Jump to content

Almas (folklore)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Almas (animal))
"Voita" redirects here. For the Romanian village, see Brabova. For the theropod dinosaur, see Almas ukhaa.
Almas
Similar entitiesYeti, Bigfoot, Skunk ape
FolkloreCaucasian mythology, Turkic mythology
Other name(s)Almasty
RegionNorth Caucasus, Northern Asia, Central Asia and portions of Eastern Asia

In North Caucasian and Turkic folklore, an almas, alma or almasty, is a cryptid folk creature said to inhabit the Caucasus, Tian Shan and Pamir Mountains of Central Asia and the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia.[1][2]

Etymology

[edit]

The term "almas" and numerous variants thereof appear in Mongolian, Turkic languages and Iranian languages.[a][3][4]

Scholar P. R. Rinčen (aka Byambyn Rinchen[6]) in a 1964 paper also referred to the creature as "wild man" (Mongolian: kümün görügesü, cf. "kung-guressu" of Przhevalsky below), and commented that "the origin of the old name [Almas] is quite unknown … and it does not lend itself for translation in other languages".[7][b]

The name is connected to a variety of place names (toponyms) in southwestern Mongolia, including Almasyn Dobo ('the Hills of Almases'), Almasyn Ulan Oula ('the Red Mountains of Almases') and ('the Red Rocks of Almases').[7]

Folk belief in the almas in Oburkhangai and Bayankhongor has resulted in a name-avoidance taboo there, wherein the entities may be referred to as akhai, meaning 'uncle-brother'.[7]

The folk traditions of Darkhad include the deity Almas khara Tenguer, meaning 'Almas the Black God' and associated with highland prairies and mountain forests. According to Rinčen, the god may be offered edible wild roots and wild animal meat.[8]

Description

[edit]

Nikolay Przhevalsky describes the almas, as related to him under the name kung-guressu ("man-beast"), as follows:

"We were told that it had a flat face like that of a human being, and that it often walked on two legs, that its body was covered with a thick black fur, and its feet armed with enormous claws; that its strength was terrible, and that not only were hunters afraid of attacking it, but that the inhabitants removed their habitations from those parts of the country which it visited".[9]

Heaney suggests that the almas should be identified with the Arimaspi, a group of legendary humanoid creatures said to inhabit the Riphean Mountains.[5]

In science

[edit]

In 1964, a Soviet scientist from the Soviet Academy of Sciences proposed that the Almasti could be a relict population of Neanderthals still living in Siberia.[10]

In 1992, a group of scientists went on an expedition to search for the almas in the Caucasus Mountains.[11]

A 2014 study by Sykes et al. matched the genetic fingerprints of eight hair samples of the "almasty" all from Russia, and matched them to the Eurasian brown bear (Ursus arctos), horse (Equus caballus) and cattle (Bos taurus) and the American black bear and raccoon.[12]

The Sykes et al. (2014) also produced the controversial result that the golden-brown "yeti" sample from Ladakh[c] and the "yeti/migyhur" sample from Bhutan were a 100% match with a museum-held Pleistocene fossil polar bear, but not with any modern specimen.[12] This finding (on the 2 hair samples) has been refuted by Gutiérrez and Pine (June 2015) who concluded there was no reason to regarded these as anything but brown bear.[13] Ceiridwen J. Edwards and Ross Barnett (February 2014) also refuted the polar bear claim, and concluded the degradation of brown bear DNA to be the likely explanation.[d][14]

See also

[edit]

Explanatory notes

[edit]
  1. ^ Variants of the name include: Mongolian: Алмас (Almas), Chechen: Алмазы (Almazy), Turkish: Albıs/Albız or Albastı, Kazakh: Алмас (Almas), Russian: Алмасты (Almasty), Armenian: Ալմաս (Almas), Georgian: ალმასი (Almasi), and Kyrgyz: Алмасты (Almastı).
  2. ^ Rinčen also notes that Ivan T. Sanderson, one of the founders of the pseudoscience of cryptozoology, made attempts at explaining the name that are "absolutely inacceptable from the point of view of Mongolian philology."
  3. ^ Ladakh lies in eastern Kashmir and administered by India but borders China which disputes the sovereignty.
  4. ^ Edwards & Barnett also challenged Sykes et al.'s claim of 100% match to a Pleistocene bear as misstated in the first place, since there analysis showed 100% match to a modern polar bear in database, whereas the Pleistocene sample was off by a sequence at position 1675. Also the Pleistocene sample could be grouped with brown bears showing a C to T base mutation at position 1751.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Wenzel 2009, pp. 9–11, What Is The Almas?.
  2. ^ Wenzel 2009, p. 5, Introduction.
  3. ^ Mayor & Heaney 1993.
  4. ^ Ståhlberg, Sabira; Svanberg, Ingvar (2017). Piwowarczyk, Darius J. (ed.). "Wildmen in Central Asia". Anthropos. 112 (1). Sankt Augustin, Germany: Anthropos-Institut [de] (Academia Verlag): 51–62. doi:10.5771/0257-9774-2017-1-51. ISSN 0257-9774 – via Nomos eLibrary.
  5. ^ a b Mayor & Heaney 1993, pp. 53–54.
  6. ^ Cf. Rinčen as "Zhamtsarano's pupil"[5]
  7. ^ a b c Rinčen 1964, p. 186.
  8. ^ Rinčen 1964, pp. 186–187.
  9. ^ Przhevalskii, Nikolai (1876). Mongolia, the Tangut Country and the Solitudes of Northern Tibet. Vol. 2. Translated by Morgan, E. D. Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington. p. 249.
  10. ^ Sulzberger, Arthur Ochs (18 February 1964). "Soviet Scientist Believes 'Snowmen' Are Neanderthal Survivors". The New York Times. New York. p. 14. ISSN 0362-4331. OCLC 1645522.
  11. ^ "Almasty international". The Economist. Vol. 323, no. 7765. 27 June 1992. Gale document number A12378431.
  12. ^ a b Sykes, Bryan C.; Mullis, Rhettman A.; Hagenmuller, Christophe; Melton, Terry W.; Sartori, Michel (22 August 2014). "Genetic analysis of hair samples attributed to yeti, bigfoot and other anomalous primates". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 281 (1789): 20140161. doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.0161. ISSN 0962-8452. PMC 4100498. PMID 24990672; (html@zookeys.pensoft.net)
  13. ^ Gutiérrez, Eliécer; Pine, Ronald H. (16 June 2015). Helgen, Kristofer M. [in German] (ed.). "No need to replace an "anomalous" primate (Primates) with an "anomalous" bear (Carnivora, Ursidae)". ZooKeys (487): 141–154. doi:10.3897/zookeys.487.9176. ISSN 1313-2970. PMC 4366689. PMID 25829853.
  14. ^ Edwards, Ceiridwen J.; Barnett, Ross (7 February 2015). "Himalayan 'yeti' DNA: polar bear or DNA degradation? A comment on 'Genetic analysis of hair samples attributed to yeti'". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 282 (1800): 20140161. doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.1712. ISSN 0962-8452. PMC 4298200. PMID 25520353; (html@zookeys.pensoft.net)

Sources

[edit]

Further reading

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Almas_(folklore)&oldid=1283155089"