The creator of the term “hominology,” Dmitri Bayanov was born on March 18, 1932, in Moscow, Russia. He celebrates his 86th birthday in 2018.

One of the foremost Russian cryptozoologists and hominologists alive today, Dmitri Bayanov originally graduated from a teachers school in 1955 with a major in humanities. He worked first as a teacher and later as a Russian-English translator.

After studying under such individuals as Professor B.F. Prshnev and P.P. Smolin, chief curator of the Darwin Museum in Moscow, Bayanov took part in Marie-Jeanne Koffmann’s expedition in search of the Almas in the Caucasus and made reconnaissance trips in the same region on his own.

Since 1964, Dmitri Bayanov has been an active member of the Relict Hominoid Research Seminar at the Darwin Museum and became its chair in 1975. He was a founding board member of the International Society of Cryptozoology and served on its Board of Directors until 1992. Bayanov is also credited with coining the terms hominology and hominologist in the early 1970s to describe the specific study of unknown hominoids and those who study them.

Dmitri Bayanov’s cryptozoological career has been spent mainly on the study of relict populations of hominids including the Almas and the American Bigfoot. This is reflected in his books about hominid research.

As described by Dmitri Bayanov, “hominology was and still is in a cryptozoological phase of development.”

Bayanov himself notes that “Hominology is a branch of primatology, founded in the middle of the 20th century in science’s ‘no-man’s land’ between zoology and anthropology.”

In the concluding remarks of Bayanov’s presentation at the International Bigfoot Symposium in Willow Creek, California (September 12-14th 2003), he said:

“I think that one of the great scientific results of the 20th century was the discovery of relict hominids (homins, for short), popularly known as Abominable Snowman, Yeti, Yeren, Almas, Almasty, Bigfoot, Sasquatch, etc. Actually, it was a re-discovery by hominologists of what had been known to western naturalists from antiquity to the middle of the 18th century, when wild bipedal primates were classified by Carl Linnaeus as Homo troglodytes (i.e., caveman) or Homo sylvestris (i.e., woodman, forestman). As for eastern scholars and rural populations in many parts of the world, they have always been aware of wild hairy bipeds, known under diverse popular names. Hominology is primarily championed as a unique and necessary field of study by a handful of Russian scientists. They argue that resistance is based on fear, that is, that recognition of hominology would facilitate documentation of a relic ‘homin’ by making funding available. Documentation of a species such as the Sasquatch would, in turn, precipitate an upheaval of long-standing evolutionary and paleoanthropological theory, which explains in large part (in their view) the resistance to hominology and related efforts.”

Dmitri Bayanov at Bluff Creek, California, 2003.

Photo at the top of this blog and the one above are credited to Daniel Perez, Bigfoot Times.

Books:

In the Footsteps of the Russian Showman (1996)

America’s Bigfoot: Fact, Not Fiction (1997)

Bigfoot: To Kill or To Film? The Problem of Proof (2001)

Bigfoot Research: The Russian Vision (2015)

Russian Hominology: The Bayanov Papers – Fact & Folklore (2016)

Schooling and/or Degrees:
~ Majored in Humanities
Organizations:
~ Relict Humanoid Research Seminar at the Darwin Museum, Chair
~ International Society of Cryptozoology, founding Board Member and Member of the Board of Director

 

From left to right, Dmitri Bayanov (the creator of the word “hominology”), Igor Burtsev (holding the common Almas-like print found in the Pamirs, this example from 1979), and Vadim Makarov (with the long four-toed footcast of a True Giant from the Pamirs, 1981). Photograph by Igor Burtsev, November 19, 2010.

 

Dmitri Bayanov, John Green, Grover Krantz, and George Haas

+++

Watch history being made on September 1 – 2, 2018, at the International Cryptozoology Conference, presented by the International Cryptozoology Society and the International Cryptozoology Museum, Portland, Maine.

For tickets, click here.