Legends and Myths about Little People
Clyde Nakamura
According to Comptions Interactive Encyclopedia
1998, deep within the tropical rain forests of Africa live
little people called Pygmies. Pygmies are defined as
people whose male have an average height of less than
59 inches. Early in the exploration of Africa there were
stories about tribes of little people. These stories about
little people turned out to be true. They were the Pygmies
of Africa.
Ireland also has myths and legends of little people called
Leprechauns.
In the Philippines Islands there are legends about
little people. These legends are from provinces
surrounding Mount Makiling. The Philippines also
has little people called Negritos [also called Aetas].
According to Compton's Interactive Encyclopeda
1998 they do not seem to be racially related to the
Pygmies of Africa.
In the book "Shadow of the Unknown " [1970]
the author Coral E. Lorenzen describes 2 stories
about little people of North America. According to
Shoshone and Arapaho legends a hunting party of
12 Shoshone braves had just about compeleted a hunt
for Buffalo and were skinning the Buffalo. They were
quickly surrounded by little people. At this point the
hunting party decided to make a fast retreat. One
brave decided to hold his ground and quickly grabbed
a skin of a white Buffalo and covered himself with it.
The little people backed off shrieking in fear. The hunting
party now knew they did not have to be afraid of the
little people. The other story involves the Pueblo
Indians of the Stone Lion in New Mexico. A long time
ago many of their people were killed by little people
who used poison arrows. The author also had stated
that she had actually seen glass cases of mummified
little people in the Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico in
1950.
Ancient Hawaiian legends do also talk about little
people. They were called the Menehune. They are
supposed to have built ditches and other stone
structures. They were last said to have been seen
on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands.
These myths and legends about little people seems
to be a worldwide phenomena. The question I now
pose is this : Are some of these myths and legends
true? I believe that some legends and myths have
a basis in fact. Does anyone else have knowledge
about legends and myths of little people or stories
about little people that was not mentioned on this
message that I posted ?
Best Regards
Clyde Nakamura
Ronald MacIsaac
Clyde Nakamura wrote:
How tall was the average of these little people 5" no offence anybody 3"
an inch just wondering?
Clyde Nakamura
On Sun, 03 May 1998 13:29:53 -0700, jzpau!@oz.net (JC) wrote:
>
>Additionally, I seem to remember that a "mummy" (term used
>loosely, here) of a "little person" was found in the western
>U.S. I think it's been debunked as an actual "little person" but
>am not sure. I seem to remember the "mummy" was thought
>to be an adult but much smaller and dwarfism had been ruled
>out. However, there is a disease that causes extremely early
>aging and I don't think the disease had been ruled out (meaning
>that the body was that of a youngster in spite of its aged
>adult appearance. Anyone have an update on this?
>
I saw this article in the book "Lost Cities of North
and Central America" by David Hatcher Childress
page 475-476. I am not sure if this is the same case
you are referring to.
Best Regards
Clyde Nakamura
---------------------
Summary of article from "Lost Cities of North and
Central America" page 475 .
In 1932 just north of Leadville, in Casper, Wyoming
a group of gold prospectors were working a gulch
on the base of the San Pedro mountains. They noticed
a rock wall of solid granite with color and decided to
blast it with dynamite. After the explosion they exposed
a cave not more than 4 feet wide by 4 feet high and 15 feet
deep. Inside the cave there was an ancient mummy
about 14 inches high that appeared to be looking
back at them. He was dark brown, his face was
deeply wrinkled and was monkey like in appearance.
The prospectors carefully wrapped up this mummy
and headed back to Casper, Wyoming. News about
this got around and scientists were skeptical, but
interested. X-rays showed that the tiny mummy had
been an adult. Biologists who had examined the
mummy had said that this was an adult of about 65
years of age at the time of death. X-rays had also
showed that the tiny mummy had a full set of
teeth, tiny skull, full set of backbone and ribs and
completely formed arms and legs. According to
Dr. Harry Shapiro, head of the Anthropology
department of the American Museum of Natural
History, the mystery mummy is smaller than any
known human types now known to man.
Clyde Nakamura
>
>How tall was the average of these little people 5" no offence anybody 3"
>an inch just wondering?
>
Compton's Multimedia Encyclopedia does not say what the average
height of the Pygmies were. It just gave a definition of what a Pygmy
was. However Compton's left this definition open ended. It did not
talk about a minimum size. My guess is that a Pygmy could be about
36 inches to under 59 inches in average height.
Clyde Nakamura
I received this email message from one of my friends about little
people.
Best Regards
Clyde Nakamura
---------------------
Message from my friend 5/98.
