Tajikistan apeman expedition
RICHARD FREEMAN and company carry on up the Romit Valley in search of some aggressive and rapey apemen (and women) – the fabled and rather terrifying guls of Tajikistan...
Two cryptozoologists and a reporter walk into a pub…
The venue is Mr Fogg’s Tavern, a Victorian theme pub on St Martin’s Lane in London’s Covent Garden. Our meeting place is a little conceit of mine: after all, between the three of us we must be at least as well travelled as JulesVerne’s eponymous globe-trotting adventurer.
Dr Chris Clark has been on almost every expedition the Centre for Fortean Zoology has ever mounted, and for some years had expressed an interest in visiting the Central Asian country of Tajikistan. The idea was to search for relic hominins, possible offshoots of one of the ancestors of humans or their relatives. In the 1950s, during the Soviet era, Russian polymath Boris Porshnev had visited the country with the Snowman Commission (see FT298:30-34,
315:40-44) and had spoken to many witnesses whose sightings reached back into the 19th century. 1
Looking online for more recent sightings, I had stumbled across an article entitled “Tajikistan: Search for the Yeti” in the online magazine
Standpoint. The author was a journalist called Ben Judah, who had written the piece back in 2010. In it he recounts visiting the RomitValley and meeting witnesses, people who claimed to have seen – and even to have been attacked by – hairy, man-like beasts whom they feared more than the mujahideen. Judah’s own guide had been chased by a black-haired creature with dangling breasts 10 years previously while out searching for firewood in the mountains. Travelling around the region, Judah talked to more witnesses: another man attacked by a black-haired female creature; one who saw a manlike beast attack his donkey; and a youth of 15 who’d watched a hairy, monkey-like creature climbing over rocks just four days before – despite the fact that there are no monkeys in Tajikistan. The author could not decide if what was being described was a living creature or a living myth. I decided to contact him.
And so we sat in the pub and talked hominins over gin and roast beef. Ben told us that almost every person he’d spoken to in the RomitValley had seen one of the creatures or knew someone who had. The local name for the beast was gul – an Arabic
The creatures were described as mansized, hairy, and with a foul smell
word meaning ‘to tear’. In Middle Eastern folklore these were desertdwelling, human-like demons who emerged at night to feed on human corpses: it is from gul that we derive the world ghoul.
The creatures were generally described as man-sized, hairy, with monkey-like faces and a foul smell. They seemed to be far smaller than the yeti, and more like the almasty of Russia, which we had previously mounted an expedition to search for (see FT246:46-52)). Ben was still undecided as to the nature of the gul, wondering if it were flesh or fable. He had noted, though, that as his travels took him above the tree line and into the Pamir Mountains, the stories of the
gul dried up. I suggested that if these stories were just make-believe, then they would surely have been carried to the communities who lived in the barren wastes above the tree line; but a real creature needs food and shelter and would, of necessity, be a forest dweller.
Ben had hoped to accompany us on the mooted expedition, but sadly could not get financial backing from any of the newspapers or magazines he wrote for. However, we would instead be joined by Dave Archer, another stalwart of CFZ expeditions and an eyewitness to the orangpendek of Sumatra. With the most recent sightings emanating from the RomitValley, it was there we decided to head.
ARRIVAL
In June of 2018 we found ourselves in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital city. We were met at the airport by our guide, interpreter and fixer, a young man named Daldat. We paid a quick visit to the local museum, where there was a display of Neanderthal tools
and a curious reconstruction of a family of hominins with Neanderthal-like faces but gorilla-like bodies, down on all fours with bowed legs and ape-like feet.
The next day, we travelled to the north east, leaving civilisation behind and heading for the twin forks of the Romit Valley. The mountains looked nothing like the Alpine peaks of my imagination and more like those of Greece. The region is well watered by rivers and streams, but the earth itself seemed dusty, stony and dry. Nevertheless, the land was highly productive, with mulberries, plums, walnuts, cherries, apples and pears all growing wild, and bears, wolves, lynx, deer, and mountain goats inhabiting the area. Both forks had rivers running along them and small villages dotted along their length, the mountains rising steeply on either side.
Eventually, we reached our first camp area, close to a farm on the lower reaches of the lower fork of the Romit. After breakfast the next day we walked down the valley to the village of Tavish. On the way, we met an old man walking the dusty path beside the Kafirnigan River. We stopped and, through Daldat, asked if he knew of the gul. The man said he had never seen one, but he had heard about them. We asked him to describe the creature to the best of his knowledge. His first words were: “Its thumbs are placed further back on the hand than a human’s.” This seemed strange, but we were to hear this comment time and time again. The man went on to say that the gul was covered in hair, had long arms, a barrel chest and was very muscular, and that several people in the village claimed to have seen it.
