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Agogwe (page 2)
Another account of the Agogwe appeared in The
Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society in 1924,
written by Mr. S. V. Cook:
"Fifteen miles east of
Embu Station there rises from
the
Emberre plains the lofty
hills of
Dwa Ngombe, nearly 6,000
feet high. They are inhabited, the Embu natives say, by buffalo and a race
of red little men who are very jealous of their mountain rights. Old Salim,
the interpreter at Embu, tells me with great dramatic effect how he and some
natives once climbed to near the top when suddenly an icy cold wind blew and
they were pelted with showers of small stones by some unseen adversaries.
Happening to look up in a pause in their hasty retreat, he assures me that
he saw scores of little red men hurling pebbles and waving defiance from the
craggy heights. To this day even the most intrepid honey hunters will not
venture into the hills."
Roger Courtenay, in his The Green Horn of Africa,
tells of a story related to him by his African guide:
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"But have you heard of the little people
who live in the Mau — small men, who are less men than monkeys? Less then
shenzi (i.e. loathsome foreigners), these little men, and almost monkeys
in their lives and ways." And he went on to tell how his own father, who was
driving his sheep to pasture on the slopes of
Mount Longenot, fell into the hands of these
gnomes when he went into a cave, following the trail of blood left by one of
his cattle that had been stolen. He was stunned from behind, and when he
came around he found he was surrounded by strange little creatures. "The Mau
men were lower even," he told his son, "than those little people of the
forest (the Pygmies) for, though they had no tails that I could see, they
were as the monkeys that swing in the forest trees. Their skins were white,
with the whiteness of the belly of a lizard, and their faces and bodies were
covered with long black hair." To his great surprise the shepherd noticed
that his spear was still lying at his side. "The Mau men who are so nearly
monkeys did not know what was the spear. It is possible they did not know I
could have fought with it and killed many of them."
If indeed the Agogwe is real, it could well be a surviving species of
Gracile Australopithecine, a bipedal primate known to science from approximately
2.5-4.5 million years ago. Australopithecine footprints did have to some extent
a diverged toe — although far from opposable. Regardless, the overall height and
the rest of the creature's description are consistent, and one must take into
account that the Australopithecine foot could conceivably have changed over the
spam of several million years.
Other theorists have suggested that these beings might be an unknown race of human pygmies.
Recently, in light of the discovery of late-surviving dwarf hominids in the island of
Flores,
east of
Java, this explanation has somewhat gained some weight.
Despite its smaller body size, smaller brain, and mixture of primitive and
advanced anatomical features, the new species falls firmly within the genus
Homo.
On the other hand, tales of the Agogwe could possibly be based upon sightings of
known anthropoids which were unfamiliar to the witnesses and the local natives. Anyhow,
since no conclusive evidence has ever been found, the mystery surrounding the
existence of these creatures still continues.
See Mysterious Primates, Abominable
Snowman, Almas, Sasquatch,
Yowie, Chemosit,
Chuchunaa,
Curupira, Higabon,
Kaki Besar, Maricoxi,
Bigfoot,
Mapinguary, Yeti,
Meh-teh, Nguoi Rung, 'X', Windigo,
Orang Pendek and Wildman of China.
Sources: (1)
Anderson, Ivan T.,
Abominable Snowmen: Legend
Come to Life,
Adventures Unlimited Press;
(2) Heuvelmans, Bernard,
On the Track of Unknown Animals,
Columbia
University Press;
(3) Wilson, Damon,
The Unexplained,
Scarlet Books; (4) Clark, Jerome,
Unexplained!,
Visible Ink Press; (5) Clark,
Jerome and Coleman, Loren,
Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of
Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature,
Fireside;
(6)
Quest for the Unknown,
Reader's Digest Association, Inc;
(7) Cremo, ,Michael A., and Thompson, Richard L.,
Forbidden
Archaeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race,
Torchlight Publishing.
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