Between Ape And Human: An Anthropologist On The Trail Of A Hidden Hominoid, by Gregory Forth

This book was not the book I thought it would be from its title. I had in mind when opening this book a more general work about the complications of the often fraudulent search for missing links within the human family tree. Yet this book offered something unusual and much better than that, and that is an anthropologist’s generally respectful presentation of the views of some local people on the island of Flores about sightings of a rare being that has been labeled as a member of the homo genus by scientists who have found fossil evidence of a hobbit-like small hominoid. The author’s intention, such as it is, is to present plausible accounts as a scientifically trained anthropologist that there is a possibility that we are not entirely alone with regards to hominoids, but that it is possible that a small and isolated population that has apparently lived on Flores for a long time remains alive to the present day and has done so in large part by remaining isolated in mountainous jungle areas far from human habitation as well as being somewhat opportunistic in foraging. The author is aware that some people might consider this sort of investigation to be a hunt for bigfoot, with the difference that there have been fossils that match the descriptions of fossils dated to somewhere between 11,000 and 50,000 years ago. I am by no means a believer, but I think the account is plausible enough, even if it seems like the area would be a difficult one for scientists to go to in search of such a being that they would be able to interact with and obtain cells they could preserve in order to see its DNA.

This book is about 250 page long and it is divided into ten chapters in four parts. The book begins with a short introductory chapter about the ape-men of Flores Island and the author’s own investigations of them and his coming to a sense of credibility in some of the accounts he was hearing and collecting (1). The first part of the book discusses what people say about ape-men (I), including a discussion of the way that they are viewed by some as natural creatures (2), but by others as a supernatural creature related to other local myths (3). The second part of the book discusses stories of ape-men (II), including ape-men in myth and legend (4) as well as second-hand stories of ape-man encounters that the author has been able to collect from Lio villagers on Flores Island (5). The third part of the book then discusses eyewitness accounts (III), including a selection of accounts that ranges from questionable to compelling (6), as well as more remarkable encounters (7), and also some reports of sightings of similar creatures in areas outside of the Lio territory on Flores Island (8). The fourth part of the book then consists of the author discussing what to believe (IV), including what stories of ape-men tell us and what they could be (9), as well as the possibility of the survival of ape-men on Flores Island (10). The book then ends with acknowledgements, notes, a bibliography, and an index.

There are at least a couple of areas where this book could stand to be better. For one, the book is likely to throw many readers for a loop in that they will come in likely expecting something different from what they get, and many readers may not be prepared for an anthropologist taking the stories of illiterate Flores Island tribespeople seriously. The author is at pains in this book to discount the more fantastic elements from the accounts, and to provide a chain of transmission of stories, and I think that in the main he is right to be skeptical of those whose prestige within society depends on their being workers of shamanistic magic or who are sellers of relics that are most definitely not from the hobbit man that the Lio people call lai ho’a. Besides the unhelpfulness of the title, the book itself organized in such a fashion that it appears to be a bit repetitive in some parts as the author goes over the same stories and the same caveats about the reliability of various stories multiple times, depending on whether they showed up as first-person accounts or were retold by someone else. Nevertheless, if you are in the mood for a field study about a possibly alive species of ape, this book will likely hit the spot. As a crytpozoology fan, I must admit I enjoyed this book a fair deal more than I expected to.