VILLAGE WITNESSES
In the village, Daldat asked around and soon several men came forward to tell their stories. The first was a biology teacher called Raga Bali. About seven or eight years ago, he’d been camped some 18 miles (30km) up the valley, where he and some others were cutting grass for livestock fodder. Sleeping in a tent, he’d been awoken by a noise outside. It was about 3am, but the bright moonlight made him think it was morning. He could hear the donkey stamping and braying, and looking out he saw a strange, hairy creature about 23ft (7m) away. It was about 5ft 5in (1.7m) tall and standing in a somewhat stooped position. Its eyes shone in the moonlight and it had a monkey-like face, black hair and long arms. The thumbs were set well back on the hands and the fingernails were black. It looked muscular, but not as massive as a gorilla. It seemed to be trying to strangle the donkey with the rope used to tether it to a tree. The struggling ass broke free and the gul ran off. Raga Bali found man-like tracks on the ground where the thing had stood.
We showed him a selection of pictures. These included a gorilla, an orangutan, reconstructions of Homo habilis,
Homo erectus, Neanderthal man and
Australopithecus africanus and various illustrations of the yeti, sasquatch and skunk ape. Instantly, he chose Justin Osbourn’s excellent cover illustration for Lyle Blackburn’s book on the Fouke Monster,
The Beast of Boggy Creek. The picture shows a dark-haired skunk ape with yellow eyes slouching through a swamp. Raga Bali was particular in saying that the hands were very like those of the creature he saw. He also told us that there was a stone shack further up the river, now abandoned. Years ago, an old man had lived there alone, and during the night something would throw rocks at the roof. The old man had told him it was a gul.
A second man, Zai Dim, had an even stranger tale. There are many honey farms along the Romit, where bee-keeping is big business. In 1982, he was driving from a village further up the valley to deliver some hives to Tavish. It was around three in the morning. As he approached a wooded area he saw a hairy animal that he took to be a bear run across the road in front of his car. It disappeared down a slope and into some trees. Zai Dim stopped the car and tried to get a closer look at the creature, but he could not see it. Thinking it had vanished into the trees, he turned to go back to his car.
Suddenly, something grabbed him from behind. Turning around, he was faced by a creature covered in dark yellow hair, with a human-like face, wide cheekbones and slanting yellow eyes. It was clearly female, with drooping, hairless breasts. It slouched, but stood on two legs, and was about five and a half feet (1.7m) tall. As the gul grappled with him, he saw that its thumbs were placed far back on the hands and it gripped with its fingers alone. The creature wrestled him to the floor and pinned him down, and he could smell its foul breath. They struggled for some minutes before he got an arm free and punched the creature in the face. It let go of him, and he ran for his car and locked himself inside. The creature retreated into the forest. Zai Dim said he was ill for weeks afterwards – a claim made by several other witnesses, possibly pointing to post traumatic stress.
Interestingly, he felt that the attack had not been motivated by aggression but because the creature had wanted to mate with him. Again, when shown the illustrations and photographs, Zai Dim chose the Fouke Monster as closest to the creature he saw.
The third witness was a man called Gulmond. One morning, when it was still dark, he was walking along the valley about 19 miles (30km) from Tavish, taking food to his parents who were working on a farm. He noticed a figure walking behind him and, suddenly, a hand grabbed his arm. He saw that it was not a human hand but had thumbs placed far back. Turning, he saw a female
gul covered in dark, camel-coloured hair, with drooping breasts and a foul smell. It tugged at his arm as he tried to pull away, and splashed him with water from the river. As the Sun rose, it ran away. Gulmond, like Zai Dim, felt that the creature’s intentions were sexual rather than violent. Like the other two witnesses, he selected the Fouke Monster illustration as being most like the creature he saw.
When we returned to camp we found the owner of the land, a man called She Rali, had returned. He was a park ranger who’d had several encounters with the gul over the past 10 years. At first, he’d had rocks thrown at him by an unknown assailant in his orchard. Then, one morning, he saw an upright, apelike creature looking up into a walnut tree; it ran away when it saw him. Another time, he saw a female gul from only 16 ft (5m) away. The creature seemed to point to his groin before running away. In June of 2017 he got an even closer look. He was re-routing a stream to irrigate his crops when something grabbed him from behind and hugged him, letting go when he turned around and fleeing into the forest. It appeared to be a female gul with dark yellow hair, drooping breasts and a vile smell. It had a flat nose with a wide face and cheekbones. Again, the witness emphasised the thumbs being far back on the hands and thought the creature was interested in mating with him. When shown the cards, She Rali picked out a reconstruction of a yeti as closest to what he had seen, but said that the hands were different.
