Almas
The Soviet "wild man" investigated as a possible relict Neanderthal.
- Region
- Caucasus mountains, Mongolia, the Pamirs, and Central Asia
- Documented sightings
- 4 on map →
Overview
The Almas — Mongolian for "wild man" — is a hair-covered hominid reported across the mountain ranges of Central Asia, from the Caucasus through the Pamirs to the Altai and Mongolia. Soviet Academy of Sciences historian Boris Porshnev hypothesized the cryptid represented a relict population of Neanderthals or another archaic hominid, an argument he developed across decades of fieldwork and his 1963 monograph "The Present State of the Question of Relict Hominids."
Identification
Reported at 1.5 to 1.9 meters tall with a stocky, heavily muscled build, dark hair covering the body, prominent brow ridges, a flattened nose, and bare palms and soles. Behavior is described as non-aggressive, with witnesses noting the creature's ability to live entirely off the land in extreme environments. Tracks resemble enlarged human footprints.
Lore & Origin
The 1941 Caucasus capture of an Almas by a Red Army detachment — examined by Lt. Col. Vargen Karapetyan before being executed as a suspected German spy — became the foundational modern case study. The Zana account from 19th-century Abkhazia, in which a captured female Almas reportedly bore four surviving children with local men, was investigated by Porshnev and remains among the most extensively documented Almas cases.