The Pangboche Hand: A "Yeti" Relic Tested
A mummified hand kept at a Buddhist monastery in Nepal's Khumbu region was long shown to visitors as a yeti's. In 2011 genetic testing of a finger smuggled out in 1959 found it to be human.
Sources BBC News, 'Yeti finger' DNA results, Royal Zoological Society of Scotland / Edinburgh Zoo (27 Dec 2011); Wikipedia, 'Pangboche Hand'
The village of Pangboche, on the trekking route to Everest in Nepal’s Khumbu region, has a small Buddhist monastery. For decades it kept a mummified hand that monks said belonged to a yeti, and Western expeditions in the 1950s took a keen interest.
A stolen finger
In 1959 an expedition funded by American oilman Tom Slick obtained a finger from the hand. The story, told later, is that the mountaineer Peter Byrne swapped it for a human finger and the actor James Stewart helped smuggle it out of India in his luggage. It ended up in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
The test
In 2011 geneticist Rob Ogden at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland tested the finger’s DNA. It was human. The original hand was stolen from the monastery in the 1990s and has not been recovered.
Ledger status
Marked cited. No map position: the relic belonged to an active monastery.
Sources
- BBC News, “Yeti finger mystery solved by Edinburgh scientists” (27 Dec 2011) — bbc.co.uk
- BBC News, “Tracing the origins of a ‘yeti’s finger’” (27 Dec 2011) — bbc.co.uk
- Wikipedia, “Pangboche Hand” — en.wikipedia.org
Part of the World Ledger, batch 1. Original text; no images are used.
Evidence ledger
Each claim in this file, the source it rests on, and how well it holds up: 3 corroborated · 1 debunked. What the labels mean.
| Claim | Source | Type · date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| A hand relic at Pangboche monastery was displayed as belonging to a yeti. | Wikipedia; BBC (2011) | press · 2011 | corroborated |
| A finger was taken from the hand in 1959 and ended up at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. | BBC (2011) | press · 2011 | corroborated |
| DNA testing in 2011 at Edinburgh Zoo found the finger to be human. | BBC (2011) | press · 2011 | corroborated |
| The hand belongs to a yeti. | Expedition-era claims | secondary · 1950s | debunked |
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