WEBVTT 1 00:01:14.100 --> 00:01:17.140 This is the sculpture. 2 00:01:17.320 --> 00:01:24.260 It may look as though it's wrapped in an unusual garb, but that's how we got it when we got it from the monastery itself. 3 00:01:25.120 --> 00:01:27.500 And so we've left these things around it. 4 00:01:28.880 --> 00:01:29.980 This is a sort of a ceremony. 5 00:01:29.980 --> 00:01:29.980 6 00:01:29.980 --> 00:01:29.980 7 00:01:29.980 --> 00:01:29.980 8 00:01:29.980 --> 00:01:29.980 9 00:01:29.980 --> 00:01:29.980 10 00:01:29.980 --> 00:01:32.980 This is a ceremonial scarf that they put around things. 11 00:01:33.540 --> 00:01:39.200 This rather tattered old object you see here is their scalp. 12 00:01:43.920 --> 00:01:50.380 It's a very obviously quite old, certainly very brittle. 13 00:01:51.100 --> 00:01:52.980 You have to be treated with a good deal of care. 14 00:01:55.400 --> 00:01:58.040 But what exactly is it? 15 00:01:58.040 --> 00:02:01.840 Well, the local people claim it's 240 years old. 16 00:02:03.460 --> 00:02:05.040 The people who possessed it, the shepherds. 17 00:02:05.880 --> 00:02:06.760 240 years old. 18 00:02:08.780 --> 00:02:10.420 We haven't submitted any tests yet. 19 00:02:12.760 --> 00:02:15.020 What kind of a creature do you think it came from? 20 00:02:17.380 --> 00:02:22.780 I don't know. I think if we did know, we probably wouldn't have brought it back, I suppose. 21 00:02:22.780 --> 00:02:27.700 I don't think we really have any accurate idea. 22 00:02:28.500 --> 00:02:31.600 We've got a few ideas of possibilities. 23 00:02:33.060 --> 00:02:37.480 But if it's authentic, in other words, if it is really, that is a complete scalp. 24 00:02:38.440 --> 00:02:41.380 As is, it's obviously rather unusual for the creature. 25 00:02:41.760 --> 00:02:42.880 You can see the shape of it. 26 00:02:43.700 --> 00:02:52.140 And we want a careful investigation of it to try and identify whether or not it is really a complete scalp of a single unit 27 00:02:52.140 --> 00:02:56.740 or whether it's been fabricated out of some other skins many years ago. 28 00:02:59.300 --> 00:03:00.980 In fact, an answer for it, if we can. 29 00:03:01.380 --> 00:03:02.820 Has any analysis been made yet? 30 00:03:03.140 --> 00:03:04.100 No, nothing at all. 31 00:03:05.460 --> 00:03:08.040 The work has been done actually on the hairs of this thing. 32 00:03:11.040 --> 00:03:18.220 There's another scalp at a place called Pangbochi, very similar to this, in somewhat worse repair. 33 00:03:19.060 --> 00:03:27.040 And these hairs have been examined by one person, a Japanese professor of zoology, 34 00:03:27.520 --> 00:03:32.180 who met us at the airport in Tokyo on the way through, and he showed us his report. 35 00:03:34.020 --> 00:03:46.980 And he said that it could not be discounted, the possibility that it might be some type of anthropoid hairs and so on. 36 00:03:46.980 --> 00:03:49.820 But we don't know and we want to try and find out. 37 00:03:50.660 --> 00:03:53.800 Could you give us an educated guess, Sir Edmund, on what it is? 38 00:03:54.520 --> 00:03:55.880 Do you have an idea yourself? 39 00:03:57.060 --> 00:03:58.940 I don't really have an idea at all. 40 00:03:59.520 --> 00:04:06.820 As a matter of fact, the scalp in many ways runs right across the evidence we've been accumulating on the scalp. 41 00:04:08.840 --> 00:04:11.140 It's a bit of a throwback as far as we're concerned, 42 00:04:11.140 --> 00:04:21.860 in that we feel we have been successful in finding fairly rational answers to most of the yeti questions. 43 00:04:22.480 --> 00:04:28.660 And these answers haven't really involved the mythical yeti soul. 44 00:04:29.600 --> 00:04:33.860 But we haven't really been able to give a satisfactory answer to this scalp. 45 00:04:35.620 --> 00:04:45.420 The possibility that it's just an ordinary skin and has been fabricated into this form in years gone by has to be considered, of course. 46 00:04:45.580 --> 00:04:51.900 But the actual ridges of hair on it are most unusual and have always been its most unusual feature. 47 00:04:52.860 --> 00:04:54.720 Well, how was it used in that village? 48 00:04:55.440 --> 00:04:59.440 They used it as a, it wasn't a religious symbol at all, really. 