Not only are some of these myths factual, the people exist today. The
Bantus are the pygmies of Africa and the early Egyptians claimed that
they were the origin of the Egyptian civilization. Two months ago the
History channel presented a 1942 documentary in black and white on the
Bushmen and the Bantus. The Bantus spanned a gorge using a rope
bridge created on the spot. There were two small groups of little
people in The Philippines, Negritos and Egorots. The Negritos are the
original inhabitants of the Philippines ( they built the famous rice
terraces and the Igorots came later with an advanced (check out their
ruined temples) civilization. They all used poisoned arrows. In the
circle of fire, Malaysia there are many different groups of small
black and brown skinned people. Most of these groups of little people
still exist today. Memnom who the Greeks call Hypocrites is the
father of modern medicine. He was also the chief designer of the
modern pyramids and the size of the Bantus. I have a Book called (The
Elder Brothers by Alan Ereira) that is a documentary about the Kogis
of Columbia who are a small people with extraordinary highly developed
spiritual, mental, and physical powers. In fact it might interest
you to discover that Europeans of old were very small> Check out some
of the old armor. It averages 3.5 to 5 feet tall.
JBassior
There's very good reasons to believe that (1) a prehistoric maritime
civilization was ancestral to the Egyptian, Sumerian, and Dravidian Indian
cultures; (2) that this civilization centered around the Indian Ocean,
stretching from East Africa to the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf to the Bay of
Bengal to the Philippines in the east. It is possible that this race (which may
well have had writing and thus been "prehistoric" only in the sense that
samples of their writing have neither been discovered nor deciphered) possessed
considerable navigational attainments, and may have been anatomically rather
dwarfish.
There are marked similarities between the early cultures of Egypt, Sumer,
and the Indus River Valley. During the 4th millenium BC, the Egyptians seem to
have been influenced by contact with a people who came from the Red Sea; in the
same general period the Sumerian civilization appears fullblown with legends
about "gods from the sea" bringing civilization and with their most sacred
place being (oddly) the island of "Dilmun" (modern Bahrain, a lousy place for
land-dwellers to colonize but an obvious place for an outpost of a maritime
culture); meanwhile the Indus River Valley civilization appears from nowhere
(like the Sumerians), with socialistic central planning and massive urban
construction.
Racially and linguistically, the Sumerians, Dravidian Indians, and modern
Filipinos appear similar. While none of these people are "pygmies", all are (or
were, in the case of the Sumerians) small of stature, with swarthy skin and
straight black hair. Their languages contain numerous points of similarity, and
are now believed to belong to an "Australo-Asiatic" group which in ancient
times rivalled the modern distribution of the "Indo-European" tongues.
The earliest Sumerian legends state that the gods came from the sea and
that the people were created to be their servants; if we take this literally
(but leave out the magic), what this says is that the Sumerians were subjects
of a maritime empire of some sort. The Sumerians explicitly state that the gods
taught them the arts of civilization, including writing, and it is notable that
the earliest apperance of writing in Mesopotamia is connected to accounting and
trade (both subjects of interest to mariners).
Before about 3000 BC, the Negroes were a relatively small and unimportant
race, being confined to the Sudan and parts of Chad and Ethiopia. Most of
Africa then belonged to other races, of which only remnants today survived. One
such race is the Pygmies.
The Pygmies are not Negroes; they are swarthy of skin but lighter-colored
than their Negro neighbors, their facial features rather resemble the
Australian Aboriginies, and grey or even blue eyes and light brown hair are not
unknown among them. There are indications that they were originally a taller
(though still relatively short) people, and that the Pygmies we know today are
the last survivors of a formerly widespread people who were driven into the
forests by the expansion of iron-wielding Negro tribes c. 1000 BC to 1000 AD.
In taking to the forest, natural selection operated to render them even
slighter of stature than their ancestors.
There may well be a racial connection between the Pygmies and the
Australian Aboriginies. If so, the link must be maritime; Africa and Australia
are very far apart by coast-hugging land routes, which implies that the
maritime link employed advanced navigational techniques. Which in turn suggests
a link to the maritime origins of the first known human civilizations.
We don't need to postulate ancient Lemurians or lost superscience or even
magnetic compasses. The Polynesians (who are also related to the Sumerians and
Dravidian Indians) have long navigated across water gaps of a thousand or more
miles using catamarans and meticulous observation of the stars and landmark
islands. Indeed, their navigational skills were not surpassed by Europeans or
Chinese until the 14th century AD, and were probably superior to those of even
the Phoenecians.
Need I point out that small size is actually an asset aboard a small
sailing vessel? Bigger seamen consume more food and water and take up more
space, while their extra strength is less important than skill in dealing with
the ocean (especially if the ship's fittings are designed for people of smaller
stature).
Maritime activities are also well-suited to the development of a
proto-civilization. Long-distance trade brings together the ideas and goods of
many lands, while the needs of navigation, shiphandling, and trading require
the development of primitive astronomy and at least a mnenomic marker system of
writing. Note that historically the Phoencians, a maritime people, developed
the first true alphabet from Egyptian demotic writing, and the role of maritime
commerce in the ascendancy of Western Europe in the 16th century is also fairly
obvious.
