Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia: An Anthropological Perspective

by Forth; Gregory

• ISBN13: 9780710313546
• ISBN10: 0710313543
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-01-26
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Indonesian Island of Flores was the site of the discovery of a new species of small hominid that may have survived into historic times. Was this the origin of the "Wildman," images of which are encountered throughout Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world? In this first comprehensive anthropological study of the Wildman, Forth asks: Do Wildmen exist anywhere and, if so, in what sense? Is the universal representation of the Wildman best explained as an archetype of human thought, as a reflection of empirically existing creatures, or by some combination of these? This book will appeal to general readers and crypto-zoologists as well as to human and social scientists.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. viii
Preface	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 2
Organization and sources	p. 8
The story of ebu gogo	p. 12
What the ebu gogo looked like	p. 14
How the ebu gogo behaved	p. 16
Nage wildmen in space and time	p. 19
Fantastic elements	p. 24
Knowledge and categorization: survival of the image or survival of ebu gogo?	p. 27
Names, masks and bogeys	p. 32
Classification: human, animal, spirit (or something else)?	p. 36
Internal comparisons and summary considerations	p. 39
Other Florenese hominoids	p. 50
The 'ana ula' of Poma and Rawe	p. 50
'Toro gogo' in So'a	p. 55
Ngadha variants	p. 57
Manggarai (western Flores): 'ine weu', 'poti wolo' and hairy ancestors	p. 60
The 'lae ho'a' of Lio	p. 65
A note on East Flores	p. 75
Wildmen, bogeys and 'pontianak'	p. 75
Other eastern islands	p. 91
Sumba and the 'mili mongga'	p. 91
Stories from Sumbawa	p. 101
Timor and the Moluccas: a bogey from Buru	p. 104
Sulawesi: historical reports and local legends	p. 106
Tales of capture, some provisional conclusions and a Flores retrospect	p. 110
The 'short man' (orang pendek) of Sumatra	p. 117
Local and colonial representations	p. 118
European sightings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries	p. 127
Orang pendek at the end of the millennium	p. 134
More fantastic aspects	p. 139
Stories of capture, mating and abduction	p. 142
Comparison and conclusions	p. 146
Wildmen of western Indonesia and Mainland Southeast Asia	p. 159
Hominoids in northern Sumatra	p. 159
Wildmen in Borneo?	p. 164
Peninsular figures and the ape-men of Trolak	p. 165
More reports from the Southeast Asian mainland	p. 168
Back to the islands: Java and Bali	p. 171
'Forest people' (orang utan) reconsidered	p. 173
Other Asian hominoids	p. 182
The 'nittaewo' of Sri Lanka	p. 182
Varieties of 'yeti'	p. 188
Wildmen of China	p. 194
Central Asian exemplars	p. 198
An Asian summary	p. 201
Outside Asia	p. 204
The wildman of Europe	p. 204
Apes in North America	p. 207
The Australian 'yahoo' or 'yowie'	p. 215
East Africa and the 'little furry men'	p. 217
Ape-men of Central Africa	p. 220
Southern and West African variants	p. 227
Madagascar: a bridge back to Southeast Asia	p. 230
Pacific images	p. 242
Melanesian figures	p. 242
Polynesia: wildmen, dwarfs and fairies	p. 248
Micronesian variants	p. 250
The extinct dwarfs of Taiwan	p. 251
Views from the Philippines	p. 254
Local differences and Asian origins	p. 255
Conclusion: What were the ebu gogo?	p. 260
Wildmen and spirits	p. 263
The wildman as 'archetype'	p. 265
Bases in experience: non-human animals	p. 273
Other humans, or human others	p. 275
Or something not quite human?	p. 280
Notes	p. 287
References	p. 315
Index	p. 338
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