Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia: an Anthropological Perspective

The RELICT HOMINOID INQUIRY 2:123-124 (2013) Book Review Images of the wildman in Southeast Asia: an anthropological perspective. By Gregory Forth. London & New York: Routledge, 2012. xv + 343pp. ISBN 978-0-415-53348-5. $49.95 (paperback). People have different – although this immediately sparked global reactions to the idea of interest in ebu gogo, it is important to realise cryptids: if they are not that Gregory Forth’s developing views well frauds, or figments of the preceded the discovery of the Hobbit. imagination, then either In this book, the stories told about these they are real animals, or beings by the Nage and other peoples of else they are a reification Flores (who have different names for them) of some local cultural are recounted in some detail, as the author construct. This last possibility is quite often tries to separate factual recounting from put forward, but rarely tested, probably fantasy. There is some consistence in because few sociocultural anthropologists descriptions of their appearance, behaviour have taken much interest in cryptozoology. and distribution. Some said they are extinct, This gap has now been filled, by the noted exterminated by earlier generations, but there Canadian cultural anthropologist Gregory are in some regions claims of persistent Forth. In 1984 he began research on the island sightings, and they may have survived of Flores in south-eastern Indonesia, regionally. Elements of a fantastic nature seem specifically among the Nage people, and quite easy to extract from these descriptions, became intrigued by their stories of small, leaving an apparently factual core. hairy, humanoid creatures called ebu gogo. The author then turns his attention to The Nage insisted to him that they did not fall stories from elsewhere in Indonesia. Similar within the category of spirit beings or other stories from the island of Sumba probably cultural constructs, and he got the idea of derive from Florenese contacts. There are collecting their tales, and comparing them to more equivocal tales from Sumbawa, Timor, tales of apparently similar beings elsewhere in Buru, and even Sulawesi, although the latter Flores, in Indonesia in general, and elsewhere are perhaps memories of earlier stone-using around the world. It was only in 2004 that peoples. The famous orang pendek of fossil remains of a small-sized hominin, Homo Sumatra, described by European visitors and floresiensis (the “Hobbit”), were discovered in residents since at least the 18th century, varies Late Pleistocene deposits in a cave in Flores, in its descriptions from very human-like to not far west of the region where the Nage live clearly ape-like, and Forth mentions the © RHI COLIN GROVES 124 forest-dwelling Kubu people, a possible from quite a different perspective, that of a surviving southern population of orangutans, sociocultural anthropologist, used to thinking and other possible explanations; despite that it about mythology, ritual stories and folk tales, is sometimes called gugu, it is obviously, he and able to disentangle them from something considers, quite different from ebu gogo (and that has a grounding in reality. That reality he is much less impressed with it than with its may be some kind of extinct ape or an Florenese counterpart). unfamiliar human group, or it may be some He briefly considers the stories of hairy not-quite-human hominin species, either humanoids from Vietnam, Sri Lanka and recently extinct or still existing in small elsewhere in tropical Asia, and of the yeti and pockets. There are places on Flores where Chinese, Mongolian and Caucasian wildmen. they are supposed to be buried, or (usually His conclusion on most of these: “The most caves) where they are said to have once lived. plausible interpretation is a figure Gregory Forth’s fascinating book has raised substantially grounded in a non-human new questions and proposed new answers, and primate and, more particularly, contemporary is worth reading by anyone interested in populations of orang-utans or culturally cryptozoology, whether believer, sceptic or retained memories of the apes”. There are simple searcher-after-truth. brief chapters “Outside Asia” and “Pacific images”– wildmen in Africa, North America, even Melanesia. Colin Groves Ph.D. This well-researched and well-written book Australian National University is unusual in that it comes at “wildman” tales Canberra, Australia .

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