Captive wild man being tamed by virtuous woman - Swiss tapestry, late 1400s
Homo sapiens was not the only species of human named and recognised by Linnaeus when publishing Systema Naturae, his revolutionary binomial system of zoological classification, in 1735. Among several others was Homo ferus, the wild man, which according to Linnaeus was covered in hair, moved on all fours, was mute, and lived apart from H. sapiens in forests, hills, and mountains. Today, none of Linnaeus’s ‘other’ species of human is recognised by mainstream science.
Bestiary depiction of European wild man
Nevertheless, his European wild man, also known as the woodwose or wudewasa, has such a richly intertwined history of folklore, depictions in medieval art and architecture, and reported true-life encounters, including certain very recent ones, that some cryptozoologists and primatologists wonder whether such beings might indeed have existed in the not-too-distant past, and may even still linger on today in some of Europe’s more remote, secluded localities. But what could they be? As will be seen from the following selection of cases, several very different identities could be involved, collectively yielding a composite, polyphyletic woodwose entity rather than any single-origin, monophyletic being.
Woodwoses (Albrecht Dürer, 1499)
WILD MEN, OR FERAL CHILDREN?
Linnaeus himself delineated various subcategories of Homo ferus, of which the most significant was Juvenis lupinus hessensis – ‘wolf boys’, or feral children. That is, children believed to have been abandoned or lost by their parents in the wild but subsequently raised there by wolves or other animals. According to legend, moreover, Romulus (alleged founder of Rome) and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf. There is little doubt that such children were indeed responsible for certain reports of alleged woodwose.
Depiction of Mowgli, the wolf boy from Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books, by Kipling's father, J Lockwood Kipling (1895)
As recently as 1934, for example, a supposed woodwose was briefly spied running through some trees by a party of hunters in the forests near Uzitza in Serbia. Pursuing it, they fired and the entity dropped to the ground, shocked but unharmed. When the hunters approached, they discovered to their great surprise that their quarry was a completely naked and somewhat hairy but otherwise normal-looking human youth, approximately 15 years old, terrified, and covered in mud. Taken back by the hunters to their home village, he was unable to speak any language, but was found to be remarkably fast-moving, could run naturally on all fours, and was able to imitate with startling accuracy the sounds and songs of the various beasts and birds sharing his woodland home, where he had apparently lived for much of his life, feeding upon berries and roots.
Famous statue of Romulus and Remus suckling a she-wolf
Another such case was the Wild Girl of Champagne, France, cited by Linnaeus himself (dubbing her Puella campanica) as support for his Homo ferus species. She had been confirmed to have survived 10 years (November 1721-September 1731) in this region’s forests before being captured at the age of 19. Unusually for feral children, she then learnt to read and write, and became totally rehabilitated intellectually and socially.
RETURNING TO THE WILD?
A number of so-called wild men have proven to be ordinary humans that for a variety of different reasons – from poverty, mental health issues, or escape from persecution or criminal retribution to a simple desire to shake off the burdens of modern life – had abandoned their normal life and dropped out of human society, seeking solace and solitude in the wild and regressing to an almost bestial existence.
A possible woodwose statue inside St Mary's Church at Woolpit, Suffolk, where the famous Green Children allegedly appeared many centuries ago - could they have been abandoned children, left to fend for themselves in the wild? (Dr Karl Shuker)
In autumn 1936, for instance, a team of foresters inspecting one of the great forests near Riga, Latvia, unexpectedly encountered an extraordinary apeman-like entity crouching at the base of a tree. When it saw the men, it fled rapidly, swinging itself onto an overhanging branch and climbing upwards with remarkable speed and agility to the very top. When shot at by one of the foresters, the entity shrieked and crashed down onto the ground, where it was seized by the men, who discovered that it was covered in hair and bereft of any clothing. When it was taken back to a village close by, however, the being was recognised there as a farm labourer who had disappeared many years earlier, but he was now no longer able to speak or understand speech, and was capable only of yelling gleefully when meat or fruit was placed before him.
Wild man of Orford sculpture on font in Church of St Bartolomew, Orford (Simon K/Flickr)
A similar, more famous entity was Suffolk’s “wild man of Orford”, who, during the reign of Henry II (1154-1189), was captured in the nets of some sailors while he was swimming in the sea. According to a description penned by chronicler-monk Ralph of Coggeshall in his Chronicon Anglicanum, the being was completely naked but resembled a man in every way, with a profuse and pointed beard, hair that seemed torn and rubbed on his head, and very hirsute breasts. Brought back to the local castle and guarded day and night, he was unable to speak, did not display any sign of reverence when taken into the local church, and preferred eating fish raw rather than cooked. He escaped into the sea once, but eventually returned of his own accord; when he escaped a second time, however, he did not return and was never seen again.
