![]() I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that he deliberately engaged in mystery-mongering and hype because that’s how he made a living he was never interested in any of this stuff for honest, scientific reasons. There are good reasons for thinking that Sanderson was playing this whole episode like a showman because, basically, that’s what he was. Heuvelmans states on several occasions that he regarded certain of Sanderson’s statements as unwise or based on poor judgement some of the actions concerned are well established in the public record and already noted by others as weird given that Sanderson was apparently trying to drum up official acceptance of the thing as a real carcass ( Naish 2016). It is also evident throughout the book that the whole iceman deal led to a falling-out between Heuvelmans and his friend and colleague Ivan Sanderson. He is less formal, faster-paced, angrier. ![]() Heuvelmans’s writing style is quite different from that encountered in the works most familiar to English-speaking readers ( On the Track and In the Wake). The book ends with a series of appendices and an afterword by Loren Coleman. The last few chapters promise to provide his specific interpretation of the creature’s zoological and evolutionary significance (‘What it Really Was’ and ‘A History of Man-Beasts’), and it was those I was looking forward to reading the most. It’s immediately apparent just from the titles of the chapters that he believed in a conspiracy of silence that affected his research and how it was received (there are chapters titled ‘Cloak and Dagger’ and ‘The Wall of Incredulity’). It is an inexpensive, well designed softback, and it’s most interesting – at last – to hear Heuvelmans’s full version of events.Īcross 12 chapters, Heuvelmans describes all the steps in the story. Retitled Neanderthal: the Strange Saga of the Minnesota Iceman (Heuvelmans 2016), the work does not include a separate section penned by Russian economist, historian and biologist Boris Porshnev, but is nonetheless very welcome. LeBlond – an oceanographer by profession but well known for his interest in sea and lake monsters (see previous Tet Zoo articles on the Cadborosaurus Wars) – had translated the volume in his own spare time. It was thus a pleasant surprise to hear in 2015 that cryptozoologist and author Loren Coleman had learnt of Paul LeBlond’s completion of a translation, and of Coleman and LeBlond’s successful venture to see said translation published in the United States. * Like many of Heuvelmans’s works, it has become a sought-after and expensive collector’s item. While mentioned in every published discussion of the iceman, this book (despite seeing a 2011 reprint) has long been both hard to obtain*, and untranslated from the original French. Even better, in 1974 he co-authored an entire book – L’Homme Néanderthal est Toujours Vivant ( Neanderthal Man is Still Alive) – on the whole story. In 1969, Heuvelmans published a brief technical paper on the creature (it’s telling that the paper is sole-authored and not co-written with Sanderson more on that in a moment) (Heuvelmans 1969). Sanderson – also a formative character as goes writings on alleged mystery animals – examined the iceman in person in 1968. As justifiable as it might be to regard the whole case as ridiculous and unworthy of scientific consideration from the off, the key factor that transformed the iceman story into an international incident (see Regal 2013) is that several knowledgeable people either became convinced that it was real, or at least became interested in the possibility that it might be.Īmong those convinced of its reality was the late ‘father of cryptozoology’ Bernard Heuvelmans (1916-2001) who, together with colleague Ivan T. ![]() As if the initial circumstances were not suspicious enough (a travelling exhibit very clearly of the ‘Is it real? You won’t believe your eyes!’ tradition of fairground gaffs, initially marketed as the ‘Siberskoya creature’ or ‘Siberskoye creature’, and viewable for a small fee to the public), we even have the name of a person stated to have been the model-maker (Howard Ball), and know of a model (today on display at the Museum of the Weird, Austin, Texas) that most people say exactly matches their recollection of what the original looked like. If you need a primer, please see the previous article. The main story of the iceman is familiar.
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