Still Living?: Yeti, Sasquatch and the Neanderthal Enigma: Shackley, Myra: 9780500274064: Amazon.com: Books

I am quite the cryptozoology diehard and, among other volumes, own a good ten or twelve books treating the problem of relict anthropoids (e.g., bigfoot/sasquatch, yeti, yeren). (FYI, it's interesting to note that--per current, standard Chinese dictionaries--'yeren' translates merely as 'savage' or 'barbarian'.) I welcomed the crisp, scholarly treatment that Dr. Shackley afforded. However, I found her analysis ultimately wanting. First, she pays (IMHO) far too much attention to anecdotal "evidence" of the central Asian hominids--the putative reliabilities of the cited witnesses notwithstanding--scarcely proffering a footprint here or a coprolith there. Second, she poo-poos the Patterson film (admittedly, not directly an Asian hominid issue) despite the fact that repeated analysis of considerable academic rigor has repeatedly borne out its legitimacy and the utter impossiblity of its having been faked 45 years ago--television snippets of, "Oh, So-and-So admitted he faked that" notwithstanding. Finally, even though the crux of Dr. Shackley's thesis is the purported connection between Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and the supposed relict central Asian hominids, she doesn't do a very convincing job of interrelating the two, but, essentially, postulates a relationship and engages in some mildly convincing hand-waving.

Other than those criticisms, the book was well written and thoroughly researched. I won't carp about the occasional mis-numbered footnote or improperly hyphenated name (Sak-halin or some such when "kh" is a digraphic transliteration of a single Russian consonant). The layman might be very convinced and say, "Wow, that was quite a treatment," but--as an aficionado of this field--I find the book, ultimately, largely to constitute an also-ran.