William Blake's famous depiction of Nebuchadnezzar in the wilderness (1795)
During the Middle Ages, insane people or simpletons were sometimes released into the wilderness to fend for themselves, so that they became little more than wild beasts. According to the Holy Bible’s Book of Daniel, moreover, the once-mighty Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II underwent a seven-year period of madness during which time he lived alone in the wild, crawling on all fours eating grass, and allowing his hair and nails to grow unchecked until he resembled a man-beast instead of a man.
AT THE SIGN OF THE WILD MAN
There is no doubt that an appreciable component of the woodwose composite is the wild man as a symbol rather than a corporeal entity, personifying Nature or various aspects of it. In traditional rural folklore, the wild man most commonly represents strength, fertility, rebirth, and the ‘noble savage’ uncorrupted by modern civilisation. Very popular in medieval times but still occurring in certain rural areas of the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe even today are countryside pageants and festivals that feature dancers dressed in elaborate, ostentatiously hairy wild man costumes and taking part in symbolic wild man hunts, in which the latter is the quarry, to be captured and killed but afterwards resurrected.
The wild man and his family (De Negker David, Renaissance Period)
Moreover, the symbolic wild man is often closely allied to the green man, in which the former’s hair is replaced by a leafy profusion of foliage but its symbolic significance remains much the same.
Green man sculpture (Dr Karl Shuker)
CORPOREAL HUMANOID OR PARANORMAL PRESENCE?
In modern times, there have been reports of man-beasts in regions of Britain where it is simply not possible for such a species to exist without having been discovered by science long ago.
Visiting Cannock Chase (Dr Karl Shuker)
Persistent sightings of troll-like entities in the forests of Cannock Chase, Staffordshire, for instance, and even a 6.5-m-tall hairy bipedal giant allegedly encountered on Ben MacDhui, Scotland’s haunted mountain where the panic-inducing Big Grey Man is said to roam, cannot be readily explained (if accepted as genuine and not hoaxes) by normal cryptozoological theories.
Does a huge hairy man-beast entity exist on Ben MacDhui?
Consequently, it has been suggested that beings like these are not corporeal man-beasts at all, but instead are zooform entities – preternatural creatures assuming visible, humanoid form but of occult, paranormal nature and origin.
WAS GRENDEL A WOODWOSE?
The eponymous hero’s deadly foe, Grendel, in the famous Anglo-Saxon epic poem ‘Beowulf’, is generally thought of as a totally imaginary monster, and has been depicted and classified in many different ways. Intriguingly, however, some cryptozoological researchers, including American chronicler Thomas J. Mooney, have speculated that perhaps Grendel was actually a man-beast - because he is described in the poem as bipedal, clawed, larger and stronger than humans but somewhat humanoid in shape, very ugly, and residing in gloomy seclusion with his mother inside a cave hidden deep within a forest in Sweden.
Grendel, portrayed as a man-beast by J.R. Skelton (early 1900s)
If we assume (though it is obviously a very big, unsubstantiated assumption) that Grendel was based upon a real creature, a woodwose or similar man-beast would correspond more closely than any known animal species, including bears.
LAST OF THE NEANDERTHALS?
By far the most exciting suggestion on offer is that at least some woodwose reports are based upon relict Neanderthals. Variously deemed a subspecies of Homo sapiens or a separate species in its own right, Neanderthal Man first appeared in Europe as a distinct hominid with a complete set of recognisable characteristics approximately 130,000 years ago and officially became extinct here 24,000-30,000 years ago.
Reconstructions of Neanderthal man and woman at the Neanderthal Museum (UNiesert/Wikipedia)
Co-existing alongside our ancestor, Cro-Magnon Man, for around 10,000 years, Neanderthals are widely believed to have interbred with Cro-Magnons, and such interbreeding may even have brought about the Neanderthals’ extinction, via absorption into the Cro-Magnon population.