A couple of days later, we visited the village of Sorbu gi Dakana, where we spoke with another witness, Aka Jon, who told us of his experience back in 1978. He had been out harvesting walnuts with friends in the RomitValley, where they camped. Some time after they had retired, he had looked out of the tent to see a male gul crouched and warming itself by the fire. It had long black hair and when it stood up was as tall as a man. Its face was like a man’s but broader, and the neck was so short that the head looked as if it sat directly on the creature’s shoulders. The gul, as in other accounts, smelled bad. When it saw him, it ran away.
Aka Jon had heard that in the next village, back in 1956-57, there was a disabled man who had visited the forest on a regular basis to have sex with a female gul. One day he was found dead there. In the 1940s, a friend had taken a shot at a gul and missed. Some days later he was found dead in his home, and the locals believed that the creature had killed him in revenge.
SON OF THE APEMAN
The next day, assisted by witness Raga Bali, we drove up the valley and found the now abandoned shack he had mentioned at our last meeting. It was a simple stone building of one storey with a slate roof through which tall trees were now growing. Raga Bali told us he had heard a tale about a woman who had lived in a similarly remote house in the Romit Valley. Her husband had passed away and she lived alone. One night, a male gul broke into her house and raped her, or so the story went.
2 She later bore a hybrid son – half gul, half human. The boy lived with his mother until her death. He was then taken in by relations in a town called Chuyangaron about 20 miles (32km) away. He was apparently a little slow but otherwise normal and still lived in the town.
I had heard similar human/hominin hybrid stories involving the yeti in the Himalayas, the sasquatch in the US, the almasty in Russia and the didi in Guyana. Sceptical as I was, I thought it might be worthwhile to try and find the youth. So, a few days later, after some failed attempts to capture anything on film with camera traps and night vision cameras (a split-second glimpse of something hunched, grey and hairy proved to be a false alarm in the shape of a crested porcupine) we broke camp and travelled to Chuyangaron to see if we could locate the man who was supposed to be half gul.
All we had to go on was that he lived near a mosque: there were two in Chuyangaron, one old and one new. We asked a young man outside the new mosque if he had heard of the story. He hadn’t, but said he could take us to the old mosque, where he asked around and found an old man who was apparently familiar with the tale and invited us in for lunch to tell us what he knew.
It turned out that what we had been told was not strictly accurate. The man in question was not a youth – indeed he was now dead. His name was Yattin and he had been born in 1956 and had died a couple of years ago, aged 60. Yattin was indeed supposedly half
gul, and it was known that his mother had been raped by such a creature. He himself was totally normal. He had married and had twins, who unfortunately died, but his wife had later given birth to a daughter who was still alive. The mother having also passed away, the daughter now lived with a female guardian in a suburb of the town. Daldat took down the details and we decided to try and visit her. Of course, three Englishmen couldn’t just roll up, bang on the door and ask “Excuse me, but was your father half apeman?”, so Daldat suggested he would tell the girl’s guardian that we were three of Yattin’s old friends, come to pay our respects and meet his daughter.
We arrived at the house and were met by the woman who looked after Yattin’s daughter, who was very accommodating and introduced us to the girl. Her name was Moha, and though she could tell us her name she could not tell us how old she was. The guardian said she was 19. Moha looked perfectly normal, thickset with a broad face and bushy eyebrows, but clearly with nothing other than modern human genes. However, she did suffer from some intellectual disability; perhaps this was the origin of the whole hybrid story – a sort of ‘changeling’ tale, which could have been used to explain Moha’s condition.
The guardian brought out some old passport photos of Yattin himself. He too was thickset with a broad face, flat nose, a black and white beard, and a thick, Brezhnevstyle monobrow. Like his daughter, he was clearly a modern human. We now know that early modern humans did cross-breed with other hominins including Neanderthals, Denisovans and hominins only known from the genetic material they left in modern man. Any hybrid of a human and some kind of hominin would have shown primitive characteristics that neither Yattin or Moha displayed.
DEAD GULS TELL NO TALES
Our next destination was the upper fork of the RomitValley. We stopped at the first village, Qhyshan. Here, we visited the mosque and spoke to a group of village elders who were very glad to help and shared much information about the gul.
We were told of a man named Zanadren who’d had an encounter around 10 to 15 years ago. He had been cutting firewood in the mountains. When he sat down he was attacked by a male gul. It forced him to the ground but he was able to hit it with an axe. The gul then fled. Sometime around 1990, we were told, two hunters were camping in the mountains. They had built a fire, made camp and were soon asleep. In the night, a female gul grabbed one of the men and clutched at his penis. He pulled a burning stick from the fire and drove the creature off.
