Episode Twelve: YETI! Part I
Photographs of so-called ‘Yeti’ footprints taken by Eric Shipton on the British Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition, 1951
Western climbers have been trekking the Himalayas for over a hundred years, and through all that time they have been bringing back stories of a mysterious ape-like creature they called the Abominable Snowman, or the Yeti.
In this episode hosts Ana and Luca explore how the modern myth of the Yeti was created. What role has it played in the wild history of Himalayan mountaineering? What is the Yeti in the Western consciousness, and how does he differ from similar beings in Tibetan, Nepali and Bhutanese belief systems? Whether he's real or not is irrelevant: how did he first appear, and why did we keep 'meeting' him?
Part 2 of our Yeti episodes will follow in 2 weeks.
Check out our website and find us @themaydaypod on Instagram and Twitter to say hello. Our amazing composer and producer Marlon Grunden can be found at his website marlongrunden.com
Sources & further reading:
Graham Hoyland, Yeti: An Abominable History
Bryan Sykes, Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Last Neanderthal: A Geneticist’s Search for Modern Apemen
Reinhold Messner, My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas’ Deepest Mystery
Edmund Hillary, High Adventure: Our Ascent of the Everest
Edmund Hillary and Desmond Doig, High in the Thin Cold Air
Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero, Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids
Eric Shipton, The Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition