In the late 1960s, a Soviet historian became fascinated with reports of a giant ape-like beast roaming the mountains of Central Asia. His obsession led him to develop an elaborate theory that these sightings were not of a mysterious cryptid, but of surviving Neanderthals who had endured since the last ice age.

Born in 1905, Boris Porshnev was a Soviet historian who dedicated much of his career

to studying mainstream academic topics, like popular uprisings in 17th-century France and the Thirty Years’ War. However, his scholarly pursuits were later peppered with an unorthodox interest in cryptozoology, especially the strange reports of the so-called Almas.

For centuries, reports of the Almas have emerged from people living within the mountain system of Central and East Asia, including Mongolia, the Altai and Tian Shan Mountains, Xinjiang, Gansu and Qinghai in China, and the Tuva Republic in Siberia.

As reports continued to surface, Porshnev secured approval from the Soviet Academy of Sciences in the 1950s to formally investigate the Almas. In 1958, he led an expedition to the Pamirs of Tajikistan, accompanied by a team of folklore experts, geologists, and botanists. After collecting a load of anecdotal reports about local sightings, the commission compiled a 400-page report on the topic, concluding that the Almas was most likely real and residing in the region between the Tian Shan, Pamir, and Mongolia. 

After the expedition, Porshnev began to suggest that the Almas were, in fact, a living Neanderthal. He had flirted with the idea in previous publications, but it was most explicitly laid out in his 1974 book called L’Homme de Néanderthal est toujours vivant (French for Neanderthal Man is Still Alive), co-authored with explorer and prominent cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans.

“One must say that Porshnev and I were both quite convinced of the existence of wild hairy men in the broadest and loosest sense,” Heuvelmans wrote in the intro to Porshnev’s other book, The Struggle for Troglodytes.

“However, there was a point on which we never managed to agree: I saw the Himalayan snowman as an anthropoid ape while Porshnev saw an actual human, more specifically a Neanderthal man survivor from the recent Pleistocene,” he added. Fossilized remains of the extinct hominin species have been uncovered in this part of world.

You can read more from IFL Science’s article Here

But what do you think about his theory? I have always been on a line believing more that what ever this creature turns out to be, they have likely been here along. After all we know now thanks to more recent findings that several different types of hominids were existing side by side, might the infamous cryptid wandering out forests be one of them. I think yes. Man? Ape? Something in between most likely.

Maybe some day we’ll know for sure, hopefully in our lifetime…

Have a great day everyone and please I’d love to hear your thoughts…