Neanderthal skull (Dr Karl Shuker)
It was veteran American cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson who first widely popularised the notion that perhaps the reports and legends of wild men in Europe arose from encounters with late-surviving Neanderthals, quietly persisting reclusively in various scarcely-traversed localities across Europe long after their official extinction date. This was subsequently championed by none other than the ‘Father of Cryptozoology’ himself, Dr Bernard Heuvelmans, who believed that the satyrs of Greek mythology also belonged to this category, and included the following paragraph in his comprehensive annotated checklist of cryptozoological creatures, published in 1986:
"[In Europe:] Wild hairy men, most probably Neanderthals having survived into historical times. Known as satyrs in classical antiquity – a name borrowed from the Hebrew se’ir (“the hairy one”) – and as wudewása (“wood being”) in the Middle Ages, they were reported until the 13th century in Ireland, until the 16th century in Saxony and Norway, until the 18th century on the Swedish island of Öland and in Estonia, in the Pyrénées ([known there as] iretges, basajaun) up to 1774 at least, and in the Carpathians (“wild man” of Kronstadt) up to 1784 at least."
Satyr statue by Frank 'Guy' Lynch, Sydney Botanic Gardens (Dr Karl Shuker)
In fact, it is possible that such beings have survived far beyond even those times in certain mountainous regions of Spain, with sightings there having being reported as recently as the 1990s, and which have since been researched by several cryptozoologists, including Sergio de la Rubia-Muñoz, who documented the following reports.
Neanderthal reconstruction (Dr Karl Shuker)
On 4 May 1993 at around 3.45 pm, in a sparsely-populated area known as Peña Montañesa (in Huesca) in the Spanish Pyrenees, woodsman Manuel Cazcarra was working with five others when, after they had all heard a scream and some squeals nearby, he went off to investigate and encountered a hairy man-beast, standing 1.7 m tall. It immediately clambered swiftly up a pine tree, where it remained, clutching a branch with its arms and legs, and screaming loudly. When Cazcarra called the other men, they came running up and one of them, Ramiro López, was just in time to see the entity climb back down to the ground and hide itself behind a dense thicket before hurling a hefty tree branch in their direction. Not surprisingly, they chose not to pursue it further!
'The Fight in the Forest' - a woodwose-featuring engraving (Hans Burgkmair, early 1500s)
These eyewitnesses were woodsmen, they were used to working in forests and were very familiar with bears, but they stated categorically that what they had seen was no bear. Mysterious footprints that could not be identified with any known species in the area were found there later that same week by a patrol of the Guardia Civil, accompanied by one of the woodsmen. And soon afterwards, an ape-like figure was seen crossing a road near the French border by a family travelling in their car towards Prats de Molló.
Wild man design for a stained glass window, generally (though not universally) believed to be by Hans Holbein the Younger
During the late spring of 1994, another putative woodwose sighting was made in this same region. While hiking from Peña Montañesa to the village of Bielsa close by, Juan Ramó Ferrer, a mountain climber from Andalusia, encountered a very hirsute but distinctly humanoid entity jumping from tree to tree and giving voice to ape-like squeals. According to the description later given by Ferrer, who had duly fled, terrified, to a campsite near Peña Montañesa, the entity was shortish, was covered with reddish hair, had very long ape-like arms, and exuded a musky odour.
Humorous set of figurines depicting a woodwose family (Dr Karl Shuker)
It would be easy to shrug off the woodwose as merely a medieval legend, but reports such as those documented here suggest that there is much more than that to this mystery.
Woodwose (Albrecht Dürer, 1520s)
Reports of hairy man-beasts in Europe and the Middle East (not to mention the Himalayan yeti, Mongolian almas, Chinese yeren, North American bigfoot, and numerous other similar beings reported elsewhere around the globe) date back to antiquity, and some of these definitely bear comparison with Neanderthal Man.
Wild man depiction in Omnium Fere Gentiumr - Jean Sluperji, Antwerp, 1572
EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE?
But perhaps we should not be too surprised that a second species of human, a hairy wild man far removed from our own naked ‘civilised’ species, may well have existed alongside us since the earliest days and even into the present day.
Wild man with shield (Martin Schongauer, 1490)
We have only to turn to the Holy Bible (Genesis 25: 21-27, referring to the brothers Esau and Jacob) for a highly unexpected yet remarkably precise corroboration of this dramatic cryptozoological prospect:
"And Isaac intreated the Lord for his wife...and Rebekah his wife conceived.
And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord.
And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.
And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb.
And the first came out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau.
And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel; and his name was called Jacob...
And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents."
Esau portrayed as a hairy wild man, alongside an ape (left) for comparison (Johann Scheuchzer, 1731)
What better way of describing to non-scientific laymen, back in the ancient days when this Old Testament passage was written, the existence and development of two separate species (nations) of human, one of which is modern man and the other the wild man? Perhaps Linnaeus was right after all.
'Wild Women with Unicorn', c.1500-1510, Basel Historical Museum
AND FINALLY:
Woodwose riding a unicorn - one fabulous beast, or two?
