History?

History

It can be said that almost all communication consists of history. Be it ancient history, or current events, it is still history.
When that first primitive man first awoke and told his cave mates that it was time to get up, that was a news communication about current events. Later when he told a younger member of the troop where he had found food last week that was a history lesson.
As man learned to communicate better he began to pass on more and more of this older information. To better remember the story it was woven into songs and poems to make it easier to remember. And many of the more important lessons evolved into folk sayings, and the Old Wives Tails.
These Tails weren’t so named so much because they were old, though they clearly were, but rather because they were passed on by the oldest members of the group. Passed on by those who remembered them from days long past. Often told and retold more in a setting of entertainment than as real stories they were, and are, often discarded as fiction.
But are they completely so?
As I pointed out before there is an argument to be made that the old stories of Trolls and Goblins were based on the raids by an older more primitive race upon the more recent arrivals. While he have seen the skeletons of these people we don’t actually know how they looked. Science assumes that because they lived in the north they had pale skins, but did they? Science assumes they had light thin body hair like we do, but did they?
What if they were more ape like.
If these older people had a dark ape like skin, and more ape like body hair they would have been fierce looking creatures indeed. Hair and beards with a dark skin would, with a little dirt and soot, look black and menacing. Longer thicker body hair would give the person a clearly animal like look. They could be easily taken for a monster.
OR, they may have been recognized as a different people by the newer race and given a more descriptive name.
IF, this happened and the older race was clearly outnumbered and driven deep into the woods and forests, they could become rare and unusual sightings. Add in the human tendency to kill anything that scares us and they may avoid the newer peoples like the plague.
Just what might the new people call this race? Forest People? Hairy Wild Men? Woodland Giants? Or maybe Sasquatch, Almasti, or even Yeti.
There is a clear case that the first arrivals in North America arrived before the last Ice Age and that the Clovis People may well have come from Europe rather than Asia. Their artifacts are more common in the east than in the west where they were first discovered and named for example.
Could the Clovis have been the older hairier race that fled west ahead of the newer people across the edge of the ice and the islands of the then shallower North Atlantic? It is possible. And if it happened they would have arrived about 15 to 20,000 years ago well ahead of the Asian migration. They spread west across North America in a warmer period after the last Great Ice Advance. They lived in a world of Mammoths and Hairy Rhinos where the land was thick with large game. A world that a hairy body and dark sun absorbing skin would have been helpful in.
Then something happened. As the huge miles thick ice withdrew and melted there was a huge amount of melt water forming. A small ocean formed around and north of the great lakes. For centuries the melt had run south, but now something blocked the flow. Several theories have been tossed around as to what happened and why. Ranging from tall moraines, to stubborn ice walls, to meteor impacts they all agree on one point. The melt water did not go south. Instead the small ocean of cold fresh water went east along the St. Lawrence river. Right into the path of the North Atlantic current that was causing the warming cycle that caused the melting.
And the current changed.
About 10,000 years ago the Younger-Dryus cooling happened. The North Atlantic current was disrupted, the weather cooled, and within a year the ice began to return. That first winter would have been catastrophic. Blizzards and extreme cold well beyond anything the natives or animals had experienced or were prepared for.
There are no Clovis settlements or relics newer than 10,000 years ago. Clovis settlements have deep layers of overlay between them and any other signs of human habitation.
During this period the Asian migration moved east over the Aleutian Island route and down into North America. In the many centuries of slow spreading and growth the Asians moving south met the remains of the Clovis. By now the Clovis had been decimated. Only small isolated family groups remained, and these had been close to the sea or in the warmer south west during the cooling. Their hairy make up, evolved for a cooler climate, now drove them north and into higher elevations.
Could the oral history of these early meeting be the bases for the Indian stories of the Sasquatch or Almasti?
Just how long does oral history last? How many centuries will a story be told and re-told before it’s forgotten?
And as we all know stories will be changed to meet the audience so how far have they wandered from the originals?

" What was once history became legend, and then legend became myth. And things that should have been remembered were forgotten." The Lord of the Rings.