Another story involved a shepherd who was tending his flock in the mountains when a gul appeared and blocked his way. The man struck the creature with a stick and killed it. If there is any truth to this story, the gul must have been a very young specimen. A blow from a stick wielded by a human would not kill an adult chimpanzee: apes are strong creatures with thick skulls and a ABOVE LEFT: Yattin’s passport photo shows that he was quite clearly a normal modern human and not the half-man, half-ape hybrid of local legend. ABOVE RIGHT: Yattin’s surviving daughter, Moha, who now lives with her female guardian in the town of Chuyangaron.
One night, a male gul broke into the woman’s house and raped her
lot of muscle mass, and most hominins from the fossil record seem to share these traits. The body was seen by other villagers and apparently looked like a man, but covered in black and yellow hair.
Another story featured a man who went into the mountains to search for a hunter who had vanished. The man carried a gun for self-defence. One night, as he slept, a gul grabbed him and tried to drag him away by the legs. He managed to seize his rifle and shoot the creature dead. The men did not know what happened to either of the bodies in these stories, but they all believed that the gul is some form of wild man. As we drove further up the valley the trees grew sparser and the temperature dropped. On the road we met a man called Abdula who claimed to have seen two guls. One he had encountered about six years ago while out hunting with dogs. It was man-like, covered in black hair and had a human-like face with a protruding jaw line. The dogs attacked the creature, which defended itself by throwing rocks. It could run both on all fours and upright like a man, and escaped by running away into the mountains. His second sighting had been just four years ago. He was riding a donkey along the same road we were now on when the animal stopped and would go no further. He saw a creature hiding behind a rock. At first, he thought it was a bear, but then he saw it was a gul that looked very similar to the one he had encountered previously, with black hair and a prognathous jaw. It loped off on all fours like a gorilla.
Over the next few days we hiked further up the river valley. We met a honey farmer called Asid, who invited us in for tea. He had not seen a gul himself, he said, but his father had. His father had a machine for kneading dough, powered by the flow of the river. A female gul would sometimes come around and steal the dough. His father had told him not to be afraid of her.
On the way back down the valley we took tea with a group of honey farmers. One of them, a young bee keeper called Kaseem, had seen a pair of guls a few years ago. He was working with another man in a waterpowered mill in one of the streams upriver that led down to the Sardai-Miyona. The mill wheel stopped turning, so Kaseem went upstream to see what had caused the blockage. He discovered two man-like creatures sitting in the stream and blocking the flow of water. They appeared to be a male and a female. The female was human-sized, the male somewhat larger. They had humanlike faces, were covered with black hair and gave off a foul smell. As soon as the creatures saw Kaseem they became aggressive and chased him back to the mill. He and the other man locked themselves inside the mill as the creatures banged on the door and leapt up onto the roof. The guls prowled around the mill for an hour. The second man, a mullah, who claimed to have seen the creatures before, tried to calm Kaseem down as he was panicking. Eventually, the guls gave up and left.
GRAPPLING WITH THE GUL
So what are we to make of the gul? Before visiting Tajikistan, I’d thought the creature would most likely be the same putative species as Russia’s almasty. However, the accounts we collected suggest the two are quite different. The almasty could, according to witnesses, reach seven and a half feet (2.3m) tall, while the gul was more like an average man in height, if far broader across the shoulders. More telling is the strange structure of the hand. All the witnesses stressed that the thumbs were set further back on the hand than a human’s – it was invariably the first thing they mentioned. If you were going to make up a story about a monster, surely the placement of its thumbs would hardly be top of your list of things to talk about. The hands of fossil hominins such as Homo
erectus or Homo habilis are much like those of modern man in structure, with a more opposable grip. Even the more primitive Australopithacines, a primitive subfamily of Africa-based hominids that flourished between two to four million years ago, had a hand structure more man-like than apelike. The shape of the hands of the gul, as described by witnesses, is more like those of a chimpanzee or of Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4-million-year-old hominin twice as ancient as Homo habilis. Does this mean that the gul is a descendent of Ardipithecus
ramidus or one of its relations? Possibly, but not necessarily: the strange hand shape may be a relatively recent development, or a plesiomorphic trait; that is, an ancestral feature retained by a modern organism. It could be a feature that allows the creatures to climb with ease, much like the orang-utan with its reduced thumbs and elongated fingers.
All this is just speculation. Only a specimen could answer these riddles; and only then would we know whether the gul represents a whole new chapter in hominology or is nothing more than the product of local folklore.