The main evidence of the Yeti and Alma's existence falls into three categories: footprints, sightings, and scalps and hair. More unusual are the claims of actual contact with or capture of one the beasts; the evidence remains physically unconfirmable in all such cases to date.
According to an article written by Sir Edmund Hillary for the World Book Encyclopedia of 1961, the first footprints believed to belong to the creatures were found in the 1890's, though it is important to note that no more is said about this incident than that. Other sources give 1832 as the earliest known date for British acknowledgment of the legend, when B.H. Hodson, the Court of Nepal's first British Resident, reported that his native hunters had been frightened by a 'wild man' that "moved erectly, was covered in long, dark hair, and had no tail." According to Stranger Than Science, there were many expeditions formed specifically for the purpose of finding the Yeti that came back empty-handed; though the truth is more likely that more expeditions were to map the area of the Himalayas, with a search for the Yeti as a secondary task. The constant failure of Europeans and Americans to locate a specimen of either a Yeti or an Alma when they want one has lead to more than a few skeptics on the subject, quick to find fault with existing evidence.
The footprints are an especially favorite target, as they are the most common physical evidence of the Yeti's existence. In 1958, anthropologist John Hopkins is said to have declared that the prints were merely the tracks of Sherpas whose toes protruded from their sandals; later, an unnamed scientist with the World Book Expedition to find the Yeti in 1960 attributed the footprints to the paw prints of bears and other large animals, melted by the sun into a larger size; but Eric Shipton shows common sense (in his book The Six Mountains-Travel Books) when he points out that native Sherpas are familiar with the tracks of monkeys and bears in the snow, fresh and melted, and unlikely to mistake them for something else.
According to Strange & Unexplained Mysteries of the 20th Century, the scalps and hair said to belong to the Yeti by the Sherpas have generally turned out to be from somewhat more common and better known animals; namely, a goat called a southern serow. Strange Stories, Amazing Facts tells of a Yeti scalp that was found in a village in Nepal, but later was analyzed as being skin and hair too similar to a Nepalese goat. Some scientists have even suggested that the "Yetis" are all just hallucinations induced by the lack of oxygen at the high altitudes in the Himalayas, an argument that doesn't explain away the reports of Almas from lowland areas.
Despite the general scientific pessimism about the Yeti and the Alma, many people still believe in these creatures' existence. Theories about them include the belief that these and other legendary hairy wildmen (the Sasquatch or Bigfoot in the United States, and the Yowie in Australia) are survivals of a more primitive form of man; the popular choices are either Neanderthals or Gigantopithecus.
Gigantopithecus is an ancestor of the giant ape, first identified in the fossil record by Dutch paleontologist Ralph von Koenigswald (or von Koenigwald) when he found a tooth in a Chinese apothecary shop* in 1934 that he believed belonged to a giant ape tall that lived around half a million years ago. In 1954, Dutch zoologist Bernard Huevelmans put forward in a series of articles published in Paris the theory that Gigantopithecus, unable to compete with anatomically modern humans, took to remote mountainous regions to survive and that it is a modern descendant of the huge ape-like creatures that are now called Yeti. Unfortunately for this theory, Gigantopithecus doesn't match the average reported height of Yetis'; Yetis average five feet tall, while the Gigantopithecus theoretically averages eight to ten feet (if it stands erect, which it may not). [*In China, ground-up fossils are considered a medicine for many ailments.]
The other favorite candidate for a surviving human ancestor, Neanderthals, are physically closer to the description given of the Alma and Yeti than Gigantopithecus is, averaging a height of about five feet; but they have only been found in the fossil record in western Europe, never in Asia, and are believed to have been as hairless as modern humans.
Perhaps more damning to both of these theories is that neither of these early homonids are found in recent fossil records; Neanderthals cease to be found in the record at about 40,000 B.C. and Gigantopithecus vanish at 1.5 million B.C.. If either survived, some evidence sould have been found by now; and until some is, the Almas and Yetis remain as unproven and as unexplained as ever.
