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| The Yeti' finger, pictured that was displayed at London's Royal College of Surgeons |
The Pangboche finger, as you can guess, is part of the Pangboche hand. The hand was one of two artifacts, (the other was a scalp) that were stolen from a Buddhist monastery in Pangboche, Nepal. We have covered multiple stories regarding the Pangboche artifacts in the past.
Loren Coleman, Cryptomundo contributor, is responsible for confirming many of the stories surrounding the Tom Slick expedition that discovered the Pamboche artifacts.
Loren Coleman, Cryptomundo contributor, is responsible for confirming many of the stories surrounding the Tom Slick expedition that discovered the Pamboche artifacts.
Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman rediscovered this story while writing Tom Slick's biography in the 1980s. Coleman confirmed details of the incidents with written materials in the Slick archives, interviews with Byrne, and correspondence with Stewart. -- Wikipedia contributors, "Pangboche Hand," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pangboche_Hand&oldid=451541253(accessed December 27, 2011).You can read some recent news regarding BBC 4's announcement of the Finger DNA at Cryptomundo by Loren Coleman and an excerpt from the Daily News Article. Below is a reprint from the BBC 4 radio show titled "Yeti's Finger"
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| Pangboche Hand and Skull Cap. |
High up a remote Himalayan Mountain in Nepal is a Buddhist monastery. The monks say there is no doubt yeti's roam the high forest, they see and hear them and they sometimes even attack people. The tantalising prospect of being the first to prove that this mythical ape like creature actually exists has been the goal many explorers - but the beast has always evaded capture. Then the discovery of a supposed yeti's hand kept in the monastery set off a remarkable chain of events that drew in a mountain explorer, an American oil tycoon, a Hollywood film star and a high tech lab for forensic science in Scotland. But is it a yeti?
Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to be the first. Tom Slick, an American oil tycoon, had the money and the desire to try to prove that yetis really do exist. He used his vast wealth to mount expeditions, sending off climber and explorer Peter Byrne into the most remote areas of the Himalayas to follow any leads he came across, and one seemed worth investigating further - a hand of a "yeti" in Pangboche monastery in Nepal. Byrne did a deal with the monks and replaced one finger of the hand with a human finger and arranged to have the yeti finger smuggled back to London.
How the finger actually reached London is a most bizarre tale that involved Hollywood film star James Stewart concealing it in his wife's lingerie case. And then the trail went cold. Slick died, Byrne went onto other things and the finger was lost to the world until it was found by chance in a forgotten collection of curiosities in the Royal College of Surgeons in London. New scientific techniques are now applied to see if the yeti's finger really is what it claims to be - or if not - what on earth has a finger like that?
Presenter: Matthew Hill
Producer: Mary Colwell
Editor: Julian Hector
You can catch Loren's Take at Cryptomundo
Read the history of The Pangboche Finger at Daily Mail
Listen to The results at BBC 4
Read the history of The Pangboche Finger at Daily Mail
Listen to The results at BBC 4
Just as most cursory sequencing of purported sasquatch specimens have revealed "within human ranges", so has this tale ended in a similar conclusion.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC news article doesn't mention WHICH part(s) of the "Yeti" genome, let alone whether they sequenced parts or all of the mitochondrial or nuclear genomes, have been sequenced, my guess is that they have made the same mistake as most -- if not all -- North American scientists have made with sasquatch: They only bothered to sequence part of the mitochondrial genome, because that is easiest and that usually reveals both the male and female origins of a given sample (for example, a black bear but not a mule deer).
Wrong. Through the "Ketchum" study's subsequent nuclear DNA work, it now appears that the mitochondrial origins of sasquatch are also "within human ranges" but not exactly any known, modern human. See: "www.ScienceAliveNews.com" for more information on this aspect of DNA testing.
Further nuclear DNA testing of the same purported sasquatch specimens have revealed "similar but not identical to any known human sequence" for a single gene: MC1R. The difference between the three sasquatch samples tested for the MC1R gene and all modern humans on record are one or two locations on the MC1R gene. These differences are identical to the differences found between Neanderthal and Modern Humans -- but for different polymorphic locations!
Once again, the scientists evidently took the easy way out (partial mito testing only), and therefore they didn't learn the entire genetic story of the creature in question--whether yeti, sasquatch, or Alma.
All they learned were parts of the mitochondrial (female) origins of the specimen from thousands of years prior -- which were close to "human" but not necessarily "modern" human.
The above critique does not prove that the Pangboche Finger is NOT from a "modern human". It only proves, once again, that the scientists stopped short of properly completing the job they started. To find out the truth of the matter, at least some of the nuclear genome has to be tested.
When will they ever learn?
Richard Stubstad
Thanks for the comment Richard. It would be interesting to get the details you mention from the scientists that did the test.
ReplyDelete