Zana’s Story
Did A 19th-Century Russian Noble Tame a female ‘Yeti’?
The expansive mountain ranges of the Russian-Mongolian wilderness have been said to hide small pockets of ‘wild-men’ dating back centuries. Their features are familiar to most: height at six feet or more; thick, muscular bodies covered entirely in reddish-brown hair (or white fur in the case of ‘Yetis’), an offensive smell; and facial features which are both human and simian.
In communities from North America all the way to exotic eastern locations, mothers have warned their children not to play in the forests at night, lest the ‘Sasquatch’ or Bigfoot creatures snatch them away. Yet while most mainstream Western scientists do not acknowledge them, these ape-men — or almasty, as they are called in Russia — nonetheless seem to exist at the fringes of civilization.
Countless images of these creatures can be found on the internet and YouTube. The Patterson-Gimlin film of the 1960s is probably the most infamous, featuring a heavy-breasted Bigfoot-type creature striding into the forestry, but a merchant in nineteenth-century Russia may have come across something even more profound.
Edgi Genaba, a well-known nobleman and sea-farer, may have come across — and captured — a wild female almasty.
Zana’s Capture
In the 1870s, the frozen wilderness between Georgia and Russia was home to what could have been the greatest anthropological discovery of all time. Small villages in the area whispered about a pre-historic ‘ape-woman’ living in the forest. Merchant Genaba, a frequent traveler in the region, heard the stories about this wild almasty and was determined to find this creature for himself. Genaba hired a posse to help him scour the area of Ochandir, and rumor soon gave way to reality. Against all odds, his men apprehended the female almasty and turned her into a prisoner in the frost-dusted Caucasus mountains.
Immediately, the poor creature was a sensation. This almasty looked human — but at the same time, it was clear that she was not. Unsurprisingly, the almasty did not take kindly to having been fished out of her security in the wilderness, but Genaba realized how valuable this ‘specimen’ was. He had no intentions of letting her escape and implemented stringent measures to protect his trophy. In true colonial, brutish fashion, Genaba’s men and a few local residents were able to force the wild woman into a spike-lined ditch they’d constructed. Sadly, this a would mark the beginning of a long life of indignity and suffering for her.
Genaba, enamored with his catch, christened the wild woman ‘Zana’.
‘Taming’ Zana
Regardless of who (or what) her people and ancestors were, Zana was likely a bright, intelligent young woman. She would have been horrified to be turned into a spectacle, but Merchant Genaba could not see past the novelty parading Zana into his world. After paying the locals a hefty price for her, he brought Zana to his home on Tkhina Estate in shackles. She would not be afforded the luxury of a comfortable, humane place to sleep. Genaba had her confined in a crude cage, where Zana dug a hole to serve as her bed. There she would stay for three long years, rambunctious crowds clamoring to gawk at her.
Zana’s unique features rapidly earned her celebrity status. No-one had seen anything like her. She was six-and-a-half feet tall, with black skin cloaked entirely in thick auburn fur. Zana also had more stark musculature than even the strongest men. Her sheer strength was legendary, and she did not seem to be affected by the frigid winter air, even though forced to sleep in the outdoors.
Eventually, Genaba’s attitude toward her softened. He decided to retire Zana’s cage and tethered her to a fenced-in enclosure. Zana’s temperament proved to be gentle and obedient, so much so that the merchant went on to relinquish the tether as well. But rather than run at the first opportunity, Zana stayed. She seemed to have grown comfortable in her captivity and was never seen traveling far from her food source.
Slowly, the people on Genaba’s estate tried to initiate the process of ‘taming’. Zana was given clothes, but she would not wear them. She preferred instead to walk about naked, shredding every dress that was brought to her into pieces. Zana was also introduced to language, but lessons proved fruitless. Although she knew and could respond to her name, she never uttered a single word.
Still more interesting was what Zana could do with her physical prowess. She was said to be able to swim effortlessly against the high tide of a nearby river, and could run even faster than a horse at full gallop.
