Unit 1 Tales of the unexplained 背景材料 文章

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2024年3月14日发(作者：)

Yeti: Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas

A tibetian fortress below the mountains were the Yeti is supposed to roam.

The Himalaya Mountains, the highest range on Earth, have been referred to as the

"roof of the world." If that is so, there is a mystery called the Yeti in our attic. In Tibetan

the word means "magical creature" and truly it is a seemingly supernatural enigma in

the shape of a hairy, biped creature that resembles a giant ape.

The Himalayas lie on the border between India, Nepal, and Tibet (now part of

China). They are remote and forbidding. Large stretches around these rough valleys and

peaks are uninhabited. The tallest mountain in the world, Everest, 29,028 feet high, lies

half in Nepal, half in China. It is from Nepal, though, that most attempts to climb Everest,

and the surrounding mountains, are made.

In Katmandu, the capitol of Nepal, a visitor finds himself immersed in the Yeti

legend. He is a commercial money maker for the tourist industry (there's even a Hotel

named the "Yak and the Yeti") as well as legend, religion and fantasy to some of the

Nepalese people.

The first reliable report of the Yeti appeared in 1925 when a Greek photographer,

N. A. Tombazi, working as a member of a British geological expedition in the Himalayas,

was shown a creature moving in the distance across some lower slopes. The creature

was almost a thousand feet away in a naira with an altitude of around 15,000 feet.

"Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking

upright and stopping occasionally to uproot or pull at some dwarf rhododendron

bushes," said Tombazi, "It showed up dark against the snow and, as far as I could make

out wore no clothes."

The creature disappeared before Tombazi could take a photograph and was not

seen again. The group was descending, though, and the photographer went out of his

way to see the ground were he had spotted the creature. Tombazi found footprints in

the snow.

"They were similar in shape to those of a man, but only six to seven inches long by

four inches wide at the broadest part of the foot. The marks of five distinct toes and the

instep were perfectly clear, but the trace of the heel "

There were 15 prints to be found. Each was one and one half to two feet apart.

Then Tombazi lost the trail in thick brush. When the locals were asked to name the

beast he'd seen they told him it was a "Kanchenjunga demon." Tombazi didn't think

he'd seen a demon, but he couldn't figure out what the creature was either. Perhaps

he'd seen a wandering Buddhist or Hindu ascetic or hermit. As the years went by though

and other Yeti stories surfaced, Tombazi began to wonder if he'd seen one too.

Yeti reports usually come in the form of tracks found, pelts offered, shapes seen at

a distance, or rarely, actual face-to-face encounters with the creatures. Face to face

encounters never come with researchers looking for the Yeti, but with locals who

stumble into the creature during their daily lives.

Some of the best tracks ever seen were found and photographed by British

mountaineers Eric Shipton and Micheal Ward in 1951. They found them on the

southwestern slopes of the Menlung Glacier, which lies between Tibet and Nepal, at an

altitude of 20,000 feet. Each print was thirteen inches wide and some eighteen inches

long. The tracks seemed fresh and Shipton and Ward followed the trail for a mile before

it disappeared in hard ice.

Some scientists that viewed the

photographs could not identify the tracks

as from any known creature. Others,

though, felt it was probably the trail of a

languor monkey or red bear. They noted

the tracks in snow, melted by the sun, can

change shape and grow larger. Even so, the

bear/monkey theory seems unlikely as both of these animals normally move on all four

feet. The tracks were clearly that of a biped.

Shipton's and Ward's reputations argue against a hoax on their part and the

remoteness and height of the trail's location argues against them being hoaxed.

Shipton's footprints were not the first or last discovered by climbers among the

Himalayas. Even Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, on their

record ascent to the top of Mount Everest, in 1953, found giant foot prints on the way

up.

One of the more curious reports of a close encounter with a Yeti occurred in 1938.

Captain d'Auvergue, the curator of the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta, India, was

traveling the Himalayas by himself when he became snow-blind. As he neared death

from exposure he was rescued by a nine foot tall Yeti that nursed him back to health

until d'Auvergue was able to return home by himself.

In many other stories, though, the Yeti hasn't been so benign. One Sherpa girl, who

was tending her yaks, described being surprised by a large ape-like creature with black

and brown hair. It started to drag her off, but seemed to be startled by her screams and

let her go. It then savagely killed two of her yaks. She escaped with her life and the

incident was reported to the police, who found footprints.

Several expeditions have been organized to track down the Yeti, but none have

found more than footprints and questionable artifacts like scalps and hides. The London

Daily Mail sent an expedition in 1954. American oil men Tom Slick and F. Kirk Johnson

financed trips in 1957, 58, and 59. Probably the most well-known expedition went in

1960.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the same man that had first climbed Everest in 1953, lead the

1960 trip in association with Desmond Doig. The expedition was sponsored by the

World Book Encyclopedia and was well outfitted with trip-wire cameras, as well as

time-lapse and infrared photography. Despite a ten-month stay the group failed to find

any convincing evidence of the existence of the Yeti. The artifacts they examined, two

skins and a scalp, turned out to belong to two blue bears and a sorrow goat.

At the time Hillary and Doig wrote off the Yeti as legend. Later, though, Doig

decided that the expedition had been too big and clumsy. They didn't see a Yeti, he

agreed, but nor did they observe such animals like the snow leopard which was known

to exist.

After spending thirty years in the Himalayas Doig believes that the Yeti is actually

three animals. The first is what the Sherpas call the "dzu teh." Large shaggy animals that

often attack cattle. Diog thinks this is probably the Tibetan blue bear. A creature so rare

it is known only in the west through a few skins, bones and a skull. The second type,

called "thelma," is probably a gibbon (a known type of ape) that Diog thinks may live as

far north as Nepal, though it's never been spotted past the Brahmaputra River in India.

The third Yeti, "mih teh," is the true abominable snowman of legend. A savage ape,

covered with black or red hair that lives at altitudes of up to 20,000 feet.

So far there is no firm evidence to support the existence of the Yeti, but there is no

way show that he doesn't exist either. If he indeed lives in the barren, frozen, upper

reaches of the Himalayas where few men dare to tread, he may find his refuge safe for a

long time to come.

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