the heart of any serious research into trying to determine the undeniable truth about both cases.

As for the DNA of Zana’s purported skull “matching” Khvit’s, here too the announced result was misleading. To say they “come from the same type” does not mean they are biologically related, it means only that they belong to the same Haplogroup, which would be expected in a small primitive village. A Haplogroup is a very general category that can rule in or rule out the possibility of familial linkage, but further detailed tests are required to prove definite linkage. A Haplogroup comparison can show, for example, that the human female who buried the Starchild being, whatever it was, in a mine tunnel in Mexico and then laid down beside it to commit suicide, was not, as we believed for years, its mother. Caretaker, companion, lover…we have no way to know, but definitely not its mother. They do not come from the same Haplogroup, so they could not have been genetically related.

What these blatant distortions of fact mean, quite simply, is that the National Geographic Society can no longer be trusted. When they first approached me to be on "Is It Real?", I told them their reputation for being factual and fair was nonexistent and I didn't want to be a part of it. They swore up and down that they had great respect for all the diligent scientific testing we had performed on the Starchild, and they would absolutely treat us fairly. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I'm sure Igor Bourtsev would have been told the same thing, and with his obvious difficulty with the English language, it would have been even harder for him to "read" or interpret their true intention. I certainly couldn't do it, so I got screwed. So did Igor. Don't you be. The National Geographic Society is perhaps THE bastion of conservative mainstream thought in the world today, so they will do or say anything necessary to protect their bailiwick.

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