Soviet Sasquatch

Soviet historian and social scientist Boris Porshnev began looking into unknown primates in 1957, prompted by accounts of the Yeti in the Himalayas. He wondered whether comparable beings might live within the Soviet Union's territory in parts of Europe and Asia. With approval from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he set up a Commission to investigate the 'Snowman'. After he published an article in Pravda, he received more than a thousand reports from across the country. Together they described a wild creature more closely related to humans than any known species, thought to survive in mountain regions throughout Asia.

A 1958 expedition to the Pamirs of Tajikistan was meant to pursue the most promising of these leads, but senior figures in the scientific establishment redirected its purpose, and it produced little. Porshnev's standing declined from that point. His proposal that the Asian wildman reports could be explained by surviving Neanderthals drew criticism, including one attack that questioned his sanity. When he wrote a defence of his views, Moscow would not publish it, so it appeared instead in a literary magazine in Kazakhstan.

In 1963 he compiled a book that drew together the Commission's evidence, studies from other parts of the world, and material from history. Building on this, he sketched a consistent portrait of the creature and considered its possible connection to Neanderthal man. He never completed the work. About 180 copies of a preliminary version were sent to colleagues in Moscow, and then the book vanished for decades. With help from Porshnev's family, the manuscript reached the West, where it now appears in English translation, with notes, maps, illustrations and an index.

The book offers a fresh perspective on the Yeti and Bigfoot, and on the possibility that human ancestors survive into the present day.