Whither the iceman

In the 26 years since Dr Bernard Heuvelmans first published
the description of his Homo pongoides, based on a specimen
encased in a lump of ice, very little has come of what could
have been a monumental discovery in primatology. The loss of
the holotype,  combined with the equivocal behaviour of
Frank D. Hansen (who had toured country sideshows with this
thing for 3 years), left Heuvelmans a bitter legacy. There
were, it seemed, too many questions for the 'Minnesota
iceman' to be given credence.

But Dr Helmut Loofs-Wissowa of the Australian National
University (a long-time friend of Heuvelmans) persisted in
supporting Heuvelmans' claims and the admitedly tentative
assumption that the specimen came from Vietnam.  There were
reports from, among others the journalist Wilfred Burchett
(who travelled the war time Ho Chi Minh Trail). With a
little digging, Loofs-Wissowa discovered that the Party
Secretariat had in 1974 ordered a group of scientists,
headed by now-famous ecologist Professor Vo Quy, to don
uniforms and head into newly liberated areas of the south in
search of creatures called 'Nguoi Rung', meaning forest
people. (The term is the equivalent of 'Orang Utan', an
animal we know to have existed in Vietnam up to 10,000 years
ago.) This brief armed survey found nothing other than
archaeological artefacts and an elephant for the circus.

A subsequent 10 year resource inventory of the entire
Central Highlands also netted little. Tran Hong Viet, now
Professor of Zoology at Hanoi's Pedagogic University, found
a suspicious footprint which he photographed and cast, but
his concern was such that he did not report on this or
stories he had collected at a summation conference in 1985.

Yet stories from the highlands continued, reported for
instance in 1990 by Prof Dao Van Tien, the most senior and
respected of Vietnamese zoologists. Veterans from northern
Vietnam paralleled their American antagonists with tales of
large or small apes. Prof Quy, interviewed for a popular
article in early 1995,  got a letter from a former
Vietnamese soldier who saw the body of an ape being loaded
on a helicopter at a highlands airfield in the mid-1960s. So
we return to the validity of Hansen's specimen.

Dr Loofs-Wissowa who served as a Legionnaire in Vietnam
before becoming an archaeologist. Among the first
non-communist archaeologists to return to Vietnam, he had
introduced his colleagues to Heuvelmans' works in 1978.  In
November 1995, Dr Loofs-Wissowa returned to meet with
Vietnamese scientists in Hanoi for a one day conference on
'Nguoi Rung', or rather on the possibility of their
existence. The Vietnamese scientific community was divided:
some could not believe a creature they have not seen to
exist, others were not so sceptical,  allowing for its
continued existence, providing there remain highlands
regions untouched by the war and relatively free of human
intrusion. Size, ahape and the ecology of the being are
other questions. There are no less than three height
categories,  from 1 to 1.8 meters (or taller), and fur
colour ranges from black and redish brown to grey. The
discovery of other new large mammal species in Vietnam
certainly fuels this discussion.

In the county fair circuit, Hansen still isn't letting on.
The 'oldest John Deere tractor' seems a better value for
him. But back in the Central Highlands, minority tribe
elders have no doubts. 'Nguoi Rung' are a real animals. Not
a demons or spirits. It's just that no one's seen them for a
long, long time.