Yeti: The Abominable History

I admit to being a bit of a sucker for yeti books. But I guess my approach to date has been a little led by Sir Ed Hillary - and I am totally paraphrasing - that we don't know everything about everything, and the Sherpa certainly believe that there are yeti, but it is pretty unlikely. Hope I have been been fair to Sir Ed there.

Hoyland's book title “Yeti, and Abominable History” gives some clue to his approach in the content. He commences by catalogues each reported sighting (typically written in mountaineering books), and carries out some analysis on the person, the situation, and any other events that may have influenced the situation. For much of the first quarter of the book Hoyland doesn't do a lot more than catalogue these, but then he starts with some breaking down of the evidence. Of course there is little evidence - footprints, the occasional hair or stool sample, some Tibetan relics such as the scalp and the hand, which are well known. Much of the evidence was identified (and therefore debunked) prior to Hoyland collecting it in this book, but the appeal of the stories seems to keep them alive.
There are conclusions for the various types of Yeti that the Tibetans believe in, and again they are not new, but align with other researchers, but Hoyland takes it all a bit further (more below).

After the Yeti evidence is covered, then Hoyland moves on to other criptids in the stable. The yeti's North American cousin Big Foot is first, followed by a number of iceman type hoaxes from the USA. The Loch Ness monster is up next, including analyzing many of the suggested explanations for Nessie. The Mokele-mbembe follows, then a very brief debunking of more general hoaxes.

Finally, Hoyland brings it all together in an overarching examination of phenomena of mysterious monster sightings, and, as he puts it, the collective consciousness that leads us to believe in monsters. Here he also examines the reasoning behind many of the searches - and the very non-scientific approach - infact counter scientific, for a single purpose - for the Creationists, proof of Bigfoot, or or Mokele-mbembe is alive, they consider it would prove their belief that the earth is only a few thousand years old - and that such a find would disprove evolution. Of course it would do no such thing...

So in summary, Hoyland goes far and wide, covers off the evidence, the hoaxes (and more of then than not the reasoning for these), the effect of media, the popularity of media (such as the long-running series Finding Big-Foot which he suggests would be more correctly titled Not Finding Big-Foot), undiscovered species (which are obviously tending to smaller life forms, not dinosaur sized discoveries).

And while I haven't shared the details of his conclusions, Hoyland writes a interesting book, with plenty of humour, and while he certainly rains of the parade of a believer, he does so in a readable and logical manner.

4 stars