49 00:04:59.440 --> 00:05:08.160 It was, but it had a great deal of tradition associated with it, and it was very much a good luck or bad luck charm. 50 00:05:08.960 --> 00:05:14.580 And once a year, this thing was used as a part of dances, 51 00:05:15.500 --> 00:05:21.900 in which they reenacted the whole process of the capturing and killing of the yeti, 52 00:05:21.940 --> 00:05:25.380 in which they actually got the scalp several hundred years before. 53 00:05:25.380 --> 00:05:31.380 So it really only was used once a year during the course of these ceremonies. 54 00:05:32.140 --> 00:05:38.740 And then as a, more or less as a hat, as much as anything else, it was on the heads of the dancers, 55 00:05:39.180 --> 00:05:45.340 and they used it during the quite long reenactment really of the whole process. 56 00:05:45.980 --> 00:05:50.400 Is there a story or a legend about how this thing might get its scalp? 57 00:05:51.500 --> 00:05:56.880 Yes, there certainly is, but I think I'll get Desmond Dory to explain it to you. 58 00:05:57.440 --> 00:06:02.720 He got it from the locals, with his much greater grasp of the language than I have. 59 00:06:04.140 --> 00:06:13.560 And, Desmond, could you give them perhaps an idea of what the legend associated with its initial establishment? 60 00:06:14.100 --> 00:06:17.060 Will the legend connect it with this particular scalp? 61 00:06:17.060 --> 00:06:19.780 Will you sit down, please? 62 00:06:21.820 --> 00:06:26.040 The legend associated with this scalp is not completely a new one. 63 00:06:26.280 --> 00:06:33.540 There have been several stories which we have picked up in Nepal and elsewhere, actually, 64 00:06:34.340 --> 00:06:38.860 which are very similar, that yeti has got out of hand. 65 00:06:39.320 --> 00:06:41.860 There were so many of them that they were more than people. 66 00:06:43.380 --> 00:06:47.380 And the lamas of the village were called upon to do something about it, 67 00:06:47.720 --> 00:06:55.240 and one particular lama who belonged to the village near theirs, which was bigger than theirs 68 00:06:55.240 --> 00:07:01.800 and had the monastery, the only monastery in those days, Roa-wa-jeorje by name, 69 00:07:02.320 --> 00:07:07.980 he decided that the only way to get the better of the yeti was by trickery, 70 00:07:07.980 --> 00:07:17.580 so they produced a large amount of drink, local drink, which is potato wine or wheat wine, on a certain day, 71 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:25.220 and the yetis were all around looking down from the mountains and saw the shepherd people collect, 72 00:07:26.040 --> 00:07:31.480 drink as much of this local wine as possible, and then set to a great battle with knives. 73 00:07:31.980 --> 00:07:37.960 The knives that the people produced were wood, and all day they fought, and at night there was no one left, 74 00:07:37.960 --> 00:07:43.180 all the shepherds were dead, and then the yetis, who are very good mimics, 75 00:07:44.080 --> 00:07:49.160 descended on the battlefield, at which time the shepherds had withdrawn and left genuine knives behind. 76 00:07:49.700 --> 00:07:54.860 The yetis then drank, fought to the death, and there was only one pregnant yeti left, 77 00:07:55.620 --> 00:07:59.560 and she couldn't get away, she was sitting there looking around the days in the morning, 78 00:07:59.680 --> 00:08:05.060 and the lama came up and slew her himself and carried the scalp away in victory. 79 00:08:05.060 --> 00:08:10.780 But what happened to all the other thousands of bodies? No one knows, we could never find out. 80 00:08:11.480 --> 00:08:18.460 But that is supposed to be the story connected to this particular spot. 81 00:08:18.880 --> 00:08:22.680 You say that it cuts across your previous evidence that you've been getting, 82 00:08:22.840 --> 00:08:26.480 with the logical explanation of the yeti that it was a bear of some sort of daddy. 83 00:08:26.920 --> 00:08:33.500 It's obviously been the cause for a good deal of the, I think the local ideas about it. 84 00:08:34.060 --> 00:08:39.360 The same applies with tracks. We did find yeti tracks, some good ones too, 85 00:08:40.180 --> 00:08:46.040 and unfortunately we also found, well very interestingly we feel, we also found how they were made. 86 00:08:46.360 --> 00:08:54.320 They weren't made by large animals standing on two legs, but were very much the result 87 00:08:54.320 --> 00:09:00.340 under certain snow conditions of the effects of the sun, certain amount of melting of sun, 88 00:09:00.340 --> 00:09:07.120 on tracks of much smaller animals, where a small animal would say moving quickly along, 89 00:09:07.280 --> 00:09:13.760 you get the small tracks together and the effect of the sun on them would cause these tracks to melt together 90 00:09:14.340 --> 00:09:20.760 and made quite amazing resemblances really to, well sort of almost bare feet, 91 00:09:21.540 --> 00:09:29.380 and the type of track which one relates to the sort of traditional yeti tracks. 92 00:09:29.380 --> 00:09:32.620 We found these tracks some in the morning. 93 00:09:33.040 --> 00:09:33.860 Do you think you can understand? 94 00:09:34.180 --> 00:09:34.420 Yes. 95 00:09:35.680 --> 00:09:37.040 You asked us. Yeti just a karayi. 96 00:09:37.980 --> 00:09:41.620 You said he's not, people wouldn't say if it was a yeti or not, 97 00:09:42.280 --> 00:09:51.960 but it's what the people say as a yeti, and it was heard in the same spot where his children actually saw a yeti just a few weeks later. 98 00:09:53.200 --> 00:09:55.020 What's happened to that? What radiation is yeti? 99 00:09:55.020 --> 00:10:03.320 Now the radiation equipment was just in the process of being set up by Barry Bishop as he was coming out, 100 00:10:04.020 --> 00:10:06.540 and that's all being tied in at the high hut. 101 00:10:06.980 --> 00:10:11.500 What's the highest previous penetration by man without the aid of artificial air? 102 00:10:12.140 --> 00:10:17.040 All people have been very high indeed. They've been to 28,000 feet without oxygen before, 103 00:10:17.740 --> 00:10:22.080 but they haven't done, our main interest is in long-term projects, 104 00:10:22.080 --> 00:10:27.400 living at these considerable heights for a matter of six or seven months. 105 00:10:27.780 --> 00:10:33.140 Have you accumulated any data yet from the people who are living at 19,000 feet right now? 106 00:10:33.260 --> 00:10:39.020 We've accumulated quite a lot of information, but there's been no attempt whatsoever to assess it or examine it. 107 00:10:39.620 --> 00:10:44.580 That type of work won't be done until after the expedition, all the material has been gathered. 108 00:10:45.540 --> 00:10:47.020 We haven't, we haven't... 109 00:11:33.120 --> 00:11:37.620 I never did of course start with any preconceived ideas about the yeti. 110 00:11:37.620 --> 00:11:43.620 I've always been somewhat skeptical, and I think much of our work has confirmed this belief. 111 00:11:43.700 --> 00:11:48.540 However, the yeti scalp we have here for which we can't give an explanation, 112 00:11:48.760 --> 00:11:52.060 I think does indicate that possibly, yeti man is not a man of the mind. 113 00:11:52.060 --> 00:11:57.760 It may have existed perhaps in the past, we hope we don't know, and that's what we're trying to find out. 114 00:11:58.700 --> 00:12:02.500 I'd like to ask Marlin Perkinson the same question there, sir. 115 00:12:02.720 --> 00:12:07.220 How do you feel after your expedition? How do you feel now about this? 116 00:12:07.500 --> 00:12:09.740 Do you think it's just a nice little story? 117 00:12:10.780 --> 00:12:18.980 I think the thing that Sir Edmund has just said is the feeling of most of the people who were on the expedition, 118 00:12:18.980 --> 00:12:28.140 including myself, that we entered this whole field with as open a mind as we possibly could have. 119 00:12:28.240 --> 00:12:33.800 We weren't trying to prove anything, whether that he existed or that he did not exist. 120 00:12:34.180 --> 00:12:44.980 We were trying to find the evidence to assess this and to come up with whatever answer would result from that. 121 00:12:44.980 --> 00:12:48.840 Do you think we'll have to wait just a little bit longer to have one over at Lincoln Bar too? 122 00:12:49.440 --> 00:12:54.000 I think we might have to wait a little bit longer before we have a living yeti there.