I remember that when I was a teenager and first heard of woodwoses, I came up with the idea that they were Neanderthals for many reasons... only to learn later that this had already been suggested. I was born too late...
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that the wild man seen in Spain in 1994 was covered on red hair, because genetic testing has suggested that at least some Neanderthals had red hair.
And I'm surprised there are sightings even today... I had always read that they were often encountered during Roman Empire times, were still somewhat common in Medieval times, and then became scarcer, with the very last remnants roaming Romania and such places until they finally went extinct...
Absolutely love this post Dr. Shuker! Really interesting! As I am a Catholic, hearing a Bible passage talking about two species of man (one a wildman) sent shivers up my spine! Awesome post, once again!
ReplyDeleteThe existence of human species other than ours would not give a Catholic theologian any trouble; but the Book of Genesis contains a good deal of material that is not regarded by biblical scholars as more than legend, so I don't think you can adduce Jacob and Esau as evidence here. It simply says that Esau was a hairy man and you do get hairy men, unless my brother-in-law is a neanderthal. Incidentally, there is also a condition called hypertrichosis in which you get covered with hair.
DeleteI didn't mean shivers as in fear or anger but in excitement! I still think it may mean something more than just a hairy person as it mentions two "nations" being in her womb. It is certainly an exciting thought!
DeleteAnd I also agree that the Old Testament is mainly not factual stories that are more to explain why God did things instead of how. But still, its an interesting idea that the passage refers to two species!
DeleteI really think it would be good for humanity's collective ego to find a brother species. Great article!
ReplyDeleteI've always thought that troll legends were based on almasty when the species was more widespread in Europe. There have been reports from Russia that were very close to the boarder of Finland and reports from the Ukraine.
ReplyDeleteAn early offshoot of the first wave of Homo erectus living in the mountains and forests of Europe in the middle ages would explain troll stories very well.
Did not Linnaeus have a nocturnal man as well?
ReplyDeleteAh, that's such a nice post...
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite depictions of the woodwose is on the watermark of the Lengfelden paper company. The paper was used by Biber, Mozart, Bach, and other composers; they wrote their music over a picture of a hairy hominid! Here it is:
http://www.bluntinstrument.org.uk/biber/pics/biber_Prom-brux-talk_handout1.gif
What a wonderful piece of background research into this topic. Loved reading it. Just makes you think... have they all gone? I don't think so.
ReplyDeleteThe Wildman is appealing. It symbolizes living with Nature and away from civilization. There have been real life feral people and feral children. Life in the wild is not so pleasant and not so idyllic however. There are dangers such as snakes spiders centipedes scorpions mosquitoes flies ticks and diseases such as malaria yellow fever ebola sleeping sickness etc. Starvation dehydration cold heat hurricanes and tsunamis are other other hazards as are big cats large constricting snakes and crocodiles. Plus the human body will eventually suffer without toilet tissue soap toothpaste and clean clothes and without a dentist or doctor. The human body cannot survive or thrive without these necessities. Some people have survived for a long time in the wild but their teeth are likely to be decayed and they would certainly be stinking. Plus if one were to live in the wild one would either have to be cruel and kill and eat whatever animals one could find whether its something cute and edible like a songbird or whether its something repulsive and inedible such as snakes reptiles worms etc. Not for me. Or one would be forced to eat things which the human body cant digest or cant even chew such as leaves and tree bark. And nearly all surface water from ponds lakes streams and rivers is polluted and unsafe to drink for humans. Only rainwater is safe to drink and thats if one is able to collect it in a clean container or find it inside a cactus plant.My dream is to live on fruits and vegetables and edible plants and herbs. Edible fruits are rare in the wild or they are seasonal or they are spaced miles from eachother. Its a rare place that has ripe fruit available all year long. Even Orangutans which feed largely on fruits have to travel in their search for ripe fruit. Theres also the danger of the fruit trees being poisoned or polluted or cut by man or destroyed in a hurricane or tsunami. And fruit trees also develop diseases and get old and die. As in a Gilligans Island episode where the castaways are surviving on fruits and trying to grow an orange tree said" If this orange seed dies then we die." Survival becomes dependent on fruit availability and clean water availability. Thats a very risky unreliable shaky way of survival. Amazonian Indians and African Pygmies do not have such an idyllic life. They have to hunt and kill and they mutilate their bodies as part of their rituals and traditions and they smoke tobacco and they make war and they have to contend with snakes spiders centipedes big cats and tropical diseases pollution and deforestation. Its no Garden of Eden. The human body is too defective and too specialized and the natural world is too cruel and too dangerous to make life in the wild a happy idyllic one sad to say. Nature also has a cruel violent dangerous side. Living off the land in the wild for most people is just a fantasy. Its not feasible and its too dangerous.
