The events in Malaysia are only the latest in a long history in Asia of interactions between humans and unknown hairy hominoids. Often, especially in times of war, the encounters have not been peaceful ones for the “Wild People.” Sometimes these incidents have been covered up for years, due to the military involvements, from regional fighting to the stories we are only recently hearing from the Vietnam War era. Will the future hold more such memoirs from fighting in Afghanistan?

In the meantime, in The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates, there are vivid historical examples given in great detail. Here are new Russian illustrations contributed by Dr. Igor Bourtsev of two of these infamous events in the history of hominology.

This is a drawing of an example of the occasional killing of gul’bi-yavan – the Tajik name of the area’s Wild Men – in 1925 in the Pamir mountains. The case was described to the Commission of the Academy of Sciences by KGB General Michael Topilski.

This sketch is of the military doctor Vazgen Karapetyan, an officer in the military service of the Soviet Army, checking on a captured captar (or more often written in English as kaptar) – the local name of their Wild Men – in Daghestan, Caucasus, in 1941, during the war. Karapetyan gave the information about the case also to the same Commission. The military that had captured the Kaptar wanted the doctor to discover if the unknown hairy biped was a disguised spy. His examination found it was not, and he had to depart. Years later, Karapetyan was to hear that it had been killed.

What stories will we be discussing from Malaysia twenty-five and fifty years from now?