Black Mountain

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Readers often ask me about the underlying details in my novels — is the science real or fiction? Where do the situations, equipment, characters and their expertise come from; and just how much of any legend has a basis in fact? My answer is that I always build my stories around the germ of a fact or a legend — and in the case of Black Mountain, that something is truly enormous!

Stories about a giant hominid date back centuries, both in the United States and all around the world. Are the beasts a hoax? Or are there fossil remnants, as some scientists believe?

The amazing thing is that giant hominids really did exist only a few hundred thousand years ago — a mere tick of the geological clock. We know them today by a whole range of names, including the yeti, Bigfoot or Sasquatch.

The name Bigfoot is given to the legendary ape-like creature that inhabits forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Most scientists discount its existence, considering it to be a combination of folklore, misidentification and hoax. Nevertheless, the legend endures, and a small minority of accredited scientists share the view that evidence collected from alleged Bigfoot encounters warrants further evaluation and testing.

Bigfoot is described by those who claim to have seen it as a large hairy ape-like creature, between 6–10 feet (2–3 metres) tall, weighing in excess of 500 pounds (230 kilograms), and covered in dark brown or dark reddish hair. It has large eyes, a pronounced brow ridge, a large low forehead, and the top of its head is rounded and has a crest similar to the sagittal crest of the male gorilla. Its enormous footprints (for which it’s named) have been as large as 24 inches (60 centimetres) long and 8 inches (20 centimetres) wide. It is said to be omnivorous, mainly nocturnal, with a strong, unpleasant smell.

In 1847, artist Paul Kane reported hearing Native American stories about a race of cannibalistic wild men living on the peak of Mount St Helens, a volcano in the Pacific Northwest region, which they called skoocooms. However, they seemed to regard these beings as supernatural. In 1840, Reverend Elkanah Walker, a Protestant missionary, recorded stories of giants among the Native Americans living in Spokane, Washington, whom they claimed lived on and around the peaks of nearby mountains and stole salmon from their fishing nets.

In the 1920s, a teacher called JW Burns collected the local legends in a series of Canadian newspaper articles. Each language group had its own name for the local version of the giant hominid, but Burns coined the term Sasquatch (supposedly from the Halkomelem sásq’ets) to describe the creature reflected in these various stories.

Anthropologists Grover Krantz and Geoffrey Bourne put forward the theory that Bigfoot could be related to the Gigantopithecus fossils found in China. During the Pleistocene age, many animal species migrated across the Bering land bridge to North America, so it is not unreasonable to assume that Gigantopithecus might have as well.

Gigantopithecus was named by paleontologist Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald, from the Greek gigas (giant) and pithecus (ape). In 1935, while examining pieces of fossilised bone in a Hong Kong apothecary, von Koenigswald came across something the shopkeeper called ‘dragon’s teeth’. Von Koenigswald thought the teeth may have come from something far more closely related to mankind, a biped that existed between one million and just over 100,000 years ago in the region that would become China, India and Vietnam. This early hominid species was said to be around 10 feet tall, 1200 pounds and extremely rare. Very few fossils of it have ever been unearthed, and those that have been found were retrieved from deep caves, leading to theories that the creature may have foraged in forested areas but lived in the shelter of a cave. The Gigantopithecus disappeared from the formal fossil record between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, and no one really knows why. Perhaps it became more difficult for it to find food as competition became more intense; or perhaps early humans killed them off, as they did most other megafauna.

The current scientific wisdom is that animals, sea creatures and plants seem to have a finite evolutionary life, dying out because of climate change, a more efficient predator or competitor, or geographical separation from a mate. But Earth is a big place, and there are some areas where life forms that have disappeared from the fossil record have been found to still exist. There’s even a name for it: the Lazarus taxon — from the story in the Bible where Jesus brings Lazarus back to life.

In order for any species to be considered as a Lazarus taxon, it must have vanished from the standard or agreed fossil record for a significant period of time, implying that the animal or plant has become extinct. Examples include the Laotian rock rat, which was thought to have become extinct 11 million years ago; the 90-million-year-old Australian Wollemi pine, found in a hidden gorge in the Blue Mountains area near Sydney; and the coelacanth, considered to be one of the missing links between finned fish and four-legged animals and believed extinct for over 65 million years.

The earliest humans, or Paleo-Indians, in the North Carolina area were the descendants of the first people to migrate across to and colonise North America during the Ice Age (Paleo-Indian Period: 16,500–10,000 BCE). At that time, the climate and natural environments were quite different from today — temperatures were colder, making winters harsher, and hardwood tree species existed in abundance as there were more forests and fewer prairies.

This environment was home to various megafauna species — ‘thunder beasts’ as the Paleo-Indians called them. They included tusked mammoths and mastodons; several types of ground sloths; 2000-pound, six-foot-long glyptodon’s with spiked tails and horned plating resembling nothing known today; beavers as heavy as two grown men combined; four-horned antelopes; bison-sized shrub oxen; wolves whose large heads and powerful jaws made them resemble giant hyenas; aggressive cave bears that weighed in at over 1500 pounds; and sabre-toothed cats that could open their jaws to a 100-degree angle to spear their prey before tearing it apart with their enormous scythe-like canines. As the Paleo-Indians expanded their presence in the region, they relied on many of these animals for food, as well as using their bones for tools and hides for clothing.

By 8500 BCE, most of the megafauna species were extinct, or found only in niche environments and soon to die out. The Ice Age was ending and the eastern ecosystem was changing. Scientists disagree about what role humans played in the extinction of these mighty animals. Climate change could have been a contributing factor, as was competition from new encroaching animal types. But humankind, the super-predator, will always be considered the main suspect.

Lake Jocassee, tucked away in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is one of the deepest manmade lakes in the southeast. It was formed by the damming of several large rivers — the Whitewater, Thompson, Horsepasture and Toxaway, filling a natural valley-basin — for the purpose of providing hydroelectric power for the south-east region.

Originally, the Vale of Jocassee, which now lies beneath the surface of the lake, was home to the Cherokee Indian Nation. In Cherokee, the name Jocassee means place of the lost one. The Oconee tribe, led by Chief Attakulla, lived on the west side of the Whitewater River; on the east side lived the Eastatoees, a rival tribe. A young Eastatoee warrior named Nagoochee was hunting in Oconee territory one day when he fell and broke his leg. He expected to die there, until he heard a young woman singing and called out to her. It was Chief Attakulla’s daughter, Jocassee, and she took Nagoochee back to her father’s lodge and nursed him back to health. They fell in love and Nagoochee stayed with the Oconee tribe. Later, during a battle between the Oconee and Eastatoee tribes, Jocassee’s brother, Cheochee, killed Nagoochee. When Cheochee returned with Nagoochee’s head on his belt, Jocassee stepped into the lake and walked across the water to meet the ghost of her lover.

The arrow was a sacred symbol for the Native American Indians. It was depicted in many different forms, all of which had different meanings. A broken arrow symbolised peace, for example; and crossed arrows suggested friendship.

The arrow was also used for spiritual protection. An arrow pointing to the right meant protection; an arrow pointing to the left warded off evil.