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Bristol experts hunt for yeti in Himalayas
Is there a rational explanation for the legend of the Yeti? That’s the question asked by a team of Bristol filmmakers from Icon Films who travelled to the Himalayas with leading international geneticists using cutting-edge DNA analysis to examine the evidence.
The team travelled with scientist Mark Evans to Nepal’s wild Tibetan frontier in search of possible Yeti remains that have never been scientifically tested.
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They collected ancient flesh from what is claimed to be a Yeti hand in a crumbling palace, a shaving of alleged Yeti leg bone kept by a herbal healer, and a clump of fur that a yak herder believes could also be from a Yeti.
Other samples include 40-year-old remains from a monastery in India, and fur from a strange-looking bear shot by a Nazi SS expedition hoping to find evidence of a superhuman species related to Aryans.
“I was never a believer,” says James Mair, assistant producer of Yeti: Myth, Man or Beast? which is broadcast on Sunday, May 29 at 8pm on Channel 4.
“But I have always felt that pervasive legends come from something. They don’t come from nowhere.”
Director Steve Gooder agrees as we sit in Icon Films’ boardroom overlooking College Green, Bristol Cathedral about the equivalent distance away as the filmmakers were from Nepal, tantalisingly just out of reach but from where many of the Yeti legends emanate.
Gooder describes himself as a failed academic who then became a researcher at a TV company and who now loves combining science with storytelling.
“The Yeti myth is based on something quite real,” Gooder says. “Legends are more likely to endure for long periods if they are based on something more dramatic or real.
“Others say it’s just a cautionary tale to stop children from wandering off the beaten track so they don’t get eaten by bears.”
Yeti: Myth, Man or Beast? is broadcast on Sunday, May 29 at 8pm on Channel 4
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