Scientists at Edinburgh Zoo have solved the mystery of a yeti finger taken from Nepal more than 50 years ago.

The mummified remains have been held in the Royal College of Surgeons museum in London since the 1950s.

After being lost for some years, it was just recently rediscovered during cataloguing.

A DNA sample analysed by the zoo’s genetic expert Dr Rob Ogden finally revealed the finger’s true origins.

Following DNA tests it has found to be human bone.

The yeti, also known as the Abominable Snowman, is a legendary giant ape-like creature said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal and Tibet.

Despite the lack of evidence of its existence, the yeti myth retains a strong appeal in both Nepal and the west, where it became popular in the 19th century.

The finger, which was said to be from a yeti, was taken from a Nepalese monastery by an American explorer in the 1950s.

He replaced it with a human finger he had been given by a British scientist.

It was then smuggled out of India with the help of Hollywood actor James Stewart, who hid the artefact in his wife’s lingerie case.

It was later sent to the Royal College of Surgeons museum where it remained ever since. The College gave permission for the DNA test to take place.

Dr Rob Ogden, of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, said: “We had to stitch it together. We had several fragments that we put into one big sequence and then we matched that against the database and we found human DNA.

“So it wasn’t too surprising but it was obviously slightly disappointing that you hadn’t discovered something brand new.

“Human was what we were expecting and human is what we got.”

Primatologist Ian Redmond said: “From what we know of accounts of Yetis, I would have expected a more robust and longer finger and possibly with some hair on the back.

“If one had just found it without the story attached to it, I think you would think it was a human finger.

Here is a 1959 letter from the US embassy in Kathmandu to the State Department, outlining the regulations to be adhered to for mountain climbing expeditions in search of the Yeti.

The document was recently found in the files of the National Archives.

It seems that while the Nepal government was concerned for the safety of the legendary monster, they also wanted to control the flow of any news and images (and actual specimens) confirming the creature’s existence:

Click for larger image

For centuries, and particularly in the past decade, there have been reports of strange, hairy hominids roaming around Siberia – one of the world’s most remote regions.

Some people believe that these beings are probably the remnants of a Neanderthal-type race of humans. Others say that they may be a form of great ape.

Now government officials in Siberia are going to officially investigate these strange claims:

Government officials in Siberia are planning to set up a special research institute dedicated to the study of yetis following a number of recent mysterious sightings of the folkloric creature.

Hominology experts, who are lined up to lead the studies at Kemerovo University, are eager to prove their existence after people in remote parts of the region claim to have caught a glimpse of the elusive being.

According to 15 witness statements by Siberian locals in the Kemerovo region, 7-ft tall, hairy, manlike creatures have been spotted wandering the Mount Shoria wilderness, with one man even claiming to have saved a yeti from drowning in a river while hunting.

Villager, Afanasy Kiskorov in Tashtagol reportedly witnessed the yeti activity first-hand. He said: “Their bodies were covered in red-and-black fur and they could climb trees. The creature was screaming in fear after falling into a swollen mountain river.”

Despite the alleged sightings, no photographic evidence as yet confirms the existence of the ‘abominable snowmen.’

However, hair specimens, large footprints and huge branch shelters in forests have fuelled scientific belief to traces of the yetis, described as the ‘Neanderthal ancestors of man.’

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Dushanbe is not a real city. It isn’t a real capital and Tajikistan is not a real country. The northern neighbour of Afghanistan is a failure with a flag, shiny passports and a gang of savvy criminals that calls itself a government. This buffer between the empires fell apart a long time ago.

The city has leafy boulevards laid out in an almost utopian socialist grid. The streets are quiet but on balmy Asian nights the streets come alive with drug mega-barons racing their SUVs, blaring out rap music and tossing a few coins at the impoverished police officers — teenagers in uniform — if anybody gets in their way. These boulevards are a Soviet mirage, a Potemkin city which was initially named after a dictator — Stalinabad. It became Dushanbe in 1961 as part of Khruschev’s de-Stalinisation.

Dushanbe is a hodge-podge of dirt tracks, sodden sewage holes, tiny whitewashed homes with corrugated-iron roofs. It swarms with under-fives, their veiled mothers, jobless dads, chickens and a nocturnal orchestra of wild dogs. Dushanbe is a slum for more than 650,000 people and the capital of a country where 70 per cent live in abject rural poverty. Tajikistan has soaring birth-rates, rising illiteracy, fraudulent elections, de-urbanisation and a 1,200km border with Afghanistan.

Rakhmatillo Zoirov has vacant pale eyes. His slacks are fraying. He lives in a dilapidated, garbage-strewn row of flats overlooking a desolate motorway. Repairmen have been absent since the fall of communism and children play gangsters in courtyards of broken glass. No one takes schooling here seriously. Zoirov is the only opposition politician publically to criticise the dictatorial leader Emomali Rakhmon.

Read the whole article here: Standpoint Magazine