A few weeks ago, I was wandering along the venerable street-side walkway on York Street in downtown Colombo, savouring its old-worldly atmosphere – old-worldly atmospheres are becoming something of a rarity in ever-changing, ever-modernising Colombo – and snapping pictures of the antiquated shop signs that hang there: Millers Ltd (Groceries, Wines, Tobaccos and Fancy Goods), Cargills Ltd (Dispensing Drugs, Toilet Requisites, Perfumery and Optical Goods) and, um, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Then I noticed this shop frontage. Its window was murky with reflected light. But did I see a strange figure in there, standing just behind the glass?
I approached the window and discovered a massive ape-like creature glowering out and, indeed, glowering down at me. A yeti. Yes, here was an abominable snowman, not in its normal abode of the Himalayan Mountains but in a shop on York Street in central Colombo.
Well, obviously, it wasn’t a real yeti but a mock-up of one presumably made of fibreglass. The thing had been created as an eye-catching advertising gimmick for a product called Yeti Isotonic Energy, a rehydrating sports drink that the Internet tells me has been “developed in collaboration by Austrian and Sri Lankan scientists.” Bottles of it were on display elsewhere in the shop.
Like its North American counterpart Big Foot, the yeti is a cryptid, i.e. an animal whose evidence has not been scientifically proven. It might exist, and some people claim it exists, but that’s all we can say. I had an overactive imagination when I was a kid and, predictably, I loved the idea that fantastical beasties such as the yeti and Big Foot might be skulking undetected in the world’s less charted regions.
So how disappointed I was when, in 1980, British television aired a show about unexplained phenomena called Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World and I excitedly tuned in one evening to an episode of it devoted to cryptid apes – only to hear its host, the science-fiction writer (and coincidently a long-term resident of Sri Lanka) Arthur C. Clarke, pour cold water over the existence of such creatures. For instance, Clarke was unmoved by the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film footage allegedly showing Big Foot because he and Stanley Kubrick had shown in their 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey that it was possible to film very realistic-looking ape scenes using human actors in make-up and hairy costumes. At the end of the episode he opined that if that he had a hundred pounds to bet, he’d forty pounds on the yeti existing, ten pounds on Big Foot existing and “keep the other fifty pounds for myself.”
While the yeti and Big Foot are by far the most famous examples, there have been reports of cryptid apes, anthropoids and Neanderthal-like beings all over the world. These include the Skunk Ape of the Florida Everglades; the Almas of central Asia; the Australian Yowie; the Chinese Yeren; and the Japanese Hibagon, said to live around Mount Hiba near Hiroshima. Even Scotland has one, the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui (Am Fear Liath Mòr in Gaelic), a huge, hairy creature that’s supposed to stalk and loom up terrifyingly in the mist behind lone hikers and climbers on Scotland’s second-highest peak, Ben Macdui in the Cairngorm Mountains. Nice though the idea of ape creatures hiding out in the Cairngorms is, I’m inclined to attribute the sightings of the Big Grey Man to the sun / cloud-generated optical effect known as the Brocken Spectre. (Yes, I’m now a total, killjoy sceptic about such things. Blame Arthur C. Clarke.)
My curiosity piqued, I did some research to find out if Sri Lanka can claim to have any cryptid apes of its own. And it can, apparently. The Nittaewo were said to be a species of bipedal, tailless primates dwelling in the nation’s forests, with talon-like fingers and a strange language that resembled the twittering of birds. According to the traditions of the Vedda people – who are believed to be Sri Lanka’s oldest human inhabitants – the Vedda fought against and finally destroyed the Nittaewo in the 18th century. All the same, there have been alleged sightings of the Nittaewo since then, indeed, as late as 1984.
Still, if you go down to the Sri Lankan woods today and hear strange rustlings and twittering sounds coming through the undergrowth towards you, you needn’t be too alarmed. The Nittaewo were said to be three feet tall at most, so if they did exist they would probably have resembled Hobbits – and not their giant-sized Himalayan cousin in the shop window on York Street.