ReplyDeleteI'm intrigued by the legend and the reports, but I think linking Neanderthals to this would be foolhardy. They were clever enough to clothe themselves, had families and lived in tribes, had their own culture. Far above climbing trees and screaming at people, don't you think? Never mind that they are nowhere near as hairy as we were lead to believe in old anthropology groups. The Woodwose has more in common with archaic ideas of what the Neanderthals were like and very little to do with what modern scientific discoveries have shown us about them. Good story, but I deeply doubt the Neanderthal idea. It's kind of insulting to Neanderthals, really!
ReplyDeleteWhat a fascinating post! And such a good breadth of woodwose art. Too bad I didn't come across it earlier. I actually wrote about Mary Magdalene being depicted often as a 'wild woman' in the middle ages, it might interest you to see some of the artwork included:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cracked.com/article_20719_5-hilariously-perverse-trends-you-missed-in-famous-artwork.html
I am surprised that you did not mention Enkidu the wild man and friend of Gilgamesh from ancient Mesopotamian stories, the earliest known literature.
ReplyDeleteI didn't mention Enkidu because the article was primarily about European wildmen - I only introduced the Biblical quote to emphasise that wildmen were apparently recognised as distinct even in ancient times.
DeleteI would have thought the point were better made by Enkidu than Esau. Enkidu was specifically mentioned as a separate creation from humans and the story is from 1500 years before the biblical stories.
DeleteYes I know that, but I prefer the Biblical example, which is why I used it.
DeleteThe Grendel-as-Neanderthal hypothesis was taken up by Michael Crichton in Eaters of the Dead (1976) & the inferior movie The 13th Warrior based upon it.
ReplyDeleteHmm.. Zana (identified as an Almaty) was very hairy indeed. She was thought to be a neanderthal by Nikolai Przhevalsky -- the same explorer and naturalist who described Przewalski's horse. He was able to examine her skull, her grave being in the village where she was captured. However, other more learned naturalists of the era rebuffed him. Despite her appearance as quite different from modern humans, Zana's skull was that of a modern human, not a neanderthal. I was disappointed when I read that! :)
ReplyDeleteI believe a group of Homo sapiens moved into the Himalayas in the neolithic period, more or less. Perhaps they became more hairy as a simple matter of survival of the fittest, or perhaps a very hairy family found the cold conditions of the mountains less harsh. Zana's lack of waist and huge breasts were suggested to be adaptations to cold conditions. Her huge size also fits, I think; having more volume for the surface area.
Zana was immensely strong, which can in part be accounted for by her size. She was also very fierce, but wouldn't you be if you were accustomed to independence, perhaps had never even heard of captivity, and suddenly found yourself chained and caged by people who didn't understand your language? Hers is a very sad story!
As with my comment on the twig-haired wild man sightings in Portugal, what I'm thinking is there are wild tribes with their own cultures and languages, largely separate from the known phenomenon of feral humans. (Not entirely separate; there could be ferals of wild-tribe descent, perhaps even the last of their tribe.) It would require a culture of secrecy and separateness for such tribes to go undetected until present times, but this itself indicates they have cultures of their own. Looking at what happened to Zana, it takes no great imagination to believe such tribes would develop cultural traditions of secrecy and separateness! Perhaps at times they had less need of secrecy, thus possibly accounting for legends which have come down to us not only of hairy wild men but little people too. The latter, of course, must allow for exaggeration in the telling. :)
Now I'm wondering if I should research this, start my own blog, etc. etc., but I have so many interests! Just last night I started researching monotremes, investigating the possibility that they may be a branch of theropoda separate to the birds. It's both practice for my atrophied research skills and something I really want to investigate. :) I'll have to do a lot of digging because there's very little material which even mentions them together!
I really should start my own blog, shouldn't I?
We really must be extremely arrogant to believe we Homo Sapiens are the last surviving species of Homo. The scientific community is well aware of several other species still extant; few speak out simply because the subject is taboo.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting Karl. This film on youtube covers the woodwose on Cannock Chase that you mention: https://youtu.be/loZwFNT8H_s
ReplyDeleteVery interesting Karl. The woodwose of Cannock Chase that you mention are the subject of this old documentary: https://youtu.be/loZwFNT8H_s
ReplyDelete