I'm not sure how the "Little People" of Europe fit in, but I bet that if
we look into the mystery of the "Little People" of the Indian Ocean basin we
might open a heretofore unknown page of human history, and push the origins of
human civilization back a millennium or more.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Doug Weller
On 04 May 1998 18:56:44 GMT, in alt.history.ancient-worlds, JBassior
wrote:
>
> Racially and linguistically, the Sumerians, Dravidian Indians, and modern
>Filipinos appear similar. While none of these people are "pygmies", all are (or
>were, in the case of the Sumerians) small of stature, with swarthy skin and
>straight black hair. Their languages contain numerous points of similarity, and
>are now believed to belong to an "Australo-Asiatic" group which in ancient
>times rivalled the modern distribution of the "Indo-European" tongues.
I'll have to get back to the rest of this later. Where do you get this
about language relationships? Dravidian is, well, part of the Dravidian
family. I presume you are referring to Tagalog when you speak of
Filipinos. Not related to Dravidian. And although attempts have been
made to suggest Sumerian is related to Dravidian, it's still considered
an isolate.
The Austro-Asiatic family doesn't include any of these. Vietnamese,
Khmer, Mon, Munda in India, etc. Doesn't cover a very large area -- tiny
bits of India, Burma, Vietnam and Lampuchea, a bit of Malaysia.
Doug
Clyde Nakamura
I did a search for the word elves on HotBot and found links
to worldwide folklore on the web page listed below. According
to Norse and Teutonic folklore, the elves were originally the
spirits of the dead who brought fertility. They were worshipped
in trees, mountains and waterfalls. This is the definition of
elves as given by Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia 1998.
The web page listed below also has links to fairy folklore.
Folklore Links
http://home.earthlink.net/~bourgoin/fairy4.html
Best Regards
Clyde Nakamura
Clyde Nakamura
Presented below are reported eye witness accounts of little people.
These 3 cases were from the book called "Unexplained!" [1993] by
Jerome Clark, Chapter on Fairies, Page 114-122.
Case no. 1
In April 1950 a woman from Canby, Oregon, named Ellen Jonerson
was interviewed by Kenneth Arnold. The woman said that she had
recently seen a 12 inch little man who had dark features, stocky
build and a plaid shirt, pass under a car with a "waddling" motion
and disappeared.
Case no. 2
The Dublin Irish Press [1938] reported that a schoolboy called
John Keely encountered a 2 foot tall man, dressed in red clothing
on a road. He had asked the little man where he was from and he
replied "I’m from the mountains, and its all equal to you what
my business was". The next day John Keely got his friends and
acquaintances to come and see the little people. His friends and
acquaintances hid in the nearby bushes. John approached a
company of fairies and let one of them take him by the hand.
After walking for a short time the fairies spotted his friends
and acquaintances in the bushes and quickly ran away.
Case 3
On an isolated country road near Baron, Wisconsin in 1919,
13 year old Harry Anderson saw about 20 little men marching
towards him in single file. The little men were visible in the
bright moonlight. They wore leather knee pants held up by
suspenders, did not have any shirt on, were bald and looked
pale white. They appeared to be mumbling to themselves
and it seemed that they were not talking to each other and
did not seem to notice young Harry Anderson. Harry just
continued on his way and did not look back.
Best Regards
Clyde Nakamura
Doug Weller
On 04 May 1998 18:56:44 GMT, in alt.history.ancient-worlds, JBassior
wrote:
pSNIP]
> There are marked similarities between the early cultures of Egypt, Sumer,
>and the Indus River Valley. During the 4th millenium BC, the Egyptians seem to
>have been influenced by contact with a people who came from the Red Sea; in the
>same general period the Sumerian civilization appears fullblown with legends
>about "gods from the sea" bringing civilization and with their most sacred
>place being (oddly) the island of "Dilmun" (modern Bahrain, a lousy place for
>land-dwellers to colonize but an obvious place for an outpost of a maritime
>culture); meanwhile the Indus River Valley civilization appears from nowhere
>(like the Sumerians), with socialistic central planning and massive urban
>construction.
It's interesting how people with, shall we say, an unusal slant on the
past often come up with civilizations that 'appear fullblown' from
nowhere.
I don't know of any civilization where we don't have clear evidence that
the civilization did NOT appear suddenly. In the two cases above, we
have sufficient evidence on, in the first instance, the Ubaid period,
and in the case of the Indus civlization, what is called Early Harappan
(with no cities, little social stratification, etc). See for instance
H.F, Saggs book Babylonians, and for the Indus value, a quick web
search. We can trace the pre-history of the Indus valley civilization
back about 4000 years before it flowered.
Minor point -- to call Harappan central planning 'socialistic' is a
complete misuse of language.
[SNIP]
> Before about 3000 BC, the Negroes were a relatively small and unimportant
>race, being confined to the Sudan and parts of Chad and Ethiopia. Most of
Sure. Somehow I'm not surprised for the lack of evidence for any of
Bassior's bold assertions.
Doug