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Almas
Description: Adults stand about 5 1/2 feet tall but anywhere from 5-6 feet is normal and they weigh proportionality a little more than a human. They are definitely more human-like than ape-like. They Have an outward juting jaw, receding chin, prominent eyebrow ridges and are covered in hair except for face, feet and hands, the hair gets thinner around the buttocks and stomach. Breeding pairs remain together for life. They eat small animals and vegetable and plant matter. They may use simple tools, do not use fire and have no true language. They were sometimes known to trade and barter with the locals, but those reports are questionable.
Location: Outer Mongolia, The Caucasus, Altai Mts, Pamir Mts, Tien Shan Mts.
What are they: I personally think Almas are surviving neanderthals, the characteristics they share are strikingly similar. I wouldnt consider them true neanderthals, I would call them neanderthaloids because they have had about 20,000 years of change. That 20,000 years of change as set them back culturally. When modern humans moved into Europe and took over neanderthal territories the neanderthals were forced to move into more secluded, less desirable places. In these less desirable places they suffered a cultural digression and maybe intelligence digression. Others have suggested the Almasty may be Homo Erectus type creatures. This is also a possibility. Some people even link the Almasty with the Yeti, but the Almasty are much more human-like so this is a bad connection, although in some parts their individual ranges overlap. Some even suggest Almas are surviving Neolithic Peoples, but the reports and this idea do not correlate well.
Future: The fate of the almas is not looking bright. Sightings are getting more rare by the year and reports have indicate the almasty are moving into more secluded places to avoid the increasing human populations. In my estimations, Almas will be gone by 2030. Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union little has been done to continue research on the Alma. Those regions were it has been reported are often politically unstable, and economic conditions
in Russia, who inherited many of the scientific institutions of the former Soviet Union, have not been favorable to the ongoing research of these Hominids. Unlike most of the other "wildmen", no superstition surrounds the almas, they were treated as normal fauna by the locals. An almas gall bladder was even thought of as a cure for jaundice, they were even described as being common.
Report: In 1925, Soviet Major-General Mikhail Stephanovitch Topilski, Commisar of a mounted regiment, was pursuing White Russian forces as they retreated. He later recalled...
Continuing our chase, we caught up with what was left of the exhausted gang, who had stopped for a rest at a place where the glacier was split apart by a stone cliff. The upper tongue of the glacier hung from the cliff in which there was a crevice or cave. We surrounded the gang and took up a position above where they were resting. A machine-gun was placed in position. When we threw the first grenade, a man (a Russian officer) ran out onto the glacier and started shouting that the shooter would make the ice cave in and that everyone would be buried. When we demanded that they surrender he asked for time to talk it over with the other bandits, and went back into the cave. Soon after we heard an ominous hissing as the ice began to move. At almost the same moment we heard shots, and not knowing what they meant decided that it was the beginning of an assault.
Pieces of snow and ice started falling down from the cliff, gradually burying the entrance to the cave. When it was nearly buried three men managed to escape, and the rest ( we learned later that there were five) were buried under the debris. Our shots killed two of the bandits and seriously wounded the third. When we reached him, he showed us the spot where the body of a Russian officer was buried and we dug it out. The wounded man turned out to be an Uzbek tea-house owner from Samarkand.
We questioned him and he gave us the following information. While the bandits were discussing out order to surrender, some hairy man-like creatures, howling inarticulately, appeared in the cave through the crevice (which possibly led upwards fromt he cave). There were several of them and they had sticks in their hands. The bandits tried to shoot their way through. One of the bandits was killed by the creatures with the sticks. Our narrator received a blow from a stick on his shoulder, and rushed to the cave entrance with one of the monsters hard on his heels. It ran out of the cave after him, but he shot it and it was buried under the snow.
To check up on this strange story we made him show us the exact spot and cleared the show away. We recovered the body all right. It had three bullet wounds. Not far off we found a stick made of very hard wood, though it cannot be stated for certain that it belonged to the creature. At first glance I thought the body was that of an ape. It was covered with hair all over. But I knew there were no apes in the Pamirs. Also, the body itself looked very much like that of a man. We tried pulling the hair, to see if it was just a hide used for disguise, but found that it was the creature's own natural hair. We turned the body over several times on its back and its front, and measured it. Our doctor (who was killed later the same year) made a long and thorough inspection of the body, and it was clear that it was not a human being.
The body belonged to a male creature 165-170 cm [about 5 1/2 feet] tall, elderly or even old, judging by the grayish colour of the hair in several places. The chest was covered with brownish hair and the belly with grayish hair. The hair was longer but sparser on the chest and close-cropped and thick on the belly. In general the hair was very thick, without any under fur. There was least hair on the buttocks, from which fact our doctor deduced that the creature sat like a human being. There was most hair on the hips. The knees were completely bare of hair and had callous growths on them. The whole foot including the sole was quite hairless and was covered by hard brown skin. The hair got thinner near the hand, and the palms had none at all but only callous skin.
The colour of the face was dark, and the creature had neither beard nor moustache. The temples were bald and the back of the head was covered by thick, matted hair. The dead creature lay with its eyes open and its teeth bared. The eyes were dark and the teeth were large and even and shaped like human teeth. The forehead was slanting and the eyebrows were very powerful. The protruding jawbones made the face resemble the Mongol type of face. The nose was flat, with a deeply sunk bridge. The ears were hairless and looked a little more pointed than a human being's with a longer lobe. The lower jaw was very massive.
The creature had a very powerful chest and well developed muscles. We didn't find any important anatomical difference between it and man. The genitalia were like man's. The arms were of normal length, the hands were slightly wider and the feet much wider and shorter than man's."
-From Still Living? Yeti, Sasquatch and the Neanderthal enigma by Myra Shackley.
Read Another Good Almas Report Here
Picture of an Almas