Zana’s Abuse, Rape, and Children
Humanity is notorious for its cruelty. In years past even the most intelligent scholars, scientists, and anthropologists have been guilty of perpetrating injustices against marginalized peoples or cultures deemed ‘inferior’ to Western norm. Zana was unlucky enough to have been the recipient of such treatment. When she wasn’t working — community leaders had taught her to do simple chores, like grinding corn or lifting heavy sacks of grain — Zana was actually provided with alcohol, likely out of a callous curiosity to see how the liquid intoxicant would affect her.
Zana soon became alcohol-dependent. While she was impaired, the unthinkable happened: men from a nearby village took advantage of her condition and assaulted her. This would lead to Zana actually becoming pregnant.
After delivering her first newborn, Zana carried it to a river and dipped it into the ice-cold waters to bathe it. The newborn, having taken after its father and lacking the thick, protective fur of its mother, did not survive the washing.
Zana fell pregnant yet again, and took her second child to the river for the same wash. When this child passed away as well, a small faction of mothers and grandmothers from the community gathered to discuss what could be done. It was eventually decided that, if Zana had any more children, they were to be taken away immediately to be afforded a chance at living.
Shamefully, Zana continued to drink and be abused. She would go on to have four more children, all summarily removed from her care.
Aside from two rare photographs of a daughter and her son, named Khwit, not much is known about Zana’s children except that they had uncommon strength. They were said to have lived uneventful lives, and none were born with Zana’s distinct body hair. They worked, cooked, cleaned, and would go on to have children of their own. Some of Zana’s descendants are said to be living to this day.
In about 1890, Zana died. She had been living in captivity, drunk and childless, for almost twenty years.
Zana’s Shocking DNA Report
Zana’s story has fascinated people for more than a hundred years. In 2013, a Professor Bryan Sykes was able to conduct tests on saliva samples said to be from six of Zana’s descendants. Sykes, a Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, claims that his research yielded evidence that Zana’s ethnic background was ‘100% sub-Saharan African’, and that she was likely a slave who had been brought to the area by the ruling Ottomans of the time. Sykes also had a chance to study the unearthed skull of Khwit, Zana’s son, and was astonished to see its unusual features — mainly, eye sockets much larger than a human’s, as well as a prominent brow ridge. The back of Khwit’s skull had another strange mark: the presence of an extra bone at its base.
Was Zana Human… Or Something Else?
Although Sykes proposed that Zana might have been a slave of African descent, there are a number of factors that make this idea less plausible. The first is that, while Zana’s DNA supposedly indicated ‘100%’ African origin, Sykes was unable to clarify which regions on that continent Zana’s ancestors could have come from. The other obvious factor is that nothing about Zana’s description and behavior was ever like that of an ordinary human being.
At six-and-a-half feet tall, it would be possible to squeeze Zana into the ‘human’ category. Her full covering of auburn body hair doesn’t exclude this possibility either; it could be theorized that Zana suffered from a condition called hypertrichosis, in which a person is born with increased body hair on the face, back and limbs.
But how would that explain Zana’s sheer strength? No human that we know of can outrun a stallion or swim so effortlessly against the current of a raging river. Even if we suppose that Zana was very talented, is it reasonable to think she could have also survived outside in the winter time, without clothing, as a mere human? Zana seemed content to sleep in simple holes in the ground. The frigid weather did not effect her. If Zana were human, these things should have been impossible.
Additionally, an enslaved woman should have had at least some vestige of human language, even if she’d been living on her own in the wilderness for a very long time. She also might have had the tattered remains of human clothing. But even if she were found naked, why wouldn’t she have gratefully embraced the fresh dresses that she was given after so much time alone? And she didn’t just reject them; she tore them to pieces.
What about the disaster with Zana’s first few children? No new mother takes her newborn naked to an icy river for a bath, especially in Caucasus mountains. This would have only made sense if Zana’s people were very, very ‘different’…or perhaps not ‘people’ as we know them at all. If Zana really were an alamsty, then bathing her babies in the river would have made sense; almasty babies would have had both fur and different physiology, enabling them to survive a plunge in frigid water.
Yet, Zana was able to endure sex with lascivious men and bore at least six children. If she were not a human being, then reproducing with men should not have been possible at all. At the very least, any offspring she had would have been sterile, but her surviving children went on to have children of their own. Could Zana really have been an almasty, a member of a surviving remnant of ancient people still living as they did more than 40,000 years ago?
The answer, along with Zana, has been buried in the annals of history.
