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The Pangboche Hand is an artifact from a
Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of Monasticism, monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in Cenobitic monasticism, communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a ...
in
Pangboche Pangboche or Panboche is a village in Khumjung Village Development Committee of Solukhumbu District in Province No. 1 of Nepal at an altitude of . It is located high in the Himalayas in the Imja Khole valley, about 3 kilometres northeast of Ten ...
,
Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...
. Supporters contend that the hand is from a
Yeti The Yeti ()"Yeti"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.
is an ape-like creature purported t ...
, a scientifically unrecognized animal purported to live in the Himalayan mountains. A finger bone from the hand was tested and the DNA shown to be human.


History


Antiquity

According to members of the Pangboche monastery,
Lama Lama () is a title bestowed to a realized practitioner of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism. Not all monks are lamas, while nuns and female practitioners can be recognized and entitled as lamas. The Tibetan word ''la-ma'' means "high mother", ...
Sangwa Dorje once walked into a cave to
meditate Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique to train attention and awareness and detach from reflexive, "discursive thinking", achieving a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state, while not judging the meditat ...
. During his stay, a
yeti The Yeti ()"Yeti"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.
is an ape-like creature purported t ...
revered him, bringing him food, water and fuel, and eventually became his Buddhist disciple. When the yeti died, Sangwa collected the hand and scalp and took them back to the monastery, where they remained as sacred relics, periodically paraded around the village as a fertility ritual, until they were discovered in the modern age.


Western discovery and initial theft by Byrne

Oil businessman and adventurer
Tom Slick Thomas Baker Slick Jr. (May 6, 1916 – October 6, 1962) was a San Antonio, Texas-based inventor, businessman, adventurer, and heir to an oil business. Slick's father, Thomas Baker Slick Sr., a.k.a. "The King of the Wildcatters", had made ...
first heard accounts of a "Yeti hand" held as a ritual artifact in the monastery at Pangboche during one of his first "Abominable Snowman" treks in 1957. The Slick expeditions were the first to bring photographs of the hand back to the West. During later Tom Slick-sponsored expeditions in and around the
Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than list of h ...
, his associates gathered more information on the "Pangboche hand," and an effort to further examine it was planned. In 1959, a member of Slick's expedition that year, Peter Byrne, reportedly stole pieces of the artifact after the monks who owned it refused to allow its removal for study. Byrne stated that he was shown what looked to be a large, mummified primate hand. Byrne claimed to have replaced the stolen bone fragments with human bones, rewrapping the hand to disguise his theft. Byrne smuggled the bones from Nepal into India, after which actor
James Stewart James Maitland Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was an American actor and military aviator. Known for his distinctive drawl and everyman screen persona, Stewart's film career spanned 80 films from 1935 to 1991. With the strong morali ...
allegedly smuggled the hand out of the country in his luggage, bypassing security by hiding it among his wife's undergarments. Cryptozoologist
Loren Coleman Loren Coleman (born July 12, 1947) is an American cryptozoologist, author and television personality who has written over 40 books on a number of topics, including cryptozoology. He is also the President, Founder and leading Director of the Inter ...
rediscovered this story while writing Tom Slick's biography in the 1980s. Coleman confirmed details of the incidents with written materials in the Slick archives, interviews with Byrne, and correspondence with Stewart. Byrne later confirmed the Pangboche hand story via a letter from Stewart that Byrne published in a general book on Nepalese wildlife. During the highly publicized 1960 World Book expedition, which had many goals including gathering intelligence on Chinese rocket launchings,
Sir Edmund Hillary Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached th ...
and
Marlin Perkins Richard Marlin Perkins (March 28, 1905 – June 14, 1986) was an American zoologist. He is best known as the host of the television program ''Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom'' from 1963 to 1985. Life and career Perkins was born on March 28 ...
took a sidetrip in Nepal to investigate the hand. Hillary was unaware of the possibility that he was looking at a combination of the original material and the human bones placed there by Byrne. Hillary determined the artifact was a hoax.


Later studies and developments

London University primatologist
William Charles Osman Hill William Charles Osman Hill FRSE FZS FLS FRAI (13 July 1901 – 25 January 1975) was a British anatomist, primatologist, and a leading authority on primate anatomy during the 20th century. He is best known for his nearly completed eight-volume ...
conducted a physical examination of the pieces that Byrne supplied. His first findings were that it was
hominid The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); '' Gorilla'' (the ...
in nature, and later in 1960 he decided that the Pangboche fragments were a closer match with a
Neanderthal Neanderthals ( ; ''Homo neanderthalensis'' or sometimes ''H. sapiens neanderthalensis'') are an extinction, extinct group of archaic humans who inhabited Europe and Western and Central Asia during the Middle Pleistocene, Middle to Late Plei ...
. In 1991, in conjunction with Coleman's research, it was discovered that the Slick expedition consultant and American anthropologist George Agogino had retained samples of the alleged Yeti hand. The NBC program ''
Unsolved Mysteries ''Unsolved Mysteries'' is an American mystery documentary television series, created by John Cosgrove and Terry Dunn Meurer. Documenting cold cases and paranormal phenomena, it began as a series of seven specials, presented by Raymond Burr, Kar ...
'' obtained samples and determined they were similar to human tissue, but were not human, and could only verify they were "near human." After the broadcast of the program, the entire hand was stolen from the Pangboche monastery, and reportedly disappeared into a private collection via the illegal underground in the sale of antiquities. George Agogino, before his death on September 11, 2000, transferred his important files on the Pangboche Yeti hand to Loren Coleman. In 2010,
Wētā Workshop Wētā Workshop is a creative company delivering concept design, special effects, props, collectibles, immersive visitor experiences and video games. Based in Miramar, Wellington, New Zealand. It also offers two tourism experiences, the Wēt ...
produced a replica skull and hand based on photos of the missing hand and skull. Mike Allsop handed over the replica skull and hand to monks at Pangboche in May 2011. On 27 December 2011 it was announced that a finger belonging to the hand contained human DNA, following tests carried out in Edinburgh. Rob Ogden commented that "We have got a very, very strong match to a number of existing reference sequences on human DNA databases... Human was what we were expecting and human is what we got."


References

{{reflist Yeti Paranormal hoaxes Human remains (archaeological) Hands in culture Khumbu Pasanglhamu Buddhism in Nepal Individual thefts Buddhist artifacts